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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!

[wake with rose]

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.


[sven & dayna on her boat, "rapture"]

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.)