Big-Haired Jersey Girl

Christmastime Road Trip Adventure: Introduction

2012-01-15T10:20:00.001-05:00

A week ago, I started to write about the Christmastime road trip. This introduction never even made it back to its original point, which it probably will in the silliest blog post title I may ever write - Introduction Part Two. Since it's lengthy, and since a week has gone by, I'm going to publish it as is.

The end is a good time to reflect on the beginning and everything that has happened since. The reflective end of our Christmas trip arrived at dinner in Boise at a Basque place called Bar Gernika.

[Ed. note: Stay tuned for Part Two, when I finally get back to this point!]

The city of Handsome Man's provenance is a drive of less than twenty hours from Portland. HM and I both enjoy road trips; the topic of discussion the night he wooed me and asked me out was road trips we had both taken and the role these had in our decisions to move to Portland. The last time we flew to Colorado, I became so frustrated on the plane that I drew pictures of all of the reasons that driving would be preferable to flying. That collage still exists somewhere in a currently misplaced "to-be-scanned-and-written-about" pile. My logic was that we can't just hop on a plane when we're ready, but we can hop in the car whenever we want. If we get out of work at 6pm and already have the car packed and ready to go, we can leave right from work and be there by 2pm the next day, if we drive straight through. But if we have to wait until the next morning to get on a plane, and if we have a connecting flight in Seattle, and we have to wait in between flights, and then there's the drive from Denver to HM's home town and if that falls during rush hour traffic...well, by the time we've gotten to our destination, it's actually been more than twenty hours!

Driving a thousand miles can be exhausting, but so can artfully cramming breakables into a suitcase and ensuring your toiletries are in plastic baggies and sitting in a tiny seat breathing recycled air next to a flatulent iPhone addict who has no respect for the armrest that is rightfully yours or the flight attendants' constant requests to turn that fucking phone off while we're in the air. The energy expended on the passive aggressive battle for the armrest is equivalent to at least 200 miles of car time.

In September, HM set out on a road trip home of his own. While I stayed in Portland (and my mommy came to visit), he drove himself to Colorado in one day. He left in the morning and arrived in the middle of the night. With only one driver, he did not stop for the night. With two drivers, this seemed an even more likely undertaking. We estimated the cost of the trip based on the cost of gas at $4.00/gallon with the gas mileage of the car on the low side, and came up with a total cost of travel at less than half the cost of a plane ticket for just one of us. This allowed for a stop at a hotel, which could cost as little as the airline's fee to bring two suitcases on the plane.

So we began to plan. We factored in extra driving time, in case of Christmas traffic or winter weather. We checked the weather a week before our set departure, and every subsequent day. Each day brought the same reassurance -- cold but clear weather all along I-80 and I-84, except for a 20% chance of snow showers in between Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming. We planned as an extra precaution to take I-80 past Laramie, past the direct route through potentially-icy mountain roads, to I-25 in Cheyenne.

And yet, despite our planning, it was the road trip that almost wasn't. The night before we were set to leave for Colorado, the weather forecast changed. The 20% chance of snow showers had become a chance of snowstorms in Northern Utah and Western Wyoming. We were prepared, however. We could prepare for anything! We mapped out a few alternate routes, including a scenic northern route through Montana which would only take us an extra four hours. Counterintuitively, we would encounter less winter weather in Montana. We went to bed that night having not completely made up our minds, opting to worry about it in the morning or perhaps at some point on I-84 in Oregon that would enable us to divert north.

And then the morning of our departure, Handsome Man discovered that during the night - the four hours after he went to bed at 1am and I woke up at 5am - someone had smashed the back windshield of his car and taken our suitcases which contained nothing valuable to a thief, but all of our clothing. Not just all of the clothing we'd packed, but a good proportion of the clothing we both owned. And winter is a bad time to travel without a back windshield.

Despite potential bad omens, we cleaned up the glass, got the back windshield replaced, repacked our bags with what remained in our closets, and set out, only seven hours later than scheduled, for I-90 and the northern route to Colorado. We made it to our hotel in Northern Idaho later that night. An evening nearly a week later would find us in Idaho again, headed home this time and reflecting. [Ed note: reflecting over delicious paella and croquetas, but more on that next time!]

Dreams of academia

2012-01-07T21:10:00.002-05:00

After waiting for years on my To Read list, a library copy of Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way is in my possession. I am reading it very slowly, either because I have been reading in bed and always conk out after a few paragraphs, or because it is dense and academic. It is, however, enjoyable and fascinating. The paragraphs I have been reading the last few nights (before conking out, shortly after announcing an interesting fact to Handsome Man), have dealt with the origin of language, the theories that languages are either all from a common source (an original Proto-Indo-European mother tongue) or that the world's languages are not all related to one another. Languages used as evidence both for or against are those such as Basque-languages of ethnic groups that had been for some time relatively isolated and thus, their languages now bear no resemblance to those of surrounding areas. For example, Basque is as different from Spanish and French as is Chinese (or so was explained to me by the roommate who first explained the existence of the Basque ethnicity in 2007. It either came up because he'd just learned that a place he'd visited in Europe was now no longer safe, plagued by Basque separatist terrorism, or because we had received another gift from my grandmere of Basque shepherd's cheese.) Anyway, this part of The Mother Tongue quite possibly stuck in my mind more because I have just been to a Basque restaurant in Boise, and I am supposed to write about the nice time I had there, but since I also want to include it in a larger post about Boise and Idaho and the entire road trip, I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Anyway, what I found fascinating was that, while many scholars assert that Basque bears no resemblance to any other living language, and that it's quite possibly the closest relative to the language spoken by Neolithic Europeans, other evidence shows unusual similarity between Basque and other outcast languages - languages of other until-recently-relatively-isolated ethnicities. These languages bear no resemblance to those of the areas geographically closed to their speakers, but they do resemble each other (and Basque.)

The result of this, and the reason I'm writing, is because I had a very odd dream last night in which I was coming up with my own theories about this. I announced in the dream that the first syllable of "Euskara" (which is Basque for "Basque") was a sign of its relatedness to other European languages, that it wasn't actually so different from Latin. In my dream I was rattling off word roots similar to "eu" that meant something like "ancient" or "origin" and that this was proof that those self-aware Basques named their language in a way that indicated its ancient, true closeness to the root of Latin and Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages. These word roots included "eu-" for true, as in "Eubacteria," and "ur," which, attached to German words, refers to the original, old root of something. Before you think I am some genius in my sleep, I was also listing some word roots that my subconscious mind completely made up, and I kept talking about "eu" as a Latin word root when it is actually Greek.

I'm not sure what it means, these academic dreams, where I am developing theories that are sort of nonsensical. I don't know if it means I'm mentally preparing for school to start on Monday, or if I don't know how to take a break even when I'm asleep, or if I merely fell asleep reading a dense book. This is not the only time this has happened; in 2003 or 2004, while enrolled in a very difficult chemistry class and some English classes, too, I had a complicated dream that it was 2005 or 2006 and that I was at the library doing research for my thesis. I was trying to combine my interests in science and literature in my thesis on the writings of J. D. Salinger. In the dream, I was intently researching the chemical and physical properties of Glass with the plan to make conjectures about its relationship to Salinger's choice for the last name of his reoccurring characters, Buddy Glass, Seymour Glass, and Franny and Zooey and the rest of the Glass family. This, too, would have been most likely bullshit; there's only so much Mr. Salinger could have intended, or perhaps he meant nothing at all. Perhaps there is no relation to the transparency and viscosity of glass to anything having anything to do with Buddy and Seymour.

