PortlandiaQuill

Blurg.

2010-06-03T12:52:00.002-06:00

Dear readers,

As most of you well know, I was recently kidnapped in London and held hostage for an e-mail ransom. The result of this adventure was the unfortunate deletion of my old e-mail addresses, ariel.holman@gmail.com, the one tied to this blog, being one of them.

Though I transferred administrator privileges over before I deleted that google account, unfortunately, it appears that it has messed things up over here at Portlandiaquill as well (not the hacker, just the loss of the account).

We have many wonderful things to share - including a marching marmot, and pictures and stories from our trip out to Grand Teton National Park.

In the days to come, keep an eye out for more information - I'll be migrating the blog to another location, and hopefully will be able to retain a similar web address.

Thanks for your patience - hopefully we'll be back on-line before anyone really notices. :)

Love, Ariel

E-mail account compromised.

2010-05-27T11:52:00.001-06:00

All,

I hate to annoy you with this e-mail, but my old hotmail account has been hacked/compromised. If you receive an e-mail from cuencadillo@hotmail.com please delete it and block that address.

I've tried to get into it to shut it down, but I've been locked out. I will continue working with hotmail to try to have it deleted, but I'm not sure how far I can get with it.

I don't believe that Gmail has been impacted, but I am going to be shutting this account down as well, just to be safe.

To contact me going forward, please send e-mails to:

arielavarland@gmail.com

What a pain.

Thanks for understanding.

Best wishes to all,

Ariel Varland (Holman)

Changes in the air.

2009-12-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

This morning (and days prior) the river was steaming downtown. Big billowy clouds of steam rolling off the water.

A small sign of things to come. Today the temperature didn't drop below zero. Tonight the snow moves in. We can use the blanket, I think.

Morning.

2009-12-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Last night was bell-clear. The cold settles everything out of the air. It's as if the night holds its breath, waiting for morning.

Dawn rises a soft pink. Small clouds hang low, puffs of frozen breath snagged in the trees.

We wake slowly, the sun itself finding it difficult to rise this crisp, cold morning.

....

2009-12-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Last night was bell-clear. The cold settles everything out of the air. It's as if the night holds its breath, waiting for morning.

Dawn rises a soft pink. Small clouds hang low, puffs of frozen breath snagged in the trees.

We wake slowly, the sun itself finding it difficult to rise this crisp, cold morning.

Little things.

2009-12-08T15:12:00.001-07:00

We squabbled a little last night over whether it was a good idea for Charlie to ride his bike to work tomorrow (a couple inches of snow on the ground, slick roads, cold temps). I made him promise to ride his bike on the sidewalk if he did (no shoulder or room for cars to manuver around him was my thinking...). He reluctantly agreed.

Then the temperature dropped to -4 this morning. He was pleased to have a ride to work, I think (he certainly didn't argue!).

Likes and Dislikes.

2009-12-08T12:29:00.001-07:00

Things that I do like:

Cubes of Cotija Cheese in my Tortilla soup. They are squeaky like cheese curds and salty like love.

Very cold glasses of water. Even when it's cold out.

4 degrees below zero. The absense of degrees. The twinge of an "event" that goes along with those days, and seperates them from the ho-hum. Sub item: squeaky snow.

Honey crisp apples. They are always crisp!

Falling asleep on the couch.

Things that I don't like:

Being pressured into adopting Christmas into my heart prematurely for the season. I will get there in my own good time.

People who lack a sense of boundaries, or, (equally) those who have a very different perception of where those boundaries should be drawn.

Cleaning the bathroom.

Scraping the frost off the windshield in the morning.

2008-11-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

Si se puede!!

Hot, but not like burn-down-the-neighborhood hot.

2008-09-08T13:58:00.005-06:00

So, if you're following things on Twitter, you know that I made some outstanding brownies yesterday. I've been on a roll when it comes to cooking this weekend, in fact.

But as good as everything has been, these brownies take the cake.

I got the recipe from my new favorite cooking blog, SmittenKitchen.

What makes them so good? The slow, subtle chipotle burn.

These aren't your average bake-sale brownies. Spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, and chipotle, they are complex, rich, and delicious. And I'm not really a huge brownie fan.

Here's a link to the recipe. I'd hoard it all to myself, but it's already on the internet, so it's not much of a secret: http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/the-baked-brownie-spiced-up/

I promise that they're awesome, that you may want a glass of milk or scoop of vanilla ice cream nearby when you eat them, and that they weren't the cause of all this last night.

In other cooking news, I've been creative in the kitchen this weekend.
On Friday night, I threw together a really flavorful and easy corn and black bean salad/salsa (see description and ingredients below) which we had with cornbread for dinner. It was so good, we finished it off Saturday night on some awesome chipotle-lime chicken tacos.

Then, last night, knowing Charlie isn't a huge cheesy-foods fan, I devised a simple recipe for Spinach, Italian Sausage, and Parmesan raviolis. Holy YUM.

Without further delay, here are the basics:

Sweet corn and black bean salad:

(Note: in the photo above, I'd cooked the beans a little on the long side, so they disintegrated a little. It was still delicious, though not as picturesque as I'd like. This was also after we'd devoured half the bowl. I figured I'd better get a shot before it was all gone!)

2 cobs of fresh, sweet corn (not frozen corn, it just doesn't cut it)
1 can black beans
1/2 C diced tomatoes
Chipotle chile powder, blended chilies in adobro sauce, or a chipotle sauce of some sort
1/4 C of your favorite salsa (I had Mrs. Renfro's mild salsa on hand, can use fresh tomatoes instead)
about 1/2- 1/3 C minced yellow onion (use red onion if yellow is too strong, can add more or less depending on personal tastes)
1/4-1/3 C mined cilantro (again, adjust to your personal taste)
1 diced medium red bell pepper
1 diced medium avocado
Juice from 1/2 a large lime

Boil corn on cob for just the briefest amount of time--enough to slightly heat through. Remove corn from heat, and let cool.

Meanwhile, heat beans in saucepan over medium heat with diced tomatoes, chipotle, and a little salt and pepper to taste. Add Chipotle according to your heat preference.

When beans are warmed, and flavors are all mixy and tasty, remove from heat.

Cut corn kernels from cobs.

Combine all ingredients except lime in large mixing bowl. Squeeze lime over the top. Refrigerate to cool, or serve warm.

We ate this with cornbread and a simple green salad, and it was AMAZING.

If you're nice, I'll post the ravioli recipe later. :)

Politcial moment:

2008-09-05T12:57:00.003-06:00

My new favorite things.

This, from John Stewart: Sarah Palin and the Gender Card

This, from the Associated Press and Yahoo News: Republican Convention Fact Check

This, from Gloria Steinem and the LA Times: Op Ed piece

And finally, the term: G.I. John and his running mate Caribou Barbie.

Yow.

Because we've had a couple phone calls....

2008-08-27T14:43:00.005-06:00

No, we were not anywhere near the fire that ripped through the SE Boise suburbs on Monday night. It was pretty awful, though. Nine houses were destroyed, and another one was damaged. A very popular linguistics and English professor at Boise State University was killed.

Remember just a few posts ago, where I was saying how I'm not used to living in a place where people's houses catch on fire and burn to the ground? Yeah. THAT. It was interesting watching the news--it's so much like the California fires. People saying: I left my home to go and see how close the fire was, and by the time I turned around to go back in and gather belongings, the house was already burning. People were caught without their SHOES, even. Gosh.

Fortunately, for all you worriers, Charlie and I are living near the heart of the city--very close to downtown and to the capitol building. There are blocks and blocks of houses between us and any sage brush or cheat grass.

In other news, I found out today that I type 77 words per minute! Wow! I'm impressed with myself. Goooooo TEAM! (To any potential employers reading: think of what this will do to your bottom line! Think how fast I can send out those memos!)

Other, other news. Charlie and I are getting ready for an awesome feast of a dinner tonight. My new favorite cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen, has recently posted a few recipes that I'm going to lump together into an awesome feast.

On tonight's menu:

Crisp Rosemary Flatbread
Kefta and Zucchini Kebabs
Hummus
Lime Meltaways

I know you're supposed to serve mint and lamb together, and the recipe has instructions for making a yogurt-garlic-mint sauce... but I'm just not a huge mint fan. I'm wondering if it would be good with a garlic-dill-yogurt sauce instead? Perhaps I'll make both and see which we like better.

Anyhow, who's coming over? When can I expect you? Got your plane tickets? :)

I'll let you know how they all turn out.

Spider update:

2008-08-15T08:50:00.005-06:00

Total count so far: 5

4 nasty Hobo spiders
1 funny little crab-like spider (he was cute and non-GUUUH!!!!! inspiring, with his little legs up in the air like a warning)

Locations of Hobo spiders: Kitchen sink (2), living room wall (1), spare room (1)
Location of funny little crab-like spider: IN MY BED ON MY ARM (1)

Body count: 4 Hobo spiders (shoe [2], flush [1], garbage disposal [1])

8/20/08 update:

Total count so far: 7
6 nasty Hobo spiders
1 little crab spider

Locations of 2 most recent Hobo spiders: Kitchen floor (1), living room floor(1).
Body count: 6 Hobo spiders (Boise Weekly Newspaper [1], shoe [3], flush [1], garbage disposal [1]).

8/27/08 update:

Total count so far: 8
7 nasty Hobo spiders
1 little crab spider

Locations of most recent Hobo spider: Entry way wall(1).
Body count: 7 Hobo spiders (Boise Weekly Newspaper [1], shoe [3], flush [2], garbage disposal [1]).

More things I'm getting used to.

2008-08-08T13:20:00.006-06:00

We're heading camping this weekend up in the mountains near Stanley, ID. Charlie's parents are in town, and we've planned this with some of their family friends for several months now. Yet, there are certain perils that I'm coming to terms with as far as things like camping in Idaho are concerned. Example: thunderstorms and flash floods! Of course it's just a warning, but some thunderstorms are predicted to move through the area this evening, and there are flash flood watch warnings for the area to which we're headed this evening. Holy moley!

Also new: living in a place where brush fires and forest fires can happen almost within city limits. Yesterday, some oily rags on a guy's back porch spontaneously combusted (!!!!) and set the foothills just outside of town on fire. It ballooned into a 30-acre wildfire before the BLM and the fire department got it under control. No houses were compromised, but it came very close. Maybe I was just fortunate, but I can't really recall that ever happening near Seattle or Portland. You were lucky if you could get your firewood to cure enough over the summer so that it would light come fall--forget "spontaneous combustion."

Finally, spiiiiiiders. I like to think I'm a pretty tough nut. I get dirty, I hang out in the woods, and I can deal with stinky things, gross things, and dead things. I was the "Brunhilda" of a house of post-college roomates because I was the only one not too completely grossed-out to clean the dead mice out of the mousetraps. Come to think of it, I've cleaned up a lot of dead things that the people around me were too afraid to get near.* But I don't like spiders. I heard recently somewhere (from some news source) that phobias can be hereditary. If that's the case, that I know precisely where mine came from. My mom and I have identical reactions to a spider on the wall (KILL KILL KILL), or on our clothes/body ("Huuuuruahaaddhdahsjshjdkahdlkajsdhak!!!!"). Anyhow, I've discovered that in Idaho (and in my HOUSE) there are such nasty things as HOBO SPIDERS. I've disposed of two of them already. One, normal spider-size, the other GIANT LIKE THE TOP OF A POP CAN. Guuuuuuhhhhhhhhh.... I did a little spider research on-line, and came across this GEM of a quote telling you how horrid these spiders are: "A male Hobo Spider is identified by it's genitalia, which look like boxing gloves and are often confused as fangs." That's right. Boxing glove FANG balls. The big one I squished definitely had these. Their bites also cause to flesh to turn black, necrotic and DIE. So charming.

UPDATE: All it took was the phrase "And then your flesh turns black and DIES" to convince Charlie to abandon his Siddhartha-like ways as far as Hobo spiders are concerned and join me in Arachni-cide.

Guess what Idaho ALSO has: Black Widow spiders and Rattlesnakes. GREAT. Haven't seen those yet. Don't want to.

In good news, one little culture shock thing keeps amazing me in a GOOD way: I can wash clothes, hang them on a hanger, and three hours later they're completely dry. UNBELIEVABLE. I can't quite get over it.

(*working at a strip-mall retail shoe store job while in college my co-worker found a dead sparrow outside and, with West Nile in the news, panicked and thought we should call animal control. She was sure that the customers would freak out, and that it would all spiral downhill from there. I told her not to worry, grabbed a tissue, picked up the poor little bird (it had obviously hit the big windows and died) and took it around back for an ignoble burial in the dumpster.)

People Otto has licked.

2008-08-07T23:41:00.005-06:00

Charlie
Devon
Ariel
Celeste
Scott
Emily
David

Devon's friend Rhonda
Devon's friend Katherine

Our landlord
The electrician that RMS sent to fix the light in Portland
The Qwest phone guy

Charlie's mom
Ariel's mom
Devon's mom

Marsha

If our cat has licked you and I've somehow missed mentioning it here, please e-mail me and I'll remedy it, or post it in the comments.

My kind of activism.

2008-08-02T11:20:00.001-06:00

Sorry, I try not to post videos on here, but this is awesome.
I've got to get more than just herbs going in my containers on the porch.

This is my kind of activism. GROW!

Funny story.

2008-08-01T10:31:00.003-06:00

(If you're also reading Spudward on occasion, you'll notice this is a double- or cross-post. I thought it was appropriate to share it in both places. Sorry if this annoys anyone.)

So, this story is a little belated timeline-wise. But I wanted to wait until things were all wrapped up with our property management company back in Portland before exposing this story to the world (internet). For those of you that haven't heard it yet, it's a doozy.

About a month ago (actually, exactly a month ago yesterday) Devon and I were working hard to complete the final scrub-down of our house in Portland. Everything was packed up and crammed into cars and moving vans, and the house was looking good. As we sweated and scrubbed in the 90 degree heat, we ticked off rooms: bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, living room--DONE! We had the kitchen left to scrub, and a final zoom through with the vacuum. Devon was scrubbing the kitchen, and I was touching up a little paint damage we'd managed to do to the baseboards around the house.

Let me advise you right now, NEVER do baseboard touch-up work in a house that you are about an hour away from being DONE with. NEVER AGAIN.

I was in one of the bedrooms, scootching my way around the floor of the room on my butt, filling the little dark spots where the paint had been chipped off. Let me add, the baseboards in our house were white, so I had a can of white paint I was carrying around with me. Paint can in hand, I stood up to take a look at how things were going, and promptly stubbed my toe on the carpet and tripped. The paint can flew out of my hands, and paint exploded across the BROWN carpet and onto the tan walls. There was paint EVERYWHERE.

Based on the speed at which Devon made it into the room, the tone of my voice when I howled "OH NO, DEVON!!!!" must have been a pretty good indicator of my emotion: panic. We grabbed as many towels as we could find and started frantically sopping up paint. What in the HELL were we going to do? Not only was our deposit as good as gone, we were probably going to have to pay to have the whole damn room re-carpeted--maybe even the whole HOUSE.

We had been probably TWO hours from being done with the house, and still hadn't had dinner. The frantic brainstorming started. I encouraged Devon to start helping with the carpet rather than the walls (we had matching paint for the walls, we could touch that up later). Thinking back to what had worked best as far as getting the paint brushes clean, I told Devon we HAD to keep the paint wet. If we let it dry, there was no hope left. I grabbed a water bottle and then a bucket and started pouring water directly on the carpet. Then came the dish soap. It had worked for getting the paint out of the brushes, why not the carpet? So, with a sponge mop, a bucket of water, rags and a bottle of dishsoap, we went to work. And believe it or not, it started to come up.

We managed to get about 1/2 of the paint out that way, I think (or maybe it was just more spread out?). Devon started thinking, and remembered that she'd seen carpet cleaners for rent at Fred Meyer. At this point, it couldn't hurt. She jumped in the car, and drove out to the store to see about renting one. Sure enough, they had them. Unfortunately, they required photo ID to rent one. And hers was locked in her office at work (oh, the coincidence). She blasted home, tossed me her car keys (mine was packed with plants--no room for a steam cleaner), and I went and grabbed the machine.

I cannot BELIEVE how well it worked. It was outstanding. Emily, David, and their friend Allen came by to pick up Flymo (our hovercraft lawnmower) as I was sucking up the last of it and drying out the carpet. By that point, aside from my frazzled appearance, they swore you couldn't tell there'd been a bucket of paint spilled all over the carpet. The other awesome thing about the cleaner, is that it sucked up all the water we'd dumped on the carpet trying to prevent the paint from drying.

Devon stopped by the next day to check on things, and she said there was no sign of the disaster. Sure enough, we got our deposit back from the management company today, and it was the entire thing.

Good grief.

The moral of this story is: don't play with paint in rental houses.

The weather, among other things.

2008-07-31T21:43:00.000-06:00

In the Pacific Northwest, the air feels thick. It's thick with moisture and damp air. It's wet and heavy and it smells clean. Like the atmosphere just after a good rain: even though it's dense with moisture it feels healthy.

Here the air is dry. It has the texture of cardboard--almost scratchy. But it's also thick. Thick with particulate material and ozone. If you've read this blog before, you know that the weather intrigues me. The weather in Boise is so different (just beyond the obvious temperature difference) than in Portland. I pity the forecasters and meteorologists here: there's not much to report on any given day. When they pull up the illustration of the 7-day forecast, it's more of a polka-dotted line; sun's all across. Sometimes there's a cloud or the word "haze" written across the sun, or sometimes it gets down into the 80's (how we rejoice!), but so far that's been about it. You certainly don't get the surprise and variety I'm used to from Seattle and Portland.

There is one little thing that they regularly broadcast here that we didn't have in Portland: the AQI. Apparently Charlie even received e-mails at work notifying him on today's AQI status. What is it? The Air Quality Index. Remember I mentioned the raspy air with particulate and ozone? Boise is in a valley, sandwiched between two sets of mountains. As a result, we hang onto the same cruddy air for days at a time. The hotter it gets, the worse the air gets. Some days are so bad, you can barely see the foothills from downtown (it would be like not being able to see Mt. Tabor). It's like the backwash of air. So, every day we get an update on what tomorrow's predicted AQI is going to be: if it's green, we rejoice (probably means it'll also be breezy and in the 80's, too!), if it's orange, we sulk and try not to hang out too much outside (orange = unhealthy). Mostly, since we've been here it's been yellow.

It's the little things like that which make you realize that you're somewhere new. The weather report with seven looming suns. The AQI report. The fact that when I reach for a sponge to wipe down the counter, I have to run some water on it first to moisten it (otherwise it's a hard, dried-out brick). The lack of hipsters walking down the street (some might argue that this is a distinct benefit).

There are things that I really like about being here, but I think I'm still kind of in the "denial" of actually living here phase. The job market here is terrible (for me at least), and it's hard to even find things that look appealing and pay reasonably well, let along get called back for an interview. Challenging. I'm also starting to miss my little communities back home--I'm hesitant to start any volunteer opportunities here until I nail down a job for fear that my schedule won't allow me to continue. I'd rather hold out for now, rather than be a flake.

In the meantime, I'm trying to focus on the positive: I've read more of my New Yorkers than ever before, there's plenty of time to read and to internet (now that we have it!), and I've been able to spend lots of time cooking and making delicious things for us to snack on. That said, I'm ready for my purpose now, Mr. DeMille... time for a job, please. I'm hoping that will help to make Boise feel a little more like home.

::Brevity interlude::

2008-06-20T15:15:00.001-06:00

It's been pretty heavy around here lately.

So I have two things to share.

The first is a link to Otto's new fame and fortune. He's a model. I wish he'd tell me he's doing these things, though--I'd get him some quality representation (an agent).
Famous kitteh.

I guess at some point you just have to let them live their own lives.

That said, I think the small-time has gone to his head a little. He's never been quite the brightest bulb, but he's starting to show some disturbing tendencies toward visitors. Perhaps he's stressed by the move and is hoping that someone else can take him home? And here I thought he liked us.

Devon told me this story around lunch time. We had to have a maintenance guy out to do some work on the lights in our rental house today. She got a call from the property management company, that he was on his way over. When she got to our house he was already there, and in my room working on the light.

