i am an unrequited astronomer, pretend patient, gentle adventurer, pedal enthusiast, recovering calligrapher, occasional thespian and unfinished poet living in portland, oregon. contacting me via email is usually a good idea.
9:53 PM: blessed be
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the first week of my summer vacation and the cool cloudy weather almost killed me! i am so ready for sunshine and bikeable weather. apparently the consensus is that it stops raining after the last parade of the rose festival, which was yesterday, so i hope that it's true!
i visited jennifer at her yard sale today. it was nice to see her, evan and nina again. i lost her a customer, though: a guy with a cigarette came up to the house and when jennifer went inside to take care of evan, he threw his cigarette into her lawn. "hey, don't throw your cigarette on our grass!" i said. he glared at me. "no problem," he said, as he picked up his cigarette, threw it into the street, then got into his car and drove away before jennifer came back. oops.
later i attended the "blessing of the bikes" at st. mary's. as i told the two cameramen who wanted to interview me later, i'm not at all religious, but i like a good ritual. (earlier in the morning i also anointed rose w/ rose oil & a personal blessing.) they passed out programs and stickers featuring Our Lady of Ghisallo, who is apparently the patron saint of bicyclists. it was a smaller crowd than i expected, but they rang the bells for us and the ceremony was oddly moving, especially when they called out the names of the bicyclists who died this year and punctuated each name with a bell toll. they also found a strange passage from ezekiel to read to us (ezekial 10:9-17). since pedalpalooza begins later this week, it really feels like the beginning of the biking season is upon us!
afterwards i stopped at saint cupcake (now that should be the body of christ! ;). i also took the opportunity to ride around nwpdx, something i've not done yet, so i stopped by to see michaelmas, who was making characters w/ philip, dave & reza.
and fortunately the weather was fantastic today: it must have been divine intervention. ;)