I did ultimately write my senior thesis on J. D. Salinger, in what was supposed to be an in-depth analysis of the under-appreciated and unusual novella, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters." It was not on the role of science in the novella about which I wrote my thesis. I did not actually get to pick my thesis topic, and that is an interesting story about which I've planned to blog but always stop, thinking it might get back to my thesis advisor that I am trashing him or her on the Internet.

Against my will, I wrote about the role of religion in the text, which is such a common theme in literary analysis that I wonder if it's just a mold which some researchers just can't break out of. (I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition, but all of that "of which" was making me feel like an ass.) Fortunately, I wasn't made to hunt for some kind of Christian influence on the writing of Salinger--a Jew with a penchant for Eastern spirituality. Although I wouldn't doubt that more than one academic has cast Seymour Glass as a Christ figure, or something. I believe in the final draft of my terrible thesis, I ended up echoing the sentiments of some theorists who believed that the religious figure embodied by Seymour Glass was The Superlative Horse of the Taoist parable of the same name, and this may not be very different from casting Seymour as Jesus.

(If you really want to know, I think that the novella, which lacks a clear plot, is so much outside of standard English language short story structure that standard tools of analysis, such as quickly drawing lines between Seymour and positive-religious-figure-of-your-choice, do not apply. But I didn't get to write that thesis, so I have nothing else to say.)

Anyway, I had that glass/Glass dream when I was a sophomore in college and had not yet made the decision to double major in English and a science. I felt like this choice might be foolish or impossible, and I felt quite a bit of anxiety over it. Now that I think about it, I am feeling similar anxiety now about making an academic choice.

12 things

2012-01-01T14:15:00.002-05:00

I felt this way three years ago exactly. The New Year in fact felt like a new beginning, not in some dramatic way, but more like most loose ends had been tied up and rather than feeling behind on deadlines or overwhelmed, what lay before me was an open road, a clear path, not quite a clean slate but a calm, smooth way ahead on which I could build or plant or place things as I fancied. In normal language, my house was clean, there was food in the fridge, my bills were paid, my car was working, and I had a well-organized routine and schedule that enabled me to accomplish necessary tasks and see my friends all at a rate that pleased me. Before you hate the guts of me from three years ago, let me add that a few days after that pleasant, calm, New Year's Day, my carefully crafted routine got dumped on its head and the events occurred which set into motion my move across the country from the place I had lived my entire life.

I think about this a lot, and it was only in the past few months that I realized that while I had still felt a strong connection to that place and the contents of the life I had three years ago, many of those contents--the ones that are real live breathing people--have removed me from the forefront of their consciousness. Why shouldn't they? Even in this day and age of e-mail and Skype (which is probably going to be phased out by myFace or whatever the video chat of iPads/iPhones is called), maybe it's the people one sees in real life more effortlessly take up mental space than those who exist like imaginary friends - unseen, or seen only through a screen, or words, or heard in some digitized form on a phone.

I don't know how true this is, actually. I don't really know what I think about this. Only that I was starting to think that the reason that old life felt so real and present to me is that I made an effort (although not a conscious one) to keep it that way--I held onto the idea of certain places and people with a tight, barely-yielding grip, like a clenched fist. It was only recently that I could go back to visit without a manic need to re-visit each of my former favorite places, so that I wouldn't miss out on a single springtime at Willowwood or late November toad lily at Buck Garden. Only recently I tried to stop living two lives, or only half-living the one I have here.

I hope no one interprets this as a statement of having cut out completely my "old life" or anything like that. I still talk to my family approximately every day. I still feel the same love for my friends, only now I've accepted that you don't have to talk every week or even seen one another every year to be close.

Anyway, today I feel very much like I did three years ago. (Perhaps this is what happens when you don't wake up on New Year's Day with a hangover.) I have some creative freedom with my To Do List. I could make bread. I could re-organize my file drawer. I could study for the LSATs (more on that later.) I could finally knit the green winter hat with owl cables for which I purchased the materials in 2009. I could walk to Lloyd Center and try to replace the third of my wardrobe that was recently stolen. I could make lentils using the recipe on the back of the bag, which is in French, because my family's tradition is to eat lentils (not black-eyed peas) for good luck on New Year's Day. I could buy a calendar for my office. I could even go to Seattle. (That is going to be on my 2012 to-do list, by the way. Nearly three years in the Northwest and I still have not been to Seattle, not once, except to change planes, and that might actually have been in Tacoma. As blog is my witness, I will go to Seattle this year!)

I originally sat down to write, overwhelmed by the multitude of topics available. I even have handwritten notes on paper, not scribbled on a dry-erase board or a napkin. They are in a notebook for once (although some are on the back of a beer bottle label/tour ticket from a brewery in Colorado.) Not sure where to start, I planned to just list them, to get myself started, and I'll write about all of it later this week (because classes don't start until the 9th and I have no more Christmas cookies to bake; I have nothing but time!). And then I wrote this long intro. So without further long rambling intro, here are twelve things for 2012 aka twelve things from my road trip notebook/beer bottle label and a few more from my head from the last couple of days of December.

1. A license plate holder about John Galt; confession: I read Atlas Shrugged and liked it. Does that make me a Republican? 2. Sitting on my dream couch in my office, looking out the window, reading and writing--doesn't it just sound perfect???? 3. Big-haired Jersey driving in Wyoming winter...an unexpected adventure. 4. Whenever I'm in Portland, I don't want to leave; whenever I leave Portland, I dream about someday leaving, like how I left for Portland in 2009. 5. Artichoke dip should be a traditional New Year's morning breakfast. Served with flax seed crackers - easy and healthy and cheap and why didn't I know about these earlier? Also, they may satisfy every possible dietary exclusion of every possible party guest. 6. Symbolism in life and in fiction and even nonfiction - the first time I attempted to employ this literary tool in a short story, the teacher who read it and wasn't too thrilled, how insults are often more a reflection of the insulter than the insultee, and some signs that might help tell the difference. 7. A brief rant about dietary exclusions and attempting to accommodate multiple varieties at once. 8. Weird fruit returns to Portland grocery stores--my favorite part of West Coast Winter. 9. My life right now is the life I dreamed about when I was younger and I need to stop forgetting that. 10. Review of New Year's resolutions from 2011 - in short, I actually stuck to all of them. 11. Thoughts about interstate exits. 12. The "collect 'em all" mentality of an 80's upbringing and how it relates to soda and beer and traveling.

That and many more things, coming soon...

Oh, and as compared to three years ago, this New Year's Day feeling makes me less cockily sure that smooth roads and easy choices are ahead. Now I wonder, what next? What should I prepare for, or should I finally accept that some things can't be planned?

In conclusion, the beginning of a road on a morning in Northern Idaho:

To wyome

2011-12-23T02:11:00.003-05:00

Road trip ideas are probably similar to drunk ideas. Mine was that Wyoming is a present active participle form of the verb, "to wyome." This was probably around mile marker 445,000 in Montana. After a very long but lovely day on the road, I am happy to say that we have finally wyomed. That is to say, we have arrived at our hotel in Wyoming. Good night!

