Teahub puer..any opinions?

Aurora - Denver: tomato - tomAt :). I remember when I started my first job here as a geologist in Nevada (1988) most of other geologists were from Denver. At the time a plug was pulled by Reagan administration on oil tax shelters and Denver was suddenly terribly depressed economically. So local guys while introducing us to the girls in Winnemucca, NV bars usually first pointed at me and say "This is Alex, he is a political asylee from Russia, and the rest of them are economical refugees from Denver". Aurora "suburb" was very well represented. The girls were definitely more interested in political rebels than in good family folks from Rockies foothills.

I do not know if its coke and vodka or anything else, but I just cannot listen to the guy at all. Years ago I used to be driven up the walls by Brezhnev's speeches, but there, it was definitely the substance. Here I cannot even get to the substance, because that Gollum delivery and smirks and body language are just insulting. I can swear I hear that "Bad, bad Democratses, they want to steal our preccious... ". I used to feel bad (before Iraq) as a conservative and long-time Republican for not being able to give him a chance, but I just couldn't - my skin crawls, or as we say in Russian - "my ears wither". You Aurora guy lost (I think) also because he's done everything to forget his Colorado roots and wanted to believed himself that he did become that MIT-Harward-BU new englander, which is wonderful if you want BU tenure and just plain useless if you want to chase ladies around the Oval Office. But well...

Sasha.

So that's where all the oil geologists went. It's still cheaper to import than explore. Not changing soon since no matter what kind of government ends up in Iraq they won't turn off the spigot (plus Bin Laden will win a strategic victory because we'll move our post Kuwait bases from religious SA to a Saddam style secular Iraq). There is plenty of employment in minerals in the Rocky west. Back in 82 Anaconda moved me from NM to CO. Instead of credit cards they'd give you wads of cash to tie you over. Just like the movies I'm in a bar and pull out some hundreds and the bar flies are over me. I think JK did a good job of campaigning on what I thought were the issues. However you can't win when the other side talks of gay weddings and terrorists in the same sentence. Denver is miniscule compared to what surrounds it but they keep culture and sport venues. The large Russian emigre population is located in Glendale. That's where I buy my Russian commercial brands of Ceylon tea. Now with the diverse economy we have a problem with California refugees and their SUVs during the snow storms. CO voted for Bush but gave the Democrats control of the state legislature for the first time in 30 years despite a Texas style redistricting (my congressional House representative is now a Republican who had a psychiatric deferment during Vietnam) and elected a Democratic Senator along with his brother to the House who are the second pair of brothers ever elected to Congress.

Jim

"Alex Chaihorsky" wrote in message news:... ...Bush whacked...

Tried to send you some comments off-topic but your snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com came back twice as undelivarable.

Sasha.

The old email was valid till Jan of this year. If you use Google usenet you need a valid email address for initial signup and I could use a bogus account on the free email servers but would never check it anyway. Yep even the userid was already occupied on msn. It's wonderful not deleting spam constantly because usenet is a harvest field. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Jim

change the domain from ix.netcom.com to msn.com change the user from netstuff to thenetstuff

Sorry about the 99.9% pure OT post but I did mention our Russian emigre community where you can buy Ceylon tea. It's not as good as the Arabic brands but the boxes are more decorative. You walk into a Russian store and you get a sense of history and style.

Jim

...stream of OT consciousness deleted...

After many years of drinking exclusively black teas of which Ceylon was my favorite I almost completely switched to green pu-erhs and oolongs. Unfortunately there is no good Kradnodar tea anywhere anymore (small tea-producing region near Sochi - Lazarevskaya on the Russian coast of the Black Sea) which I loved (but they can be s***ty too - one must know his teas!). It was THE most fragrant black tea ever, IMHO (naturally). I saw their ads in Russian recently but they only sell wholesale (100kg minimum) -

Sasha.