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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 
6:58 PM: spice route [#] [2]

tomorrw i fly to sf to see leeann, and from there we go to morocco. i'm feeling pretty prepared: i've been reading, shopping, packing, learning. i got four vaccinations (tetanus, hepatitis a, typhoid and MMR) and a heavy dose of antibiotics. but i'm still a little nervous. wish me luck!

in between all that i had an interview & meetup with backline, whose services are still suspended. sven & i went to the installation at 23 sandy, where i got leeann a gift and sven discovered a playwriting group. we also saw the bourne supremacy (argh! it's everything i was worried the first movie would be).

i also celebrated the changing of the seasons: i biked to my last farmer's market (it will be closed when i return) and ate my last kahlua pork wrap from lilikoi (they're moving to a new location). for my last bike ride of the summer i biked north on the i205 path to gateway green. sven & i did our traditional hike to the top of powell butte on the equinox, which was very windy and warm this year. but the controlled fires have really taken out a lot of the underbrush and cover, and they have a new bench at the compass rose. because of morocco i celebrate michaelmas a little early this year: i took him to limo, a new peruvian restaurant where cameo used to be and went to the roof for my last stunning view of pdx.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

 
12:26 AM: sendin u good vibes through the universe [#] [0]

i am now 36, but i haven't gotten to write about it yet! i share a birthday with gerrie, maggie & obama. i held an "every minute counts" party: 36 minutes to celebrate my 36th birthday at the corner of hawthorne and 36th. last year i picked a place on se 35th to hold my birthday party, which happened to be laurelhurst park (35th/oak). i enjoyed the unusual format and looked for as many things to do on 36th this year as posisble. so we started at the waffle window, the red light used clothes store, grant park to write my annual birthday poem, had dinner at bread & ink, and then finally to ben & jerry's for ice cream with friends at the 36-minute party. the whole day was a lot of fun. michaelmas took me to the heathman the week after that, per our tradition.

some of my birthday guests kindly posed in the ben & jerry face cutouts:



[1. michael & sven 2. todd & kristen]


[1. miles & amelia 2. teena & philip]


[1. m5000 & mrs.5000 2. shu-ju & the good prince]


but then weird stuff started happening:

* right after my birthday, someone spraypainted graffiti on trixie & the svan: gay, fuck, bitch. when sven contacted the police he called it a hate crime because of the antigay messaging and the crude attempt to modify the "no on 36" bumper sticker. because sven played that card, the police said they were required to respond. it turned out more apt than we knew: the other family in the neighborhood that got hit the same night was a hispanic family -- and someone knew enough about them that they hit a car around the block in addition to the ones in their driveway. our misfortune netted us some neighbor visits, including one who brought sympathetic flowers. mph, al & ben brought pecan pie (thanks!). i felt super lucky that we had bought some anti-graffiti spray a few days before, and it all came off the cars relatively easily. at some point i'd like to do a graffiti patrol to clean it up in other parts of the neighborhood, too.

* not long after all that, we witnessed this craziness at the foster fred meyer. it went on for 20 minutes until the police finally escorted him out of the building.

* then the earl boyles garden got vandalized: vegetables pulled out of the ground, trellis wrecked, the works. that happened in the park nearest us, the one i like to bike to. i went to the community work party, but still: wtf?

* THEN i learned backline is suspending its talkline service indefinitely. my last shift was heartbreaking.

* then shelley & i had a hard conversation, which i think we worked out. but it capped a long string of difficult and baffling events.

in between all that we managed to have a little fun: i performed one last time at opsfest on mt tabor (starveling, cobweb & moonshine). thanks for coming, sven, michaelmas, kristin & todd! and bridgepedal is one of the highlights of august for me: this year i went all the way to the saint john's bridge! i've also been biking to the farmer's market every chance i get and even stopped by the clackamas town center farmer’s & artist’s market. we put bigger baskets on rose and have been tracking down stray rattling noises. sven & i went on a jet boat ride on a very hot afternoon and snuck off to the beach a few days later to find perfect weather. sven & i also got a chance to see cecilia sing in the choir and visited the new apartment she shares with carl. we watched harry potter, bourne identity, district 9 (which made me physically ill), panyo, and have finally finished babylon 5! we also did a few tba events: 10 tiny dances, small metal objects, & erik friedlander. we tried andina (nina gave us delicious cookies!), i finally got to try the "bourgeoius z" cafe (a vegan-friendly deli hidden in the antique mall near us), and portobello cafe (after a failed attempt earlier this year). i've been surprised to discover i'm starting to like coffee -- at least, prepackaged coffee. still, it's a surprise.