Road Trip Update #1

2011-12-22T11:22:00.004-05:00

I'm writing to you from Idaho, from a town whose name I never pronounce properly. The town is called Couer d'Alene. So you might be thinking, well, that's French, like you. What do you mean you can't pronounce it?

And the answer is, do you think Idahoans really are going to say the name of their city with a French accent?

If you were to say that in French, it would be something like, "Kerhrhrhrhhr dah LENNN." (Rhrhrhrhrhr is my impression of the French "r" sound.) Idahoans, like HM (who was actually born in Idaho and therefore, is in some way as Idahoan as a delicious potato) call it "Core da LANE." I call it some weird hybrid, Kerr da Lean.

Anyway, it's time to hit the road, so I'll just end this update with a quick note - HM and I got robbed yesterday. In front our house. More on that next update!

Oh, and PS, there is SNOW here in Idaho. (But not falling on the roads or our route. Another quick note - we are taking a loooong way to Colorado to avoid a snowstorm in Utah and Western Wyoming.)

Next stop, beautiful Montana, the state that has enchanted me since I first saw it in 2008!

When dreams resemble reality and reality is like a dream

2011-12-17T23:13:00.002-05:00

Hello! Remember how I said I was going to write every other day this month?

There are several reasons I did not. Aside from the ones that fall under the category of "busy," there is one compelling reason, which is that my eyes (well, actually only one) were acting up and I was trying to limit computer time since I spend so much time on the computer between work and school.

The thing with my eyes. Well, it started in November. I was washing dishes late one night while HM was out somewhere. I was hoping he'd come home soon; I was starting to get antsy and paranoid about how if someone managed to break into our third-floor apartment (not likely) they might attack me with my own cast iron skillet or hot canning water or who knows what. (Anne of Green Gables fans might remember the Haunted Wood chapter--the moral of which is that imaginative people think of very imaginative creepy things.) Anyway, I was washing dishes when I saw, out of the corner of my left eye, a big giant FLASH. It looked like someone fired off a flashbulb right in my kitchen. I looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I turned back to my dishes. It happened again!!!!! I turned, looked out the window, and stared for awhile. Eventually I observed that my neighbors, about a block away (but visible because ours are the only buildings with third floors, so the shorter buildings in between do not block our view into each others' houses) were watching TV. Somehow, my eyes were interpreting the FLASH of the TV as something much greater and closer. That or I had been abducted by aliens and blocked out everything that truly happened between FLASHes, creating a false memory of continuing to wash dishes.

It happened again, a week or so later, on the plane to New Jersey. Handsome Man was sitting next to me watching a movie on his laptop. When his screen flashed, I saw a FLASH as though a big giant camera had gone off next to the airplane window. Since that is not possible, I knew for sure that something was wrong with my eyes.

When I got back to Portland, the big tree in Pioneer Square was already up and lit. The following is a picture found on Google Images:

As a side note, if you look up the Pioneer Square tree, much of what you'll find is a mug shot of a Somali-looking guy. I guess it's the guy who got arrested after not managing to bomb the Portland tree lighting. I mention this because to non-Portlanders, this is probably the only reason one might know what the Pioneer Square tree is.

Anyway. I chose this picture because it shows most accurately, of all the Google Images, what this tree really looks like, which is blue. Also, it has these GIANT FLASHING twinkle lights. Or...wait...are they really GIANT and FLASHING? Perhaps they are normal twinkle lights. But the first few weeks I was back in Portland, riding the MAX every weekday, watching that tree out of the corner of my eye for the five minutes that the MAX would wait at a stop near Pioneer Square, what I saw were a multitude of crazily huge bright FLASHes. That tree made me feel like I was losing my mind. Being on the MAX at Pioneer Square was like being in a surreal dream.

I have since seen a doctor and found that there is currently nothing seriously wrong with my eyes--just a pigment clump (but not a tear) on my left eye's retina. This and other things are being monitored, but for now my eyes are fine.

So, while reality has felt, because of these flashes, like a weird dream, my dreams resemble the most humdrum aspects of reality.

Yes, some of you may have guessed right. I am dreaming about work. And schoolwork. And housework.

Another co-worker has shared similar thoughts, so I don't feel like a huge nerd for admitting this. Sometimes I wake up in the morning thinking about file numbers. Sometimes my dreams are a certain screenshot of the esoteric program we use at work - the one that shows documents merging - and I am peacefully watching lots and lots of file numbers go by as the documents merge without any error messages. [Part of my job is being the IT lady, so if there are error messages, it's my problem to find out why.]

I've heard that some people get mad at their significant other because of dreams. Such as they dream that their significant other is cheating, and wake up mad. Usually, I do the opposite. Once HM and I got in a dramatic fight, then went to bed, and I dreamt about what a nice person he is. I dreamt that he was helping the less fortunate or something sappy like that. I woke up happy and had completely forgiven him.

The opposite happened this morning. This morning, HM awoke to find me in the kitchen, angrily, grouchily making a frittata. Angrily making us both breakfast, I barked at him to make coffee. After awhile, I realized why I was so angry at him (besides need for caffeine and low blood sugar.) I had dreamt last night that while I was asleep, he had snuck into the kitchen to "clean out" the freezer and started throwing out things I was saving. In the dream, I woke up and was frantically trying to rescue gallon bags of frozen peaches and my unhealthy frozen burrito's from WinCo.

This post (and its bad punctuation) brought to you by liquid Christmas tree, in a good way

Theory

2011-12-11T14:04:00.002-05:00

Perhaps the best people to test vegan recipes are non-vegans. These are people who have not forgotten what butter and bacon taste like. I'm not a vegan, but I'm cheap. I go through phases where cheapness beats my concern for the unethical treatment of animals, and I just buy cheap whatever. Usually the form my cheapness takes is to buy small amounts of animal products that I deem ethical (milk from pasture-raised cows, certified humane and/or pasture eggs) and find ways to make meals vegan the rest of the time. When I bake, I rarely use eggs, except in cases where eggs are essential to the recipe. I make salads with tofu or avocado instead of hard-boiled egg. I grind flax seeds and whisk them with water whenever I need an egg in a muffin recipe. It's extra work, but cage-free eggs are expensive in Portland, much moreso than in New Jersey.

If anyone wonders how I have time for this kind of thing when I work and go to graduate school, I would like to point out that we have no TV.. The entire triplex is without cable; it was never wired for it. I bet that has something to do with it.

Anyway, yesterday I bought Earth Balance. I have had an aversion to vegetarian or vegan foods that pretend to be their zoological equivalent, but I decided to give it a try. It may have been on sale.

I did not buy the butter-flavored kind, because that just seemed too artificial, even though the "earth" in the title suggests that this stuff is totally natural.

This is truly an unfair prejudice, as I myself have coated squares of tofu in asafetida and/or oil used to fry mustard seeds, to try to replicate the sulfurous taste of the hard-boiled egg I am sneakily replacing.

Oh, it gets worse! Now that I'm thinking about it, I've also removed 1/3 to 1/2 of the sulfurous-spice-coated tofu to a separate bowl, where I've mixed it with turmeric to make it look yellow, like egg yolks. (Remember, no TV.)