She said that she was so embarrassed when she saw what was happening. Here was the maintenance guy (hopefully in his socks if he was standing on my bed!) in shorts, fixing the overhead light. Meanwhile Otto is going CRAZY licking his leg. And when that cat gets a'licking, he really does it like he means it--we're talking deep, fleshy, "I love you and I want to cleeeeaaaaaaan you" sort of licks. His eyes half-close, and he gets into a rhythm--almost as if it's a meditative state for him.

I can picture their exchange.

"Hi, I'm Devon; I live here. And this is our cat Otto. Obviously you've met. He's not especially shy."

Fortunately the maintenance man was quite accepting of the whole thing--he told Devon that it was ok, he had three cats at home.

Nonethless, it sounds like we need to have a conversation with Otto about Stranger Danger--he must have misheard us when we said it the first time: "No, Otto, it's stranger DANGER, not stranger FLAVOR."

And thus begin the goodbyes.

2008-06-20T14:11:00.000-06:00

Last night D., Charlie and I had a nice final hurrah BBQ with David and Emily out on our back patio/slab.

The weather was beautiful, E & D brought Mr. Bingley (their dog), and we had a fantastic spread of barbecue foods: grilled portabella mushrooms, fruit salad, garden burgers, grilled asparagus, red potatoes, a lovely vegetable salad, a divine sangria, and cupcakes for dessert. There was more food that we knew what to do with. The conversation was light, and the company was tremendous.

The only thing that was less than perfect was the elephant sitting just to the left of the slab with the big "last hurrah with D & E before Boise" placard hung around his neck. We did a pretty good job of ignoring him until it was time to say goodbye for the evening. I gave everyone hugs and said we'd be back to visit soon, and then, promptly, after they headed out the door started leaking big alligator tears.

Let me refer back to some previous blog postings for a moment, and remind you that my mom repeatedly points out that I can have quite a flair for the dramatic. I think this is fairly accurate, but that said, I think this was an alligator-tear worthy event. I'd prefer to think that, rather than drama, I have a knack for letting myself feel things deeply--especially when those things involve big life changes or things that directly affect my own little life.

Anyhow, the fact that we're going to be moving to another city, and that the threads that make up my Portland tapestry are starting to knot off at the ends, is finally becoming a little bit real. It's not such a bad thing--in fact, I'm excited to head east. I'm excited about Boise, and I'm excited about being there with Charlie. There are so many things that I'm going to miss about here though.

I suppose the best way to deal with that missing, is to find new things to be excited about in Boise--and I know those things will make themselves apparent in a short amount of time. It's kind of scary, though, getting ready to move and knowing yet what those things are.

Feeling bike-crazy this morning.

2008-06-19T11:03:00.001-06:00

The other day I heard a news story covering a recent study that indicated bumper stickers can help identify a driver prone to road rage. The research claimed that people who put bumper stickers on their cars tend to be more “territorial” about their space/possessions, and thus are more likely to have a strong reaction when they feel those things are threatened.

Well, I have bumper stickers on my car and on my bike and I don’t think I am prone to road rage? I didn’t think so, that is, until my bike ride in to work this morning. (Actually, in retrospect, I think this is more a case of “smugness,” feeling holier than thou, and reveling in my own “rightness”—not road rage, but also not very admirable qualities. I’m working on it.)

It was the perfect Portland morning for riding my bike to work: cool, sunny, and the traffic lights were all going my way. Another biker gave me a friendly hello as I pulled up to a stoplight with her, and all was well in the world. Birdsong, bumblebees, and singing children.

But those darn stoplights—they always ruin things, don’t they? If there’s one thing that makes me feel absolutely batty when I’m riding my bike, it’s the people who somehow think they’re so above the rules that they can blow through red lights. We don’t live in Idaho, people. Red lights in Portland mean STOP until the light turns green (unless you’re making a right-hand turn).

I pull up to a stop light—and granted, the road to the right was closed to all but MAX light rail, but that’s no excuse!—and a cyclist draws up behind me, barely slows, and zips past on my right, blowing the red light. I wanted to blow a raspberry at him. I was willing to not feel annoyed, though, because of the road closure.

My light turns green moments later (oh, the irony), and I follow him up to the next light. Which he blows through. No forgiveness for you now, my son. He gets a little ahead, and predictably, my light turns green moments later.

Now comes the part that I’m not especially proud of, but it made me feel sooo good. Here I am, wearing my work clothes, on my squeaky, rickety bike. I’m wearing sandals, and I know that I often get passed by people just because I look like I’m the type who’s not serious and is going to just slowly mosey along. And—at least in my mind—Mr. Stoplight-blower with his shorts and his mountain bike had that same impression when he decided he couldn’t wait behind me at a light.

I get in gear to cruise down the ramp to the Steel Bridge, and lo and behold, I’m right behind Speedy McImpatientson. With my rattle-y bike going clank-clank-clank on every bump, and my squeaky pedals going “reeeeeee-reeeeeee-reeeeeee” every third revolution or so, it would be hard not to know I was behind you. (It’s not an especially quiet bike. Rocinante, as I’ve chosen to call it, needs a tune-up.)

Squeeee-squeeee behind him on the Steel Bridge, and then ZOOM, as soon as we hit the Waterfront I’m off! I fly past him, and zip off on my way to work.

I never thought of myself as the competitive type, but under these circumstances, it felt so great to pass him. (I also came up on a person today who’d been at a light with me, and then took an illegal short cut—it was also great to pass her and know that my legal route was actually just as fast.) Then again, all that, and I still got to work 5 minutes late. Roh-well. They probably got there ten minutes late. OH SNAP!

Anyhow. That is my mostly unflattering bike gloat of the day. Yes, I am small and petty just like everyone else.

The worry monster.

2008-06-18T17:32:00.001-06:00

It wasn’t until recently that I became the kind of person who worries. Fancy-free, things will work out as they’re supposed to… blah, blah, blah. It seems like all of a sudden, though, someone has infected me with the stress and worry virus—because it seems like that’s all I can do! (Of course, my mother will beg to differ on my assessment of my degree of “worry”—perhaps I’m just not admitting to myself what it actually is I’m experiencing.)

Holy moly this move to Idaho is bringing out the worst of my “worrier” tendencies.

“OMG CHARLIE! What if we don’t find a place to live??” (We found a lovely place to live.)

“OMG CHARLIE! What is they don’t allow Otto?” (He’s fine with a reasonable, refundable pet deposit)

“OMG CHARLIE! What if the woman we’re leasing from doesn’t send us the lease agreement and we turn down our ‘back up’ place and then we don’t have a place to LIVE!?” (She sent it, it’s fine.)

“OMG CHARLIE! The lease agreement says that we have to have a phone on the premises—what if they make us buy a land line??” (They didn’t. Cell phones are fine.)

“OMG CHARLIE! We need to buy a new couch! What if we move to Idaho and we’ve unpacked our moving van and there’s no COUCH to sit on??” (Still working on that one, but I think it will be resolved soon.)

“OMG CHARLIE! We don’t have dressers or a table or a coffee table!?” (Working on those too.)

“OMG CHARLIE! WHAT IF I CAN’T FIND A JOB SOON HOW WILL WE PAY MY COBRA INSURANCE!?” (Fair enough, this one is still out there, but I’ve applied to three jobs that I think I’m well-qualified for.)

Thank goodness for a sweet and understanding person in my life who will listen to these worries calmly and not treat me like I’m going insane.

I’m starting to learn that moving to a new state with no job lined up yet can make a person feel a little insane.

“OMG! WHAT IF WE GO HIKING AND THERE’S A TICK OR A RATTLESNAKE??”

Big news.

2008-06-10T17:53:00.000-06:00

As if moving across state lines wasn't enough of a change for us (not to mention finally moving in together), there's more exciting news brewing in my little world.

That's right, Charlie and I are making it official--sometime in 2009 we are going to join the realm of the blissfully wedded.

We're both so excited about it (as you can imagine), and our families are thrilled as well.

We've not really started much of the planning process (aside from the occasional "WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME IF WE MADE EVERYONE DRESS IN SILVER LAMÉ AND WEAR HAIR HATS??" thought). As we've told a few people (it's turning out to be an exceptionally convenient excuse!), once we get through the move to Boise, then we can turn our thoughts to figuring out how to throw a wedding. AAA! A WEDDING!

One funny engagement-related story to share... they had an end-of-the-year party at the Homework Helper program where I volunteered this year, and Charlie tagged along. The population I worked with there was primarily Somali, and most of them were recent immigrants (refugees to be more specific) from Africa. Most of the girls came up to us and wanted to know who Charlie was.
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"No, he's my fiancé."
"What's that?"
"Well, it means we're going to get married. He's not my boyfriend any more, but he's not my husband yet either."
"So he's your husband?"
"Not yet."
"So he's your boyfriend, then...."

Fiancé was somewhat of a lost point.

Another amusing moment came when I told one of the girls that I wouldn't be able to come back next year because I was moving to Idaho. First she was so excited, "Idaho! We're going to Idaho!"
Then, not so much.
"You're moving away to Idaho?"
"Yes."
"Idaho is poo. It's where all the dogs and cats go to go poo. The dogs and cats all poo on Idaho."
(Thinking to myself: That explains why it's so brown!)
"Oh no! Well what am I doing to do there, then?"
"You're gonna have ta clean it all up." (scowling)

All in all, it was actually pretty sweet of her. :)

Oh, the silence.

2008-05-22T09:55:00.000-06:00

Boy, quiet around here lately, no?

Things have been busy and have been happening. Like what? Like C. job hunting and me trying to remain relaxed and calm-acting when really all I want to say is: "WHERE DID YOU APPLY TODAY? SEND ME YOUR UPDATED LIST? WHAT CAN I DO ASIDE FROM WAIT?" I couldn't say these things because of course C. the whole time is thinking things like, "It's two am. I'm not sleeping. I should be working on another application. I should get up and fill out another one. I should be working on my cover letters." So, any additional pressure from me? Not helpful. I've been trying to keep my anxiety over the whole process to a minimum and hide if from the rest of the world: SECRET STRESS. If you ask me, I've done a pretty bang-up job all things considered.

Anyhow, that part of the process is all over now so I can share all these things with you. C. found a job. It's in Boise, ID. In a little over a month, we'll be packing up all our things and hitting the road for Idaho. HUH. I'm actually pretty excited about the change. Of course, it will be like tearing off the world's stickiest bandaid (the kind that you wear in hot weather so the glue kind of melts around the hairs on your arm?) when we leave Portland. We may even scream out loud a little. This has been a great little home.

I've been pondering what to do with this blog--it IS named "Portlandiaquill" after all. Lot of good THAT will do me in Idaho.

I think I'll probably keep it, though, because--like it or not--once you've lived in a place, you absorb quite a bit of it (maybe that's what the whole osmosis thing is all about?). It adjusts the way you think, the way you understand, and the way you walk down the street. I'd say Portland has had an effect on all of those things for me.

More on these things (and the things I will and already miss about Portland) in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, you can check out C. and my thoughts on Idaho at our new home-away-from-home: Spudward.

Writing family narrative is more difficult than it seems.

2008-01-17T18:39:00.001-07:00

At first blush, writing family narrative should be easy. It's confessional, it's personal, and it's a topic that's close to your heart. What to tell and what not to tell, how long to keep it and how short to make it all end up cramping things a little. Especially when it's written for a class.

I'm not especially proud of this, and it's too cheesy to be profound, but it's a first go and I feel like I need to air it somewhere so that it can dry out and get a little crackled around the edges before I give it another go.

The assignment: Find a family heirloom or personal artifact and try to obtain its story from an interview. You can tape record or make notes or, in the manner of oral tradition just remember it. Bring the story and the heirloom (or representation of it) to class.

So, I'm excited about being in a class. I'm excited to do readings. I'm so excited to be sitting in a room with students and a professor listening to lectures that it's all I can do not to be THAT kid who arrives 20 minutes early and reviews all their notes on the readings, then waves their arms about wildly when the instructor asks a question. That said, I'm not sure I understand the point of this assignment. There must be one. Will it relate to the long, toothy piece on generative and iconic metaphors we read from our course reader? By sharing these stories with the class will we get to experience how difficult it is to impart knowledge we know deeply and intimately, with only a limited opportunity to give supporting contexts? Hopefully that's the point of the exercise. Otherwise, it starts to smack of show-and-tell.

Not that show-and-tell is altogether bad. Essentially that's what teaching and even basic communication are about, right? But it feels a little like secondary school, you know?

On a pessimistic note, if it is more of just a "sharing" exercise, then I think I can even take a "teaching" lesson from that--what a student hands in is, in someways limited by what the assignment requests. Mass is conserved or transferred; you get out what you put in.

So, without further adieu, a little "drying out."

(If all goes as plans, and my next big life project pans out, you may see more of these family histories (and a re-worked version of this one!) in the future.)

* * *

Sometimes an heirloom comes in the form of a physical object, other times this "artifact" takes the form of a family tradition, or location. Like an "heirloom vegetable" or "heirloom quilt pattern" often it's the seed, or idea that's really the most important component.

In the case of my family, the story of such an heirloom "seed" begins with my great-grandmother, passes through three generations, and lands, finally, in my hands. The tradition in question is that of travel—particularly, travel to Hawaii. On January 15, 2008, I interviewed my mother about how this tradition developed, and how the heirloom “trip” was handed down through the generations.

The story begins with Grandma Sue, my great-grandmother. In the 40’s and 50’s, Grandma Sue worked as a typist at the county courthouse in Tacoma, Washington. She grew up during the Great Depression, and was quite frugal by nature. Her husband, Joe, an employee at a worker-owned furniture factory, was still a young man when he died in a collision with a train. Grandma Sue found herself left alone, on a limited salary, trying to make ends meet, and raising a young son (my Grandpa Bob).

Grandpa Bob was a talented guitarist from an early age. Grandma Sue enrolled him in music lessons, and he began to learn some of the Hawaiian-style songs that were all the rage at that moment in time. This landed him a spot on a local radio program, playing jingles for a music studio. Whether sparked by her son's music, the exotic, Hollywood cache of Hawaii, or the opportunity to escape her daily grind, Grandma Sue fell in love with the idea of Hawaii. As fate would have it, right around this time (probably in her 40's or 50's) she received the opportunity to take a tour of the Hawaiian islands with a group of co-workers form the courthouse. She jumped on the opportunity. Somewhere, there are family photos of a young, smiling, Grandma Sue descending the stairs of a small, island-hopper plane and walking out across the tarmack.

One trip led to another, and as the years went by, Grandma Sue saved all her extra money for a Hawaiian vacation once every few years. Even though she was by all accounts a frugal woman in her normal life (saving twist ties, foil scraps, and envelopes for blank “scratch” paper), when on vacation Grandma Sue always stayed in the top-notch hotels, and ate at the most sought-after restaurants.

From an early age, Grandma Sue was a sickly child. Ill-treated by her parents for not possessing the vitality of her siblings, she suffered for years with a dysfunctional kidney. The excess toxins in her system frequently made her ill, and never allowed her to feel particularly healthy. Traveling to Hawaii, she found, eased those problems, and made her feel significantly better--even if only in a psychosomatic way). On these early trips she vacationed with work friends, and with her eventual daughter-in-law’s mother (my other great-grandmother, Sadie). Even so, a single woman glamorously jet-setting around the Pacific must have made quite a stir.

When her first grandchildren were born, Grandma Sue's Hawaii trips made the leap from indulgence to “heirloom.” Beginning with my mother (oldest of 7 children), she turned her grandchildren into her traveling partners. When they turned 11 or 12, she’d whisk them off on a whirlwind trip through palm trees, ocean beaches, guava juice, and plumeria blooms. These trips became an eagerly-awaited indication of “growing up” in the family.

In the years that followed, as the grandchildren grew up, married, and took their own trips, many gravitated back toward Hawaii. But whether it was for a honeymoon or just a vacation, they’d always remember to bring back mementos for Grandma Sue—leis, mugs, fresh flowers. I remember visiting her as a child and how her house was always filled with "Hawaii" things. After all her "grandchild trips" wrapped up, it wasn't long before her great-grandchildren began to arrive. As we became old enough, Grandma Sue decided to extend the tradition to yet another generation. First trips on airplanes, pictures with floral leis, memories of humid air and sweet guava juice--she brought all those things to the next "tier" of her family. Unfortunately, she only made it through the oldest two great-grandchildren, before her health worsened and she could no longer travel. I was the second and last great-grandchild to make the trip. My mother believes that this was also her final trip to the islands.

While the "gift of Hawaii" wasn't exactly a physical "heirloom" from Grandma Sue, she did pass down a tradition of travel and exploration. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have nurtured this seed of adventure and have gone on to travel the world, collectively exploring 6 of the 7 continents. Many of her great-grandchildren born after she died have since accompanied their parents to the islands. Though not "handed down" in the most literal sense, a trip to Maui or Oahu has become an "heirloom" that each of her 7 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren can all share.

* * *

(postscript: it definitely ended up just being show-and-tell. We placed our objects on desks around the room, and set the little write-up we'd done next to them--mine was by far the longest--and then walked around the room looking at what other people had brought. Criticisms: it wasn't quite apparent how this related to the goals of the course, and we didn't get to know one another better as a result--you weren't standing by your object, you were wandering the room, so there was no face-to-name-to-story element. Oh well. Refer back to that part about ultimately getting out of an assignment that which you put in.)

Variations on clouds: 3.

2008-01-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

Variations on clouds: 2.

2007-11-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

More late afternoon clouds over Portland.

Two perspectives on clouds.

2007-11-19T17:26:00.001-07:00

Looking back, and starting to look forward.

2007-11-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

Happy Veterans Day! For most people, this day involves getting up at the normal time, eating a normal breakfast, headed to work via the normal route. It's one of those "holidays" that we acknowledge, yet simultaneously makes us a little bitter inside--if the forces that "be" cared enough about honoring and remembering this day, chances are they wouldn't have us tied to our desks at work. Then again, to be completely fair, if given the day off, we probably wouldn't spend it honoring its namesake. Case in point: my first year at Lewis and Clark, the first day of classes for Spring semester began on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A collection of students, faculty, and staff elect to protest this fact as outrageous, and the school (being an all-around pretty cool place) acquiesced and gave us the day off--provided we attend some of the events that they held around campus. Did I ever know anyone who did? Of course not. They honored the holiday by sleeping in, watching Maury Povich in their pj's, and possibly updating their friendster profiles (yes, when I was in college, friendster, not facebook was the social networking site de rigueur.

In all fairness and in the interest of full-disclosure, my job, being at an institution that was built on providing post-war education to WWII veterans, DID, in fact, give us the day off--thus my ability to spend all this time working on a blog post.

* * *

I've been thinking an awful lot lately about the next phase of life that lies in front of me. Since I graduated from college, I've done plenty of interesting things. I've worked several strange, unfulfilling jobs, participated in a host of volunteer opportunities, and have seen a lot of places, and met my share of unique individuals (see previous post, titled "Quirk."). Despite this, I've felt aimless and adrift. Sure it's fun to live in a vibrant, interesting city, go to concerts, drink lots of coffee and hunker down with a few good books come autumn. Yet, lo and behold, that's not enough for me. Those kinds of indulgences really only seem pleasantly indulgent when you've something to contrast them against. So, as fall came to Portland, this year I sought out a new tutoring adventure, scoured the roster of upcoming classes at PSU, and started devouring information on local teaching programs.

While submerged in the erudition and ego inflation that comes with being a top student in any respectable department at a small college, the idea of being a teacher didn't work for me--why be a teacher when I could be a professor? One who professes! Egged on by mentors who encouraged me to aim for the stars I applied to and was rejected from some of the country's top graduate programs in my field. This was a good thing. Learning how to eat a little crow, figuring out that--in truth--only my ego wanted to be a professor, or "Doctor" of my subject, and learning what it meant to support myself, get along with a housemate, and survive emotionally, spiritually, and financially in a city (albeit, little Portland), were vastly important lessons to learn--and ones I keep learning. In the meantime, though, that little sparrow on my shoulder kept reminding me that there was more to life than just making my monthly bill payments.

So I started volunteering. First it was with a community college. They gave me a student who wasn't enrolled in any classes and said, "Go! Teach her English!" They loaned me a few texts to use for structure, and turned me loose. Mai and I worked together for the entirety of a school year, and made some decent progress--her English improved, and so did my understanding of what it means to teach someone. It challenged my creativity, my perseverance, and, of course, my patience. We had our last session in June, and then I took the summer off.

