It's hard to come up with a good topic when you do these more than once every six months.

Yesterday on an internet chat, we revived the eternal debate: coconut, best thing ever or inedible horror?

I fall on the "best thing ever" side and today bought myself two coconut desserts. The one I ate today was DELICIOUS!

What do you think about coconut? Any others that you hate (or love) that stir the food passions when you bring it up? Banana, avocado, strawberry, chocolate (!)

It's way past time for a new junk.

This is Blazer related, but I just can't see how it would fit into a Blazer chat thread. Plus, people usually ignore the topic anyway. So hopefully I'm okay.

I just bought my latest Blazer gear, a cool black polar fleece pullover, that was 50% off at the New Jersey game. It's very warm and super comfy. Downside?  It's currently covered with cat hair.

What's your favorite Blazer gear?

So, I don't know that OTF is going to stick. I'm going to call this a junk drawer, but I'm open to either. Or new ideas altogether.

So far, my resolutions are off to a fabulous start. Today I'm going to lunch with an old friend, which will be activity toward my third resolution. So, yay me. Or something.

Today's rules:

No use of the word "dead" in the junk.

I suppose football is okay, but I won't read it.

So, hey, what are your New Year's Resolutions? I know a lot of people believe they're just made to be broken, but I like the idea of thinking about what I'd like to work toward in the coming year.

I wrote down a whole bunch of them last week. A lot are not really to be shared on the internet.

But, I would like to knit more, resume some dropped friendships, and finally get my backyard into ship shape.

How about you?  What are you hoping to accomplish in 2011?

You can see my original request for information and my report on the basketball side of things.

We had a fun weekend in Phoenix. As most of you noted, not having a car limited our options, but there was still plenty to do.

We accidentally followed oLLiE Boombayay's advice on food before the game, wandering by the pizza and wings place on Washington. People were nice to us that day, despite how the game turned out.

I'd share photos of our Saturday adventures, but I left the camera behind at the hotel that day, so, oops.

In the end, we went to the farmers market, where I got some great vegan tamales and hummus. The nice woman at the Doctor Hummus stand sent me off with ice, so that after 5 hours carrying our hummus and tamales in the sun, we did not get food poisoning. Always a plus, I think.

Because we were apparently feeling both lazy and cheap, we didn't go to the Heard or Art Museums. Plus, I wanted to spend as much time as possible outside. That same day Portland received 1.3 inches of rain. Ahh, sunshine.

Back onto the light rail, and over to Papago Park. We viewed the fishing pond. Funny. Climbed up Hole in the Rock. The view wasn't so exciting, but the rock was interesting (more so after we went to the Pueblo Grande Museum) and the breeze felt great. Yep, it got up to 76 degrees that day, and that felt really hot!

We sat up there for a while, then wandered a bit more in the park, and headed back down to the Pueblo Grande Museum. They were having an art/craft show. And we toured the museum. Nobody recommended that one, and it was small, but I liked it.

We had intended to have a nice dinner out that night, but, umm, did I mention the lazy? We had tamales, and hummus (oh, and someone had a hamburger) back at the hotel.

All in all, a good trip and a nice day. Back in Portland now, and it's rained all day. I don't mind the rain, but I can see why people spend their winters in Phoenix.

Thanks a bunch for the advice!

DrivetheLane and I ventured to Phoenix on Friday to watch the Blazers take on the Suns. Despite being on the second night of a back to back (we were, too!), and playing on KGW, the Blazers won. I got a new camera last week, and boy did I use it. Apparently the second time we made the TV screen, I'm taking a picture. Ha, no surprise. Here's the first time (no, all you hecklers, we weren't bored, there's a stop in play here, we can't cheer continuously!)

via www.gifninja.com

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So, the boyfriend and I are going to Phoenix to watch the Blazers/Suns game.  Given that it's the second night of a back to back and the general crudiness of the Blazers' play lately, it could get ugly.  But the tickets are bought, the reservations are made, so we'll be there. 
I've never been to Phoenix before. We'll have one extra day to explore. Hoping not to rent a car, but we could if need be. Any suggestions for must see places? Especially must see places that can be reached by public transit?  :)

Any parks in the city good for a short but scenic-ish hike?  If not, anything not too far out of the city? Restaurant recommendations gladly accepted as well.

Thanks!

The daily Junk Drawer (JD) fanpost is the place for true off-topic conversation and people's random thoughts.. with a goal to foster community and people have really become a family here. So if you have a one-off thought, consider posting it here.

The rules about importance and significance of the topic are suspended in each JD but keep some of these basic rules in mind:

1. Personal attacks and swearing will NEVER be tolerated
2. Mentioning of football is not allowed unless it's to say it sucks; hahaha who am I kidding, it's a weekend junk drawer.
3. Pictures of cute cats are especially appreciated; those of shaved puppies will be flagged.
4. Don't use the JD to call out or talk about users from other BEdge threads.

As you try and navigate through the junk drawer, remember that you can use 'Zorro' on your keypad to mark a poster as dead and move to the next one and hitting shift-A will mark all comments as read.

