gl.

site feed by atom

Friday, June 26, 2009

 
3:57 PM: last testament [#] [0]

sven & i are about to leave to wisconsin, so i want to post this before i have to write an even longer long travel post, too! we'll be gone for about 3 weeks: first for sven's grandpa's memorial service, then with the last week or so stopping at mt. rushmore, jewell caves, and camping at craters of the moon. mph is kind enough to check on our house from time to time. thanks, mph!

so the last month has been joyful and sorrowful all at once. the month began with dr. tiller's assassination, which was a big blow. i cried for 2 days and attended the vigil at the new planned parenthood being built on mlk. my heart sank further when i read an article about how clinic violence surges during democrat presidents, which just indicates we're in for worse during the next few years. but i've been repeating the blessing of abortion to myself every day since. i continue to support backline as a talk line advocate & planned parenthood as a patient advocate, which gives me a very practical way to contribute in the face of fear.

fortunately for me, everything else in june has been delightful. it's been a big month for biking, for instance. the big news is rose is now an electric bike! i spoke to wake at the ebike store on alberta, who was kind, enthusiastic and competent. this is in marked contrast to the ebike/scooter store near me, who i talked to last year: they didn't think it would work and would require majorly modifying rose if it did. they treated me as if i was a bother to them, but talking with them last year made it easier to talk to wake this year, who seems to love rose almost as much as i do. i only had two small setbacks: the shifting cable & gearset broke & had to replaced. and when driving rose home afterward fixing that, she jumped off the back rack of my car into freeway traffic! it was really scary and i was just lucky part of the bike remained attached to the rack while the back dragged along the road. despite all that, nobody was hurt (including trixie) and rose escaped with just a large scrape on her back fender!

i tried to use my trusty stella while rose was being converted, and i have learned rose really is the right bike for me because all other bikes feel unnatural and difficult. (but wow, stella is SO much lighter than rose!) having a pedal assist has done exactly what i wanted it to do: allowed me to range further and explore in any direction without fear of hitting a giant hill. i still have to help pedal up big hills, but i no longer feel like i'm going to die or have to stop halfway up. and it's all totally reversible! wake did such a great job that when i take rose to events, nobody knows she's an electric bike unless i tell them (in fact, even boys go out of their way to tell me what a pretty bike rose is).

events like... the blessing of the bikes (blessed by both our lady ghisallo & saint cupcake ;), after which i biked to visit michaelmas & lunch at elephant's deli. but june is really all about pedalpalooza, 2+ weeks of bikey fun i look forward to every year. i tried attending the "food not lawns" events, but nobody showed up, including the ride leader. instead, i took the opportunity to bike down to the waterfront and through laurelhurst & eat lunch on stark, which confirms my suspicions that if you live in se, you could get almost everywhere you needed to on bike west of 39th. i went on the lents bike boulevard w/ mph, alison & ben (who said me & my bike were "beautiful!") where i got pretty lost, actually, but discovered a delightful eastport snickleway. i went on the big girls bike ride down the esplanade to the sellwood bridge, which was beautiful and fun. i was so happy to find i could bike to the trillium/target/toyota trinity, which is now the outer markers of an "easy" range for me. the biggest ride i've ever been on was dekum to woodstock (and back again!): 20 miles, but primarily an exercise in learning to stay upright in a big group ride. alas, though i had been looking forward to it for weeks, i missed the oregon sesquicentennial ride because i was just too crunched for time so close to the wisconsin trip. i even had a yellow-and-blue outfit all picked out to celebrate oregon's 150th anniversary!

when i haven't been biking, i've been preparing and performing in the original practice shakespeare festival. i didn't think i'd get to perform until august, so i was delighted to be able to be performing a midsummer nights dream ON the summer solstice, which is midsummer! (though in oregon it's hard to tell, and a little depressing that we've passed the climax of summer when it's just starting to be nice out). as actors in opsfest, you don't "rehearse," per se, but there were fight & dance calls to practice the things that require slightly more coordination than improv. i was also happy to be performing at laurelhurst park, which is such a stately, grand park, and we performed right at the place i celebrated my 35th birthday last year! also, as opsfest actors we don't know what roled we'll be playing until the day of the performance: that day i got to be snug the joyner & the lion, which means i get to be a big adorable goof. sven & michaelmas came to see me: thanks, guys!