A short 2 months ago, I started volunteering with a different group, this time a Refugee Resettlement program that works with a number of people from East African populations. They were looking for Homework Helpers, and I was, by that point, looking for some experience working with kids. And experience have I gained! While still a relative newbie as far as young people go, my two months there have been a wild ride. The kids I work with range from kindergartners to high schoolers. For the first half of my time there, I help kids color in shapes, connect the dots, and complete simple addition. This is the younger kids group, and sometimes the junior high schoolers.

The older kids tend to be a pretty self-sufficient bunch, and aren't as needy as the little ones. For the most part they don't tug on your clothes, they don't throw pencils, and they don't push each other off chairs. Generally, they also refrain from throwing temper-tantrums.

It's such a challenging environment: culturally, they're a group that has a very different background from my own experience; numerically, we work with probably 25-30 kids throughout the 2 hours I'm there in a drop-in fashion--that ends up resulting in a lot of time-management, learning how to say "no," and developing some crowd-control skills; subject-wise I find myself tutoring the finer details of imperative and declarative sentences one minute, and helping out with algebra and long-division the next. I hope that this is helping me develop the kinds of skills that I will be able to build upon in a teaching program, and, eventually, in a classroom.

My ultimate goal has developed into this: I want to teach secondary school English and language arts. I also want to earn an endorsement in ESL and perhaps, someday, one in Reading as well. I find it a little scary to say that out-loud: I want to be a teacher. I want to teach teenagers. Part of me finds that awful and abhorrent... I WHAT? I doubt myself and this choice of a career path on an almost daily basis. But when it comes to the end of a day, when I've tutored, and when I've helped a student--one who barely reads, let alone writes in English--finish an assignment, I get this cheesy, glowy feeling, and I think I'm on the right track.

Quirk.

2007-10-05T11:06:00.000-06:00

Being a human, living in a society filled with other people, you tend to have quirky interactions on occasion. There’s that guy on the bus that tries to crowbar his way into other people’s conversations, the lecherous maintenance man on the elevator that wants to give you a dollar for two-day-old catered coffee, or the disheveled old man that tells you to smile and asks if he can have the uneaten part of your hamburger to feed to his dogs at home.

We’ve all got stories like this. It’s just a part of living in a small space with a lot of unique people.

Last night at the grocery store, I was puzzling over the difference between the frozen shrimp in the red bag versus those in the purple bag (I am still stumped as to the actual difference). A man my father’s age comes up behind me, leans in over my left shoulder and exclaims, “MMMM! Those shrimp sure do smell GOOD, don’t they?” (Usually I have some sort of bland, noncommittal response for oddballs, but I think I just turned and looked at this guy in disgust and disbelief.) He went on to make the same comment to the woman stocking the seafood case off to my left—his tone implied that he was just doing it to normalize his statement (good luck!).

I’m not sure why it is that things like that still surprise me. I grew up within striking distance of a very “normal” suburban town, but we had our collection of hayseeds and oddballs—I suppose the difference is that most of them stuck to themselves out on their fortified acreage. I imagine you just have a higher likelihood of running into unusual people when you live in a city. The frequency of your casual interactions increases, and thus the frequency of those that stand out from the rest.

I find myself wondering, though, how often I’ve been the strange one that stands out from the general public. I can think of several times when I’ve said something, thinking it was a completely normal comment or response, and someone’s either misheard me or given me the bland “Ahhh…” sort of reply. I wonder what the girl thought when, passing her on my bike, I yelled “Hey! I like your shoes!” (she was biking in red, platform heels, and I thought that was awesome of her). What did the check-out guy at Powell’s think when I said that “Yes-I’d-like-a-bag-today-but-ONLY-because-it’s-pouring-rain.” He gave me one of those funny looks. Maybe I mumbled?

When I was working in a customer service job, interacting with strangers in a friendly, pleasant way was routine. I knew how to do it, I was in a rhythm. Now, accustomed only to interacting with my computer and a few, familiar co-workers and friends, my social “skills” seem to be sorely lacking. When someone comes up to the grocery store to ask me if I’m finding everything ok, the best I can do is a disinterested “Mmmm-hmmm.” Heaven forbid I have to make small talk with the checker. Yet, when I am in an environment where I have to provide some sort of customer service (volunteering at an event, etc), that easy, chatty, friendly side of me emerges out of nowhere—like someone flipped on a switch. Why is it that a quality like sociability can be so hit-or-miss, on-and-off? Do I really live so deeply inside my own head sometimes that talking to a cashier first involves swimming up from the bottom of a ten foot deep end? Maybe. But that still doesn’t excuse Mr. Shrimp-smeller.

a blog of many colors.

2007-08-11T13:14:00.001-06:00

They say that the one most important factor in making a blog or a website successful is finding a focus and sticking to it. If you're a food website, don't post family photos. If you're writing about books, don't link to music. By that rationale, this blog is doomed to fail. Well, so be it.

Here is your post for today... perhaps my first food-blog-post on this website.

Last night for dinner I was seeking something easy, cheap, and delicious. I ended up with an awesome vegetarian treat: hummusy, garlicy, spicy, and fresh. It doesn't get much better in the summertime. So, without further adieu, let me introduce my Sauteed Mushroom Flatbread "Sandwich."

It all begins with the mushrooms. Sauteed in garlic with thyme, a splash of sherry, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

Once the mushrooms are ready, the Flatbread (from Trader Joe's) goes into the cast iron skillet to warm.

Then the hummus--home-made is preferable; it's light, garlicy, and exactly how I prefer it.

Smear the hummus on the warm pita, garnish with lettuce and tomato, add the mushrooms, and you're done.

Holy delicious, Batman!

It's been a while.

2007-08-09T11:27:00.001-06:00

Life's been busier than it seems lately. C and I went on a big hike up to the Goat Rocks Wilderness back in July sometime... had an amazing time (check out the photos her e). After that? Life has been a blur of work, cycling around town, and giving my much-neglected friends a little love.

Anyhow, I have no good excuse for my lack of summer posting, except for the fact that every time something remarkable happens, something else busier (but less remarkable!) happens shortly thereafter, thus preventing my comment.

To try and make up for it, and to win back your hearts, here are two awesome little tidbits from today.

The first, I (along with many other Portlanders) felt as if we were directly a part of. We were grilling on the back slab last night, when C. points to the sky, exclaiming "LOOK!" It was a pilot, half-way through a sky-writing exercise! How COOL! It was positively mesmerizing to watch the plane zoom, dip, and twirl through the evening sky leaving white trails of letters in its wake.

This morning I did a google search on the words she spelled, "COOL MOON ICE CREAM" and found that a few other people had noticed it too. I also learned a little more about the stunt and was highly impressed by the story of the pilot and the way that the advertising and local history intersected. Anyhow, here's the link: "When Oregon Women Collaborate, the Sky's the Limit"
I hope this gets picked up by a few more of the local news outlets, because it was just so neat.

And here are links to a few Flickr photos (not mine, just what came up when I searched the aerial phrase on flickr... 1, 2, 3) of what we saw....

In other news, the BBC has an article on an awesome four-footed version of book-mobile... the bibliomula!!

Ok. One more recommendation.

2007-07-25T14:26:00.001-06:00

This is the coolest Portland website ever. A happy hour directory that tells you where you can find happy hours at any given moment in your town. It even has a little bar to show you how far away from a happy hour you are at your current time. They also have a branch for Seattle, and one for Columbus (and Dublin), Ohio.

Thirst no more!
Urban Drinks

Product endorsement.

2007-07-25T11:30:00.000-06:00

Oh, the ubiquitous product endorsement. We all have things that we use and we love and we wish everyone would use and love. I love my Burt's Bees soap... I love my Marmot Raincoat... but here's something I ran across the other day that I thought I would share with the internet. I think this is such a great idea that I can't help being a corny "brand-cheerleader" for a few minutes.

Sorry things have been sparse around here lately--life has been busy. I will hopefully have more to give you this weekend!

I wanted to share this with you in hope that you'll consider it for the day when your Chacos bite the dust.

I just sent my sandals in to have them re-soled. It cost me about $40 (plus $5 or so to mail them), and they came back refurbished and lovely. It was way cheaper than buying a new pair, and kept a portion of my shoes out of someone's trash bin. Yay sustainability! :)

When I got them back (yesterday), there was a little pamphlet in the box with them, and it highlighted a program that they are offering for recycling Chacos when it's time to finally retire a pair. If you take your shoes to one of the local businesses that is participating, Chaco will take them back, fix them up, and then send them off on the wings of non-profits to provide shoes to people in need all around the world. Some of the areas they work with are in Africa and Nepal. It makes me very happy to know that when I'm through with my sandals (still hopefully a few years from now!) someone else can use them, and they won't just get thrown away. Oh yeah, and you'll get 20% of a new pair of Chacos from those retailers you return them too, as well! Unfortunately for all you REI-heads, they're not playing yet, but, there are lots of places in Oregon, and one place in Kirkland, WA that will take them back. They have a web-retailer that's participating, too.

Anyhow, here are the pertinent links. I hope you consider doing this--it's not much of a hassle, gives you an awesome price break, and you get to do something good for someone else! I think stuff like this is so great, and so cool. Yay, Chaco!

Info about the program, and a list of participating retailers: http://www.chacousa.com/inside/recycleprogram.cfm?curloc=inside_chaco&subcat=recycle
One of the foundations they work with: http://www.dzifoundation.org/ (also partnered with Marmot!)

That's my enthusiastic product/program recommendation of the moment. :)

4:50 pm - 102 degrees

2007-07-10T17:50:00.000-06:00

Well. The time has come. The insanity of the day has overtaken me and I need to experience this heat for myself. What does 102 degrees feel like?

The streets are empty of cars and humans. Wish me luck as I venture out into the asphalt inferno.

And cross your fingers that the bus driver has insisted that people keep the windows closed and that the AC is working well. Otherwise I'm in for a long trip home.

Just saw another ambulance fly by. I knew we wouldn't all make it out of this in one piece.

Signing off for today.

Tomorrow? If it's still hot, you'd better believe the news will still be covering it.

Good luck to you all.

3:29 pm - 102 degrees

2007-07-10T16:29:00.000-06:00

Inside pane of glass is now warm to the touch.

Reports are in from South downtown that a window box of geraniums has burst into flames.

Visible pedestrians all seem dazed and confused. Many ignore crosswalks, some walk down middle of streetcar tracks.

Emergency vehicles too exhausted to sound sirens.

Giant tow truck traveling down Harrison St.

Traffic on 4th virtually non-existent.

OHSU tram bravely continues to run on schedule.

2:48 pm - Holding at 100 degrees

2007-07-10T15:34:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure what part of Portland they are living in, but KPTV is reporting that currently is is "partly cloudy" in Portland. We WISH.

Other amusing things from local stations:

KATU offers their forecast for the next three days...
Today: 102 - RECORD HEAT
Tomorrow: 100 - HOT
Thursday: 94 - STILL HOT

As of 2:25 it was "Sunny and 100 degrees."

2:05 pm - 100 DEGREES!

2007-07-10T15:05:00.000-06:00

Well, we've done it. As of 1:45 today, we've hit the 100 degree mark.

All of the links in my Hotmail inbox just turned red. Is it a coincidence? More like a sign. The hot temperatures are burning the internet.

It went away though after I clicked on one of the links. Maybe not a very good coincidence after all.

12:33 pm - 92 degrees

2007-07-10T13:33:00.000-06:00

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! WE HAVE AN AMBULANCE!

Now things are starting to heat up. The reading of 92 degrees was as of 12:00 noon. What a spanking rise in temp! Here we go. 90 degrees before noon.

The signs of disaster begin to kick in. Not only do we have an ambulance, but it was followed by a firetruck. Uh-oh.

There are more people on the street now as the lunch hour continues.

Construction workers are moving wheelbarrows of something in the empty lot across the way. Did no one tell them they were supposed to do their work between 4 and 7 am?

The sky appears hazier than it did earlier today. Perhaps the air is beginning to burn? That would explain the firetruck.

12:17 pm - 89 degrees

2007-07-10T12:56:00.001-06:00

Windows are still cool to the touch. This could be due to double-paned glass.

Weather.com has updated to show that it was 89 degrees at 11:45. Based on their "every-half-hour or so" updates, we should be receiving new information in the next 20 minutes or so. Unfortunately, this live-blogger will not be able to inform you if it struck 90 by noon.

Extrapolating from the rise in temperature over the last few updates, I would guess that it's likely. Especially as we're now entering the DANGER ZONE portion of the day when things tend to rocket up and really bake.

The American flag across the way is still billowing in the breeze. Completely unfurled and stretched out. A steady wind appears to be blowing continuously. The streets remain empty, though I can see lines forming at the food carts up the street.

No ambulances yet.

The trees still appear to be greenish, except for the ones with dark purple leaves.

11:50 am - 87 degrees

2007-07-10T11:23:00.000-06:00

How deceptive. The Weather.com temperature reading was from 11:25 am. HALF AN HOUR AGO! We may reach 90 degrees before noon.

Today's record was 98. Think we'll beat it?
Only 11 more degrees to go.

Most of the ice has now melted in my iced coffee.

I just saw a crow fly over. Evidently it's not too hot for crows.

The wisps of cloud in the sky are now gone. Foot traffic appears to have slowed despite the fact that the lunch hour is rapidly approaching.

Still no ambulances. Have they melted??

Here are a few recommendations from KGW.com. They are quoting the Red Cross and "ER doctors" on tips for preventing heat stroke. These select few are my favorites. They also advised "AVOID ALCOHOL" three or four times in different places. Do I detect a hidden agenda?

--Eat small meals and eat more often. Avoid foods that are high in protein which increase metabolic heat.

--Avoid using salt tablets unless directed to do so by a physician.

--Slow down. Avoid strenuous activity. If you must do strenuous activity, do it during the coolest part of the day, which is usually in the morning between 4 and 7 a.m.

-- If you're thirsty, you've waited too long.

9:45 am - 80 degrees

2007-07-10T11:15:00.000-06:00

That's right. 80 degrees before 10am. It's warmer outside than it is in my air conditioned office building. The weather.com reading is a little out-dated. I wonder how hot it is not? Predictions says it's supposed to be 102 today.

The trees outside are still looking green. They have not yet experienced any heat-related wilting.

Cars still travel down 4th Avenue with their usual aplomb.

Pedestrians are traveling down the sidewalks. Most are wearing short-sleeves. Women can be seen wearing tank-tops and skirts.

There are small wisps of cloud in the sky.

No buildings have collapsed and road work continues as usual. No ambulances yet today.

Ridiculo ad absurdum

2007-07-10T11:04:00.000-06:00

Ok. The local news lately has been in a frenzy.

There are SEVERE WEATHER WARNINGS for Portland, OR regarding the MASSIVE HEAT WAVE that is in the process of striking us all immobile and potentially dead.

For over a week now the forecasters have been predicting doom, gloom, and dire circumstances for the middle of this week. Warning us to prepare. Hold our babies close, protect the feeble and innocent, there is VERY HOT WEATHER on the way.

Of course, for some people, hot weather is a severe event. If you are very old or sick or poor or feeble, it can be a traumatic, potentially life-threatening weather situation. If you're not, it's just really hot.

Anyhow, in the spirit of community, and truly engaging with my local news and local events, I have decided to keep you up-to-date on the details of this crisis. We shall call this LIVE BLOGGING THE HEAT WAVE.

Tune in for updates as the event unfolds.

Here is the severe weather warning issued by the National Weather Service for today:

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM PDT WEDNESDAY.

A STRONG RIDGE OF HIGH PRESSURE IN COMBINATION WITH OFFSHORE EAST WINDS IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE VERY HOT WEATHER OVER INTERIOR NORTHWEST OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON. STRONG OFFSHORE FLOW TUESDAY WILL DRIVE TEMPERATURES TO NEAR OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE 100 DEGREES OVER THE LOWER ELEVATIONS WITH WITH 80S TO LOWER 90S OVER THE HIGHER CASCADES. THE OFFSHORE FLOW WILL KEEP TEMPERATURES VERY WARM FOR OUR AREA OVERNIGHT TUESDAY. TEMPERATURES WILL FALL ONLY INTO THE UPPER 50S AND 60S JUST FOR A SHORT TIME AROUND SUNRISE ON WEDNESDAY.

WEDNESDAY WILL BE ANOTHER VERY HOT DAY. TEMPERATURES MAY COOL A FEW DEGREES FROM TUESDAY BUT WILL STILL REACH THE UPPER 90S TO AROUND 100 DEGREES IN THE LOWER ELEVATIONS ON WEDNESDAY WITH MID 80S TO MID 90S IN THE HIGHER CASCADES.

AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING MEANS THAT A PROLONGED PERIOD OF DANGEROUSLY HOT TEMPERATURES WILL OCCUR. THE HOT TEMPERATURES WILL CREATE A DANGEROUS SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE LIKELY. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS...STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM...STAY OUT OF THE SUN... AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.

"The Nina Totin' Bag"

2007-07-03T12:09:00.000-06:00

Should I be ashamed of NPR? Talk about blatant self-referential opportunism! Holy cow! That's awful! Then again, it's kind of funny, too. I don't even know what to think....???

Named for NPR’s Legal Affairs Correspondent, Nina Totenberg... it has a Warhol-esque image of the lady on the front.

The Nina Totin' Bag

Just what you need for a day at the beach.

What’s wrong with the tap??

2007-07-03T11:33:00.000-06:00

Honestly. Maybe we should consider finding a new chic name for good ole tap water. “Home Fresh” maybe… “Hey hon, can you snag me a glass of home fresh on your way out of the kitchen?” That sounds like a slangy nickname for your pal… “Hey home fresh! What’s jiggin’?”

Anyhow. I want to share with you some excerpts from an amazing article on the devil with angel wings that is bottled water. After reading this article I affirm my resolution to keep lugging my Nalgene around with me wherever I go, and filling it at water fountains instead of buying a bottle of water. I’m definitely guilty of picking up a bottle at a gas station when I want something cold, but this article reaffirms to me what a silly (not to mention negatively impactful) choice that is.

I’ve sifted out a few interesting lines that I think are pretty powerful, but I encourage you to read the whole thing. It’s interesting and well-written. About as eye-opening as that fascinating article on the banana industry I shared a while back.

Here’s a link to the article (source: Fastcompany.com via Boingboing.net): "Message in a Bottle" by Nigel Cox

And here are a few choice facts about bottled water. Click on the above link for reference.

Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.
Today, for all the apparent variety on the shelf, bottled water is dominated in the United States and worldwide by four huge companies. Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) has the nation's number-one-selling bottled water, Aquafina, with 13% of the market. Coke's (NYSE:KO) Dasani is number two, with 11% of the market. Both are simply purified municipal water--so 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience.
…within a decade, our consumption of bottled water is expected to surpass soda.
San Pellegrino's 1-liter glass bottles--so much a part of the mystique of the water itself--weigh five times what plastic bottles weigh, dramatically adding to freight costs and energy consumption. The bottles are washed and rinsed, with mineral water, before being filled with sparkling Pellegrino--it uses up 2 liters of water to prepare the bottle for the liter we buy. The bubbles in San Pellegrino come naturally from the ground, as the label says, but not at the San Pellegrino source. Pellegrino chooses its CO₂Tuscany, then trucked north and bubbled into Pellegrino.

carefully--it is extracted from supercarbonated volcanic springwaters in
Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer :"We're completely thoughtless about handing out $1 for this bottle of water, when there are virtually identical alternatives for free. It's a level of affluence that we just take for granted. What could you do? Put that dollar in a jar on the counter instead, carry a water bottle, and at the end of the month, send all the money to Oxfam or CARE and help someone who has real needs. And you're no worse off."
Worldwide, 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water; 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water.

Than again, regarding Fiji water—the flip side….

