Early Wednesday three.

Having been pretty successful in my 2Q goals, and still keeping to the 1Q goal of reading more, I am optimistically posting my 3Q goals:

• Take at least two day trips to faraway locales. Day trips are a little stressful - you only get two weekend days, and driving for most of one of them is never that appealing, but I do loves me a road trip, and I think the recent AAA article on Seaside (I mean, really - I've been to the coast ONCE since I moved here over a year ago? Come on!), coupled with the Muppets exhibit at Seattle's EMP, should cover me. But I recently heard about a hike near Bend that offers stellar panoramic views, so I might have to squeeze that in too.
• At least one new restaurant every week. This will likely be a lunch spot because I'm not overly fond of breakfast (and therefore I live in the wrong town) and dinners are more expensive. I'm hoping it won't be dominated by carts during the week because I already have a long list of NE/SE places to try. But the main point of this goal is that I've won two cool things through Yelp! Portland and I really need to increase the volume of reviews to feel justified in winning more free stuff. (I actually think I've won the two contests I've entered because everyone else is too lazy to reply to messages, but... I'll use this as fire instead.)
  
• Five new Portland bands. With the NW Musicfest in September this should be no problem, but I'm really trying to cut back on the bigger "I've seen them 18 times but I can't miss them"* shows and check out the up-and-coming, local, cheaper shows.

And as always, one thing on The List wouldn't be a bad thing, although I've already got 2009 and 2010 covered.

________________
* The only exception to this is The Decemberists. I will kill whoever I need to kill to see them every time they are in town. That's my official police statement, if anyone asks.

One picture a day - check.

OK, so I may have missed a few days. But still. Some days I took many, many pictures. Overall, "A" for effort, especially since the whole impetus behind this was to have subjects for my Photoshop class, which I ended up having to cancel because Photoshop 6.0 <> Photoshop Elements 6.0 (I could hear the laughter in the reply - "yeah, maybe if you had Photoshop 10.0 the non-Elements class would be okay but your version is SO OLD...").

Anyway, here are some of my faves (that do not involve flowers - spring made it so easy to take a photo a day):

Prineville, OR

Apologetic graffiti artist - Portland, OR

Wrist stamp for Berbati's Pan

From the Broadway Bridge - Portland, OR

Laurelhurst Park - Portland, OR

Near Portland State University

Several "Portland Failblog" shots were also documented elsewhere.

Incidentally, I'd forgotten about the Photoshop 5.5 tutorial my dear friend (erhm, completely legally) gave me when he built my computer for me. Four tutorials later, I can do everything I wanted to do in the first place. In your face, Photoshop Elements at PCC!

One "Portland" thing a week - check.

Week 1: hiking Dog Mountain, which, although not technically in Portland, "counted" according to my friend.

Week 2: baking gluten-free, egg-free brownies from scratch. What? That is SOOOOOOO Portland, people.

Week 3: Mates of State and the Black Kids at Wonder Ballroom, the NE's answer to the Crystal Ballroom (and let's be honest here, it's the better answer).

Week 4: volunteering for a Friends of Trees benefit BBQ.

Week 5: Storm Large's Crazy Enough at Portland Center Stage. Oh yeah, she's Portland. For sure. When her show comes to a city near you, RUN, do not walk.

Week 6: The Shins at the Crystal Ballroom. I know it's not the better answer, but it's THE SHINS. Also this week, Portland's Best New Band show, free at Berbati's. Can't say I was blown away by either.

Week 7: Yelp Portland gave me two tickets to Loney, Dear at the Doug Fir. That's right. Elitism has its privileges. It was an amazing show.

Week 8: I think going to Bend for a three-day weekend is a Portland thing to do. Yep. I do.


Week 9: This is the week I should've gone downtown to the Starlight Parade, part of "the" quintessential Portland thing - the Rose Festival. But there was a hockey game to be watched, and also, I heard that like 250,000 people go downtown every year for this. So I stayed in and watched some of the live coverage on TV after the hockey game. Much better view, 0% of the hassle, and when I got bored with the parade I switched over to House reruns. Win!

Week 10: The aforementioned Canterbury Castle demolition.

Week 11: Hiking in Forest Park to break in the new boots after the Portland Pride parade (where I overheard the best conversation between a gay boy and a man holding a sign saying that homosexuals would burn in hell: "You know what the worst part of this is? YOU WILL BE IN HELL WITH US! Oh my Gawd that SUCKS!" and also saw the best sign held by an old lady marching in the parade: "Better gay than grumpy!" I love Pride parades).

Week 12: I had hoped to go to one part of the "best of" School of Rock shows Saturday, because really, who wants to sit through a whole Floyd or Zeppelin show? So "best of" sounded like a perfect compromise. But part one conflicted with my haircut and part two conflicted with my (apparently much-needed) nap. Later this week I went to an organic brewery for happy hour. That's pretty Portland.