When I was 17, my friend and I took a tour of one of the navy ships during fleet week. We wandered off from the tour and got ourselves kicked off the ship and told never to return. I've never returned to the navy ships, although I assume by now they've forgotten about me. We didn't see anything interesting on our detour. Hoping this is long enough...

I've been reading with some fascination the Rockets' fans assessment of the officiating last night, which many have declared to be the worst they've ever seen.

With the exception of the (dare I say it) flop that Roy pulled off in the corner to get a foul call on Battier, I didn't notice much that was terrible last night.

Actually, what I did notice was what I thought were bad calls against the Blazers.  When Yao accidentally knocked a Houston player into Joel, who was facing the other way and was called for his 5 foul, for instance. 

But I'm also fascinated that we can apparently see the exact same play in slow motion and disagree with it.  The foul on Rudy with 1.3 seconds.  A couple of Houston fans swear that no one touched him (after viewing it over and over), while a few Portland fans declare he was tripped (after viewing it over and over).  I myself only viewed it once and thought, whew, thank God it was Rudy this time and not Travis.

Apparently fans see what they want to see. Could the refs be better, can fans ever be objective, do the refs really cost teams wins?  I know I should probably have just let this die, but it seems like an interesting psychology experiment in the making.

Oh, and could someone clear up for me once and for all: are you allowed to hold on to the other guy's jersey?  Is this a foul?? 

3:30 and no junk drawer? What, are you spending time with your families? Geez.

How about Philly's crash and burn ending against Denver yesterday. Sigh.

But here's my actual topic: I've been invited to a destination wedding in the Carribean in February. A good (but no longer especially close) friend, a lovely location. But, it will cost me close to $2000 when all is said and done. I theoretically have $2000 to spend, but would frankly rather spend it on something else. Plus I hate to fly. Should I go? And if I don't, what should I tell her?

Hey, did you see this?

http://blog.oregonlive.com/sportsupdates/2008/03/rose_garden_picked_to_host_nca.html

Just today I was thinking that Portland hosting these games would be fun (really an odd thing for me to think since I haven't watched a single second of NCAA ball this year).

To get to 300, just today I learned that Western Kentucky is in the tournament.  I was born in Bowling Green, KY, so I guess that makes me a fan by default.  But Hilltoppers, what the heck is a hilltopper?.  Have you seen their mascot- big red blob. But they won, so go big red!

This link is actually from Oregon Live's links (also linked today by Ben)- I thought it was pretty funny.

First Channing insults Sacramento in his blog:
http://www.channingfrye.com/blog/?p=28

Then on our sister site, the fans of Sacramento fight back.  Well, sort of:
http://www.sactownroyalty.com/story/2008/3/10/162215/065

Interesting "behind the story" blog from Jason Quick about a story set to run in tomorrow's Oregonian.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindblazersbeat/2008/03/the_making_of_a_point_jack_str.html

I'm curious what people with strong opinions on Jack think of the transcript of Quick's interview at the end.

So at the game today, during at least 50% of the timeouts, the Lakers coaches did not talk to their team.  They stood on the court and did something that involved a clipboard.  The players who were in the game at the time drank water and sat in their chairs.  Those not  currently in the game watched the Blazer Jam Squad. At one point, I thought a Laker reserve player was going to join them in dancing.

This happened even when the game was very very close, and I think even when the Lakers had actually called one of the timeouts.
I've never seen anything like it.  Is this normal for the Lakers?  Why?

Of course, I don't think James is BETTER than Brandon.  But our "freefall," such as it is, started when Jones's production fell off.  Presumably- although not necessarily- this was related to him beginning to feel pain in the knee again.

But it sure looks like the effect on our offense when we don't have a steady outside shot- as well as the effect on the opposition's defense- is HUGE.

Waddya think?

No, I don't want to debate his play. I would like to discuss his facial hair.
This photo is Jack, right?  And that's a mustache, right?  Is it new?  And if so, can we make fun of him just for the heck of it?

filler filler, how about that Brandon Roy, filler filler
And darn that Haslem for not managing one more rebound to get me 10 more points in the jersey contest.

Players will get injured and throw our rotation out of whack.
82 games is a heckuva long season. We'll be tired in the playoffs (whatever year we get back).

This type of loss is a true test of "are we real"?

Maybe we win tomorrow.  Maybe we're tired and come out flat.
Does a loss today (or even more, a loss tomorrow) make us blow the entire road trip, or do we still salvage our 2-4 wins and come back to the Rose Garden strong?

It's from "Mr. Jones" by Mike Jones. I'd never heard of it till I searched online, but the video has been watched almost 3,000,000 times on youtube, so I guess I'm just old and out of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iPINFbs9KE

In other player music soundbite news, to make sure I have 300 characters, I would swear I heard the Flinstones theme song when Roy scored today.  Anyone else hear that?  And am I missing an obvious connection there?

I'm going to have to ramble to get this long enough to post.

Is this music in the background of the "streak video" from an actual song? (see the link to the video as of win 9)  I love it, probably because it just reminds me of the streak now.  I hope it lasts until they return home, because I want to see the outrageous Travis dunk added as the clip from game 13.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RVoRCb016mo