For someone who wakes up early enough to watch the garbage guys, this is funny:

We have these cool new trucks in Olympia where there's an articulated arm like on the Space Shuttle and it grabs the cans and hoists it overhead and dumps the contents into the truck. So, the first can gets emptied, the arm goes halfway down, then back up and waits at the top, and I'm thinking some of the linoleum is stuck in the can.

The guy gets out of the truck, climbs up on top of the truck and starts putting stuff back into the can and I'm thinking, "Oh no, what did I do now? No debris allowed? Is it filled with lead or asbestos? Did the metal strips jam the compactor?" -- not likely, I know.

I run upstairs and get on some pants (I've already had a cup of coffee, so I'm thinking ahead) and go out and ask the guy as sweet as I can, "Is there a problem?"

The guy smiles at me and says, "No. No problem, unless you count me forgetting to open the top of the truck as a problem."

I wish Olympia Report had comments, I would comment there. I bet the rest of us have funny garbage stories.

Inspiring story.

Camas not only represents a lost food source for the tribe, it represents a nearly lost prairie ecosystem that has succumbed to development, farming and invasive species such as Douglas fir and the Scot's broom tribal members had to remove from the restoration site before they could plant.

Prairie Restoration

I am reading through information on the redesign of pharmacy pill bottles, and one bit in the list of solutions particularly leaps out:

(7) Take "daily".

Adler avoided using the word once on the label, since it means eleven in Spanish.

Deborah Adler's Design

That is the Department of Homeland Security plan anyway. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. If enacted it will be enforced beginning in 2007.

A related question, why is the border between U.S.A. and Mexico treated so vastly different from the border between Canada and U.S.A.?

Washington, B.C. Officials Dread New Requirement

Check out her website: Orthodox Icons of Olympia

The modern use of the icons, rendered in acrylic on gessoed wood or masonite, has extended outside of the Eastern Orthodox religions. Heather Williams Durka recently wrote an icon of St. Benedict for St. Benedict's Episcopal Church in Lacey, and her work also can be seen at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Lacey, St. John's Episcopal Church in Olympia and St. Ephrem Orthodox Mission in Olympia, the Oriental Orthodox church where Father Durka is the priest.

Iconographers refer to what they do as writing the icons, because each icon -- meant to represent the figure as it appears in heaven -- includes very specific symbolism and lettering. The figures are posed and clothed in specific ways.

In the Theotokos (which means "God bearer"), an image of Mary holding the baby Jesus, Mary always holds her head tilted to the left, toward the child. She wears a blue robe, overlaid by a deep red one. "Red stands for divinity and blue stands for humanity," Durka explained. "She is human, but she is completely clothed in the life of Christ."

The symbolism must be exact for an image to qualify as an icon. "We don't decide, 'I'm going to do her mantle in green because I like green,' " she said. "People could do that, but it's not an icon when it happens."

This falls in the "Isn't that special" category:

OLYMPIA, Wash., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) foresters delivered an early Christmas present to the citizens of Washington State Monday morning. Fresh from Weyerhaeuser's new forest at Mount St. Helens, the gift is a 30-foot noble fir that will serve as the centerpiece for holiday festivities in the Capitol's newly refurbished rotunda.

The noble fir arrived at the Capitol by flatbed truck this morning. The tree is special because it is from the new forest Weyerhaeuser planted in the wake of the devastating eruption of Mount St. Helens 25 years ago. It was one of 18 million seedlings planted by hand in one of the largest-scale reforestation projects in history.

Tom Gideon, Weyerhaeuser senior vice president for Timberlands, said the tree is a heartfelt gift, given with pride connected to 25 years of work at Mount St. Helens.

"This tree symbolizes the success of our sustainable forestry at Mount St. Helens," Gideon said. "It reflects the remarkable renewal of an ecosystem that 25 years ago looked like a moonscape. Today it is a healthy and productive working forest -- at work to provide lumber for homes and other forest products that people need for everyday living."

"Does this mean we can drive more log trucks through your town, now?"

From the Olympian:

“Monday night into Tuesday morning looks like the best chance of snow in the Olympia area,