in the meantime, we saw storm large's "crazy enough" which was better than i expected though i was disappointed with the tone of the ending. we also saw "inviting desire" w/ bridget & darren and stayed up late talking about it at pix afterward. in other events, we went to the book launch for "hidden portland," "missile to the moon" with mph, ppcw cpr/aed training (now i can save your life! it's also good to know you can’t make dead people deader), ohsu standardized patient (asthma & pelvic: whoah!), and helped trillium paint the back rooms. i missed some hooping this month, but am still enjoying it. in terms of edible explorations, i took sven to dinner at iorio; michaelmas took me to burgerville, our traditional celebration of what is now my 6th portlandiversary; we're making an effort to eating everything perishable here before the trip; i ate a pretty good sandwich at meat cheese bread on one of my bike rides; we had lunch w/ dayna on her boat "rapture" but i had to cancel plans to have dinner w/ susan once it became clear we needed the time to prep for wisconsin; and i'm sad i'll miss the farmer's market for the next few weeks. we saw a few movies this month, too: love me if you dare, slaughterhouse five, terminator, casino royale, and the last of lost season 3.

and last but certainly not least... i finally got an iphone! when the 3gs came out, i knew that was the right one for me. this is the first cell phone i've ever owned (csusm owned the one i used there), and i feel like i'm mostly paying the monthly fee for a tiny computer, not a phone. but i'm glad to have a handheld computer again: i loved the newton when i first got one way back in 2000, and this feels very much like its natural evolution. i immediately installed voodoopad reader and an astronomy program, but i really love the maps, notes & internet functions, too. i wish the camera was a little better indoors, though, and i've been surprised that "shuffle by album" is no longer an ipod feature. (you can shuffle songs in an album, but you can longer shuffle albums). but overall, i think it's a pretty impressive piece of equipment. now i'm modern again! :D

(all this activity means i've paid less attention to the garden, and leaving right at the height of raspberry & strawberry season is so sad! sven installed an awesome self-watering system which i hope keeps the plants alive and doesn't burst while we're gone.)

Monday, May 25, 2009

 
10:14 PM: picking up where i left off [#] [2]

* activities: for memorial day i took my annual trip to ground kontrol to revel in my manitou springs arcade nostalgia. sven & i played a lot of joust, michaelmas played dr. who pinball, and sven, m5000 & i played gauntlet. i've been strangely into games lately: i also played some braid (interesting game mechanics) & meeblings (like lemmings). the only thing missing is air hockey. the big news is that i attended the national abortion federation conference earlier this month and had a really great time. i skipped stumptown this year, though, and we've attended our last white bird dance. but bridget hosted a pottery painting party for her birthday where i created address number tiles for the studio and walked around lake oswego for a bit. because my index finger burns due to trackpad use, i've been trying to use a mouse or other device. my wireless mouse is a pain because if it loses connection, you have to fiddle with the bluetooth preferences panel to get it to be recognized again. also, i don't have a very good place to mouse. but i keep struggling with it because a burning index finger is worse. i was excited to send 365 starry nights to one of my favorites authors, chet raymo, to sign. last but certainly not least, at jalex's baby naming ceremony we discovered her son's name is abraham charles meyer. hooray!

* jobs: opsfest has finally worked itself out. it looks like i won't be performing until august 16, but don't let that stop you from attending a performance near you! i would have liked to have been more involved, but apparently there is a surfeit of women interested in shakespeare who have the summer free. go figure. ohsu continues to be a lot of fun: i played a mother of a child suspected of lead poisoning and i had to give feedback to two doctors by myself (usually a faculty does it). i was just involved as an extra on the TNT tv series "leverage," which was a lot of fun, and strangely exhausting. i also got paid to be involved with a seafood taste & packaging test at the food innovation center. i was delighted to schedule a private gocco lesson at the studio; it would be nice to do more of that; i really miss teaching gocco. backline is sometimes quiet, sometimes busy. but i got two calls i had been dreading (a male & a parent) and they both went exceptionally well! the funding calls are actually hard for me, though. i took sven to the backline mother's day fundraising brunch, which was tasty & pleasant. but i haven't managed to be both a patient advocate and a talkline advocate at the same time yet: i usually do one backline shift a week and that takes most of my emotional support energy in that arena.