The plant employs 200 islanders--set to increase to 250 this year--most with just a sixth- or eighth-grade education. Even the entry-level jobs pay twice the informal minimum wage. But these are more than simply jobs--they are jobs in a modern factory, in a place where there aren't jobs of any sort beyond the villages. And the jobs are just part of an ecosystem emerging around the plant--water-based trickle-down economics, as it were.
Of course, the irony of shipping a precious product from a country without reliable water service is hard to avoid. This spring, typhoid from contaminated drinking water swept one of Fiji's islands, sickening dozens of villagers and killing at least one. Fiji Water often quietly supplies emergency drinking water in such cases. The reality is, if Fiji Water weren't tapping its aquifer, the underground water would slide into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere just off the coast. But the corresponding reality is, someone else--the Fijian government, an NGO--could be tapping that supply and sending it through a pipe to villagers who need it. Fiji Water has, in fact, done just that, to some degree--20 water projects in the five nearby villages. Indeed, Roll has reinvested every dollar of profit since 2004 back into the business and the island.

So, essentially what does it all boil down to? If we’re going to drink bottled water, should we make sure that it’s coming from a far-away place (like Fiji) so that we support small economies? Or do all the transport costs and ecological damage done in getting it here cancel out the good it does for those people to buy it?

It somehow still feels wasteful to drink bottled water when I have a perfectly good tap at home and at work. Then again, at least it’s better than soda, eh?

There will come soft rains.

2007-07-02T15:27:00.000-06:00

This is a lovely, haunting, humbling article from New Scientist magazine (link via kottke.org).

How long would it take the Earth to recover if humankind was to irrevocably, inexplicably vanish?

Imagine Earth Without People

A really amazing read as I spend my day traipsing around in the city.

On some deep down instinctual level I find that part of me longs for this to happen. Then, when i think about it more, I realize that I would want to be the omniscient eye that's watching it all occur, safe and sound, with my loved ones by my side, of course.

Obviously, this must follow.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

- Sara Teasdale

In other eerie news....

2007-07-02T11:58:00.000-06:00

On the way back from our hike yesterday on the Banks-Vernonia Trail, C. and I had a white-knuckle driving experience. We were right about here. Ten miles south of Vernonia. A person in a Red Minivan comes flying up behind us, tailgates us for a mile or so, and then passes us in a no-passing zone with a corner just ahead. Of course, around the corner comes another car. The minivan managed to get back into our lane in time and aside from a one-finger salute from the oncoming car and a stout blast from the horn on C’s end, came to no harm. When we reached the intersection with Hwy 26 a few minutes later, they were there, waiting to turn. I’m so glad they passed us and really got ahead.

Later that night, I was browsing the local news site, looking for the weather or something, and what do I find? This story.

Quite literally just where we were earlier the same day. Under the same circumstances that we found ourselves in. I guess we were the lucky ones.

How dangerous, how foolish. All for a few more seconds. People need to stop being in such a darn hurry all the time.

Today's soapbox is decidedly... GREEN!

2007-07-02T11:45:00.000-06:00

While I was fussing and cleaning and cooking dinner on Friday night (laying low after a gnarly encounter with some less than perfect Thai food… blah), I was listening to the City Club of Portland on OPB. I would say that 7 times out of 10, I find that program rather dry, and it serves as moderately interesting entertainment when I’m in my car driving somewhere. This past Friday’s topic however, was the future of transportation in our area.

It was neat to listen to the ideas and the concepts that people were throwing back and forth—Cars without drivers on our highways! Sustainable neighborhoods! Truck routes that bypass the city entirely! I felt like I was looking down the maw of a Jetson’s era space-age in which we climb into our cars, type our destination into our GPS-style mapper, crack open a good book, and, Voila!, are transported to our desired location a few minutes later. One of the guests speaking on the show (I missed the portion of the program in which they were introduced) noted that for the last couple of centuries, we’ve experienced a major transportation revolution once ever 50 years. The Car. The Train. The Airplane. Based on this theory, we’re overdue for some sort of major, society-shaping change. Interesting.

The thing that interested me most about the program was a description of a pervasive attitude that many developers and Americans have regarding agricultural land and farm land. This wasn’t something that those being interviewed claimed as their own, but rather something that they discussed.

What is an open field if not a future suburban development? “Empty space” where we find farms and forests is just an up-tapped cash-cow awaiting malls, box stores, parking lots and houses—in short: progress!!

Of course this perspective won’t be anything overt, nor will it be something that I imagine people go about shouting from the hilltops. Driving into Hillsboro and Beaverton from Forest Grove this weekend hammered this impression home to me, however. As we left Orenco Station and close in on the Streets of Tanasbourne, I noticed two or three small, single-family homes. They had yards, garages, driveways, the usual. Yet on either side of these homes leered giant new development. Townhouses, condos, strip malls, parking lots. I felt so sorry for the older couple out watering their lawn in the midst of all this progress.

I think as a society, we’ve forgotten the value of agriculture. Even in our “global society” on a local-level many communities are funded by industries such as farms, ranches, wineries, etc. Those “empty” fields are arteries for families, communities, and who micro-economies. What happens if that goes away? Can you grow wine grapes on the roof of your local Target?

Now, I’m not the more informed individual on this topic. Until I did a Google search of the US Government website, I thought that more than just 3% of Americans were employed in Agricultural labor. It doesn’t change my opinion that it’s important. I think that it’s something worth preserving if we can. Then again, there are a lot of battles out there and a lot of things worth preserving. But we can do our part. Please support legislation that enforces the Portland-area urban growth boundaries! Encourage affordable high-density living in the Portland area. Discourage sprawl! A sprawling cat is cute. Sprawling metro? Not so cute.

Ride your bike! Compost! Buy wind energy! Re-use Ziplocs!

My what a busy week! Sassy-Squatch Part II and Movin’ on Up!

2007-06-07T16:41:00.000-06:00

Wow, oh wow. It’s been a crazy week or two since I checked in here last. I’ve put on a conference, traveled to a bike race, attended a new volunteering orientation, and prepared for a big ole camping trip. And slept. And ate. And worked. And tutored. It’s not that it’s really been that busy, it just feels like I’ve not had a chance to catch my breath. In like a month.

Where I left off last time, I hadn’t told you about the Arcade Fire or Bjork at Sasquatch. They were awesome. Especially The Arcade Fire. Even from our vantage point high upon the hill, these guys had energy, theatrics, and outstanding sound. Every one of us there was wishing we were in a small theater hearing these guys up close and personal. But, really, if you had to be in an mega-theater, the Gorge is a nice place to be. They probably also had the coolest stage set of the day—big round screens that showed videos, a giant video backdrop and lots of fantastic lights. Somewhat Goth-y, but mostly just awesome and interesting.

The only downside of the festival was that everyone played and played—this meant that when Bjork finally went on, it was almost midnight. Yow. Her stage set-up alone took a serious chunk of time to get up. It was also awesome. Long colorful banners, flashing lights… they did have to take part of it down just as they got it set up due to the wind. Uh oh! We were only able to stay for a few of Bjork’s songs, unfortunately, since we had a long drive ahead of us. They were pretty great, though. C. thought that they were better live than recorded, and the eerie night with the wind and the flapping flags was a perfect counterpoint to that. I wish we could have seen it all.

At about 12:20 we finally hauled ourselves off the hill (poor C., as we were leaving the area, he could hear his all-time favorite Bjork song echoing out over the countryside). Now came the 3+ hour drive to Pendleton and to our campground. Oy vey. C’s friend D elected himself as driver, and did an excellent job of not only staying awake but keeping everyone safe. C and I failed miserably at our jobs of “passengers who are there to help keep the driver awake” as we kept nodding off. Often we fell asleep mid-sentence, only to wake up 20 minutes later and start talking right where we’d left off. It was super-confusing.

I think we managed to wake up the entire campground when we pulled in. It was about 3:45am, and of course our headlights went right through any tent walls they encountered. As the car rolled to a stop and we rolled out the doors, it (of course) started to rain. Despite the circumstances, we were an amazing, focused crew of tent setter-uppers. We were in bed, eyes closed, ready to sleep by 4:00am. When the thunder rolled in. And the people in the tent across the way started gleefully shouting to one another in a language I didn’t understand.

All in all, though, the trip was excellent. We got back to Forest Grove around 6:00 on Sunday evening, ordered pizza and I slept while the boys watched Road Warrior. Appropriate, no?

* * *

This week I am going to find myself on the road yet again. I am headed out with C’s family (him, his dad, and his sister), for MORE driving and an awesome trip up to the very northern tip of Vancouver Island. We will be traveling through Saturday, hiking out on Sunday, sleeping on the beach, and cooking out, and then returning on Thursday the 21^st. I am thrilled to be getting away from the busy streets of Portland, though the prospect of getting in a car again so soon does absolutely nothing for me. Oh well. Vancouver, ho!

In the meantime, you can do a “Cape Scott” search on Flickr, and see some amazing shots from where I’ll be. Or you can just wait until we return.

Sassing the 'Squatch

2007-05-28T15:59:00.000-06:00

Be warned. This may end up as a multi-part post. There was just so much that happened, that I'd like to talk about, I may have to break this into installations. But I can at least get the party started.

First of all, please excuse the few-and-far-between nature of my blog postings lately. I've been working a ton of long hours lately due to the big upcoming conference my work is hosting. It's a three-day event, and we're anticipating over 550 attendees. And there are, essentially, just four of us putting the whole thing together. Things kick off this upcoming Wednesday, so I've been a little tired and swamped. Once this is over, I imagine I'll be back on track again.

Anyhow, C., his friend D., and I decided to head out of town this Memorial Day weekend and hit up one day of the Sasquatch Music Festival taking place at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington. Somehow in my life I've managed never to attend a concert at the Gorge, and the line-up was good, so we chose to give it a go.

We left Portland on Friday at about 6:00 bound for the Emigrant Springs Campground just East of Pendleton, Oregon. It was a beautiful day and we roared out of town in fine style. It was in the mid-70's, and we rolled the windows down as we wound our way along the Columbia River. After a quick stop in the Dalles for gas and a fast-food extravaganza at the Eastern-most Burgerville in the world (not to mention a woeful mishap with Officers Biggs & Wasco and an improperly worn seatbelt--expect more on that point in a future post), we were off into the setting sun. The eastern reaches of the Columbia Gorge are quite stunning as the light seeps from the hills.

We had a quick drive down I-84. It was interesting passing out of the rugged, rock-lined cliffs that edged the river and into the flat, rolling hills around Pendleton. In the dark, the landscape change was more apparent from the way the air smelled and the nature of the road signs we encountered than from what we could see. You could smell the spicy tang of sage on the night air, and you'd smell alfalfa and dry grass as we passed through cow country. The road signs changed from warning us of things like "Falling Rocks, next 3 miles" or "Windy road ahead" to advising us be wary of "Blowing Dust next 43 miles." The lights spotting the hillsides grew fewer and fewer between, eventually just clustering around the small towns huddled on the banks of streams and rivers.

We zoomed past Pendleton and up the road into the Blue Mountains. It was about 10:30-10:45 when we reached our camping destination: Emigrant Springs State Park. We'd reserved a cabin to stay in, and we were tired of driving for the night. The Cabin turned out to be the best decision we made on the entire trip. Constructed of warm, honey-colored wood, it was set up with a little fridge, a wall-mounted heater, two queen-sized beds (and a bunk above one!), and a table. Outside on the porch there was a gas-powered stove. We slugged down a beer or two to congratulate ourselves on part one of the trip, spread out sleeping bags and crashed out asleep.

The alarm clocks went off at 7:30 the next morning. We had a 3-hour drive ahead of us in order to get to the Amphitheater by 12:30 when the first band we wanted to see took the stage.

The drive was a little more subdued (it was early) than the prior evening, but we took in all the amazing scenery and eyeballed the Umatilla Weapons depot and signs to Hanford a little fearfully. With no real directional mishaps (thanks to Charlie's awesome information file, henceforth known as "the dossier"), we arrived right on schedule.

The festival itself was awesome. It was packed with people, and waiting in lines became one of those things you just accepted, but everyone was thrilled to be there, friendly, and overall good samaritans. The whole drive down we'd joked about the fact that the beers there were going to coast us $15 a pop when we arrived, so we'd better bring a few of our own for camping. We were honestly quite surprised to get there and find that they in fact wanted $11 for a 24-oz Corona. C and I had just bought a 24-oz bottle of beer at the grocery store the week before for $3.o0. Good grief. No wonder they let people wander anywhere they wanted around the grounds with beers in hand--you'd have to be rich to get any kind of drunk at those prices! And you're certainly not going to share it with anyone!

Beer-lamenting aside, however, all of the shows we saw were excellent. I'm not really qualified to discuss the finer nuances of music, and I'm not much of a writer when it comes to describing shows and bands, but I'll give you a brief re-cap of what we saw below.

The Saturday Knights: We were so excited to see this hip-hop rock fusion band out of Seattle. They were scheduled early in the day to play on the mainstage, and I think this may have been a bit of a mistake. Their set wasn't great, in part due to the fact that they didn't seem to quite know how to interact with a crowd that clustered right in front of them and then spread up an enormous hill. They would have been better on one of the smaller stages. Oh well.
The Hold Steady: This band is so much fun to see. They are high energy, and are such a great, solid rock band. The lead singer had grown a big shaggy beard since C and I had seen them last, but the keyboardist still had this fabulous mustache. It was weird seeing them in such a big venue. They had a really tight set and they sounded great. Thumbs up all around. Too bad the beer was so expensive, though, this is the best beer-drinking band ever.
The Blow: Gosh. While I love the music she puts out, and I love her CD, the between-and-during song patter really spoiled this show for me. I don't care if this song is about some guy she met at a party in Los Angeles. In fact, knowing the personal details behind a personal song is sometimes kind of gross. We left in search of something else. While I'll still listen to her CD, I'm not sure if I'd see the Blow again live for a while.
Two Gallants: Great show. While I hadn't been super-impressed when I saw these guys open for another band before, and the MP3's I had were so-so, I was so impressed by their live show! These guys were fun and kind of a quirky mix of folky rock. They had the high-energy sound that makes an act a festival success, and they had some really interesting songs. Would see again. Would buy CD now, I think!
Viva Voce: Awesome, as usual. As C. always says, it's amazing that two people can make that much noise. We only stuck around for two or three songs--despite the fact that they were AWESOME songs, because they're a local band, and Neko Case was coming on soon.
Neko Case: Great, as usual. Not even the guy laying on a blanket in front of us (with his girlfriend!) yelling "I LOVE YOU NEKO CASE! I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES! LET ME BE YOUR SURROGATE DADDY!" could spoil it. She had the perfect sound for laying out and gazing across the amazing Columbia River Gorge scenery. Oh, and it was about 85 degrees out by this point in the day. Awe-some.
Ghostland Observatory: ROCKED! These guys were great! One of them had on a satiny, powder-blue cape that he wore throughout the show. They had such an exciting, interesting sound, and they were such good sports when the power went out on their stage part-way through their set. I will definitely look them up again.
The Long Winters: This band gets so much buzz. I keep giving them second and third and fourth and fifth chances, but I keep getting let down. I think they have a charming presence, and I think they interact with the crowd well, but I think their lyrics are kind of lame, and I think their sound is boring. Too bad.
Manu Chao and the Radio Bemba Sound System: I was so excited to see this band, and I wasn't let down. Complete with their signature sirens, and play-like-your-house-is-on-fire style, they amped up the energy at the mainstage in a serious way, and people were dancing all over the hill. They played an awesome set--I love the way that their shows end up sounding like one big song because they seamlessly blend them all together into one long musical blur. Awesome. The stage crew nearly had to drag them off the stage with big shepherds crooks, though--they played 6 or 7 "last songs" and kept expressing their live for the crowd and for the show. They were great.

Ok, so this post is hugely long now. I will have to finish it in a part II.

A taste of things to come:

The Arcade Fire - Bjork - Crazy night driving - setting up tents at 3:30 am with a thunderstorm looming - Tumbling along with the blowing dust and the tumbleweed.

No hiking this Sunday.

2007-05-20T16:39:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, no hiking to report this Sunday. The weather is drab and drippy, so the outdoor activities were put on hold for a weekend. Word has it it's supposed to be sunny and amazing during the rest of the week. Of course.

Instead, this morning C and I made homemade English muffins. That was a fun adventure. I'd tried to make English muffins once before with mixed results. They turned out to be tasty little biscuits, but they were missing that bubbly, hole-y, English-muffiny crumb that leaves pockets for butter and other delicious toppings to hide. That was early last fall. Obviously, it's been a while since I've given it another go.

Armed with a recipe from the internet, we had better luck this time. Unfortunately, there aren't any pictures of the deliciousness--primarily because we devoured them so quickly! That said, here's the recipe I used (and recommend), and a link to a measure converter (useful if, like me, your measuring cups don't count things using the metric system.
Recipe (courtesy the Winos and Foodies blog): http://winosandfoodies.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/06/english_muffins.html

Measurement converter (also courtesy of that blog!):
http://cuisinedumonde.com/convert.html

A few notes about things that I discovered when making these... A non-stick pan seemed to work about as well as a cast-iron skillet. While you lose the griddle effect, it also makes the pan easier to wipe down between muffins so that you don't end up with a charred cast-iron skillet and a smoke-filled kitchen. Blahrg. Also, you can sort of feel when the muffins are done if you poke the sides--they firm up and lose a little of the doughy feel that indicates they're not quite yet ready.

All in all, a couple had scorched bottoms, a one was pretty raw in the middle, but after I got the hang of them (time, temp, type of pan)? Lovely baked breakfast yumminess.

Mmm. Muffins.

Oh, advertising.

2007-05-16T11:20:00.000-06:00

Yesterday while waiting to hear Sherman Alexie read from his new novel "Flight" (see Powell's for the description), I picked up an interesting flip-through on matchbook covers. I learned that these were highly-collectible, inexpensive pieces of pop-culture art. Not entirely surprising. The pictures of the matchbox covers were the most interesting part of the book. Running the gamut from lighthouses to insecticides, the book displayed a fascinating array of cultural tidbits from the last century.

While the commentary regarding the pictures themselves was un-helpful and obvious, there were some trends to matchbook advertising that I had never thought about before (then again, I'd never spent much time pondering matchboxes before either). In the communist Eastern Bloc countries, matchbooks were often used as a means by which to convey health messages and images of party ideals. You'd see images of people exercising, pictures of people working hard in the fields or in the factories, images of smiling women, and heroic pictures of men on horseback--all in the stark, clean, two-color, block-figure style that you see in many old party propaganda posters from the old USSR. I understand that it was a cheap way to rapidly distribute a message--and likely a way to convey that point in a decidedly non-overt, subliminal way. Beyond a glance or two, who ever really looks at and contemplates the wrapper advertising their matches? Of course this was made possible by the fact that the government controlled the match-making industry, and thus was less concerned with advertising a product than a company might otherwise be, leaving them freer to distribute any message they chose.

This theme was repeated throughout many non-communist countries, however, too. Scandinavian countries promoted good health by encouraging people to be active and swim (the irony of advertising health on something primarily used to enable smoking is certainly not lost on me), Western European countries warned parents of the dangers of their children pulling boiling pots of water off the stove or falling through thin ice. African countries emphasized the danger from and transmission cycle of disease-carrying flies--all on the covers of their matchbooks.

So, fine. Fascinating. Hooray for foreign governments tapping into the subliminal power of a well-designed ad as a means by which to distribute a social message. Not a new story, but a refreshing one--way to look out for the greater good! Way to capitalize on something that people are going to buy regardless of what is on the cover.

I'd probably have filed this little tidbit of information away and not thought of it again were it not for a TV commercial I saw, just this morning, that jived so well with the theme of the public health messages on the matchbooks.

I was waiting for the weather forecast to come on and munching away on my cereal, when one of those "Make good choices" commercials came on. Usually sponsored by Kaiser or another health insurance group, the commercials advocate that people take the stairs instead of the elevator, or drink water instead of a soda--essentially, as one commercial states, to "be your own cause." This seemed to be another one of those--it showed a man choosing an apple instead of a donut, recycling instead of throwing away his aluminum can. These commercials appeal to me--they're colorful, well-designed, and have appealing ping-pingy-ping music. I wasn't really paying attention, though, until the final few frames. They caught my attention when they showed a man trying to decide between two big screen TVs displaying vibrant nature scenes. As I'm sure the creators intended, I expected the "good choice" to be seeing those landscapes in person on a walk, instead of watching them on a TV. But no! The ad turned out to be a HD Digital TV commercial encouraging you to make the "best choice" and buy the right (fancier) TV. Wuuuuh?

