gl.

site feed by atom

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

 
11:59 PM: i've got a bike you can ride it if you like [#] [2]

tonight i biked all the way out to mph's! i thought that was going to be my goal for the end of summer, so it surprised me almost as much as it probably surprised them to find me at their door. by the time i got to woodstock/82nd, i thought, oh, it's just another 30 blocks!.

mph & al offered to drive me home, but i wanted to try it on my own first. and i'm glad i did, because the beautiful blue moon followed me all the way home. afterwards i ate half a container of chicken salad and drank half a "revive" vitaminwater.

this was one of my first "on the road" experiences. previously i had stuck to the springwater corridor trail with tiny little darts down streets. gmaps pedometer says i traveled over 10 miles (& burned 1501 calories). (as an aside, i counted 13 cats on the springwater corridor trail tonight.)

i'm still not a serious bike rider: i'm slow and often in first or second gear (on my 3-speed stella). i have a light that wraps around my roller hockey helmet from california. mph notes that i do not have a rear light and i should get one. stella is old & aging. she has double back baskets, a bell, glow-in-the-dark star stickers, and tireflys.

next goal: biking to the max at 122nd & taking it... somewhere...

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

 
12:50 AM: red dwarf needs food, badly [#] [0]

to celebrate memorial day, i visited an arcade, as per tradition. this time i went to ground kontrol -- which is an almost perfect arcade (if only they had an air hockey table! and their sodas should be cold. and if they had space harrier, i would never leave).

i had a great time: i got the high score on tempest, alex's son miles beat me in joust, i got michaelmas to join me in dance dance revolution, jalex & i did several more rounds of DDR and teamed up to play gauntlet dark legacy -- until we reached the plague fiend, at which point we ran out of health & quarters.

see you next year!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

 
10:57 PM: no on 36 [#] [1]

i can't decide if ecovillage apartments is real or not. they were advertising on craigslist, but if so, i am unqualified to live there because i don't have kids and am not planning on having them.

plus, "We believe monogamy is the foundation of civilization and the key to a sustainable society. We believe human rights are derived from the voluntary and exclusive creation of children by one man and one woman."

but then, if you had children from a previous marriage, you'd be unqualified to live there, too.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

 
11:20 PM: gone phishin' [#] [1]

doing my part to fight phishing:

when i got a recent amazon phish, i checked where the link was going and poked around the server a bit. it was a residential adsl account on sbcglobal.net, so i sent the help desk the link and told them they probably had a phisher on their network. i never heard back from them, but the server doesn't respond anymore, so i think they must have shut it down. yay!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

 
2:42 AM: true north [#] [3]

i'm feeling a little better about the golden compass after seeing the trailer for it (via gus). more hopeful than i am about stardust, even. i hope new line lays off the lord of the rings comparisons, though.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

 
9:39 PM: temporal antipode [#] [1]

happy csusmiversary to me!

this marks the last day i worked for csusm four years ago. this is a particularly great anniversary for me, because it means i've been here as long as i was there. and i'm SO glad to be here! i still feel like i haven't been here very long. there's so much more for me here to discover and do, whereas i was desperate to leave csusm & san diego after two years.

to celebrate i picked up my art from the emergence show, made plans for a blue moon event w/ serena, went grocery shopping at new seasons and saw someone i haven't seen in a couple of years, went to the plant nursery and strapped 3 big trellises to trixie, went to the bike gallery to compare a few bikes (more on that later), took upstairs jennifer out to dinner to celebrate her new job (very fitting, since she helped me leave san diego), gassed & washed trixie. i'll have a delicious lemon creme tartlet w/ strawberries & mint later. tomorrow night i have a studio event, saturday i have another studio event and will begin working on a theatre production.

this comes at just the right time, because portland's entering its most enchanting time of year: the days are warm and sunny, the breeze is cool and gentle, the sky is blue and wide, the flowers cheerful & strong. i've been here long enough to anticipate the growing cycles. i know the traffic patterns and the shortcuts. i learned the stars here. i have people i love here and who love me back. i like to walk, bike & make delicious things. i am making things i love & finding the kind, generous people who want them.