alas, the moonlight obliterated the perseids this year. and we're never invited to "bash on the butte," a loud & yearly tradition for our neighborhood. but i finally replaced trixie's windshield, so only the dents on the roof are left to remind us of her brush with a tornado in minnesota.

as far as work is concerned, i was surprised to learn that diylounge won't be offering adult craft classes at collage starting in november, which means i picked up a couple of classes at the studio from refugee instructors. i also resigned from trillium once my two-year term was up, though i'll still be helping them recruit board members. but i'm still a patient advocate with ohsu because it pays so well and is so rewarding.

sven's parents visited last week, and we painted the town red with them for three days: the little red bike cafe, renting bikes on the waterfront, oaks park, tthe whisky soda lounge, the market street mcmenamin’s (marred by poor service), the ohs will vinton exhibit, knit purl (and boy did we have more yarn stores we could have stopped at!), reading frenzy, andina, saturday market, art in the pearl w/ an awesome cajun band, craft museum ("touching harms the art." ugh.), powell’s technical books & silk. whew! i gave sweet bree a trillium catnip that she madly loved.

of course, the big news is that leeann invited me on a trip to morocco. for free! well, i'm paying for the flight to san francisco and the travel vaccinations. still, it's an a amazing opportunity that just dropped into my lap and i'm suddenly glad i've been divesting myself of obligations so i could be available for it. if all goes well, i'll be gone sep24-oct13. eeeee!

in the meantime, i'm looking forward to the new green line max opening tomorrow. until then, i leave you with a text i accidentally received last week:
"Hey its blair. Thinkin of u, sendin u good vibes through the universe. Mis u and how fantastic u are.”
gosh. someone is going to be very sad they didn't receive this. what is appropriate texting etiquette here?

Saturday, August 29, 2009

 
3:47 PM: road tripe [#] [0]

the wisconsin trip we took in july was quite long and not long enough -- i find that true for a lot of trips. of course, more of this trip was spent in the car than in wisconsin, but that was part of the fun. we were gone for 2.5 weeks and could have easily eeked out some more time in south dakota or at craters of the moon.

the goal was to drive to wisconsin, spend some time w/ sven's family, attend kenyon's memorial service, then drive home, stopping at places like the caves near mt. rushmore & craters of the moon on the return trip.

we tried to make roughly 500 miles a day:

to wisconsin:
wallace, id: a sweet town with a nice interactive mining exhibit.
miles city, mt: i was surprised to find i couldn't make it through montana in one day.
glendive, mt: a dinosaur museum w/ giant bible quotes on the walls.
enchanted highway, nd: gigantic sculpture garden & metal maze in the middle of nowhere.
fergus falls, mn: a pool shaped like minnesota & a very cheap whirpool suite.
coloma, wi: our destination!

i enjoyed getting the chance to experience a part of sven's family life i've never known: coloma is an area sven's family has lived in for generations. our first night we saw fireflies, which felt like it made the whole trip worth it. we spent a lot of time with people i haven't seen since shield's wedding and edmonton. they're a fun bunch, though, especially sven's nieces and cousins. we spent a lot of time barb's lake house, and i loved the pedalboats. i could get used to lake life! sven sorted through a bunch of childhood stuff still stored in the old church. 4th of july had plenty of fireworks and i brought lots of glow necklaces & glowsticks to pass around. shield's birthday is on july 4th, so there was cake, too! the memorial service itself was a "celebration of life" at the claussen family music show barn, after which we all drove to the cemetery to witness the internment, then headed back to the barn for dinner. it was quite nice, actually, and it went off without a hitch.

returning to portland:
worthington, mi: tornado hail shattered trixie's windshield in two places.
sioux falls, sd: vegetarian meats! in the midwest!
mitchell, sd: the corn palace
wall, sd: wall drug, which mph recommended but we couldn't have missed because there were 84 billboards promoting it.
rapid city, sd: very expensive during tourist season. saw saw jewel cave, wind cave and one of the most peaceful campground location i've ever seen (pity we didn't camp there!).
devil's tower, wy: i'd never been here before, but it is pretty awesome and the trail around it is quite nice.
billings, mt: two more scary storms.
yellowstone: google routed us through here but it cost an extra $25 and a lot of time. we skirted the edges to get to Idaho so we didn't see much, but I was impressed with beryl springs. we also saw antelope, deer, buffalo, a bald eagle, and a coyote on the road eating a bird.
craters of the moon: what a neat place to camp! we climbed around in indian cave, dewdrop cave & boy scout cave, which still has ice in the summer. boy scout cave also had two boys that were stuck and one was crying; sven had to talk them out. sven also explored buffalo cave while i stayed outside w/ a walkie talkie. the stars were beautiful, and i took advantage of the "sky walk" iphone app to look up some messier objects while sipping warm french onion soup. jupiter almost blew me away: it was so bright i thought it was faumalhaut!