I decided to test the Earth Balance this morning by frying an egg. I removed it from its place on the second shelf of my fridge, which is where condiments that don't fit on the fridge door and "ingredients" that are neither fresh food or whole meals reside. This is where I keep things like pickles and cheese. I was so averse to the Earth Balance, apparently, that when I unloaded my groceries last night, I refused to put it on the door of the fridge with the butter.

When I opened the box, I was a little dismayed by the gold foil packaging. It reminded me too much of the disgusting margarine of my youth. When I unwrapped the foil packaging, I was a bit dismayed by the near-translucence of the white log I beheld. Well, I told myself, that's probably what you get for not buying the butter-flavored version with annatto seed for coloring.

I tasted a tiny bit raw. It tasted reminiscent of my homemade soy milk.

But then I fried my egg in it. It melted and coated the not-really-nonstick pan with so much ease, that I began to see its appeal. It did not pile in one place like butter or olive oil. What would have been not-quite-enough butter was more than enough Earth Balance. I began to think I may have found a new tool for specific kitchen functions. I also suspect that this will make pie and tart dough that forms easily and doesn't crumble or crack in the pan. I will let you know later this week, as I plan to try it.

Maybe I'll even give the butter-flavored Earth Balance a try.

Oh, and the egg tasted fine.

In conclusion, the doubtful non-vegan has had her mind changed about pretend butter.

Coming Soon: Adventures in Frugality

2011-12-04T23:51:00.000-05:00

This is to stick with my every-other-day posting goal. I have drafted - on paper - a post about recent adventures that occurred because I was being frugal. These are not tips on being frugal. These are things that happened because I was being cheap, adventures that would not have taken place, but would have instead been ho-hum commonplace events, had I not gone out of my way to save/not waste money.

An adventure in anything but frugality is what I would have posted a picture of, had my camera phone not been too full. I got my Dream Couch today, a loveseat from Palace of Industry, which is a very unusual combination bar/vintage shop in North Portland. It was in October, or perhaps late September, when I first spotted the loveseat, and it was still there when I returned in late October for a drink (Lillet blanc--not that you care, just that I would like to proclaim happily, "THEY HAVE LILLET THERE," because it is so good). Rearranging my office for an $8 art deco vanity that never was--it was at Goodwill, and someone bought it shortly before I returned for it--I realized I had room for the Dream Couch. So I e-mailed the Palace and got it put on hold, and today it became mine. I finished the draft of my issue paper (which is due tomorrow, or you'd get my Frugality story) from this Dream Couch.

From the Dream Couch, I see my office, currently a messy junk repository with a desk in the corner and a very organized office-y wall above the desk, from a fresh new angle. I see new ways to organize. Not only have my office and I gained seating, but we have also gained a new perspective. When finals are over, I will make the office into my Dream Office and be totally ready for Winter term.

I couldn't provide a picture because my camera is full. When I empty it, I will post a picture.

Welcome home and Happy December

2011-12-02T12:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning, at 7:30, I called the TriMet automated phone system to check to see if the 7:35 bus was running on schedule or its usual three minutes late. This is the difference between a leisurely walk to the bus stop or a sprint. In horror, I listened as the automated man read off the name of a different bus arriving in eight minutes, and my bus arriving sometime after 7:40. There was no 7:35 bus. There had been a pre-7:30 bus! It seemed as though the bus schedule had changed without my knowledge. Even though I am signed up to receive e-mails from TriMet about that very thing.

The bus that was arriving after 7:40 was going to bring me to work too late. That's okay, though, because I have a car!

Portland winters do not usually bring freezing temperatures. We have rain, not ice. But on this atypical morning, my car was covered in ice. My nice ice scraper was either stolen in the Great Car Break-In of January, left in New Jersey, or misplaced somewhere in my apartment. It took me a long time to scrape off my windows, long enough for the car to warm up so that it would not stall on my way to work or fog up.

Before I started my drive, I realized I still could not see out of my back windshield. This has been a problem for some time; the back windshield takes a very long time to de-fog. I climbed into my backseat to wipe off the windshield with the tail of my scarf. But the visual obstruction was not liquid condensation, but a thick, unmoveable solid. It was ice.

I successfully removed the ice from the inside of my car, giving it even more time to warm up. Then I started to drive to work.

As I turned onto Broadway, a busy street with multiple lanes, of which I needed to be in the farthest from where I'd entered, necessitating the deft navigation through a sea of buses, cars, bikes, and pedestrians, a slow white fog began to build in the corners of my front windshield, passenger side windows, and rear windshield. I turned up the defroster and frantically started wiping down windows--within reach, at a stoplight only--from the inside. The fog crept back with renewed speed. I quickly turned off of Broadway, praying no pedestrians were crossing in the space obstructed by my foggy windows, and looked for a parking spot.

The defroster is totally shot. Except on sunny, dry days, my car is currently undriveable.

I walked home and woke up Handsome Man so that he could drive me to work, to which I arrived half an hour late, to discover immediately that the computer program I need to do most of my work duties was stuck, giving me nothing but an inscrutable error message that flashed angrily whenever I tried to close the program, open another copy of it, or restart my computer.

Welcome home, Sarah, and Happy December. The bus scheduled changed without you, your car isn't working, and your computer isn't either. Three bad things. I declared myself pre-disastered for the day, resolved that no further bad things would take place until at least December 2nd, and folded mail and stuck labels on things until tech support called to free me and my computer from the error message.

The call came, my computer and I were both set free to do our work together, I had Cafe Yumm for lunch, and walked to class and then home from the MAX station in a rain-free city without incident or disaster.

Daydreaming about the future

2011-11-30T23:11:00.003-05:00

I look forward to the day when I can work in my office without hearing tantrums or sobbing below. In the meantime, I migrate from room to room while home, and use spare moments on my lunch break or on the bus.

Happy, happy day, in my future--I'm sorry to seem ungrateful, but it is after my fall class ends. But I will have opportunity to cherish the peace and quiet during winter term.

Final Day of NaBloPoMo

2011-11-30T11:54:00.004-05:00

I did it!

Trying to post from my cell phone in traffic on the way to Newark Airport

2011-11-29T16:35:00.001-05:00

i wrote a lengthier post about being stuck injtraffic on the way to EWR with a notjso smart phone and some thoughts on mobile web use in general. and ten my post disappeared like it had never existed. two more days.

5 Things About Reading and Writing

2011-11-28T11:28:00.004-05:00

It was either this or posting my free-writing for my term paper as a blog post. Which could still happen at some point this week.

1. I'm reading Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton. I am about halfway through. I inadvertently, reluctantly love it. I put myself on the hold list for the library's EPUB copy after reading something about it online. It might have been a New York Times review. It might have been a brief mention in a Mark Bittman column. Maybe it was a book review by Mark Bittman. Who knows? Anyway, I put myself on the hold list, and then it came in at the same time as three other holds, and then I accidentally had my default setting for EPUB checkouts as 7 days, so I ran out of time to read it. I put myself back on the hold list, and I got the e-mail while I was here in NJ that it was ready for me.

I was somehow reluctant to read it--something about the drawing of asparagus on the cover page with "human blood" listed as the medium, something about the first chapter documenting a lamb roast. I was mistakenly concerned there would be too much blood and bones in the book. (Mostly concerned with the former.) You know how some writers get a little showy and over-the-top with food-related gore? Well, that's not the case at all. It doesn't surprise me that Hamilton has a graduate degree from a writing program, from the Harvard of the Midwest. It is a well-written and enjoyable read.