Like advocating good health and exercise on smoking paraphernalia, these is a huge amount of irony in promoting good health and exercise in an advertisement selling TVs. Only slightly more extreme would be advertising abstinence on condom wrappers. "Make the healthy choice! Buy a big new TV!" How is encouraging people to sit in front of a fancy new TV at all congruent with the notion of making good, healthy choices, and encouraging them exercise and reduce-reuse-recycle?

Furthermore, the move from government-sponsored health messages to those that are promoted and driven by commercial companies strikes me as interesting. While, theoretically, the government has the general population's health and best interests in mind as a general rule (out current administration notwithstanding), I find that their well-intentioned advertisements to be safe and healthy seem benign and even smart. Yet, for a private company with the ultimate goals of furthering their product and increasing their profits to advertise in this way strikes me as sinister and even misleading. The logical conclusion of the commercial in question is "If you want to be 'healthy' you will buy this." To me, watching lots of television on a new TV seems the antithesis of healthy. I think the company is banking on the fact that we will subliminally associate the two images without ever questioning that correlation. Seems pretty sinister to me.

I'm going to be thinking about this for a while, I think. What is the role of ethics in advertising? What counts as misleading your consumer? Ultimately, the responsibility of what to buy and how to use that product isn't in the hands of the advertiser, yet do they have any inherent responsibility? How effective is "subliminality" anyhow, how do you control what's overt and what's implied? Should you? Is it ultimately the responsibility of the consumer to make those connections and decisions for themselves? How much does the intent of the ad matter? Why does ti seem more ethical when it's for a "good cause"? Questions to think about while fussing around with databses.

Self-contained narrative.

2007-05-14T10:49:00.000-06:00

Tri-Met stop #6005, corner of N. Vancouver and N. Skidmore. 8:06 am. Monday, May 14th.

M-W word of the day....

2007-05-14T10:48:00.001-06:00

From M-W Word of the Day for Monday, May 14th.

inkhorn \INK-horn\ adjective

: ostentatiously learned : pedantic

Example sentence:
The professor peppered his lectures with inkhorn terms of pseudo-Latin and Greek, a practice he felt essential to instilling in his students the proper respect for his knowledge.

Did you know?
Picture an ancient scribe, pen in hand, a small ink bottle made from an animal's horn strapped to his belt, ready to record the great events of history. In 14th-century England, such ink bottles were dubbed (not surprisingly) "inkhorns." During the Renaissance, learned writers often borrowed words from Latin and Greek, eschewing vulgar English alternatives. But in the 16th century, some scholars argued for the use of native terms over Latinate forms, and a lively intellectual debate over the merits of each began. Those who favored English branded what they considered ostentatious Latinisms "inkhorn terms" after the bottles carried by scholars, and since then we have used "inkhorn" as an adjective for pretentious language.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Gale's Creek: A Sunday Walk in the Woods

2007-05-14T10:38:00.000-06:00

Approximately 32 miles outside of Portland is a small town called Gales Creek. Named after an Oregon Pioneer who was a well-known trapper and settler, Gales Creek is a tiny town situated on a little creek. After a recent episode of Lost, Gales Creek is also a potential birthplace for super-Other-villian Ben Linus. It was also the inspiration for a Sunday, Mother's Day hike in the Tillamook Forest.

Earlier this week, C and I decided that a Sunday hike was in order. After the most recent episode of Lost, C--with TV on the brain--was flipping through his copy of W. Sullivan's hikes on the Oregon Coast, and found an easy day hike in the Tillamook Forest. Topping out at around 6 miles round trip, our hike was a pleasant ramble along scenic Gales Creek.

The hike begins just off of Highway 6 at the Gales Creek Campgound. The campground is located at the 35 mile marker--to the right of the highway if you're headed toward the coast. The campground requests that you pay a small day-use fee.

We started off on the Gales Creek Trail, and set off into the green, lush forest. The trees were a decent mix of evergreen (fir, primarily), maple, and alder. Located in an area that underwent the amazing Tillamook Burn back in the 1930's, the forest surrounding the trail is young and full of interesting wildflowers and ferns. Unlike a number of the other forests I've hiked through in the area (and perhaps this is due to the microclimate of the location, rather than the burn?), the plant diversity in the understory is composed of leafy deciduous plants rather than the hardy, woody evergreen types (such as salal, huckleberry, etc). Sword ferns, however, flourish along the length of the creek. This time of year (May) found the trail thick with wildflowers: pinks, whites, yellows, purples.... My favorites were the Bleeding Hearts, and the little yellow pansies. We saw wild strawberries (in bloom, not yet in fruit), blown trilliums, salmon berries, Devil's club, and many other excellent representations of Oregon's wild flora.

The trail was a fairly easy grade along the entire length that we hiked. The steepest, hilliest part was the initial mile or two which was comprised of several rolling ups and downs, swinging around bends in the creek and hills in the canyon. The trail was shady and quiet, though, and we only crossed paths with two or three other groups even though it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday. After the T-junction (at .8 miles) the trail rapidly leveled out and made for an easy, relatively flat, and exceptionally plesant walk along the creek.

We hiked out around three miles, lunched at a bridge crossing Gales Creek, and then turned back for home. We got back to the car just as the sun was dissapearing behind the ridgeline. In the end, our hike was around 6 miles round trip, filled up a nice Sunday afternoon, and made for a great day trip out of Forest Grove. I would certainly hike it again (I'd like to see it in the fall), and would recommend it to others looking for a good hike that's within an hour and a half of Portland.

Media Overload!

2007-05-09T14:40:00.000-06:00

So this past weekend C. and I went and heard Andrew Bird play at the Crystal Ballroom. The show started at about 9:30 with the opening act, Apostle of Hustle. They were ok. Their music was eccentric and bounced around a number of different genres including 80’s-influenced indie rock and Calexico-style swinging Southwest. While they didn’t cause me listening pain and agony, I’m not sure I’d pick up their CD—yet. I haven’t done extensive research on them, but to me they had the sound of a slightly unpolished, inexperienced band. The one recording I heard before the show sounded quite a bit better than the live performance. I’m glad that they’re getting to tour with Andrew Bird, though, because every little show helps a band sound better.

As for the Bird man himself? The show was fantastic. He played a long set with lots of music from his new album and plenty thrown in from the old ones. Even if the music hadn’t charmed me on some deep, base level, his stage performance would have won me over. Barefoot and blazered, he waltzed around the Crystal Ballroom in a haphazard graceful way. He’d stumble back and forth, curls flying, coaxing his fiddle and whistling. It was like—and I say this with no intent of belittling—watching a Tim Burton-esque Victorian mad music-scientist come to life. The swirly, soaring whistling, the fiddling that veered back and forth between Classical European and Appalachian screech, the green scarf he referred to as “seaweed”, and the spinning (quite literally) gramophone seemed to all come together in a brilliant, steaming, bubbling elixir. If music could be a beautiful experiment concocted out of green glass, bird song, spider webs, rain gutters, and the sound of a high-rise apartment building—it would sound like that concert.

I would see him again in a moment, and I recommend that you see him too. Wonderful.

We let our brains relax and rest for a few days, and then last night C and I went and heard Michael Chabon read from his new book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel. He’s an excellent public speaker (not all authors are!), does a nice job reading aloud, and had a grinning sense of humor and good cheer when answering questions to the packed (PACKED!!!!) audience. I was surprised that Powell’s didn’t hold the event at a larger venue, actually, given Mr. Chabon’s rampant popularity and recent appearance on Fresh Air.

The novel itself seems like it will be an interesting romp in the style of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The selection he read sparkled with his usual wry style. As evidenced by his success (Kavalier and Clay won a Pulitzer a few years back), the deft weave of funny and touching appeals to a wide audience of intellectuals and “lay” readers alike. It appears to be back in full-tilt in this new novel. Eventually I imagine I’ll pick it up in paperback (buying hardcover books is a tough thing for me!), but for now I’ll have to just trust that the impression I received it correct, and listen as the reviews (and interviews) roll in. If you’ve read it, or have it on your shelf to read, let me know. I’ll be interested in your review.

May 1, bike trip #1.

2007-05-01T15:32:00.000-06:00

Just an FYI, now that things are growing again, “Bloom” is back in action, too. There’s a new, long post up there this morning. Rumor has it that my co-collaborator may even post something soon, too. Ooo! http://webloom.blogspot.com

I am so determined to be in a good mood today—it’s no joking matter. Do you ever have those days in which, despite of everything, you are so staunchly determined to stay in a positive mood that it more or less ends up working out?

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, the news tried to ruin my morning. I bought an inexpensive rear rack for my bike (silver which looks darn slick with my silver-and-blue bicycle) last week, so that I could use a pannier pack for my work stuff. Well, since right now, biking on tutoring days is a no-no (I don’t want to arrive all stinky and sweaty), today was going to be my first ride to work ever since I weenied out last fall and started taking the bus. Of course, the weather reporters had RAIN RAIN RAIN in the forecast. Boo! Hisss!!!

I woke up this morning and decided to put on a rain coat and ride anyhow. The weather was brisk and dry. Cloudy, but certainly not raining. Setting up the pannier bag was a bit of a wrestle, but after switching sides a few times to determine which would be best, I got it secured and set off for work.

The ride was good. Chatty bikers shared a laugh in the bike lane behind me, and no out-of-control drivers hassled me on the road. I didn’t pop a flat (like last time) and I wasn’t even too sweaty when I got to work. The only hitch in the get-along of my good morning was a less-than-pleasant punked-out biker I encountered when crossing the Steel Bridge.

Now, please know I’m not the fastest biker. I wear a helmet, and have my blinking rear light going throughout my trip. I stop at lights, and I don’t intimidate pedestrians. I realize that may make me somewhat of a pansy or an annoyance to those of a zippier, “harder-core” ilk, but I’m respectful to that population, too. I ride as far to the right as circumstances allow, and before I swing out, or to the left, I always check to make sure that I’m not going to make someone else’s life too unduly difficult. But I don’t go fast. At least right now—I’m out-of-biking-shape, and my confidence on sharp corners isn’t where it was last fall, especially when I’m negotiating the new weight distribution of a one-sided saddle bag. I don’t care if other bikers pass me. But I also try not to be one of those lookie-loo’s who gets in the way of commuters. I realize I’m riding at a busy time of day, and lots of people have places to go.

Anyhow, as I’m tooling across the Steel Bridge this morning, zip from behind comes a biker. Before I even see him, I hear “Just ride your f-ing bike!” What? He zooms past me. I don’t want to stereotype him as a bike messenger, because there are plenty of polite messengers out there who wouldn’t yell mean things at someone as they were biking past, but the way he dressed, the bike he was riding, and the WAY he rode suggested that to me. I also don’t know if I did something that made his life more difficult—I suppose that’s entirely possible. But geez, dude, come on! That was totally uncalled for.

Maybe I shouldn’t, but I tend to take things that strangers yell at me for no apparent reason in a rather hard way. It always upsets me. I’ve tried to be dismissive about it in the past, but it really gets under my skin. And definitely has the potential to set an otherwise fine, normal day off to a grumpy start. I was stewing about this, and feeling a little shocked this morning. Coming up with good retorts in my head, sizing up the other bikers that were heading my way, basically getting stuck in a negative cycle of trying to get past Mr. Nasty. Not to mention trying to figure out what he meant… Uh, I am just f-ing riding my bike?

Anyhow, the whole point of this stupid story is that right after this happened and I was feeling all sad and wounded, another biker passes me, warning me that he was coming up on my left. As he goes past, he looks over, smiles, and says, “How’s it going?” Not in a creepy way, not in a hitting on me way, just in a “Hi! Have a great day!” sort of way. And you know what? It didn’t entirely make up for the other guy, but it came close. And you know what else? It’s been a good day in the end.

Thanks, Portland, for at least throwing both sides of the spectrum at me. I appreciate the contrast.

Links you must please visit yes?

2007-04-30T15:49:00.000-06:00

Vote yes for trees! (After all, they're only slightly more dangerous than jelly)
http://www.votefortrees.com/

"We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company were selling sheep as poodles," Japanese police said.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/pets/sheep-or-poodle/2007/04/27/1177459933458.html

{seductive, "romantic" voice} "Uncle Gerry is forever...."
http://www.lifegem.com/

Traveling back in time.

2007-04-30T15:34:00.000-06:00

This lovely one lives next to the main door to C's building. She never even things twice about the students constantly coming and going through the doors, or swiping their ID cards just below her nest. This is her second year in residence. One more, and her on-campus requirement will be complete!

When C. and I were first dating, and I was gushing madly about him to anyone who would listen (C., if you read this, please know—and los amigos will vouch for this—that little has changed!), a frequent topic of conversation was his job. As a Resident Director at a local university, this means that not only does he work in a residence hall, he happens to live in one, too. A few years out of college, and even more out of our residence halls, this was a great novelty to myself and my friends.

It even smells like a residence hall! Weird!

In the months that have passed (and that C. and I have subsequently stayed together!) the shine has worn off a little (read: a grumpy boyfriend because a few first-year students decided to set off the fire alarm at 3:45 am with burnt popcorn—or the like). The nostalgia, however, hasn’t. It’s still intriguing to walk down the hall to his apartment and see all the decorated doors, dry-erase boards, and jam-crammed living spaces. While I wouldn’t eagerly go back to sharing a room the size of a bathroom with a virtual stranger for 9 months out of the year, it feels good to hang out over there and know that the community, friendships, and quirky college events are going on all around us. In just a few weeks the students will move out, and the summer conference folks will move in. If last year is any indication, though, there will be a few days of utter silence. Whoosh, they come in, whoosh they leave.

* * *

This past weekend, I attended an entirely different sort of nostalgic event out in Forest Grove. “Faire in the Grove” held at Pacific University was quite the hilarious event. I hadn’t attended a bonafide Renaissance Faire since I was in high school. It was all there. The costumes, the sword play reenactments, the vendor booths, and the overnight campers with their tents, braziers, and mugs of mead. We wandered around a little through the Faire, taking in the sights and people-watching. In the end, I came away thrilled and a little amazed that this community exists and thrives. The looks of awe on the faces of the little kids are they ran around and watched armor-clad men bang on one another with swords was priceless. All the little girls got to wear flowered crowns, and I saw more than a couple fairy princess/ballerina tutus made of flowing pink and purple netting.

One factor I find so compelling about the whole event is the absolute acceptance of make-believe and “pretend.” Aside from the lascivious-hued holidays of Halloween and Mardi Gras, when do adults have the utter license to dress up in costumes, speak in overblown accents, and pretend to their hearts’ content? There is definitely an awkward vibe that surrounds Ren Faires—“Shouldn’t the people dressing up be just a little embarrassed? Shouldn’t we be a little embarrassed for them?” Once you look past that, however, the theory of the thing is somehow rather brilliant. And no wonder the kids love it—it’s like walking into make-believe land, and all the grown-ups are playing, too.

For more photo-documentary of this event (and proof I was there!) visit: http://www.flickr.com/arielarielariel and choose the "Faire in the Grove" photo set. There are also lots of pretty new flower pictures there too! Maybe I will have a photo-post soon of Spring Flowers in Oregon. They are popping out all over!

April 12 is.... Nostaligia Day!

2007-04-12T11:15:00.000-06:00

Last night on the late news, the prim, coiffed reporters announced to the world that Kurt Vonnegut had passed away.

I’m sure this is already all over the internet blogs, and everyone has heard the news. Regardless, it’s a sad thing. His website offers a poignant, fitting send off: http://www.vonnegut.com/

Beyond the scope of losing a great thinker, writer, and, yes, quirky philosopher, I find that the end of Vonnegut’s life resonates with a different sort of loss: the loss of a time, a place, and a certain sort of idealism.

It seems funny to make that statement about someone who had such a cynical, often pessimistic view of the world (pooteeweet, anyone?). I remember reading my first Vonnegut novel in high school. Mr. Jackson passed out 30 paperback-sized hardcover copies of Cat’s Cradle. He filled our brains with Ice-9 and people who pressed their feet together in order to say “I love you” (among other things). We sucked it down and filed it all away. At that point, the world didn’t seem like such a bad place. Horror and terrorism and cynicism were more just theories than anything real.

It’s funny to feel nostalgic for a theory of cynicism and pessimism. In high school I read 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Slaughterhouse Five, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” among other things. And I understood them on an allegorical, theoretical level. Bad things happen. Here are some bleak ideas of the past, present, and future. But at 16, none of the problems in the world, none of the moral dilemmas facing these authors were substantial for me. It was my responsibility to educate myself on what had gone wrong in the past and what people thought about that, but I wasn’t in a place to do anything about it. The most I had to do with the terrible side of humanity was learn about it.

Life feels so different now. Shuttled from the theoretical phase of my life and into the pragmatic phase, suddenly the problems of the world belong to my generation. The horrors taking place, the bad things that authors write about, those are our problems to fix. If our society does bad things, promotes ridiculous values, or makes asinine judgments, by default--by being a functioning adult in this era—I share the responsibility for those actions. The world is weightier. The problems no longer belong to someone else.

Kurt Vonnegut’s death reminds me of that fact. His passing moves him from the realm of “now,” in which the thinking and worrying and criticizing belong to him and his generation, into the vast eternity of “was.” His role of social jester—pointing out the flaws and falls of the world—now becomes our job. There’s no longer the security of knowing that someone like Vonnegut is there to shoulder that responsibility for us.

I’m already nostalgic for a time when all I had concern myself with was education, rather than battling those dragons on my own.

Andrew Larson on Salon.com writes a nice epitaph for Kurt Vonnegut:

“Vonnegut had an incomparable way of mixing bleak pessimism with avuncular warmth. He could inspire even in the moments when he was underlining, highlighting and italicizing just how fucked up and criminally insane the world really was.”

Read the rest of the article here. It’s a good one.

* * *

In other news (and speaking of nostalgia, progress, and responsibility), they started tearing down the old Jasmine Tree restaurant on 4^th and Harrison yesterday. I took some pictures from my office window.

Though it wasn’t a place I went often myself, I appreciated knowing there was a kitchy old Tiki bar in downtown Portland. Now we have to go to NE for our fruity drinks and 60’s atmosphere. It always tugs at my heartstrings a little to hear about an old stand-by closing up shop in the name of “progress.” The Virginia Café is another case in point. I know that I’m the sort of person who closely affiliates places with people and places with emotions, so it makes me sad to see places that I had great times in get bulldozed for glassy, shiny, metallic “new.” You may be doing good for the world, and I’m all about green, eco-friendly building, but it’s hard to replace character once you’ve torn it down. New construction just lacks the grit and grime and quirk that give a place its soul.

Anyhow, if you’re interested, here’s the info from the Portland Development Commission on what’s happening down in the South Park Blocks and beyond. The Jasmine Tree site is considered block #153, and they have big plans in store for the area, including housing, grocery stores, and more light rail brilliance.

Here’s the planning site: http://www.pdc.us/ura/south-park-blocks/block153.asp

Food disasters and feasting.

2007-04-02T11:56:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while, a rock that’s been rolling wants to stop and pick up a little moss. I had the mossiest weekend ever. It was fantastic.

As I alluded last week, I had plans to have a relaxed weekend hanging out with C. while he was on duty. We watched a pile of television, read several pages, and ate some fantastic food.

Most of it was fantastic, anyhow. Our big plan for weekend cooking was to be a spectacular home-made pizza. C. was going to whip together the dough while I was driving out, and we’d top it, bake it, and then relish in its delicious glory.

We got off to a slightly slow start. We were still waiting for the yeast to get bubbly when I got there, and then had to wait an hour for the dough to rise. In the meantime we snacked on hummus and flatbread, and chatted. We also may have watched some television. Whatever, it was the start of a lazy weekend!

Once the dough was looking gorgeous and well-risen, C. prepared the toppings while I turned out an excellent oblong-shaped rectangle of doughy-goodness. Then we topped it. Italian sausage, mozzarella, pepperonis, red onions, bell peppers—it was a work of art! I got the oven hot, and we set it in.

I will take responsibility for the mess that happened next. Thinking that the pizza would take longer to cook than it did, I suggested that we finish the second half of the DVD we were watching. It was only 30 minutes! The air filled with the smell of delicious pizza baking goodness. Finally, the show wrapped up, and our stomachs grumbling, we went into the kitchen to retrieve our masterpiece.