Week 13: Portland roller derby championship bout... followed by a Broadway show. I had a hard time with the transition from one to the other, and my ears are still ringing from both. But it was worth it.

Early Friday five.

Patton Oswalt is a funny, funny man. I saw him at Cobb's a few years ago and recently learned that someone at work had his album, so I borrowed it and have been giggling incessantly in my cube ever since. Five favorite quotes that don't really require hearing the full story, but need a little 'splainin'*, in no particular order:

• "We're thinking of having an invisible kid named '10 hours of sleep a night' " - response to his friends' incessant questioning about when he and his girlfriend were going to have kids
  
• "America is like a giant trust fund kid with nuclear weapons 'this country is nice can we have Disney World here?' ('but this is Paris...') 'DISNEYWORLD!' " - response to the Hard Rock Cafe in Dublin that they probably had to tear down a bar from Ulysses to build
  
• "Every time you eat a steak, a hippie's hackey sack goes into the sewer" - no 'splainin' necessary
  
• "You wouldn't give a crippled crab a crutch!" - from a crackhead who wandered into open mic comedy one night and did a bit, which Patton recreates verbatim, which was probably one of the best open mic night bits I've ever heard
  
• "The Continental was one of those hotels where everything looked like it had been rubbed in ham" - because we've all stayed at one of those...

________________
* Remind me to tell you the book group story someday. Offline.

Almost too pretty to eat.

Almost.

Penguin mania countdown: 243 days.

Early Wednesday three... Three favorite excerpts from my "Preparing for your adventure ship expedition to Antarctica" booklet I received yesterday, in no particular order:

• "There may be an opportunity for a polar plunge during the voyage, so we recommend that you pack a swimsuit."
• "Our expedition members are independent-minded travelers from around the world with a strong interest in exploring remote regions."
• "Fur seals are usually dangerous, therefore keep a greater distance than 5 meters from them at all times."
  

Here's the thing.

I HATE HATE HATE that I even feel the need to go here, but since everyone else (on Facebook) apparently also feels the need... And because I can't formulate anything constructive on my high school friend's post which states that she is clearly distressed by all of this... And because I'm really trying to be constructive on FB because there is so much negativity potential there (do you know these people? no? then what the hell are you crying about?!)... I have to unleash here. Sorry in advance.

I used to watch Jon & Kate Plus Eight because their kids were FREAKING ADORABLE. I had personal issues with the whole "have twins then have sextuplets then get your own TV show even though you clearly hate each other" concept, but those kids, they were FREAKING ADORABLE. So I watched up until a few seasons ago.

And now it's a huge debacle and I'm appalled that J&K are still accepting money for doing the show and that TLC is supporting/sponsoring this. So much so that I've added channel 38 to my list of channels to "skip right by" when I am surfing. (Other channels on auto-skip include FOX News and the 18,457 public access channels that Portland offers. I'll just be living "What Not To Wear" every day on the MAX, thanks.)

Same-sex couples who ACTUALLY love each other cannot legally marry in more than 3 states nationwide, but this crapdrama is financially rewarded and given all this media attention.

Really?

P.S. Hey J&K&8 fans - what's going on in Iran? I'm just saying...

One new recipe a week - mostly.

Week 1: Aforementioned gluten-free, egg-free brownies. When chilled, they were actually pretty good.

Week 2: Umm... I did cook up the most beautiful hard-boiled eggs thanks to a farm-fresh dozen and Julia Child's "recipe"... That counts, right?

Week 3: Umm...

Week 4: Spinach, Tofu and Sesame Stir-Fry from the New York Times. I had most of the ingredients already, and it was simple and pretty healthy. I upped the amount of red chili flakes and ginger, and added mushrooms (because I had some to use up) and water chestnuts (because I {heart} water chestnuts). I also halved the spinach because I needed the other 3 oz to add to beets and some amazing sheep's milk cheese with rosemary for dinner that week. Added to some brown rice, it was hearty, pleasantly spicy and delicious. Also this week, cocoa oatmeal raisin cookies and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I took about two dozen of each to work. All were gone in 60 seconds.

Week 5: Umm... more hard-boiled eggs (why is this so hard?).

Week 6: Enough with the ummms already! This week I purposely bought things I really like but rarely cook with (kale and fennel), to encourage this goal. Saturday night I eeked in this easy rosemary kale with black-eyed peas. I embellished with a little tofu and it made 2 lunches for the following week. It was tasty enough, and quite pretty...

... though I wish I'd added couscous or some other grain to turn it into three lunches.

Week 7: For the fennel, I found this ridonkulously simple soup. It seemed too easy to be true. Sunday night I whipped up a batch for one including a small potato. It was okay, but I think it would've been better without the potato.