i was dubious about getting a new piece of technology right before a big trip, but i have to say the iphone was a perfect travel companion. having access to driving directions and "where is the closest health-food store or taco bell" was really helpful. and without it i certainly wouldn't have regularly updated twitter, twitpic and youtube with silly videos of toby & gregory. i feel like i got more pictures because i could easily carry it around in my pocket. i switched between pandora & the ipod depending on whether i had an internet connection or not. also, how could i have kept up with the wailing from portland's first heat wave this summer without it? ;)

but trixie was surprisingly temperamental during the trip, frequently throwing suspicious, unresolvable errors. once she didn't start her gas engine at all and i thought we were going to have to stay an extra several days in rapid city. we found the jumpstart battery box very helpful in that situation (and later we used the box as a power source to recharge the iphone and inflate the air mattress). i love trixie to death: she was a great deal better to bring than the svan and she's behaving fine now, but it makes me a little nervous to take her on a big trip again.

i appreciated mph watching over the house while we were gone, checking to make sure the watering system sven set up for the garden this year didn't explode and sampling the raspberries that were ripe right while we were gone. i kind of missed not being able to ride rose for so long, especially since i had just converted her. (barb just got a new bike (an ice-blue Giant named "freya"), but she was a 21-speed, which i still don't understand, and made a terrible racket.)

only a few minor things were less than stellar: wisconsin had pretty awful food (doubly so if you're vegetarian like sven). minnesota & wisconsin have a really disconcerting amount of anti-abortion billboards. the fireworks on the 4th were a little too exhuberant and the people shooting them weren't being very careful: two of them zipped back into the crowd (us!). i had a little meltdown in a grocery store in idaho. i got a cold on the way home. i lost my back filling while brushing my teeth camping. at craters of the moon, there was a terrible ampitheatre astronomy program that was much more like a mangled book report than anything with interest in, love for or knowledge of stars.

but overall, i really had a good time. i'm still playing catch up on some tasks over a month later (like, say, this blog), but we got unpacked and back into motion pretty quickly. whew!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

 
4:04 PM: powell butte green walk [#] [0]

right before the wisconsin trip i have yet to write about, sven & i went on a walk on powell butte w/ a parks & rec biologist. powell butte is our playground, but i don't actually know much about it -- except that the hill outside my house is very steep. :) construction for new reservoirs may close the main road up to the butte for a while, so despite bumping against our packing deadline, we decided it was worth it.

the biologist was a bit of a crusty curmudgeon who obviously loves powell butte but must have been "volunteered" to lead us. powell butte is a square mile of extinct volcano on the outer se edge of portland. it's the second largest park in portland. our biologist showed us "lidar" images which were fascinating and clearly showed the geological processes that formed the it. the City bought powell butte in 1922, when it was still a large farm, and there is a row of oak trees to mark a prior windbreak. but it's only been open to the public since the 90s. (side note: clackamas means “lots of kamas,” kamas being bulbs native americans used to eat.)

the job of the biologists is to return the landscape to a more native habitat. powell butte has been attempting to hack back its 30-60 acres of blackberries & hawthorne, replacing them with thimbleberry & ursine native blackberries. he brought a camera with embedded gps to document invasive species. fire prevention is another large component of the biologists' job: they burn 20-30 acres a year and trim the doug fir skirts to keep low bush fires from consuming the whole tree.

the reservoir construction will alter the butte: some trails will be rerouted during construction and some trails will remain rerouted afterwards. the concrete ditch will be removed, too. i was very happy to learn the compass rose will be replaced as part of the project, but i was sad to see the compass rose bench is gone -- they simply sawed it off after vandals damaged it. i hope they replace it and place benches on the new trails, too, but this marked one of our biggest disagreements. he says he wants to promote walking, not loitering, and that benches attract vandals and drugdealing. however, i feel quite strongly that offering rest points and vistas is a prime way to enjoy powell butte -- one does not need to be in motion to appreciate the outdoors, and places to contemplate and relax are rare. plus, benches help people who may not be in a good shape get in better shape by allowing them to go at their own pace and rest when needed. that's how i explored the springwater early in my biking days, for instance, by hopping from bench to bench (and why it's so difficult for me to see the damage done to some of the benches lately).

near the apple orchard (which will remain, thank goodness!), he showed us three memorial oaks planted in honor of former powell butte attenders. they have no plaques or designations because they wanted the memorial to be about the planting of the tree, so it's neat to know what they're for.

near the end of the walk he turned some mountain bikes around on a path reserved for hikers & horses. i'm always interested to see how people respond and use authority in situations like this. apparently, the way you do it is by overwhelming an otherwise well-meaning couple with biological repercussions, rules and lingo. it was pretty awesome.