C’s face when he opened the oven was something to see. Our delicious dinner, our awesome work of art… it looked like it had been through an incinerator. The cheese was black and crispy. The crust (labored over!) was hard and carcinogenic. The red peppers, once plump and tasty, had dissolved into nothing more than charred rinds. The pepperonis were sad brittle discs. I thought C. was going to cry! I take full responsibility for the disaster, and ate two pieces of it (crunch crunch crunch) anyhow. It was awful.

The rest of the weekend’s cooking turned out spectacular, however.

Saturday brunch was a fluffy and delicate Dutch Baby with lemon juice, powdered sugar, and fresh sliced strawberries. I’ve been trying to be good and only buy things like strawberries when they’re in season, but the ones at New Seasons have been so lovely lately, that I splurged and—yet again—made a treat out of them.

I’ve made some lovely Dutch Babies with hand-beaten, eggs, milk, and four, but the consistency is so much better when you have a device that allows you to really beat the hell out of the eggs and the batter. A Christmas eggbeater from mom fit the bill to a T. Portable! Fun! Functional! Whirrr! Whirrr!
The other winning factor in the DB combination this time around was the use of a ceramic pie pan instead of my standard square Pyrex. The presentation was much prettier, and the end result was slightly thicker and moister, with the same perfectly crisp edges.

Still making up for Friday’s disaster, we restored our good cooking streak on Sunday night with a tasty fillet of salmon, rice and fresh green beans.

We made a Soy/Ginger/Maple marinade (full of garlic and yummyness), and spooned that over the fish. We sliced a couple of red onions for flavor, and placed those on top of things as well. The sweet of the Basalmic vinegar and the maple syrup was a perfect complement to the ginger, garlic, and soy sauce. And the fish was moist and beautiful. Rice was a mix of wild and brown rice, steamed and plain. Finally, the green beans were sautéed in garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. We didn’t eat until almost 10, but it was well worth the wait.

Friday.

2007-03-30T18:00:00.000-06:00

Portland: Today I woke up and the skies were blue. Now a fine line of clouds is moving in from the west. They pause for a moment, gathering above the West Hills, before, like a full glass of water breaking past the point of surface tension, they spill into the valley and over the city.

This week is the first week that the trees are truly starting to green. It was 66 degrees out yesterday. Next weekend is Easter. Last weekend I went snowshoeing. It’s that amazing, adolescent time of year. It’s not still winter, but it’s not quite yet full-blown spring. There’s still snow in the mountains, and the ski areas are still flooded with recreationalists, but the trees in the valleys are growing leaves, the daffodils are just about over, and a teenager was too hot yesterday so he tried to swim across a local river. The river was too cold and the water too strong. He died.

Like people growing up, the world grows up into and out of spring.

I went out with a friend last night. We sat outside at the Amnesia Brewing Company on N. Mississippi, slowing nursing a pair of micro-brews. It was warm enough to sit outside until almost 10pm wearing just a sweatshirt. We certainly weren’t the only ones there—the place was packed. Portland doesn’t have enough patio bars. The ones it does have are attacked by roving bands of beer-drinkers and bench-sitters as soon as the weather turns nice. Like locusts, we drank their beer and occupied their tables until the night got cold and we realized that we had to get up and go to work in the morning.

Is it that atmosphere of community that makes me want to break out of my shell, see people again, and have long conversations about the virtues of a practical profession versus those of an artistic profession? Or is it just the beer and the warm weather?

Either way, I’m looking forward to more of it this summer.

* * *

So, snowshoeing! I tagged along last weekend with C’s family up to Mt. Baker. We took Friday off of work and drove up to Bellingham. It was a long drive, but we broke it up into a few short segments that made it entirely tolerable.

After a comedy of errors in attempting to get into our weekend lodging, we had a wonderful stay. It poured all day on Saturday, so we didn’t get to ski (I was going to take my first ski lesson on this trip), but we took a nice wet walk to Nooksak Falls (click link to see picture, beautiful!) instead. The river was on the verge of flooding all weekend, so it was a very spectacular sight. The water was roiling and slightly brown, and you could feel the rumbling of the falls deep inside your ribcage as you stood on the sheer rock cliffs overlooking the vista. I feel somewhat morbid focusing on this, but the information sign in the parking lot described the number of lives that had been lost trying to achieve a better view of the cascade. Not a single person over 30. Having the names and the ages of these people in my mind as we overlooked the waterfall made it so real. My brain crafted scenarios, imagining people tumbling over the rocks and disappearing into the water below. I imagined being the other people in the group—those not lost to the river, but instead left behind to try and cope with what they’d just seen. It was just eerie, especially with the river so powerful and wild looking in the pouring, wintry rain.

We spent the rest of the day poking around the Snow-water resort area. C and I went for another walk in the rain, and checked out the river banks. The place we stayed was right on top of the Nooksack River. We could see it, just 30 or 40 feet away from our condo.

On Sunday, the sun came out (perfect, right? Sunshine on Sunday?), and we got up to the mountain itself. Our day was a little protracted, due in large part to the imposing 8-hour drive in front of us, and so we didn’t get out on skis. We did, however, rent some snowshoes and made our way up to the upper ski area and then tromped a ways up a creek basin. It was a lovely walk, and it was great to get into an environment that was so far removed from my day-to-day life. It’s amazing how alien a good layer of snow can make a place feel.

Now I get a weekend off from traveling around (more or less, C. is on duty, so I can anticipate a great deal of time spent in Forest Grove!), and some time to breathe and remember what it’s like to stay put for a little while. I’m looking forward to doing some cooking and watching lots of my new favorite object of entertainment…. DEADWOOD!

On the cooking agenda this weekend:

Tonight = homemade pizza. I’m not sure yet what the toppings will be, C’s on grocery duty.

Brunch tomorrow = a big Dutch Baby. I’m going to swing by New Seasons today and see what their strawberries look like. Mmm… fresh strawberries.

Dinner = I found this recipe for a soy-maple-ginger dressing that would make an awesome glaze or marinade… we’ll see!

“Ah, the world is sweet and the world is wide…”

2007-03-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on the move lately. Driving, walking—a body in motion wants to stay in motion.

Two weekends ago it was to the Oregon Coast. We drove down to Yachats and stayed at the Ocean Haven hotel. It was such a compelling little place. Five rooms, and run (presumably) by a couple (we only met the man, but read mention of the proprietress in the guestbook), it was a hotel on its own rather peculiar terms. No Hummers. Mandatory composting and recycling. Quiet hours strictly enforced. Occupancy numbers strictly enforced.

You have to be a particular type, I think, to appreciate a vacation spot with such potentially restrictive rules. We loved it. The quiet, the earth-friendly atmosphere, the proximity to such spectacular natural beauty (Cape Perpetua is remarkable…)—these things were just up our alley. Weeks later, I still find myself inspired to commune with my compost bin and wash and re-use my plastic bread bags and zip-locs. My mother would be proud.

The Oregon coast south of Yachats has a distinctly rugged feel that other, more “settled” parts of the coast lack. Perhaps our timing had some influence on that—the edges of a storm blown down from Alaska were rolling in during our stay. On Sunday, there were National Weather Alert warnings advising us to steer clear of the beaches unless we wanted to be swept away by the pounding, churning, crashing, and smashing 30-foot MONSTER WAVES. It seemed a little extreme, but the waves were awfully large, and there were a number of beach-front waysides temporarily closed due to high surf advisories. Hooray for ruggedness and the great outdoors.

Since that blustery weekend—torrential rain, gusty winds, several inches of snow in the usually mild Oregon Coast Range—we’ve been gifted with glorious weather. Getting up is only half as difficult when the sun is streaming through the gaps in the curtains. The daffodils are blooming around town and the grass-seed farms are sprouting acre upon acre of glowing green lusciousness out in the valleys. Oh, and it is 65 degrees outside.

The sun is warm and the soft winds ride
On a willow tree by the riverside

* * *

In other news, the hawks that were frequenting the roof of my office building (just above my window) have been replaced by a flock of large black crows. I miss the hawks. They were more spectacular to watch. As smart as they are, crows flying just don’t really compare.

* * *

There is a Catholic church across the street from my office building. The church bells chime every day at noon, and it’s been an excellent means by which to gauge the progression of my day. Today they started ringing early—at 10:45. I was a little thrown off, especially when they kept chiming and chiming with a slow, morose cadence. Curious, I walked over to a window with a view in that direction, and saw individuals dressed formally in black, several priests, a coffin and a hearse. Members of the funeral procession draped an American flag over the casket. I can only assume that means the deceased was in the military or a public service employee.

While a funeral in and of itself isn’t too terribly remarkable (we all will die eventually, right), I somehow didn’t expect to see one in the middle of the city with people in office buildings crowded all around, looking down on the event. It seems like funerals should happen out in green, wide-open spaces where everyone in the near proximity pauses to reflect and respect. There seems to be something sacrilegious about holding a service when people are reading snarky e-mails and forwarding pictures of the presidents dressed up like ladies in the tall office buildings nearby. I guess we aren’t allowed to choose, though, exactly when and where we go.

The other aspect of this moment that struck me as photographically “fitting” was the arrival of 10 school busses packed with children. Off to see a mid-day play at the nearby Keller Auditorium, as the casket was being carried to the hearse, the long yellow busses were overflowing and spilling hundreds of children from their doors. Church bells on one side of the street, screams and laughter on the other. The metaphors, imagery, and sense of circular completion was quite intellectually satisfying.

One if by car, two if by bus.

2007-02-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of many vehicle trips. Down the Sunset Highway to Portland this morning, and then on the bus from No-Po into downtown. Add in that I walked a little ways between transportation methods, and you have a three-modes kind of day! So, all in all it took me 90 minutes to get to work this morning. Oh well. It's definitely worth it.

To the point: the bus was packed when I got on this morning. I ended up sitting next to a guy who appeared to be more than a little down on his luck. I was shuffling all my things and dragging out my books as the bus started, so aside from eyeballing the empty seat I appropriated as my own next to this fellow, I didn't really give him a good look. You know, feeling all groggy in the morning enhances one's desire to give everyone else a bigger bubble of personal space and privacy, in hopes that they will afford you the same privilege.

Of course, as I woke up more, I got curious. but having erected the "wall of politeness" I didn't want to blatantly turn and stare him in the face. Especially from the seat right next to him. So I gathered clues. The odor of stale woodsmoke just reeked from this guy. He had on scruffy-looking black pants and a worn black leather jacket. He was reading a paperback that had yellowed pages, and also looked as if it may have seen a read or two before. The hands holding the book were dirty and worn-looking, too. He had tattoos around his fingers--that blue-black ink that looked as if it'd been in his skin for a while. Red dirt under his fingernails. Everything about this stranger looked like he'd been out for a while and that his personal affects were well-used.

I went back to my book. Tried to read. There's always someone down on their luck on the bus, and I was quite honestly relieved to only be faced with the salty smell of old smoke rather than the urine or body odor(s) that often assault ones senses on public transportation.

When we got downtown, he looked over and started talking about his stop. Things are a little confusing now that they've re-done the Portland bus mall. Every one's customary routines are all jumbled up. I looked up to make eye contact and respond to his comment. All the clues I'd picked up about his appearance earlier in the bus ride had pointed me toward someone older, in their mid-30's or early 40's. The kind of middle-aged man that hung out on the square and would come into Starbucks for a cup of coffee or hot water. I was surpised. Instead, he was probably my age. Maybe a year or two older.

No lines on his face. No grizzled-looking countenance. Just a dude. On the bus. With down-trodden hands and a coat that had already seen a surprising proportion of the man's life.

Once he got off the bus, I found myself wondering, "Was it more surprising that he was younger than I'd anticipated or that he was so close to my own age?" Maybe he was more that "grown-up who's seen better days" that I'd pictured him as after all. And I was just a "grown up" now, too. Maybe it was still surprising that someone I'd look at as an "age peer" could show the signs of so much time spend in a hard, rough-looking life. Maybe I just mis-judged him from the start and my age-dar is really out-of-whack this morning.

Uncanny.

It's a morning.

2007-02-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Happy February.

In a departure from just a run-down of the daily news, I'm going to try a new tact and write about some life-things. Nothing depraved or secretive (I don't have much of that in my life right now anyhow!), but rather just the little here-and-there's that make my life in Portland tick-on.

To start with, it's lovely that the days are finally getting longer again. I get home from work in the evenings, and it's light out for a few minutes. Much preferable to fumbling for my keys in the dark. I realize that I like my house significantly more when I get to spend time in it in the daylight. It's nice at night, too, but a little sunshine really works wonders.

I nearly killed two of my plants this week. I went away for a couple days this weekend, and when I returned home, both of them were forlornly draped over the rims of their pots, wilted and pathetic-looking. It reminded me of nothing so much as a room full of Victorian ladies in a full-blown swoon. Similar to the delicate constitutions it brought to mind, loosening their corsets and offering them a little water seemed to do the trick. This morning they were upright with ruddy complexions and in good cheer. Really amazing how they do that. Their quick resuscitation is also reminiscent of something else: those little wooden puppet toys that collapse when you press in the button on their base (and loosen the strings holding them up), and then snap to attention when you stop depressing the "button." BOING! Recalled-to-life.

I'm sure you didn't drop by to read about my slightly forgetful green thumb, though.

What else is new in my world? I was writing a letter back to a friend abroad last night, and I was hard-pressed to come up with note-worthy events to tell someone who isn't living in Portland. Um... I was sick last week? I went on a hike last Saturday before I got sick? (check out the pictures Here. They're pretty awesome. It was a lot of fun.) It really challenges my sense of myself sometimes to wonder: should I be living my life so as to make it the happiest and the most comfortable, or should I be living it so as to make the best stories out of it? It seems that sometimes, your situation alone creates fodder enough for good anecdotes (eg: jobs I've worked in the past year or two), but when it doesn't, are we obliged to seek those experiences out? I tend to be inclined to say yes. When we're abroad, we think nothing of taking an 8-hour bus ride on a weekend to go to a town we've never seen before: just for the sake of making the trip. When do we really do that at home? Should we? Is that somehow irresponsible? Maybe on a large scale. On a small scale (once in a while) we should probably shake off the apathy and do that sort of thing. Maybe I'll kidnap C. one of these days soon and drag him off to Ontario (like a good cavewoman, so, by his scalp.) In Ontario we'll eat big greasy burgers and wear parkas. We'll sleep in our car in a church parking lot, shivering in the sub-zero temperatures. Then we'll come home and say, "Whelp, that was Ontario alright." Our parents and our friends won't understand our trip, but then again, neither will we, really.

Lord, blow the moon out please!

I tutored last night. That's a whole different can on worms I should tell you about. I think I'll hold off for a few minutes, and tackle a handful of tasks around here, then check back and update. Stay tuned.

It's true. The world is officially falling apart.

2007-02-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

All over the local news stations this morning, the buzz phrase was "global warming." Even when I petulantly threw the covers over my head (trying to pretend that morning wasn't something "real" that I had to "deal" with), the radio still snuck through talking about things like thermal ocean increase (the scientist compared it to a cup of tea, when you warm up water, it's volume increases... lovely, briny, fishy tea. Boiled oceans?), Artic ice sheets melting, human are to blame, etc.

Surely you've heard it by now... scientists have resoundingly declared that Global Warming is legit, and yep, we're the ones to blame. If you need to know more about it, read this front-page post on the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm .

Anyhow, so trying to ignore the mini global warming I'm experiencing in my office (as the sun beats in on our Southward-facing windows), I ran across this creepy news story out of Russia:
Oily, Yellow snow that smells like stinking garbage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6323611.stm Frightening. (I guess it goes well with my previous post, too! Themes anyone?)

Go outside while you still can.

Neat word of the day.

2007-01-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

Ah, M-W, sometimes you dissapoint, other times you knock my socks off.

Your word of the day today was a sublime treat....

oleaginous \oh-lee-AJ-uh-nus\ adjective

1 : resembling or having the properties of oil : oily; also : containing or producing oil
*2 : marked by an offensively ingratiating manner or quality

Example sentence:
Kelly spoke to her boss with an oleaginous deference that made her coworkers cringe.

Did you know?
The oily "oleaginous" slipped into English through Middle French, coming from the Latin "oleagineus," meaning "of an olive tree." "Oleagineus" itself is from the Latin "olea," meaning "olive tree," and ultimately from the Greek "elaia," meaning "olive." "Oleaginous" was at first used in a literal sense, as it still can be. An oleaginous substance is simply oily, and an oleaginous plant produces oil. The word took on its extended "ingratiating" sense in the 19th century.

This is lifted from the Mirriam Webster Word of the Day e-mail series. To subscribe to M-W Word of the day (and see whether you'll be enlightened or disspointed) please visit http://www.m-w.com.

Now kids, make sure you use this word today. I once heard the best way to "own" a new word was to use it ten times--and in three different ways, written, spoken, and read.

SALLY FORTH AND OWN "OLEAGINOUS!"

Top Ramen Gourmet

2006-11-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

Fresh from blog-town at the Willamette Week... the Matador will be hosting a Top Ramen cook-off this weekend. Who can make the most gourmet noodles and spice packet meal? The competition is spiced up a little when you take into account the most devilish part of the rules: You can add in just $5 worth of other ingredients. And you have to account for those (and the strict $5 limit) with receipt proof. And they definately said that you have to use the spice packet (says the WW). Check out their info post here for more information including time and place.

Since today is depressing news day....

2006-11-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here's another awful one. My mom mentioned this story when I was home this weekend. I hadn't heard anything about it at that point, since I was on the road and away from newslandia.

So, since everything else I've posted is full of cheer and fluffy bunnies, here's another. A UCLA student was repeatedly tasered by his Campus Safety Officers when he was unable to produce his student ID card upon request. Onlookers, asking the officers to produce their IDS and Badge numbers, were threatened with tasering themselves.

Here's the story: http://dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=38958

Black Tuesday!

2006-11-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

Sad news on the local wires this morning, Free Geek was broken into early on Saturday morning and lost a ton of stuff.

Check out the news on their website, here: http://freegeek.org/news.php#breakin
It appears to have gotten pretty good media coverage so far... it's all over the local news and even on BoingBoing.

The BoingBoing post describes nasty things like smashed doors and forcible entry. Really sad.

Also, according to the same post on BoingBoing, the IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) was broken into the night before. Badness, sadness, and MADNESS! Aka, NOT GOOD!

I think it's monsterously cruel that people have targeted these awesome local non-profits. I think that's even lower than stealing tips (which, as we all know--or should know--is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to lower-than-low crimes). Pretty darn nasty.

Don't leave teddy out in the rain... he might biodegrade?

2006-11-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, and now for a non-NYT "odd product of the day" feature.

Check this one out.

http://www.tofubear.com/

(Picture from TofuBear.com, click on it to visit the site and see Soyphia in person!)

Let me first offer a disclaimer that I appreciate the green-qualities of these products, and I encourage everyone to support sustainable, biodegradable products.

Ahem. Welcome to Tofu-teddy. A teddy bear made of soy.

Quoting from their website: How does SOYSILK® brand fiber affect the environment?
SOYSILK® brand fibers are part of the new class of green textiles. Soy fibers provide the environment with a unique “cradle-to-cradle” approach – coming from the earth and being wholly biodegradable. SOYSILK® brand fibers contain no petroleum and all products are manufactured to be eco-friendly. In addition, the United States is currently the largest exporter of soybeans in the world.

A friend also pointed out just how much fun it would be knowing that your cuddly, huggable teddy was made out of a Soy waste product.

So, seriously, kids, make sure you take care of Tofu-teddy, or he might just compost!

Actually, though, their picture of "SOYphia the goat" is pretty cute. What's not to love about a Soy-goat!? (It rhymes with "toy boat"!!!)

And now, from the Land of Aparthied....

2006-11-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

When you see an article like this one, it makes you stop and wonder how it is we're so completely out of touch with the concept of civil rights in the United States.

We tsk-tsk at how long it took South Africa to abolish aparthied, and we salute Nelson Mandela as a hero and a saint. South Africa's eagerness to extend equal rights to all its citizens has skyrocketed past aparthied, and is quickly making the US look like a backward collection of narrow-minded pie piggies. "What? Marriage for everyone? How vulgar! Next thing you know, they'll be encouraging women to vote..."

Anyhow, hip-hop-hooray today to the South African Parliament for their guts and open-minded foresight.