Week 8: Get your fiddleheads before they turn toxic... I found it hard to believe that Emeril could create such a simple recipe, but this was quite tasty. I skipped the "essence" ingredients and other than needing garlic it was fine. I also skipped the truffle oil, which the recipe called for but which I just don't have lying around.

Week 9: I bought rainbow chard from the farmer's market. I'd never cooked chard before - always opted for kale. But I blanched it and threw it in with some couscous, sweet corn and red pepper flakes, and it was good. (Improv recipes count, right?)

Week 10: (Is it July yet?!) OK, this week I tried these two asparagus recipes from Sunset. I preferred the orzo recipe... and I also prefer what beets do to your pee.

Week 11: I tried this Mediterranean wrap recipe and this green bean pasta recipe this week. Both were very tasty. I kept the wrap fixings in separate containers (onions in one, cucumber/carrot/pea mixture in another, yogurt mixture in a third) and they lasted a full week in my refrigerator so I didn't have to eat the same thing three days in a row (and everything didn't taste like onion when I did eat it). The wrap filling would be great on its own, mixed together as a summer salad. Also made some everything-free cornbread for a dairy-intolerant friend's birthday... I added a diced jalapeno and 1 tsp cayenne, since my favorite cornbread recipe includes these. It didn't look that appealing but it was actually quite tasty.

Week 12: This week I am most definitely making these strawberry shortcake cookies. And maybe this chard lasagna, or a black bean salad, or maybe these cornmeal ricotta blobs for book club.

I'm a little sad that "simple" seems to be the theme with all these non-baked-goods recipes, but when I get home from work the last thing I want to do is stand around in the kitchen. And on weekends, the last thing I want to do is stand around in the kitchen.

That said, I've had fun with this and I think I'll keep it up.

Public service announcement.

If you're considering dicing a jalapeno pepper and then touching your face before washing your hands... DON'T DO IT.

This is your face: awwwww!

This is your face after being touched by hands that just diced a jalapeno pepper: OWWWWW!

Wednesday three.

Three things that do not suck:

• Patton Oswalt
• David Cross
• David Sedaris

I play their concert CDs/book audiotapes incessantly these days.

Unrelated, I'm a big fan of "if you don't really wanna know, don't ask the question." I stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home from work, and those people are just so nice. The guy pricing my items asked me how my day had been going so far, and I replied, "honestly, not so great..." He seemed truly sad that my day had been crappy, so I asked about his day in a peppy voice, and then I gestured to the bottle of wine and spaghetti makings in my handcart to indicate that my day was fixing to be a lot better. And he smiled, in an "oh you pathetic office drone I love my job so much more than you" way, and now I'm enjoying a glass of wine while he's still at work, so who is the joke really on?

He could've been my soul mate. We'll never know.

Last night in the sauna that was the Wonder Ballroom, between sets of the amazing show that was the Tragically Hip, I was leaning against the wall (the only cool place in the building - seriously, it was at least 90 degrees in there).  A not-altogether-unhandsome, very very drunk guy walked over to me.

 

Very very drunk guy:  "You look bored.  Are you bored?"

Me: "Actually, no, I'm not."

VVDG: "Are you bored enough to talk to me?"

 

[I paused - briefly - to consider this inquiry.  On the one hand, it could pass the time.  On the other hand, the conversation had crazy-making potential, and what if he didn't go away after the show started back up again?]

 

Me: "Nope!"

 

VVDG gave me the "thumbs up" sign, smiled and walked away.

 

If only people in my everyday life were so polite.

Monday FTTDS.

Most things about today, also known as MONDAY, did really suck, but here are a few things - five, in fact! - that did not:

• Finally listening to Jason Lytle's Birds Encouraged Him, NPR's Song of the Day from a few days ago, which is really great and also kind of ironic because I never really liked Grandaddy all that much, and also because the book I'm about to finish (Adverbs, by the grown-up Lemony Snicket) keeps referencing magpies. Booker T's instrumental of "hey ya" from a few days ago is also really, really great. Who am I kidding - everything they feature is brilliant. I {heart} NPR's song o'the day. And when my IT department takes away my ability to stream NPR songs o'the day, I am going to burn the building down.
• Being able to help a friend in need who has been a friend indeed for over 20 years.
  
• Skipping the gym in favor of some wine and cheese. And subsequent pizza, but that hasn't happened yet.
• Filling out my Antarctic excursion paperwork. I dreamed about penguins last night (real, live penguins, not the Flightless Birds although they do not suck either right now) as well as tomatoes. "Why have we been rooting through tomatoes for an hour? There are PENGUINS right outside this Antarctic Safeway!" (I think you had to be there.)
  
• Sunshine in my apartment at 8pm on a Monday. That can't be a bad thing.
  

My summer project ...

... and yours, should you choose to accept the mission: infinitesummer.org. And I'm not just doing this because HE is.