2. Speaking of books I learned about from The New York Times and books that handled gore and violence in a tasteful manner, I am conflicted about the American movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I've heard from people whose opinions I respect that the trailer looks promising, perhaps even better than the Swedish version. But the Swedish version, in my opinion, is as good as a movie version of a lengthy book can be. I don't see how an American version is necessary. American movies tend not to tastefully handle gore and violence. You should know that this is progress for me; at one point in time, I would have refused to watch the American version or consider that it might be good, because that would be an act of disloyalty to the Swedish movies I originally liked. Now I know, yes, it's okay, you can like both.

3. Speaking of the book I am reading now, part of the reason I went to the trouble of putting it on my Nook is because I only brought one book with me on this trip, and I finished it on the plane. It was Radio On by Sarah Vowell. I was excited to read this after reading The Wordy Shipmates, my first ever Sarah Vowell book!, at the end of the summer. I was newly a fan of Sarah Vowell, and I am a longtime fan of radio. Long story short, I was disappointed with Radio On. I enjoyed reading it as a diversion from schoolwork, but when I got to the end I was like, "That's it?" I guess I was expecting more of a conclusion, more history, more analysis, something more in-depth like The Wordy Shipmates. Oh well. I still like Sarah Vowell.

4. Speaking of EPUBs from the library, my love for my Nook has been rekindled. Or I guess I should use a different verb. It has been renewed. After a few months in which Adobe Digital Editions was frustrating me to the point where I stopped trying to get library books on my Nook, I've gotten it to work. It was nice that I was able to check a book out of my Portland, Oregon library while I was on the other side of the continent.

5. Once NaBloPoMo is over, I am going to keep writing here regularly. I've found that my writing for school and other important things starts more easily and flows more naturally when I am blogging, because I am in the habit of writing regularly. It is as important as exercise, as important as the two miles I try to walk each weekday (and three on the weekend.) I will try to write every other day, not every day, because a) I'm too effing busy and b) writing every day, forcing it, can result in a bunch of garbage on this blog.

This was going to be a 10 things post, parallel to yesterday's 10, but I'm cutting it short as there is a show on TV right now that is entirely about gin!!!!!!

10

2011-11-27T23:08:00.004-05:00

Jessica's latest post is just what I needed. I knew in advance that much of today would distance me from a laptop or any other means of blogging, and that I was at risk of blowing the blog-every-day goal with only a few days to go. Yet last night, awake at 3am for no good reason, and again this morning, in a few spare minutes before leaving for the train station, I sat in front of a blinking cursor on an otherwise blank page. I could not bring myself to post a bunch of garbage just to post something. My readers are not going to return to this page if there's a risk that they're going to get something like, "Today I am going to New York City. TTYL!" So I waited.

And here I am, again with no ideas of what to write. I have no pictures to even share, because I've been using film this trip and the pictures I took with my phone yesterday are kind of ugly--just blurry shots for documentation purposes, with museum signs and strangers' elbows intruding into the frame.

In what was really just a form of stalling, I went to my Google Reader feed, purportedly to look for some kind of inspiration. And I found it in Jessica's latest post! which directed me to a panoply of prompts on another website. Click the link above and see for yourself.

I like this one, which fits with the rushed nature of my day and my writing. (I only have forty-five minutes until I've blown it for the day, unless I decide to allow myself to post by midnight West Coast time.)

Write a 10-word sentence that sums up your day. Post your response (500 words or less) in the comments below.

This reminds me of an exercise assigned in an advanced poetry seminar I took at Rutgers. The assignment was to write "imagist" poems, short poems of some limited length (three lines? ### words? I'm not sure) and, for a wordy person, it was actually a blessing. Rather than try to fit every relevant idea into a poem, it forced me to focus intently on one detail. If I were to write a series of imagist poems about today, for example, I might focus only on the lights of Times Square and camera flashes all over the city.

(As a side note, these lights stand out to me because something weird is happening with my vision lately--I keep seeing bright flashing lights that aren't there. They are usually on the side of my vision. They seem to correspond with some actual light source, like a distant television in my neighbor's house that is nearly a block away. I am going to go to the eye doctor as soon as I can. Glaucoma runs in my family and maybe I can get a weed card! Or maybe I'm just tired, and maybe also I am spending too much time looking at computer screens.)

Today was flashing lights and wishing I had hand sanitizer. (10)

The Morris-Essex Line made me nostalgic, but not for TriMet. (10-a compound word is only one word.)

Why does the Metropolitan Museum of Art close so early? (10)

I wish I had one more day in New York. (10)

I found the cleanest public toilet ever in Central Park. (10 - prosaic, perhaps, but for some people this is a real concern!)

Not to end it on a toilet-related note (I mean, the entire post dedicated to that topic was enough for one person's blog!), I would like to tell you about the beer I had that was made with and tasted like sweet corn! I think that Heartland is a strange name and concept for a brewery in the middle of a city, in Times Square, no less (which--and I can't take credit for this as it was in fact said by a clever friend--is like walking through someone's bad MySpace page) (I couldn't seem to get a sentence about the down to less than eleven words), as opposed to being in an old farmhouse or something, but I'm limiting my criticizing because corn beer is a weird concept, too, and it was well done. When I got to Penn Station today, drinking corn beer in a bar decorated with chiefly rural Americana--in Times Square, no less--was not on the list of things I thought might happen. Well, New York is a surprising place.

Saturday Morning Miscellany

2011-11-26T00:17:00.000-05:00

The day we left Portland for our Thanksgiving trip, we used a Google Offer coupon to have breakfast at Radio Room on NE Alberta. I had never been there before. I had only been near it. It's right next to my former favorite bar, the Bye and Bye. (The Bye and Bye hasn't thrilled me for awhile because it got crowded and the last time I had its signature drink, it was too sweet. Perhaps fame has changed it or time has changed me. In any case, since the reason I don't like going there anymore is that it has become so popular--and Olive-Branch-on-$1-Yuengling-Night-Tuesday crowded--it clearly doesn't need my business or approval to thrive. It was an amicable separation.) Anyway, I never went to the Radio Room because I was under the impression that it was really pricey. Someone told me that, and I believed it. But then I got this coupon.

Long story short, I liked it. And it was so not pricey! The prices were normal. I thought my breakfast was a great value. Mostly, I just wanted to provide this illustration--the pesto scramble I ordered, called the Dr. Seuss, was literally...

green eggs and ham.

Speaking of food that sounds (and perhaps should be) fictional, this was in my parents' pantry.

I haven't tried any yet.

Finally, I found what I hope can be my outfit should we decide to send out Christmas cards again this year. The day we went to the airport, we had difficulty finding a ride. We also weren't that concerned, because we can walk to a MAX stop where one can catch the Red Line and be taken directly to PDX. But what we were not counting on was the volume of rain that would be pouring from the sky that day. Because in Portland, it usually doesn't pour. It sprinkles, mists, or rains lightly. That day, however, it was pouring.

This is not only what I wore to the airport, but also to merely take out the trash.

Note the DOUBLE layer of hooded jackets and the bell bottoms sticking out from under rain pants.