Read about it here: "South African Parliament Approves Same-Sex Marriages"

(I know, I feel like a "review" of today's New York Times. I'll branch out in my next post.)

Feeling Piggy for Pie.

2006-11-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Pie! Pie!

The weather starts to cool, and we turn to foods golden with fat and butter.
My experiments with pies, quiches, and pie crusts this year have turned out lovely--though I still stink at making a gorgeous, decorated edge. I'm sticking to the "squish it and hatch it with a fork" method lately.

Evidently I'm not the only one who's been interested in making warm, rich, tasty foods this fall. The New York Times had an article today on making the perfect pie crust. They suggest suet--aka, cow lard. The best pies, popular opinion believes, are made from a combination of lard and butter. Me? I think I'll just stick with the sweet cream variety.

Here's the article: "Heaven in a Pie Pan."

What's that, Fireball?

2006-11-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no fireballs this year. But! The Leonid meteor shower is taking place this weekend. Sources say that in Western Europe and the Eastern United states, you might be able to see over 100 meteors per minute! That's a meteor-downpour!

Given the last link I just posted, I should advise you not to fret--the Leonid shower occurs when the Earth passes through a cloud of comet dust. And we all know how comets feel about Tsunamis (After all, Mr. Tsunami was the one to coin the phrase "Just a dirty snowball streaking through space," wasn't he?). No meteor-driven mega tsunamis in the Leonid Gang (which, I might add, sounds like an after-school tv show), just lots of sparkly, flashy dust.

What a beautiful night to be floating on a boat somewhere out in the Atlantic ocean... I'll bet the view won't get much better than that.

Anyhow, though the chances seem slim, if it's at all clear in Seattle (C and I are visiting up there this weekend), I'll step outside sometime after dark, and see what's streaking and sparkling through my night sky!

Article on NASA Science News about the Leonids.

Surfing a Mega Tsunami

2006-11-14T10:25:00.001-07:00

The New York Times today had an interesting article on a developing theory integrating astronomy, geology, and world-wide "flood" myths. According to the researchers in this article, the earth has likely seen far more large-scale impacts by meteors than previously believed. In a high-tech "x-marks the spot" sort of treasure hunt, scientists examined the presence of large geological formations, dubbed "chevrons" to determine where deep-sea craters might exist. The striking association of the two has led researchers to believe that the forces creating these chevrons were none other than mega-tsunamis--over 600 times the size of the memorable Aceh event.

I suggest you check out this article--if only for your daily feel-good dose of "When Science and Religion meet in the wild!" Well, if the word "MEGA-TSUNAMI" tickles your fancy, you might check it out just for that, too.

Article

Bookishness.

2006-11-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

In honor of revitalizing this expedition into cyber-space, I have two new links to show you. Both demonstrate the ongoing integration of traditional "paper-based" media into the on-line world.

Back in high school I won a national writing award. It was a teacher-nominated contest, and you were asked to submit several samples as well as a timed, "in-class" essay. The prompt they evaluated us on was a topic close to my heart: Will electronic media render books, magazines, and other tactile print objects obsolete? My response, if I remember accurately, took the stance that the internet would change media as we know it, but that books and newspapers hold such an enduring charm that they would persevere.

In some ways, these two links bring that question full-circle.

The first, a daily chapter of a classic book sent to your e-mail inbox (the tagline for this site offers the irresistible hook: "Too busy for books? Read them by e-mail." As if you'd have time for them there?) :
http://www.dailylit.com/

The second, a brilliantly self-absorbed on-line catalog of your print library. Don't worry, I'm working on mine on my home computer. Once I have it up and running, I assure you, you'll see a link off to your right. How could I resist? It's just so NEAT to see them represented as little pictures on the interweb. Obviously, I love the album cover feature about iTunes as well. Genius.
http://www.librarything.com

Blog of a friend.

2006-11-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

C. started up a new blog last week, so I thought I'd make note of it in case anyone out there checks in here from time to time. He has great media links from all over the place, and other fun bits, too.
So, here it is: http://bigface-smallrazor.blogspot.com/

Hopefully his dedication to that project will inspire me to be a little more active on this, my little plot of internet space.

My favorite 419 scams....

2006-09-01T16:38:00.000-06:00

I've started receiving quite a few 419 scam e-mails at my work address. Instead of just deleting them, I tend to browse through them, seeing what creative take on "Send me your money!" they can come up with next.

This week, I've received a couple really awesome ones.

Just today, I got a post-dated one with this fantastic line:

"This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as unserious could come into your mind; but please, consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility. "

It's the first part that kills me. Please do not ignore this as unserious.

Another from my close friend "Tessy":

"From Tessy Benson.

Email:tessyben001@yahoo.com.cn

Dearest one,
How are you today? I hope that you are fine, that is great.
It is a great pressure to mail you this morning with my request of assistant from you, please go through this mail very well and get back to with your ability."

She continues... in great dramatic, pulp-fiction fashion....

"I am Tessy Benson, daughter of late Chief Philip Benson. My father was a highly reputable business magnate (a cocoa, diamond and gold merchant).

It was sad to say that my father passed away mysteriously during one of his business trips. Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle of his who travelled with him."

(BUM-BUM-BUUUUMMMMMMMM!)

"I never know the caring of my mother because my mother died when I was just 4 years old which made my father to take me so special when he was alive"

(Tessy, you may want to get some professional counseling about that....????)

"...and he never hide anything from me and before the trip that leads to his death, He called me and explained many things to me and also told me that he has the sum of Nine million,Five hundred thousand United State Dollars.(USD$9.500,000) deposited in one of the security companies here in Abidjan Ivory coast West Africa, which he disguised and declared the box to contain family valuables instead of money,by this way the company does not know the true content of the box."

And the plot thickens.........

Yesyesyes! Nonono!

2006-07-14T11:46:00.000-06:00

I think that says about it all.

Compare.

2006-07-10T17:30:00.000-06:00

INBOX)1010
Originally uploaded by ArielAmanda.

New, fresh-faced, ready for adventure and excitement! (Left)
Old, travel worn, weary, and beat-up. (Right.)

This is what happens when mailings go astray.

2006-07-10T17:27:00.000-06:00

Part-1
Originally uploaded by ArielAmanda.

This sweet little copy of our publication tried to take a trip to Nova Scotia. The address it was going to was no longer available. Sad little Focal Point ran into some sort of trouble along the way. What's strangest about this is that the liquid weirdness it got into has no odor, yet managed to cement the pages together. It is more like a solid piece of cardbord now than an actual publication. When I whack it on the table, it sounds like I'm striking my desk with something hard and plastic. It's really nuts.

More pictures to follow.

Barometer changing....

2006-06-26T10:58:00.000-06:00

BW Barometer
Originally uploaded by ArielAmanda.

Already more than this! 72 is the comfy cozy temp of my office right now. Or, I imagine it's close to it. Ahh.... content for the time being.

2006-06-26T10:16:00.000-06:00

Summah-time, summah-time, sum-sum-summah-time....

It's 9:15 am, and it's 80 degrees. Weather.com says it's supposed to be 101 today! That's steamy, smelly, wilty hot. Call me an over-delicate whiny voilet if you will, but that's awfully warm for our dear city of Portlandia! Time for iced drinks, drawn blinds, and plenty of cool showers.

The view from my office looks south, directly toward OHSU. Party on the hill. It's green and lush, and looking at all the trees blowing in the wind, I feel like I can watch them wilt as the minutes tick past.

Things have been busy lately. I went back to Seattle-land two weekends in a row. Once to watch the little sister graduate from high school, and again to hang out, eat delicious food, drink lots of wine, and take a glorious day-hike. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Driving back to Portland, windows wide to the world, good music on the stereo... life felt wonderful.

I'll try to remember that when I prepare to leave the AC of my office and set off into the jungle after work today.

Bits and Pieces

2006-05-02T16:48:00.000-06:00

Bits: Every time I go into Neuberger Hall to take something to Accounts Payable, I see this graffitti written on one of the stairwell doors. It says, "Fuck Fascists." It's pretty hard to argue with that.

Pieces: The sidewalks are covered in maple tree helicopters--except they are all bright spring green.
It's monsterously disconcerting to ride in an elevator that you can't tell is moving.

2006-04-28T15:35:00.000-06:00

On a sunny afternoon, things seem a little less trite and cynical in my world.
Know that it is, then, with utter sincerity that I share with you the images and moments that have managed to mark my life in the last few days. They're nothing much, just a few scattered observations about living in town and sharing a city and its resources with thousands of other people, going about their lives, sharing their space and their city with me.

New Hero!

The other day I went to the pool for a swim after work. The lanes were full of somersaulting college boys, trim girls in round swim caps, and proliferate with older, professional people (all a little muffiny about the edges, all a little squeezed into their swimming suits).

I was a bit shy about it. The woman who'd asked if she could make three in a lane at a busy hour last week made things a touch easier. All I had to do was be polite and somewhat sheepish about it.

My target was the lane closest to the wall on the South side of the building. One swimmer. Though an optical illusion, the lane appeared smaller than the others. This being due, I believe, to its one solid edge. She was geared up in a leopard-print one-piece and round as a hot-crossed bun. Her Clairol red hair was piled atop her head in a vain attempt to avoid the pool full of water, and she was doing a version of the breast stroke that I recognized from when I used to be afraid to put my face in the water (neck craned back at an uncomfortable angle, her movement particularly vertical in the water. I watched her swim a few laps back and forth, and watched her watch me waiting to ask the big question.

Eyeing one another like two interviewees crossing paths in the hallway, we started one another down. Finally, as she approached the shallow end, I made my move. Voice soft and deliberately not at all brassy, I blurted my little prepared speech in her general direction as she neared the end of the pool, "Would you mind if I shared a lane with you?" Her response, a little more metered than my own explosion, and obviously also pre-prepared for this precise moment sailed forth with a bold Eastern European accent, "Yes! It'z not my own perzonal pool, you zee!"

She kept swimming. I'm not sure why, but she became my own personal hero for the day.

Spriiiiiiiing!

2006-04-18T17:50:00.000-06:00

mONA2
Originally uploaded by ArielAmanda.

This is how I feel now that it's SPRING!

Dear Sir. In your fancy car.

2006-04-12T10:14:00.000-06:00

Dear sir,

Good morning! Isn't it wonderful that spring has arrived? I can tell you're enjoying the warm weather because the sunroof on your little car was wide open, as was your passenger side window.

I was enjoying the brisk spring air this morning, too, on my bike ride to work. Boy, I was looking forward to the long, swift downhill stretch ahead of me after that long, slow climb from Burnside to Market street. It's great fun because I get to go fast and there is little traffic on the broad, wide thoroughfare through PSU at 8 am.

I'm still a little confused as to why you chose to drive in the right-hand lane directly behind me, though. I know, my little patootie does look cute on the back of my little blue bike, and I did have a smart ponytail in my hair this morning (though, due to my helmet you probably didn't notice it). But, if you wanted to drive quickly, there were two empty lanes to the left you easily could have moved over into. I was tucked right up close to the sidewalk in my lane as it was.

You didn't really startle me when you leaned on your horn. I'm a city kid these days, so I've heard far worse under my window at 4am. To be honest, the tinny quality of your extended "beep" makes me laugh a little in retrospect. With a car as fancy as your suped-up Toyota Tercel I was surprised that you hadn't invested in a more masculine horn to go with your popped up moonroof. But I understand, sometimes it's hard to make ends meet, and things like that are only aesthetic luxuries anyhow.

I was a little taken aback when you leaned out your window to talk to me though. We were moving along at a good clip, so I understand that you had to yell in order to be heard. It was difficult nonetheless to make out what you said, "Pay road taxes or get out of the way!" was what I believe you yelled. The bored, sardonic tone of your voice made it momentarily even more difficult to understand. I'm glad that you slowed down once you zipped around me too. It's always nice to know that someone likes you well enough to want to drive close to you and slow down sharply in front of you. It must have been in order to get a better look at the green grass growing in the park we were passing through. It's spring, I understand, we're all a little crazy right now.

I am sorry that you misunderstood me, though. I commute to work on my bike via a specially chosen path that sticks to bike lanes for all but the last 10 blocks or so. This last little leg is a wide, broad avenue complete with the three lanes aforementioned, which are always empty of cars in the morning. It's unlikely that I proved any real impediment to your morning commute. Furthermore, I know you didn't seem to realize, but even though I ride a bike to work everyday, I'm helping out with your road taxes, too! I own a car, I pay for the license and registration, I even pay the exorbitant gas prices, too! In fact, by riding my bike to work everyday, I'm enabling you to drive that fancy little car of yours a bit longer! Isn't that considerate of me? Conserving a little fossil fuel for your benefit?

Well, I hope you had a good day at work, Sir. And I hope that you made it there safely, too. You should really re-think that whole not using your turn signal business. Even with the invincible flush that comes after hollering out your window at a biker half your age, it still could get you into an accident--and you'd be the one paying for the damages. And I know how desperately you must be saving up to replace that silly horn of yours.

I'll have a good day--even if I am a little sweaty from my ride in. I didn't have to pay for parking, I got a little bit of a work out, and I was able to enjoy the spring morning and feel a tad more connected to the city around me. I don't expect you to try it, or to really understand. It's good enough for me that I do, and that more and more people out there are reaching the same conclusions.

Set some legislation in motion--I'd happily license my bike! I follow the traffic laws (I even use arm signals when I'm turning or moving across a lane!). Maybe then you'd feel that there was something productive happening in your petty little life rather than seeking self-empowerment by striking out against those around you. Because I assure you, it was a brilliantly productive display of aggression--you're right, with summer on the way, I'd better turn in my two wheels for four. It's worth it for a two-mile commute.

Just another Christmas Past

2005-12-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

It's good to be home, to see the parents and sleep in a house that smells like a home should smell, but at the same time, it's just all awash with memory—lovely, happy, sad, and most of it a long time ago. Looking through the Christmas books my mom had out in the big basket, I found two in particular—one was inscribed, "To Ariel, 1982" the other, 1984. The first I was just a year old, the second I had barely turned three, but I can hardly explain how vivid those books still were. The first, done in big, broad-stroke watercolors showed snow-blanketed farms, kind-eyed palomino draft horses, and a man and woman seeking shelter in a 1970's American stable. In spite of the premise, the book exudes an absolute, impenetrable stillness and warmth—I can still even hear my mom's inflection as she read certain words, though the words and story themselves remain rather vague. The same is true for the second book. Tapping into the layers of imagination and depth that I gave certain illustrations when I was a child, the emotion of the story is more vivid than either the pictures or the tale.

But if there are ghosts of Christmas' past folded into the pages of the picture books, then there are also a few hovering around the lintels. The whole place is awash with melancholia and echoes. I walked outside tonight to go to bed in the upstairs office and heard the jingle of a collar in the rose garden to my right. Out of the dripping, slimy plant skeletons I expected a furry black and white cannonball to blast— Baaaa-zaaaaaam!!—but, of course, no Luther kitty. Another fleeting individual in and out of my life, and one sorely missed.

Just shy an alligator tear....

2005-10-18T12:23:00.000-06:00

You can feel the egos swell and collide in our office today.

I imagine that the tension and built-up animosity would be tangible to even an outside observer.

The dark space underneath my desk is looking quite attractive at the moment--perhaps if I crawl underneath I can just avoid the whole thing.

That's not to say that my own ego isn't involved in this whole debacle, I'm trying not to be a little snot about the topic at hand over my e-mails, but it's more and more difficult as the minutes tick by. Especially since each e-mail I receive regarding the situation (ok, any of the SIX different ones currently being hashed out) gradually appears in the middle of my screen with the header and first line before fading away--just the teaser of another hackled, prickly entry into the whole conversation (thank you Outlook, gah).

Email could possibly be the death of polite society--or at least of business decorum. The tones that people insert into their e-mails by the mis-use of a word or phrase are enough to nullify any pleasantries that might occur in person. As D and I have discussed regarding the poor decisions we've made about having serious conversations over instant messenger, there is too much room for willful misinterpretation. What can be intended as deadpan or serious, sweet or teasing, or even polite and well-spoken can all be lost based soley on the recipient's mood of the moment.

Add to that a history of disagreeable interactions (oh the stories I could tell), the selfish short-sightedness of a sales team only out to make a commission--no thought spared to the fact that the money they contract with clients doesn't really "count" until I deposit it into the company system, and the ongoing misconception that my department is out to only harass their clients and badger and bully them unnecessarily, and you come up with a very unpleasant work environment.

***

I never used to buy into Astrology as anything other than an amusing game. My little brain still doesn't when it comes to the logical details of it all. Of course, it's easy to be a realist and enumerate all the reasons why astrology and sun signs, etc are ridiculous nonsense. I'm still not sure how much I believe the daily horoscopes, etc.

That said, the more time I spend around it, and am reminded of it by people who are a smidge obsessed with the topic (my boss at the EG, for one), the more I am impressed by how astute some of the personality traits attributed to different signs are. I'm not referring to it on a day-to-day "The Moon is in Venus so Don't Walk Under A Bridge With Yellow graffiti Or An Infectious Man will Cross You" sort of way, but rather to the different characteristics I see in myself and others of particular "signs."

God, I sound like a follow-Your-Bliss hippie.

"Hey baby, what's your sign?"

As the years go by, I see more and more elements of my personality that align with "Libra" qualities. Of course, I don' t think that I'm entirely defined by this system, but the coincidences are surprising. Even more so when you look at the descriptions of Libras with other signs. I just about passed out when I read how accurate of an interpretation the Libra/Pisces combo was for my last relationship.

Ok. Disclaimer. Saying all these things. I'm hyper-aware of how simple it is to take a vague paragraph using vague terms and make it form to your life like spandex to a fat woman. But I don't think I'm an idiot, and I don't think I'm grasping at straws.

***

The segue back to the original point is this: as a Libra--or as one who avoids conflict, prefers harmony, and likes to see everyone get along to the best degree possible-- this office environment shakes me to the core! It's so aggressive, so antagonistic, and so mean-hearted that I want to curl up into that little ball under my desk (I have a pear for lunch! I'll be ok for a few hours at least!) and only come out once everyone is gone.

I try not to let it upset me, but sometimes the tension gets to be too much. It just makes me want to cry.

*big SIGH*

Ok, back to it. I still have a zillion things to do today.

I'd always expect something like that from you, Ariel...

2005-10-10T10:46:00.000-06:00

So Saturday night I was involved in a dinner party with a few near and dears. We were lamenting something, perhaps the circumstances under which I broke my foot... and I said that, really, it was rather tragic as I had no brilliant story to go along with the event. I stepped off the curb wrong, and that was that. Lame start, lame end, and finally, lame foot.

One of my friends pointed out that she was suprised by this... considering the crazy things that happen to me in my life.

I started thinking about this... do crazy things really happen to me all that often? It doesn't seem that way to me, but perhaps I'm the one with the misconception. That said, I relish good stories. I just love to have a new mad-cap thing that happened at work or to someone I know that I can pass along to amuse the troops. Does my affinity for things like this lead others to believe that I lead an international life of mystery? Because, to me, it all seems pretty pedestrian.

As an example, I will outline my weekend for you.

Friday: I worked at the Employment Guide until round about 3:30, went and got some food, ate it, went by the bank, talked to my mom for an hour on the phone, got ready for work, left home, went to work, worked at Starbucks until about 1:30am, then drive home, and went to bed around 2:30am.

Saturday: Got up around 9:15, showered, took the streetcar down to the Farmers Market where Devon and I bought some lovely Bosc pears for our cobbler/crisp that night, bought some flowers, went down to Pioneer Square to hear David sing harmony for the group "Per Se," heard Pt. Juncture, WA and bought their EP, walked up to Powells, bought a Spanish grammar refresher book, walked up to Freddies, bought a few things for that night, walked up to NW 23rd to the liquor store, walked home, speed-cleaned the house, threw together the cobbler, got dressed, met up with James and Celeste, then went and had our Progressive Dinner Party. We finished that up around 12:30-1am, Devo and I drove James home, then went and drove around the city for a while (gorgeous fall night), went to bed around 2:30 exhausted.

Sunday: Got up around 11, picked up a book I'd been reading lately and wanted to bust out, read a ton of that, cooked breakfast (eggs and leftover cake!), showered, went an spent a few hours with David and Emily, came home, completed a few exercizes in my new grammar book, fell asleep in the cooshy chair, woke up around 10pm, watched the news, got up and put away a ton of laundry, went to bed around 1am, fell asleep closer to 2am.