* garden: after growing several sweet seedlings, i lost almost all of them when i optimistically planted them in april before a cold week. meh! so i reset my garden with portland nursery starts and they're doing pretty well so far. sven created a pretty amazing watering network for the garden boxes. we've found three grasshopper pupas so far though we haven't seen them hatch. but we have seen clusters of baby spiders hatching, which are cute because they're so tiny (when they get bigger i won't find them as cute, even though mph says they're beneficial orbweavers). the empty house across the street that's been for sale for months has these giant rosebushes that are getting all floppy and wild, leaning out into their driveway and the clawing their way onto the sidewalk. so for the good of the roses and the safety of the neighborhood, i run over there at midnight and trim the rosebushes, filling jars with these huge yellow blooms. now that the weather is warm enough, we leave the back door open and the cat speaks to the birds outside, plotting her escape. after garden labours, i spent a perfect afternoon out on the porch w/ homemade lemonade reading a book. heaven!

* hooping: my progress continues, slowly but steadily. i learned some double hoop tricks, some fancy foot recovery and understand float up/down better. i'm better at knee hooping than most, but none of us can get it back onto our hips. surprisingly, clothing makes a difference while hooping: if the fabric is too slick the hoop is much harder to control. it turns out that skin works best to keep the hoop up, so hooping fashions that expose midriff, chest and thighs are more practical than they first appear. i'm still too self-conscious for that, but for class we often tuck pant legs and shirts up to expose more skin area.

* biking: biking season really starts for me with the "pretty dress bike ride," where everyone wears a pretty dress (even the boys). we stopped by sock dreams, the alice & wonderland mural, the organic gardens going up at city hall and ended up in the park across from city hall with the rocks that look like dinosaur bones. but in my neck of the woods, the springwater corridor has been a little shaky lately: there have been 2 reported sightings of tacks strewn across the path, it doesn't look like the johnson creek bridge is ever going to be reopened, and the sheep bench & the compass rose bench both have their outmost slats broken. so i've been heading west: fred meyer's on johnson creek involves a short sprint at the end without a bike lane on 82nd. i could go to the freddy's that's closer to me, but that would involve coming up the 136th hill, which is still intimidating, and this way i get to visit pdxmph on the way home. once after a bike ride i discovered 3 little girls and a boy selling flowers like a lemonade stand. they were so cute and the tulips so beautiful i bought one, and even though i gave them exact change they insisted on giving me 16 cents in change as part of the transaction. :) i still love rose, and everyone loves rose, too: even boys go out of their way to mention her. but after visiting the new ebike store, i took rose in to have a conversion kit added! i don't have her back yet, but i'm really looking forward to it. :)

* movies: the day the earth stood still remake, signs, philip glass documentary, sound of thunder, the new star trek, benjamin button. none of these are particularly noteworthy.

* food: sven & i alternate taking each other to a new edible place each month. sven chose flavorspot, which created delicious waffle sandwiches. don't roll your eyes till you've tried one. i attempted to go to the vegan portobello trattoria, but was rebuffed by a sign that said they had too many reservations for the holiday weekend -- even though there was nobody there and no waiting list. so we went to nedd ludd instead, where i had a pretty phenomenal trout. we celebrated the housiversary w/ flying pie pizza in gresham, the first time we've been to that location. i was excited to learn about a fried pie foodcart at the hathorne lot, but the fruit pies aren't all that great, actually. and the last time sven & i got burritos at ole ole their chile rellenos were filled with nacho cheese rather than cheddar: blech! but the thing that blew my mind was that i learned how to make my own butter! it's fantastic, incredibly easy, and goes great with that nytimes homemade artisan bread. speaking of which, i was inspired by that nytime bread recipe to try a chocolate chip cookie recipe where the dough rests for 24-72 hours, but it turns out they weren't really worth the effort. but then i tried a vegan feta cheese recipe which is surprisingly good.