but i am still trying to learn how to balance work and play. i just left a couple of groups & volunteer positions, and i decided not to offer any events at the studio in july & august. so in some ways, the csusmiversary marks the start of my "summer vacation," when i hope to be able to rest, dream, explore & play.

still to come: the californiaversary & the portlandiversary!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

 
7:45 PM: the graceless ninja strikes again! [#] [0]

i got to be a ninja yesterday at the go game! i don't have a ninja outfit anymore, so i wore big flowy black pants and a black long-sleeved shirt. i also found great instructions for how to make a ninja mask from a tshirt (thanks, mph!).

unfortunately, i ended up not using the ninja mask. i wish i could say it was because it interfered with my awesome fighting skills, but the truth is, combined with the loose flowy pants, the outfit looked vastly more hijab than ninja. if i were wearing a giant hat, funny wig, wings, wizard robes or a foofy dress, i wouldn't have felt nearly as self-conscious as i did as i did with the mask. if i were with a group of friends or at a halloween party, i could wear the mask, too. but being as i would be spending 2 hours in pioneer courthouse square, i didn't want to deal with any potential harassment. and boy, did THAT make me feel guilty about internalizing all the crappy anti-muslim propoganda.

so instead i just sat cross-legged in deep meditation under the trees, willing the team members to find me. they had odd instructions: they were suppposed to find "an enemy with a strange quirk. she will not reveal herself until someone holds her hand. you may scare off a few strangers, but you will know you have the right person when she lets out a loud siren noise."

i don't think -i- would have held hands with likely-looking strangers in pioneer courthouse square! and in fact, most teams didn't, either. i would see them enter and look around, pointing to people and talking with each other. at some point, someone would eventually point to me, and i would try to make my hands look open and inviting. then someone would scout over to my area, looking for signs that i was one of the players. i waited with closed eyes or resolutely staring ahead until someone actually came over and asked "can i hold/shake/touch your hand?" which i thought was good enough, and the battle would begin.

the gender divide here was interesting: in 5/6 teams, the person who approached me was female, though there were more men on the teams than women. when i would hand them a sword, most women tried to pass it to a man, but i said, "you were the one who disturbed me, -you- must fight me... to the death!" one man tried to take the sword even though i was handing it to the woman who found me. another man wanted to be the hero so badly that even though i was fighting his female teammate, he felt compelled to put a construction cone on his head and be a part of the picture they were required to take at the end, putting his foot upon me in a victory pose. however, most of the women played defensively, despite my repeated admonishments that the only way to end the duel was death, so i often had to impale myself on their swords. but i was thrilled when one woman responded well to the challenge after trying to pass her sword off to someone else, and we had a very cinematic fight where she was spinning and thrusting quite dramatically.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

 
4:53 PM: 'tis the season [#] [0]

my vietnamese neighbor is singing while doing lawn maintenance. it would be completely charming if it wasn't accompanied by a horrible cacophony of lawnmowers, trimmers & edgers.

i hired "the limber luddite" to hack the weeds out of the back yard & mow the lawn. i hired him because he uses a reel mower and a pickaxe. i wish more people did. someday i'll tear out the lawn entirely and do something more interesting with it, like susan, who should totally blog about her texas wildflowers.

 
2:04 PM: turkey in the straw [#] [2]

the saddest ice cream truck in portland:

(thanks, miles!)

but now that the weather has suddenly leaped into summer, i can now anticipate the tinny, enchanting song of local ice cream trucks any day now...

Monday, May 07, 2007

 
9:50 AM: lolcats [#] [0]

oh, good. anil dash explains a phenomenon i have been wondering about for a while, but didn't have the googlefu to find the origin of "I'M IN UR X Ying your Z.".

Saturday, May 05, 2007

 
11:12 AM: tomorrow around lunchtime [#] [0]

12:34 5/6/07

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

 
2:14 PM: better than chocolate [#] [0]

thunder! YEAH!