Writing about writing (other people's)

2011-11-25T19:56:00.001-05:00

This is short because I am short on time, not because I am not excited about my friend Jessica's newest project, which she is attempting to fund with Kickstarter. She has already reached 25% of her goal. Please consider helping her get the remaining 75%.

I have known Jessica for close to a decade. I have been friends with her, and I have worked with her in groups and on projects. Jessica has two graduate degrees and although she works full time, every time I talk to her, I learn about some exciting creative project that she is pursuing. I have known her to be organized, driven, and creative. (As well as kind and fun, but that is perhaps not relevant to this project.) (Also, she is a fellow Oxford Comma fan.) What I am saying is that if Jessica sets a goal, I have no doubt that she will meet it. If Jessica is behind a project, I have faith in its success. I have faith that her efforts will yield not only success, but something original, interesting, perhaps revolutionary. That is why I am writing about her project, a new literary magazine, on my blog, and why I am a backer of her project. The link is here.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, if you enjoyed the Thanksgiving poems I linked to yesterday and shared previous Novembers, you will also enjoy my friend's blog The Lox of Knowledge. My friend (whose real name I am withholding, because I'm not sure if she uses it on her blog or not) is a teacher and in addition to blogging about education, she also includes (quite frequently of late), hilarious things her students say.

An early holiday card

2011-11-24T10:44:00.006-05:00

When I was a little girl, I learned from my teacher at the time the story of the pilgrims and the Mayflower in an account much more detailed than that we either learned or acted out in my previous preschool years.

Note: I am not sure, but this might have been the same teacher who gave the House Rules homework assignment.

Note #2: No, this was not the year we learned about smallpox blankets or wars or slavery or burning people at the stake or any of that.

What I do remember is that this was the year we learned that where the pilgrims landed was called Plymouth, Massachusetts, and that there was a big rock called Plymouth Rock. I'm pretty sure I imagined the ship sailing at top speed and crashing into this rock (but surprisingly not injuring anyone or causing alarm of any sort) and thought that the Mayflower was, as a result, a little too banged up to bring home to England, and that was why they couldn't just turn around and leave when they realized that East Coast winters suck and they were starving.

The story I learned was the standard Squanto-to-the-Rescue story. (Unfortunately not the version that involves beer.)

As a side note, the "acting out" of which I wrote above refers to a pageant performed for the parents in my preschool. I remember nothing of it except that I got assigned to be an Indian (which was appropriate, although it might have been based on which teacher I had and not because I had dark hair) and my friend Shannon, who was pale white with white-blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes, got to be a pilgrim, and I was really REALLY jealous. I guess four-year-olds weren't aware of the noble savage concept in 1988.

Anyway, the following day, which was Thanksgiving, we had dinner at my house with my grandparents (the French ones--and when I refer to these grandparents, I am actually referring to three people: my grandmere, my mom's stepfather Pierre aka Pipa, and my grandmere's mother, Suzanne aka Mima, fka Minou, who lives with them. Note the present tense. She is going to be 99 in a few weeks.)

This is turning into a longer post than I'd planned. Anyway, I call my great-grandmother Mima now, which is what everyone else in the family calls her - my mother, my mother's cousins, and my second cousins. When I was a little kid, I had trouble saying this, I guess, and I called her, "Minou." I was always surprised when I met French people who had cats named Minou. I would say, "That's funny! That's my great-grandmother's name." No one told me that Minou was a term of endearment for a cat. I made the switch to Mima in college. It was fortunately long before I learned that "minou" in French also has a dirty connotation. The first time I became acquainted with the term, "faire le minou," let's just say I was very distraught for my four-year-old self.

Anyway. So, in that lull between turkey gluttony and dessert, while the adults were either madly preparing dessert/cleaning dinner dishes/packing away leftovers in the kitchen or taking a nap, I was full of five-or-six-year-old energy. To keep out of everyone's way, I was channeling that energy into creativity. (I wasn't really a run-around-the-house-kid EVER, actually. I was pretty ~~lazy~~ sedentary).

Eager to show off my school lessons, I drew a picture of a giant shoe with a shattered toe and some lollipops with limbs and with buckles on their heads and a large gray blob and some other lollipops with rainbow-picket fences on their heads. My art skills then were as great as they are now. Over my pilgrims-landing-in-America + Mayflower-fender-bender masterpiece, I wished to provide some text. Since without that caption, no one would have any idea what the hell I had just drawn.

Pipa had dozed off in his chair at the dinner table. No one adults were around, except perhaps Mima, but she only speaks French. She would have been no help to me at this point. So I asked Pipa, the French immigrant, for help with my caption. I needed help spelling things, like "Plymouth."

And that was how I ended up handing my parents a Thanksgiving card that read, "Happy Thinksgiving from Planet Rock!"

I wonder what would have happened if I'd try to include, "Massachusetts."

Happy Thinksgiving from Planet Rock

2011-11-23T12:37:00.002-05:00

I'm writing a quick post in between some Thanksgiving food prep. Again, I'm writing a short possibly-placeholder-post with a plan to, if possible, write more later. I should also note that the Internet is very spotty here. My parents need a new router.

We arrived safely in New Jersey, after walking to the MAX station in a downpour (no really, not an Oregon "it's more than sprinkling or misting" downpour, but a downpour even by my East Coast place-that-has-a-hurricane-season town-that-once-got-fourteen-inches-of-rain-in-one-day standards) with two large almost 50-pound suitcases. We survived that journey, crossing the 17th-Avenue river and the 9th-Avenue creek, and we survived the 6-hour-flight next to a flatulent smartphone addict. When we got safely to Jersey, we got to eat real pizza made by a real Jersey Italian (my mom.) This morning I got to have Taylor ham for breakfast. ShopRite brand!

That's all for now. I'm going to try to write more, with pictures, later.

My beautiful home

2011-11-22T10:30:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be at the airport and on a plane most of today. I'm posting something now so that I don't miss out on my NaBloPoMo goal this close to the end of the month. There's a pretty good chance I won't have time to write later.

In lieu of a story, here are some pictures of the place I am going.

A very late correction

2011-11-21T00:01:00.001-05:00

I have intended for over a year to write the following amended review of Bar Gernika in Boise, Idaho. Now that it looks like I might be passing through Boise during a meal time, the time has come.

I have not been back to Boise since 2009. But after I wrote this post that included a very detailed account of my negative dining experience, Gernika wrote to me. And I wrote back. What transpired changed my opinion.

Last November, I was attempting to satisfy the requirements of NaBloPoMo by writing the long-overdue account of the road trip that brought me to Portland to live. I don't get many comments on this blog, and when I saw in my inbox that Anonymous had commented on my latest post, I was so excited!!! Until I read the following:

Wow, I am so sorry that you had such a negative experience at our restaurant.It really affects me when I hear or read things like this. If you could tell me what night it was, I can check in with the server about his service. I am also dismayed that he didn't point out our many other Basque specialty dishes when you were ordering. We do run out of some of our more popular dishes sometimes. We prepare everything fresh every day, and it is sometimes difficult to determine how much to make for the day. Again, I am truly sorry about your visit with us, and I hope you give us another try. Please email me at bargernika@yahoo.com. Thank you!