* my photo system is well & truly broken. i still take pictures, but iphoto is so slow that i resist loading & labeling them. now it's may and i'm still sorting through xmas 2008. i suppose that would be an argument for a new laptop...

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

 
5:35 PM: inside and out [#] [0]

* another baby report: jalex had a baby boy apr13! we stopped by today to visit. the naming ceremony is saturday.

* april is the month to start biking again! on one of the first beautiful days (i saw a sundog!), i biked down the springwater corridor trail and thought i was really out of shape because it seemed like i was going so slow. on my way back i passed someone on a bench who called out "you're back tire's flat, ma'am!" and so it was. i walked her home and took her to the bike gallery the next day -- but when i got her back, she was missing two gears! so i returned her to the bike gallery and they got it right the second time. despite the chainguard, rose caught another pair on my pants on the chain, so I'm going to have to start tucking my right pant leg into my sock. in warmer weather, i can go back to wearing just skirts! on my way home from the trillium board meeting, i got caught in the rain: i discovered my raincoat is only semi-rainproof. :)

* ohsu's osce was a blast! i cried when one doctor insisted on putting me in a position that "hurt" me, and another doctor surprised me by asking me detailed questions about my sex life that i had to create answers to on the spot. but overall i had a great time. it's fun to see the various ranges and styles of doctors-to-be and makes me feel good to be contributing to the next generation.

* i attended another opsfest playgroup. it's a neat format where mistakes are funny, not frowned on. i do angry shakespeare really well, but soliloquies need some work. i'll know more about what performances i'll be involved with at the end of the month.

* hooping class is going well: we were hooping blindfolded and learned elbow hooping! (not at the same time)

* michaelmas turned 47 last week. he spent it quietly at home watching the dr. who easter special. on tuesday i took him out to dinner, and afterwards we had an ice cream cone and watched the maltese falcon.

* mph had a birthday, too. i dropped off the birthday card sven made for him, and he showed me his kindle (much nicer than i would have guessed from the pictures). ben gave me a tootsie roll pop & a bracelet. :)

* sven & i watched "the invasion," the best part of which was that it didn't contain a monster that roars before it attacks you (this is one of my least favorite scifi movie tropes).

* we like to celebrate easter even though we're not religious. i like dying and hiding eggs and we eat egg salad and shepherd's pie. but this year we realized it sure is a lot of cooking for a holiday we don’t really celebrate! :)

* we helped mph's family move to their new house in lents. i brought a yoyo, hoops, bubbles, kite and a soccer ball to distract ben during the move but we played "rescue ben & verl before they fall off futon mountain" and "zombie blueberry" instead. afterwards, mph took us all to izzie's.

* trixie got a flat tire on the way to help mph move, though, so i changed my tire on the freeway by myself! a woman stopped who wanted me to wait for someone to help, and then a man stopped to divert traffic around my head. thanks, linda & mark!

* my taxes are finally done. thanks to the stimulus package, my tax person waved her hands and amended a previous tax return to get me some money back. bless her!

Monday, April 06, 2009

 
11:38 AM: monday's child is fair of face [#] [0]

i'm so glad april's here: i really needed a dose of sunshine. april is also national poetry month! & national grilled cheese sandwich month. with that in mind, here's something completely different:

* michaelmas & i have finished the first season of heroes. he's not inclined to watch the second or third season, so we'll probably finish the veronica mars series or go back to lost.

* i finally got a chance to go to the hawthorne food carts, which are usually only open w-sa after 8 p.m. i had poutine once in canada so i wanted to try it here, and they had a vegetarian version, which warmed my heart. pretty good, though i liked the canadian version better. also a nice crepe cart. (speaking of which, michaelmas & i noticed the crepe place on 23rd that was always randomly open is now gone. unsurprising, but still sad.)

* now that april is here, i am compelled to do more biking. i'm trying to tackle the hills around here, because 136th scares me. so i'm practicing on what i call the "starwatching hill," a former horse pasture that has been a development in limbo for over a year now. no traffic, beautiful views, very steep hill. i noticed bike gallery is finally carrying an electric bike option: the a2b, which is disappointingly ugly, or i'd be considering it.