Monday, August 03, 2009

 
11:18 PM: while i'm still 35 [#] [2]

tomorrow's my birthday (which i share w/ gerrie, maggie & obama!) and i still have to write about wisconsin. in the meantime, here's what i've been up to since returning from our 3-week long road trip:

* surviving the heat wave: i wait anxiously for the pacific northwest summer and most of the time it's simply glorious. however, we do find ourselves in hot weather occasionally, and like the snow, portland is ill-prepared to deal with it because hardly anyone has air conditioning (including us). so a whole week of heatwave was pretty crippling (as bonnie said, you had to stay inside almost like you were snowed in). i got through it by using a complex system of opening/closing the shades & windows, putting my hair up, drinking homemade iced chai tea lattes & homemade lemonade, wrapping a wet cloth napkins around my neck after letting them chill in the freezer, and when it got to 106 degrees, i kept my feet in a tub of ice water.

* biking: i was housetending for pdxmph and was happy to use it as an excuse to ride rose (thanks for chocolate-covered cherries, too!). i attached a cupholder to rose and have already broken it just by pressing against it, but sven modified rose's baskets so they'd stop drooping from the weight of the battery and scraping against the fender/wheel. rose lost a whole lot of her native domed hex nuts for no good reason, so we had to replace them with less spiffier ones. i took a bike safety class from the ebike store, which i enjoyed primarily to be with the company of other ebike owners. i had to bike late at night because of the unusual heat (biking with the breeze was cooler than being inside the stuffy house or even outside with no breeze). one night i found an easy route to clackamas town center so later i biked to rei to get my bridgepedal vest & explored the new renovations (the sidewalks are so shiny!). i had several weird bike interactions this week (a woman at the bike rack yelling at daughter, a man asking weird questions about rose at target, a family sitting with their grill in the middle of the path at raymond park at 10pm). i also got squeezed between a driving car and a parked car on holgate. when he stopped to drop off someone off, i stopped to talk to him. he seemed initially reluctant to talk to me, but when i told him i was scared he took it well and we parted amicably.

* eating: when we got back from wisconsin we wanted to get chinese & watch bablyon 5 (ala lily allen), but the "lucky corner" chinese restaurant down the street from us remodeled and drastically changed their menu so that there were no vegetarian options for sven. fortunately pho van is as delicious as ever. michaelmas found a cheap & delicious savory pie shop on 23rd and a new frozen yogurt place for us to try. sven & i went to ping for the first time and i had a really wonderful "african chicken" dish. i also lovelovelove their drinking vinegars. i've been using the hot weather as an excuse to visit dutch bros coffee, who conveniently sent us a slew of coupons i've been using on dutch freezes. dutch bros is a straight shot down 136th and seems to be the replacement for our much beloved coffee people.

* stargazing: well, not too much of that, strangely enough, though july was an excellent month for iss watching thanks to @twisst. i also finally got my galileoscope (!!!), which i plan on setting it up later this week.

* entertaining ourselves: sven & i saw quantum of solace, which i liked less than casino royale. we also saw the movie "moon" at fox tower, which i quite enjoyed. we saw one of the last of the amok time trek-in-the-park plays and afterwards had dinner w/ bridget & darren -- which was apparently so much fun we missed the beauty salon explosion and fire down the block. i've been delighted to return to my sunday farmer’s market routine, though i was crushed to find that lilikoi will be moving to a mississippi site since lents is still so slow. (lilikoi makes fabulous kalua pork wraps. i really want more food vendors there!). michaelmas & i went to saturday market to celebrate the beginning of our relationship 11 years ago (though rob bowman introduced us in 1996!). we saw a bagpipe player on a unicycle and i found my favorite new skirt at shabbyknapsack. i also popped over to mt. tabor's 100th anniversary and plein air exhibit. sven & i attended anna’s fortuitous 40th birthday party: we had a pretty good time for a couple of introverts, playing bocce, volleyball, and tarot.


[amok time: oh, iphone, how i wish you had zoom. and that we had gotten there 20mins earlier.]

* working: i prepped and taught a new class: creative business identity. it went really well, though i had a question at the end that threw me for a loop. also, it's worth mentioning that it looks like i'm in the market for a part-time job again. i'm not in a rush and am pretty open to the field, though my ideal job is something low-key and/or in the reproductive health/counseling areas. please keep me in mind! :)

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...