I mean, how hard could 75 pages a week really be? (She asked naïvely.)

Early Friday five.

Five buzzwhacky phrases from a pretty good book I read last night, in no particular order:

• the "cc game" - passively aggressively copying your boss when resending a document you've already sent (and hand-delivered a paper copy of, and copied to the server with a link in the original email reply) to someone your boss reports to, and ending the email with an ingenuine "thanks!"
  
• "keep me in the lopp" - a new take on an old phrase, as typed by a spelling-challenged upper manager
  
• "deprotion" - a promotion sharing the hallmarks of a demotion
• "does anyone want anything from the outside world?" - a common phrase uttered by non-management who are aching to get out of the office
• "that doesn't work with my comfort level right now" - used by a manager to reject the simplest of requests that would make an employee's life more tolerable... AKA my new catchphrase

Not listed: Friday's FB status.

"Have fun storming the castle!"

Today's adventure involved visiting an 80-year old local castle that was about to be demolished because the lame-assed Jaguar-, Ferrari- and Land Rover- owner who bought the house next to it thought it blocked his view of the city. (Allegedly.)

A lot of PDX police cars, too many hipsters and a local band, playing pretty much on the street, were involved, but my friend and I successfully avoided arrest and/or confrontation by heading up ahead of the pack to quietly view the castle remains, and by taking a side adventure into an invitation to a (just under) $1M open house.

So allegedly, it originally looked like this:


And that was just 10 years ago. Now, it looks like this:


(If you look closely you can see the drawbridge crank.)

This made me sad. Which is not to say that I'm surprised at all. People with money do the strangest things.

Friday five.

Urban tumbleweed...

... does not photograph well. Neighborhood trees (in sepia tone) and flowers, on the other hand...



... not too shabby. But the best photograph, by far, is this one:

My next two weeks' notice letter.

Haha, just kidding. (I think.)

This is part of an art project called "Street Wise" along SW Yamhill at SW 3rd downtown. There are at least 80 plaques in the sidewalk, ranging from the "silly"...


... to the "wise"...


Here's the one I decided to put on the outside of my cube:

I wonder how long it be before I'm asked to take it down.

Just the interesting facts, ma'am.

No one cares about most of the stuff on the original FB list making the rounds, so I pared it down to some rarities.

You can ONLY answer Yes or No. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks.

Held a snake? --- YES
Driven a vehicle at more than 100 mph? --- YES
Sang karaoke? --- YES
Ridden a motorcycle? -- YES
Ridden in a helicopter? --- YES
Shaved your head? --- YES
Eaten a whole habenero pepper (or other hot peppers)? --- YES

Actually, I don't think anyone will care about this stuff either...!

Not really Friday five.

It's been a month since Her Maj passed, and I've noticed some major changes in my day-to-day, even from before she was sick. Obviously the credit card bill is significantly lower these days, but five other things I've not been sad about, in no particular order, include:

• Not vacuuming for a month.
  
• When I sit down? I can just get right back up again. And then? I can just sit right back down again. There's no need to shift a fuzzball off my lap only to have her sit right where I was sitting, and subsequently relocate her when I return. (It sounds dumb, but this has returned a subtle quality of life I'd forgotten about.)
  
• I went to Bend. And just had to get in the car and go. And that was amazing.
• I can open a can of tuna in peace.
• You know that game that one-year-olds play, where they're in the crib, and they throw a toy on the ground, and you pick it up and give it back to them, and they laugh and throw it back on the ground again? Well, whenever I changed the sheets on the bed, Her Maj would jump on the bed and sit in the middle. First, I would pick her up and put her anywhere but on the bed. She'd jump right back up. Lather, rinse, repeat a few times. Then, I would snap the sheet to startle her and encourage her to get off the bed. She wouldn't flinch. So, I would put the sheet on the bed on top of her, where she would whine and cry and eventually weasel her way out from under the tucked-in sheet. This happened every time I changed the sheets over the last 11 years. I know she thought it was funny somehow, but it was also a royal pain in the ass. (No pun intended on the "royal.")

All this notwithstanding, I still turn to say goodbye to her when I'm leaving in the morning. I still expect her at the door when I get home, and I still feel like I'm forgetting something if I get home late after a happy hour or leave for an all-day trip. I still laugh at the LOLcats site and I still stop to pet the neighborhood cats sunning on the sidewalk.

But someone at work has a cat who just had kittens, and the pictures circulated. And man, are they cute. And boy, do I remember the early days of Her Maj and His Maj climbing up clothes hanging in the closet and chasing each other across the bed at 3am. I remember stressing about arranging for feedings over vacations, and never wanting to go away for too long because of the stress it would cause them and especially her when it was just her. I remember the months leading up to April 30.

And that's when I book the 3-week polar cruise... and get up and then sit down and then get up again. I don't think Crazy Cat Lady is in my blood. Yet.