* every ohsu job has been interesting, but this one is particularly so because it's more than a week of it, roughly 8 a day. also, i'm responsible for evaluating them. these are first-year med students and this is their final exam -- and so even though they're not supposed to be perfect, it's still intriguing to see the range of approaches, manner and competence. this is especially awkward because it involves a chest exam, and asking me to lower my gown and reaching inside my bra is obviously not something they've practiced much. :)

* i took a huge load of clothes back to savvy plus, my original introduction to the world of stores that featured nice clothes that fit me, and only got $8. most of the clothing was stuff i had bought there! so that was ... disappointing. now i'm wishing i had brought them to fat fancy instead.

* i taught "starting a creative business" at the gresham library on saturday. a small but enthusiastic group. i really love that class: it's the one i feel is most well timed, well-paced, engaging and encouraging.

* i'm slowly working on gardening: all the garden boxes have been cleared and i've started seeds inside. i probably should have started the seeds last month because i'd have lettuce by now if i had. but the radish sprouts were immediately entertaining and it looks like the corn and pumpkin seeds are gonna burst out of their little pods and destroy tokyo soon. i'm trying a method called "square foot gardening" and sven made me a collapsible grid to put in the boxes he made several years ago. i really missed gardening last year, so i hope it's better this year.

* i finally received an invoice from the lawyer for my mom's estate and paid it. it's a remarkable amount of money for what amounts to less about an hour and a half of time.

* my current snapshot song is lily allen's "the fear": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F-lqOrRcIY

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

 
1:27 PM: the light returns [#] [1]

i'm so glad the vernal equinox has arrived! i can't believe how light it is until 8 p.m. we took the traditional walk on powell butte to celebrate the changing of the season. little known fact: up to 2007, the equinox could happen either mar20 or 21, but now it will only happen on mar20 -- until 2044, when it begins falling sometimes on mar19. astrologically, the equinox marks the new year, with the sun in aries (though astronomically, the sun is still in pices).

now the clouds just need to back off a bit. i've been keeping a starjournal since january, and march is the most depressing month, filled with entries like "more clouds," "too cloudy to see any stars," "clouds again," and "WHY DO THE CLOUDS HATE ME?" i've missed several sighting of the iss and space shuttle this month.

though i've been keeping busy: ohsu is in the middle of final exams for their 1st-year students, so i've had "asthma" and i'll have a whole week of "chest pain" starting thursday. the iprc "starting a creative business" class last week was packed and always goes well, so i'm looking forward to teaching at the gresham public library on saturday. alas, the census didn’t call, but now i'm in the pool, so maybe next year? backline breaks my heart every time i do a shift; it's much different than being a patient advocate, and i haven't been able to manage to do both at the same time yet. i just finished one hoop series class and i'll start another on wednesday.

haven't eaten out much lately, it seems. though i had coffee w/ shuju at half and half; for st. patrick’s day michaelmas & i ate ruebens at kornblatt’s; sven & i celebrated an anniversary at belly timber (where i had a good hamburger & an interesting beet mocktail); michaelmas & i celebrated our awkward anniversary at thai orchid.

sven & i watched the flaming lips' "christmas on mars." i expected it to be more painful than it ultimately was.

gardening is coming along. i have a blueberry bush in one corner and muscat grapes by the back porch. i've got two boxes cleared and trellises on one one box. the lettuce box still needs to be cleared and then i'll add some new soil to all the boxes. i'm going to start seeds inside today (i hope); the soil still seems too cold to start anything. then i'll attend to the herbs, which have been neglected by the sidewalk and are all leggy and rampaging over each other.

and last but certainly not least, the mead's new baby "bee" was born this week. welcome home, willa jane.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

 
9:38 PM: simple stories [#] [2]

i applied for the census. it sounds like a good job for a curious introvert. i took a test but the background check takes a while, so we'll see if they call me for training in a couple of weeks. but even if they don't, ohsu invited me to be a standardized patient for their end-of-term clinical exams for the 1st-year med students. whee!