I was so embarrassed. I had forgotten that, duh, this is the world wide web, and people read what you write, and people search for things, and people have Google Alerts set up...and people will find your obscure blog about a person from/living in two states that are both not Idaho, and they will read it, and have their feelings hurt. I suddenly looked at my review from the perspective of someone not familiar with my style of writing, and I realized where I might have sounded like one of those crazy people who writes reviews on Yelp accusing bartenders of starting fights with them or criticizing the paint choices of a restaurant or dropping a star from the rating because they have trouble eating with chopsticks or because the weather sucked the day they went or something else that is entirely not the restaurant's fault.

I wrote to them because I felt so contrite. Unless they totally hadn't been paying attention that this was a trip that happened a year in the past; I was also writing to kind of call them out on that, if that was the case. (The truth comes out!)

I wrote the following:

Dear Bar Gernika,

I apologize if anyone's feelings were hurt by my post in which I wrote about a bad time at Bar Gernika. I am impressed that you care about a visit that took place over a year ago by someone who lives pretty far from Boise. [...edited for brevity's sake...] I'd assume that I just had the rare bad experience, and that's what I've always thought about Bar Gernika. Most of my criticism was intended toward my travel guide, which only told us about *one* Basque restaurant in Boise. I provided a link to Bar Gernika in case any of my readers passing through Boise wanted to check it out, because even though we had a bad time, we still liked the food and cider! [...] I certainly don't want to get anyone in trouble; it's possible that July 2, 2009, was just an uncharacteristically bad night! Anyway, I've never made it back to Boise, but I enjoyed the time I spent in the city and have always wanted to return. I'd be happy to give Bar Gernika another chance. [...] Thank you for your interest in my long-ago visit.

Gernika wrote back! They really did care about what someone who is from two states, neither of which are Idaho, had to say about something that happened more than a year in the past!

(Oh, and I told them I was eventually going to post this email in a correction post, so I totally have permission to write this.)

Thanks so much for your response! [...edited for brevity...] Even though our little bar has been around for about 20 years now, there is always room for improvement and fine tuning. We have zero staff turnover at our place, and the schedule is pretty static, so it was easy to figure out who it was that was serving you. It is someone who, last summer, received several complaints on various websites and blogs. After getting to the bottom of his frustrations, we worked with him to try to get him to a point where he was happier with his situation. I am happy to say that he is still employed by us and doing great. He has been able to participate more in the business by designing and marketing our schwag(sp?). This has really improved his personal investment in our bar. Our staff is like family but bad service is intolerable so we were glad everything worked out. I am just sorry you were treated so poorly, that's just not okay. If you ever come back to Boise, I would absolutely love to buy you and your party a round[....]

Isn't that nice? Not only that they expressed genuine concern over my year-old review, but that this is an organization that works with staff to find ways they can best work for the organization, rather than merely terminating them (or allowing them to continue in a position where they are unhappy.) So, again, it was my fault I spilled Astarbe all over my clumsy self, and our non-paella food was great, and I'm impressed with this response.

Bad service is intolerable. In Portland, it is more common than it should be. The result is that good service (or even above-average) causes me to tip wildly high. (Maybe someday I will tell you my ultimate bad service in Portland story, except this time I will not name names.) Anyway, I wonder how many Portland restaurants would have responded this way. Before this turns into a rant about an unrelated topic, I will end this post about my long-ago trip to Idaho. In December, I will be passing through Idaho on my way to Colorado. We will probably go through Boise twice, so our chances of passing through at a mealtime are pretty high. I look forward to trying Gernika again!

Sunday of Errands

2011-11-20T21:55:00.006-05:00

My apartment is a chaos zone, yet I am feeling calm. I just got a great haircut!

The roofers apparently took Sunday off, so even though the contents of our attic and our roof garden are taking up space in most of the apartment, it was not so stressful today as it was yesterday.

When I started packing for my Thanksgiving trip, I noticed that what was taking up space in my suitcase was some clothing I had been waiting to donate. There was a blue corduroy blazer that really doesn't fit me anymore, which I got for only $1 at a thrift store in the early 2000's; a black shawl (I don't wear shawls) which I think came with some dress I got at Joyce Leslie, also in the early 2000's; some other forgettable shirt; and a blue jean pencil skirt from Anthropologie. That one I had been holding onto for awhile. It was from a nice store and I paid $50 for it (on the clearance rack.) But it was a piece of garbage, a harbinger of the lesser-quality (yet still high-priced Anthro-wear to come.) The back seam kept ripping every time I walked in it.

Why have clothing makers started making pencil skirts with the slit in the back? I can't imagine what grown woman can wear these skirts without showing the world her panties!

For men, or for those who have a very flat ass, let me explain.

Because the back of women (especially some women; I recognize that not all women are endowed with a convenient coffee cup shelf* like I am) tends to stick out more than the front, if there is not more fabric in the back than there is in the front, a short skirt will be shorter in the back than it is in the front.

Adding a slit to an already short back-of-the-skirt creates the danger of...well...obscenity.

What happened to side slits in pencil skirts? I'd much rather have someone see a little more of my thigh than my bottom. Doesn't this make sense? Perfect sense? Huh? Huh, OLD NAVY? and ANTHROPOLOGIE!?

Adding insult to injury, these slit seams tend to rip, creating a higher slit, when one engages in such activities other than sitting or standing still such as walking up a hill, walking briskly, or walking up stairs.

It may be the twenty-first century equivalent of all of those Victorian clothes that impeded the movement and respiration of nineteenth-century women. Now, perhaps modern-day women's attire does not pose a fire hazard, like a dozen layers of petticoats, but it does seem that a garment that rips if worn while simply walking might be designed the discourage the movement of women. Could we even say that there's a subtle message here, such as the discouraging of women's metaphorical movement up, where she might bump her pretty little head on some glass ceilings (and then break it), or maybe women's movement toward equality?

Um...really, I just want a pencil skirt that doesn't cause me to moon my co-workers and co-bus-riders. Can you make that happen, Old Navy?

So anyway, I had given up trying to sew and re-sew that Anthropologie skirt, and today I gave it to Goodwill (where it can aggravate some other woman. Or maybe find a good home with a woman who never climbs hills.) I stopped at Goodwill on my way to the mall, where I was going to buy a solid-colored shirt in a very specific color to go with a very specific outfit.

I found it at Goodwill. For $3.99.

The other errand I went on was finally, finally getting a haircut, and that is what I meant to write about. I already did, in fact. It's my second ever Yelp review. I forgot to mention in my review - Bishops is pretty cheap, too! I usually don't trust places with such consistent bad reviews, but I seriously do not know why Bishops has so many bad reviews. I am always happy when I go there.

So, that was my Sunday! Have a nice week, everyone!

* For explanation of the "coffee cup shelf" of which I speak, read here and here.

Pound

2011-11-19T18:23:00.004-05:00

I don't want to write anything today. Since 8:30 a.m. there have been workers on the roof of the building where I live. I live on the top floor. I think they are actually taking off the old roof and replacing it, piece by piece. It is cold in the apartment, I guess from the roof removal aspect, and it is loud. We tried to escape to run errands and to go out to brunch, but now I have things I need to do here, like laundry. It is driving us both slowly crazy. HM is more silly crazy, singing lots of songs, and I am irritably crazy.