And thus, here I am today, at the office as usual, trying to stay awake and alive, despite the fact that I left my bagel on the counter at home, and our boss came back three days early from his vacation (Embarassment! I wore jeans to work today, thinking he was out until Wednesday. BOO.)

What's on the agenda for a Monday?

Ariel, in her role as the A/R goddess of the EG has to:

Fax some deposit reports to Home Office...
Complete a few detail aging reports to distribute throughout the office...
Complete my weekly aging report and flag the clients I need to call this week...
Compile the newspaper mailers to send to the other cities...
Make a few important, immediate A/R calls...

No deposit today, since it is Columbus day. No mail today since it is a holiday.

Go home around 1:30pm, scarf some lunch (remember? I forgot my bagel!), do some dishes, take a brief nap, finish my closet project from the night before, then do some Spanish grammar, apply for a job or two, and get ready to ride my bike down to Starbucks--it'll be the first time since the broken foot that I'll have ridden it! I'm so excited!! I work from 8pm-12am, and then I pedal home, go to bed, and get ready for Tuesday!

And who said I had anything but the average pedestrian life?

Pretty thing #2

2005-10-03T00:20:00.000-06:00

Some days, you get out of bed, and the sky is still dark. It's cold in your room, and the shower is so hot that it makes your face feel dry and crackly when you emerge back into the cold world. You putz around your room, your eyes still adjusting to the bright light of a fluorescent bulb, and go through your little morning routine. Pants, socks, brush teeth. There is the sound of running water through the pipes in the wall of someone upstairs flushing a toilet. All is quiet, and sterile, and dry.

Then you open your blinds.

Outside, the first shards of sunlight have broken through the net of branches and shattered over the roof of your building, they lie, scattered, on the little circle of green grass that splays like a throw rug between sidewalks and parking lots. The trees are still dripping from last night's rain, and the helicopter seeds from the maple trees scatter the sidewalk, soggy, abandoned, the left-over troops from a failed invasion of earth by sky.So starts another day. A day of tests and failed appointments, of white lies and black moods. People toddle along, bobbing their hair aimlessly to the rhythm of their curt footsteps, lost in their own whirlwind of thoughts and preoccupations that whiz off them, spiraling to the ground.A foot lands on a sodden maple helicopter. Water oozes out and the delicate hairs and wings crush and break under the weight of so many worries, hopes, and obligations. Who looks? Who picks up the brave little souls that spiraled to the ground in a gust of wind and inspiration? Once, they, too, thought they could fly.

Thus goes the way of so many small things in our lives, memories, deep thoughts, acquaintances... they soar for a moment, then fall, still and sodden to the ground.

***

I wrote this my senior year of college; Fall 2004. I found it the other day and liked re-reading it. I was obsessed with my thesis on the construction of "self" and "identity" in Hamlet at that point (or if I wasn't, I soon would be, so close enough). I was also dating (vaguely) this goony boy from the internet. It was a pathetic attempt to get over the whole James thing, as I was recently back from abroad and dealing with the whole face-to-face seeing that person every day at school issue. Fun, fun, fun. That seems like such a long time ago. Anyhow. Yeah. That's that.

Pretty thing I've written #1

2005-10-03T00:19:00.000-06:00

To one who I hardly know,

It’s another lonely evening in my life. I shouldn’t think about you, but the birds singing under the cloudy sky seem tug at the strings in my heart. The disjointed notes, so far from a melody, tease it out until I’m stretched out the window, pulled into the warm early evening air. Yes, it’s still light out, and the day hovers just outside the window full of other people and stories and other chances to make the world different.
But me? I’m here with a sad smile on my face listening to the birds dripping like liquid drops in a dish of water behind me.
There’s a moment in the course of the day, usually very early or not so late, that the bird song echoes off the pavement. It ripples around the open spaces and wraps itself among the branches of the trees.
You’re not for me, and I’m definitely not for you. Perhaps there was a moment, a brief evening in time where our hearts were teased out like the birdsong echoing in the night to ricochet back and forth across the sky and the street.
* * *
Who’d have known that the birds sing in the city? Who’d have known that one could hear them? Certainly not me. I’ve lived my life tightly tucked in the arms of the sweet country stillness. There wasn’t ever any other, nor did I want anything else. The trees and the woods and the innocence of the frogs in the pond, they cradled me in their arms and rocked me to sleep every night.
Then I moved here. The air teems with people. They are to my right and to my left and behind me and above me and over there and there and there and there… There is not a private moment, not even when you’re alone. An energy moves along the streets and passes down the hallways. At first it frightened me; I found it exhausting. Gathering the various folds and layers of the skirts of my soul, I held them tightly in, high above my knees, so that no one passing by would trample upon them. That was always a danger, to be stepped on. But now my arms don’t grow as weary. Perhaps my skirt gets shorter as my credentials grow… I’ll be America’s corporate banker before you know it.

***

I like this one too. I didn't know when I wrote this my junior year of college that I'd someday end up applying for a job at a corporate bank. Funny how life works. I think my skirts have gotten longer since then, though (for the record), though they (and I!!) have certainly have gotten cuter (trust me on that one). Anyhow. I think this is pretty, too. I miss those days when I was expected to do so much "technical" or "school" writing, that a little creative interlude like this one was candy. I miss school. :(

Call a tow truck... I locked my keys in Starbucks...

2005-09-22T10:01:00.000-06:00

The story does lose a little moxie when one gives the punchline away in the title. They got away with that trick in the movie The Aristocrats, but I'm no comic Hollywood genius. I know you've heard various incarnations of this story before, but bear with me, this version might be new.

We actually got out early yesterday. It was quiet as a mouse in the store all night long. Not even any good crazies to liven things up. When Brian the security guard dropped in to check on us before we closed, he asked how things had been. I had very little that was interesting or funny to impart, so I just shrugged. Oh. Well there was that one guy. The one that came in waving his arms and turning in circles while muttering silently to himself. He was dressed in a running suit (polyester of course), thick bleary glasses, and had a couple of furry adornments attached to his belt. They looked like giant lucky rabbits' feet--except about ten times the size. Fox tails maybe? Who knows. Maybe Jesus really was telling him to get coffee.

Without the normal hustle and bustle of madhouse customers demanding gooey extra-caramel concoctions until the wee hours of the morning, we were closed and shut in a mere 45 minutes. This is a far cry from the days when closing took an HOUR and 45 minutes, thankyouverymuch. Remarkable how a slight shift in the weather and starting up school again scours downtown of its evening strollers.

We bid one another goodbye in front of the store, and set off in our different directions. Jess rode her bike, Kraig hoofed it up Broadway, and I hobbled on my foot-and-a-half past Nordstroms up to the parking garage. I felt Smart. I'd parked in SmartPark. It was probably the last time for a few hours that I'd feel anything even resembling "smart." I'm still recovering, in fact.

I casually slide a hand around to the corner of my bag where I always deposit my car keys, preferring to have them in-hand before I venture into the garage. Not there.

Huh.

I stop, lean on a newspaper box. Maybe they are in the bottom of my bag?

I root around.

Nothing.

I check the various other myriad pockets of my messenger bag--mind you, this is a very large satchel, stuffed with work clothes, newspapers, and other sundry items. After no luck, I'm incredulous. I've never misplaced my keys, and despite fears of such in the past, have never left them at work! I pull all the clothes out. Check the pockets of my pants, shake out my apron, etc. No luck.

Not even my cell phone turns up. Why? It's locked IN my car, three flights above me in an empty, echoey SmartPark.

With all my phone numbers safely stowed in it.

I could digress right now on how cellphones are a blessing and a curse, how now that I have a "contact list" I never bother to memorize any phone numbers any more, how tragic it would be if anything even happened to it and all my numbers were irreparably lost, but I know you've had those thoughts before yourself, so you'll know how it felt to stand outside on a city street corner at a loss for what to do next. Call the housemate? No... don't know her number. Call the supervisor from Starbucks and ask him to walk back and let me in? He, too, is safely stowed away in my phone.

The brain starts buzzing. Should I take the bus? That means waiting on the bus mall for 45 minutes with all the tweakers. No thanks. Should I walk home? That means hobbling up Broadway and Burnside--the two arterial streets in West Portland known for their "questionable" loiterers. As a woman, on her own, with a broken foot, I decide for the third option, I'll hail a cab!

I do so. The driver is an older gentleman, thick Eastern European accent who I chat with about the misfortune of my night. He rationalizes that it's a good thing I live relatively close, at least, so that the cab fare wouldn't be too expensive.

After being dropped off in front of my apartment I am relieved to find that the front door is open, and the boys in the first floor unit are still up smoking on the porch. Good news. One more key that I don't need to use tonight. Only one left to go which also turns out to be a non-issue, as one of the extra doors to our place has been left unlocked.

I leave an alarmist note for my housemate informing her of the situation, and begging her to wake me up at 5:30am when she goes to the gym with the hope that she'll drive me down to Starbucks. Bless her heart, she does.

The two of us try to have an intellectual conversation about a matter of some seriousness in the car on the way to the Square. It's pretty hopeless. I've had 4 1/2 hours of worried sleep, sure that all the windows have been broken out of my car and that my cell phone was stolen, or that my keys are somewhere else (not Starbucks) entirely, or that I'll be too groggy for my interview the next day after working off of so little rest.

We arrive. I run down to the basement, greet the opening crew (who are all rather appalled to see me, the "perma-closer" there so early on a weekday), and dash to the bathroom. My keys await, safely napping under a green apron on the floor by my locker.

All's well that ends well, Shakespeare says (with a tinge of irony, once you've read the play). But my night ended without any more drama. Devon drove me up to my car. It was intact. My phone was there too. And to top it all off, the SmartPark people weren't there yet to charge me for a whole night's parking. I paid my normal fees (evening maximum), drove home in the early twilight, and tucked myself back into bed for an extra hour or so of fitful sleep.

This morning, dressed to interview, and whiling away the morning at work, the whole thing seems like one of those awkward dreams imbued with a sense of drama and urgency that never exactly manifests. You're with friends at a meal, or in a car, or at home, and you know there is something bad that is about to happen, but you don't know WHAT it is. Your dream is hazed with the heat-shimmers of an impending something, but that something never is fully developed. Only the sense of it.

Which is often enough.

I checked my purse six times this morning before I left the house to ensure that my phone, keys, and wallet were all intact.

What a beautiful day outside!

2005-09-16T14:38:00.000-06:00

Of course you may beg to differ. I do understand that it's cloudy and 60 degrees outside. That's no matter. It's a perfect cloudy. The kind where out one window things are just gray and drippy, and out the other side of the building, when you look toward the city, a thick powder-puff of gray makes the tops of the sky-scrapers dissappear.

Now Portland doesn't have too much when it comes to big high-rise office buildings. You have the Pink building, the one shaped like a stick of deordorant, the one with the Portland City Grill in it, and of course a few more. Yet, on days like today, the city feels tall and important. Scraping the sky for real, as it were. The buildings are propping up the clouds.

Not having spent a great deal of time in a high-rise building (visits, that's all), I have to wonder about how interesting it must be to watch a cloud bank like that roll in. If you're in a truly large edifice, I would imagine that you'd be engulfed in clouds quite frequently in the winter. Not to mention engulfed in storms, too! How exciting!

It's probably not quite as exciting as it might seem at first, though. It's not terribly thrilling to fly through clouds in an airplane, after all. Just dense and grey and misty hour after hour. It's also not too great when you're hiking and you're up high in a cloud. Just looks like fog. I wonder why I feel like it would be any different up in a building. If I think logically, of course I know it wouldn't be.

I think it's the constant prospect of being inside something that is strange and opaque--clouds are just clouds, but maybe if you were standing still inside one you could watch pockets of air open up or something! Gaps INSIDE a cloud mass. That would be neat. Maybe there are gremlins that will appear out of the mist and suction-up with their toothy little mouths on your office window. No one talks about these things so I must presume that they don't exist.

(adding as an edit... check out that rad link to the Cloud Appreciation Society over to the right. It's so cool. The pictures they have are incredible, and if you do check it out, read the links about the morning glory cloud. Very cool.)

Stoopid piece of shit foot.

2005-09-07T19:36:00.000-06:00

(Also lifted from the bowels of e-mail hell)

So, I'm now the proud owner of one lame, gimpy, crippled, deplorable, damaged and gosh-danged broken foot. Fractured foot, actually, to use the appropriate term.

Last night I was walking with Rebecca to the grocery store, and went to turn around to her to say something (well, ok, to vividly act something out that involved how silly it is when people turn to watch a hot piece of ass and walk into something and hurt themselves), and wuh-oh, where'd the sidewalk go? Evidently there was a big dip in said sidewalk where the exit to a parking lot came out. Foot didn't know about it. Foot bent in half in stupid chaco sandals as it fell over the rounded edge of the curb. Person attatched to foot heard a loud "SNAP" and said, "ouch.ouch.ouch" then laughed at the circumstances.

Rebecca insisted several times that we go back to my house and that I ice it then and there etc. In insisted that No, I wanted to keep walking to Fred Meyer. So I went to Freddies. By the time I got there it was hurting, SO SO SO bad I couldn't really even see straight. All I wanted to do was buy ibuprofin, an ice pack (which needs to go back into the freezer--REMEMBER that Ariel!), and an ace bandage for my foot. I was being very whiny and was casi-naseous.

I've always thought I was pretty tough when it came to your run-of-the-mill basic pain, and so the quality of this to make me whine like a baby was kind of suprising. I downed some Ibuprofin when I got home, and it then felt a lot better. Well, except for the big goose-egg swelling on the side of my foot that was somewhere about the side of a walnut-in-shell.

Well, this morning rolled around, and no. NOT better. I could hardly stand on it let alone walk or WORK. I somehow deliriously made it down to the EG job fair, and then sat down and sat that out all day. My boss took me to the hospital afterward, and they did xrays and all that fun stuff, and yes, voila, there appeared to be a fracture on my fifth metatarsal and maybe one on the fourth, though it was hard for the Doctor to tell from the pictures. He gave me a note to get a few days off from Starbucks, and suggested that I keep off it, elevate, ice, and ibu. Sounds about right. I have a prescription for Vicodin that I will be filling too. Ooolala. Not that I'm a prescription drug junkie (quite the opposite, in fact), but it's just protocol that when you get a vicodin prescription, you fill it! Duh! So, that's that I guess. I'll work again on Saturday, though I'm not sure what it'll be up for. We'll see. I feel bad bailing on them on an important night like that, but what can you do? my fut is der broken! Whee!

Anyhow. that's the update. Now to spend another boring night lazing about with nothing to do but watch tv and read a book. Woohoo.

Oh, I did get one of those crazy stupid elephant-shoes! Those are kind of fun. Except that I can't wear it because it hurts too bad to lift the darn heavy thing and it gets caught on the floor when I scuff it around. Dang!

Le Tour de Sauvie....

2005-07-24T20:31:00.000-06:00

(This was originally an e-mail shared with friends and family)

Aka... Lance-a-pants, eat your heart out! So. It's Sunday. It's gorgeous out. Celeste is back in town after a zillion weeks in France. I'm starting to feel like the only person I know who isn't going anywhere FUN any time soon. But! I do have TWO bikes: a mountain bike, and a little funk-o-rific ten speed Huffy I bought off Craigslist for $30. Cool!

So we decided to hang out. It's either the Zoo or Sauvie island. We opt for Sauvie. Celeste, being the good sport that she is sounds totally enthusiastic to bike around said island for the afternoon. AWESOME. So we load up the Isuzu, and head north.

It's a STUNNING day. Nice breeze, not too hot, but gorgeous out. We're pedaling along, and it's the epitome of pastoral bliss. Hell, there are even SHEEP. We ride and ride and ride and ride. Ten miles whiz past. Our plan was to stop for a water break, then head back and get some fruit/veggies at a stand on the way out, and eat when we got home. Thus, we did not bring lunch.

3 o'clock rolls around and we are ready to turn back. We've ridden a little ways down a gravelly road, saw some fantastic scenery, and are set for the ride home. When my chain falls off. Oops! Oh well, it's not the first issue I've had with this bike. The brakes are wonky, and as a result, only the front set currently function. We stop, I put it back on, and we're back in business. Except now it's not shifting. Well, it sort of it, but it's really laboring. And now my pedals aren't turning very well, and the tension is insane along the top part of the chain. Huh!

So, in a pique of bull-headedness, I pull over and start wrassling with it. What can be wrong?? I'm doing this and that, and it's just NOT working. So a group of three men our fathers' age pull over and ask if we need any help. I say that no, we're fine, and kind of laugh it off. They stick around, to my chagrin. I keep toying with the bike, to my amazement NOTHING I do is fixing the darn thing! Bikes are not intended to be rocket science! It's pretty straight-forward: pedal moves chain around spikey gears, bike goes forwards. I figure, I'm a smart girl, I should be able to figure this out. Minutes pass. Celeste is helping now, we're baffled, and the men are still standing on the other side of the road, congenially watching and taking a break.

Well, one of them comes over again, and with a laugh, says, "Well girls, last chance... my friend here is a bike mechanic after all...." Wha?? You never MENTIONED that! Ok, Ariel swallows her do-it-yourself pride, and hands el $30 bike over to the bike mechanic. He looks at it for about 30 seconds and says, "Well, it's not good. Your rear axle is broken."

Oh.

Ok.

So... now what?

Let's recap: it's now about 3:30, Celeste and I are ten miles north of my car on Sauvie Island. We have water, but no food (we last ate at, oh... BREAKFAST), and the temps are climbing. Oh, and one bike is BROKEN. And it's now HOT out on the pavement.

So. We start hoofing it. How long can it possibly take for us to walk ten miles? We figure two to three hours tops. Which sounds miserable. But what do we do? So we chug along. Now, keep in mind, under normal circumstances, we'd just leave one person behind and send the other one with th ebike to go get the car. But we're up by the wildlife refuge on the northern part of the island, and there are people practicing shooting guns behind us. Along with a few other sketchballs. So we walk.

And walk.

And walk.

After what seems like an ETERNITY we hit Milepost Seven. That means we have seven miles left to walk. It's about 115 degrees out now. Nice.

My mom calls at about milepost 5. She wants to know why I'm laughing when she asks how I am.

It's 156 degrees now and the blisters are emerging out from under my chacos. I'm also thinking about the amazing cancerous skin cells that are slowly morphing on my shoulders, cheeks, and thighs. I KNOW that I sweat off that spf 15 about 15 degress and 4 miles ago.

Anyhow, at this point, mom points out that it might be a good idea to just send one person to go get the car. With 4 miles left, we agree to that, and since I am the resident stick-shift driver, I hop on the bike and put muscle to pedal. 20 minutes later I'm at the car. And about ready to melt in a little puddle.

I consider stopping in at the convenience store for a cold beverage (and one for celeste), but it seems like it would be a cruel thing to show up with water, while she's still walking. In the sun. Waiting for the car. So I don't.

I pick her up, and we go and retrieve the problem child (chained to a barbed wire fence ten miles back), and then hit the fruit stand. Woohoo! Green beans and cold bev's! Awesome!

Then we drive home. I am pretty tuckered out. After a cold shower, I felt like a triathlete. Except for that whole swimming part.

So, everyone else have a good weekend? xoxo lovies! A

Update:

Update on Le Huffy Puffy:

Rode home from work last night... the damn chain fell off THREE TIMES while pedaling through the Pearl. Awww... isn't it CUTE? Do I need mention it was at 11:30 pm? Brilliance all around.

2005-04-30T20:56:00.000-06:00

Now I believe I will go cook and change the fish's bowl. Won't he be PLEASED? I would if I were he. Then I will get a beer and sit out and read. Brilliant. I wish I wasn't such a nerd!

Addendum: I never changed the fish's bowl. Nor did I drink a beer. But I finished the book I was reading! And I feel better for it. It was a trashy paperback anyhow. Total fast-food for the brain.

First time reader, first time writer.

2005-04-30T20:42:00.000-06:00

Well, Mr. Internet, nice to meet you. What's a little Portland girl have better to do on a bright sunny day than set up an internet blog, I ask you? I've worked, I'll drink beer later, for now the internet serves as a cheap, satisfying date though which to indulge a little narcisissm. And we DO love ourselves now, precious, don't we?