in the meantime, i've had my first two primary backline shifts. the first one was pretty mellow, with two completely different calls. the second shift was really long and intense and dramatic, with two dropped calls and someone having to pretend i was her friend "megan." one woman called after she found the the nuremberg files (which i am not linking to because it is so awful), which really frightened her.

i haven't had further contact with my aunt about my mom's estate, but her lawyer recently sent a letter to me and the "surviving spouse" that she's choosing an informal probate that won't be finished until at least august.

while michaelmas was at acrl, i catsat arwen, who was happier to see me each time i visited. i'll bet she's really happy michael's home again. sven took cleo into the vet to get her nails trimmed and a cyst on her neck removed. afterwards, she was scratching it & making it bleed, so we made her wear a blue cone around her neck that she hated. fortunately, she seems to be over it now.

for fun, sven & i went to another whitebird performance and to see the play "how to disappear completely." we also watched juno (i must be the only person in the pacific northwest who doesn't like this movie), watchmen (better than i expected) and spiderwick (meh). we tried eating at several new places: blossoming lotus, dechutes brewery, lovely hula hands to celebrate jalex's birthday, the waffle window and pine state biscuits. also, i've started a new hooping class w/ the same instructor at somaspace. this intermediate class is all about transitions, and it seems so much harder!

personally, i love daylight savings time and am looking forward to the equinox this week. and i -finally- got to see comet lulin! it was just a smudge near regulus, but i was very proud (thanks for the good weather, carl!). i also modified stellarium to include comet lulin, which totally rocked. in other celestial news, saturn passed opposition, the moment it lies exactly opposite the sun in the sky (which means it rose at sunset and set at sunrise). in addition, uranus reached aphelion, the furthest it will get from the sun in its 84-year orbit. for the rest of our lives, uranus will be just a tiny bit closer every day.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

 
10:31 PM: just when you think it's over [#] [11]

more death news:
* i took kamron to lunch so she could notarize the "renunciation" form for my aunt to be the personal representative for the estate. i never expected anything from my mother, but it's still hard to give up all hope so tangibly. i also requested a copy of the death certificate.

* sven’s grandfather died: food poisoning from a crab enchilada, they think. sven and the other grandchildren (from canada & india) gathered in tucson to pay their respects, though the actual memorial service won't be until july in wisconsin.

* we discovered michaelmas' friend bryan died a few weeks ago, too. bryan helped michaelmas move into 1010 before i arrived and into 306 after i left. we helped him move from an apartment into a house. my first thanksgiving in portland included bryan and we watched a few geek movies together. but my favorite memory of bryan was when he took us to the airport when i came to visit michaelmas -- upon discovering i had lost my wallet, he urged michaelmas to give me some money for the trip home. i was touched at his thoughtfulness.

in medical news:
* i went to the dentist. ouch. i've had trouble with one of my back teeth because it's difficult to clean since getting my wisdom teeth out several years ago.

* i'll be attending the NAF conference in april since it will be in portland. according to the washington post, med students sometimes practice abortions on papayas, so i tried it, too. though i don't have the tools, i only missed a couple of embedded seeds. whether i did it gracefully or painlessly is another matter, of course. it was interesting to review the procedure i've now seen dozens of times as a patient advocate from a different perspective. it was definitely a different mindset and it makes me even more grateful that ppcw has a patient advocate program, someone who's totally focused on the patient.

* i was a standardized patient at ohsu again (abormal pap smear again). i really love doing these roleplays: in addition to being a whole lot of fun, they feed you lunch and pay you. i hope i'm not -always- the abnormal pap smear, but so far it's been incredibly interesting to witness the range of responses to the same scenario.

in other news:
* michaelmas took me to dinner at 23 hoyt for a belated valentine's day meal (thanks, michaelmas!).

* i applied for an "original practice" shakespeare performance here in portland over the summer. OP means they do it the way they did it in shakespeare's time: without rehearsals. instead, each actor is given just their own lines on a scroll they carry with them on the stage, and each show rotates the cast members for each performance, so each show is unique. wish me luck!

* venus reached her peak brightness this week. she'll still be brilliant for a while, but she's on her way to becoming the morning star again. alas, i haven't managed to see comet lulin yet. assuming it's not too cloudy, this should be a good week for it! *crossing fingers*