Yesterday I accidentally prank called my friend in the blandest way possible. I was trying to call the credit union and track down what happened to my new credit card. In addition to noise in the house, we also haven't been getting our mail recently, and I had some theories for that but I actually saw the mail deliverer today and confirmed that it was because the roofers have been hurling things not just in the dumpster in the driveway, but on tarps that are near all entrances to the house. I don't really blame the mail lady for not wanting to get knocked in the head with a piece of our old roof.

Anyway, I was trying to make some calls to find out what happened to the credit card that I was supposed to be getting in the mail. I was directed to a different call center, and the phone rang, and a generic message telling me what number I'd reached, which I thought sounded like, "866" (like the toll free number I'd called), is what I heard, so I left a detailed message and my phone number and expected to hear back from the credit union tomorrow.

Except my cell phone is a piece of garbage. At first, it would just turn on and off in my purse. Maybe call the last person I'd called, if I didn't hit the lock button before I put it in my purse. Then it started unlocking itself, somehow, and calling the last people I'd called, the last people I'd texted, the first five people in my alphabetical contacts list (sorry Angela, Amanda, Alyssa, Alice, and AAA!), and also the number, "7777777777789213490132098132+++zqx."

Oh, and lately, every time I look at my phone, the background has changed and the clock has either disappeared or reappeared. It's not just purse-dialing, it's purse-rearranging-the-settings.

Last night, my phone entered a new level of strange behavior. Apparently, the generic voicemail I heard was actually my friend, but I didn't recognize his voice. Also, he wasn't saying "866," I guess. That or I did leave a message for the credit union, but also for my friend. According to my phone, I called both my friend and the credit union at the same time, for the same length of time.

Past butt-dialing, pocket-dialing, and purse-dialing, has my phone traveled to a new dimension of unwanted behavior--face dialing. The touch screen on my phone is now so sensitive that the side of my face causes it to call someone I had not called or texted recently, who was not one of the first five people in my alphabetical contacts list. After the side of my face called my friend, it also merged that call with my call to the credit union.

And that is how I left the longest, blandest prank voicemail in history. What should I do next? Call my grandmother to request reservations for a restaurant in SE tonight? Maybe on Monday, make an appointment with another friend to discuss my financial aid options for the Spring term?

Well, I guess I did end up writing about something. On the bright side, today is supposedly the last day that the roofers are scheduled to be here.

Today's Prompt: What has been the happiest moment of your life thus far?

2011-11-18T15:26:00.003-05:00

This seemed like one of those prompts it would be difficult to answer. I can't even pick a favorite ice cream flavor, let alone a moment of my life.

I'm a pretty happy person. Especially right now. I have a good life. I have reliable employment that I enjoy, I still get to go to school to work toward some future employment that is in line with my dreams, but I don't go to school so much that it stresses me out, I live in a nice city, I am able to stay in touch with faraway friends and family, I get to take mass transit to work, I get to go for walks every day, my roommate is my boyfriend and my best friend in this city is my neighbor. I get to regularly go to farmers' markets, and several nice grocery stores are a short walk away. I can also walk to lots of cafes, bars, restaurants, and shops.

People who know me in person, or who read this blog when Big-Mouthed Jersey Girl is posting, know that I complain a lot. Sometimes it is good-natured complaining, with a joke tied in, and sometimes it is just pure crankiness. Sometimes it is about big things (racism! inequality! injustice! pollution!) and sometimes it is about stupid little things (rude pedestrian/motorist/bicyclist! black tights with brown shoes!) Otherwise, I am happy with perhaps equal enthusiasm; my happiest moment might have just been five minutes ago, when the world felt like a wonderful, happy place, because the sun is shining out the window (for now-it's supposed to snow later) and the cottage cheese, satsuma, and sandwich I had for lunch seemed like the perfect lunch.

So this prompt is a hard question for me to answer.

Then I thought, well, how did I get here? Maybe the happiest moment of my life (or at least one of the top ten) had to do with that.

So, perhaps the best answer to this question is that the happiest moment of my life was when I got the job that took me to Portland.

The reasons why I was particularly sad and exhausted on this particular Wednesday aren't very interesting. (Believe me. I just wrote them out, and then erased it all because it was BO-RING.

And I just got a phone call, so I'll end this early!

No time to write!

2011-11-17T16:06:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, students occupied PSU. They planned a walkout to all demonstrate.

I'm a day late, but I'll be occupying PSU today. I will be occupying a classroom, learning about public policy and how to analyze, change, and implement policy.

I have no time to write more today, and I don't want to risk that I'll forget to write after class tonight. I have to spend the time I would normally be writing working on my presentation for class tonight. So I'd like to share with you someone else's writing. I read a great article for my class called, "Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?" It appears that the full text of it is available here as part of the Google Books preview.

The writer confesses to being an environmentalist, and I am too. But like this writer, I get frustrated with others who identify themselves as environmentalists, and think they are treating things the wrong way, being hypocritical in other ways (ex: my work doesn't directly pollute the environment like, say, spraying pesticides, but sitting in an office isn't really working closely with nature or benefiting nature), and maintaining the adversarial nature that is unfortunately (and unnecessarily) extant in discussions of environment and economy.

Quick note

2011-11-16T17:24:00.002-05:00

Since I don't have much time today, I'll post a nice picture.

First, I would like to note that since writing yesterday's post and searching online for mail-order sources of Russian groceries, I am now getting ads on the websites I visit not for mortgages or shoes at Zappo's, but for online dating websites that specialize in matching one with Russian women. ARGH. I guess I could practice my Russian. "My name is Sarah. Ice cream! Paprika! Store! Halva!"

It's the John Day Fossil Beds! It's awfully rainy here today, which could make a person wish to be in the desert.

It's Sunrise Mountain!

The fabric of my dreams from Bolt on NE Alberta. I only got a small square and I made a belt that perfectly matches a pair of pants that I have and a cardigan that I have. I just need a berry-colored shirt to go with it, and I'd have the perfect outfit. Perfect for what? I don't know.

Going to the magazines

2011-11-15T15:26:00.009-05:00

I drafted this post on Sunday, and unfortunately all I gave myself were very brief notes, some words in Russian (in the Cyrillic alphabet), and a transcription of a receipt. Believe it or not, this was not a clear reminder of what I intended to write on Sunday.

My notes began with the following: Hence the quest for tkemali. Also, Russian shopping and how I got to use my IFL 7th grade lessons in reading Cyrillic.

They continued with the following list:
мороженое
библиотека
паприка
халва

What was I trying to tell myself and my readers?

Well, I do recall that this weekend, I went grocery shopping with a friend in East Portland. I mean outer East Portland, not close-in, like where I live now. Out where I used to live and work.

It all started on Friday, 11/11/11, when two of my co-workers began talking about beef stroganoff. I hadn't had beef stroganoff in years, since my mother used to make it, and come to think of it, I hadn't had Hungarian goulash in years, either, and my mother used to make that, too! By the time I left work on Friday, I wanted both.

My co-worker had been explaining how to make beef stroganoff, beginning with where the packet was at the store.

"Well," she paused, looking at me. "You would probably make it from scratch."

"I might not!" I said, defensively. "I use mixes!"

But then I did go home and make it from scratch, only because the recipe in Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table was so easy. It really, really was. I made it with tempeh and dried mushrooms, because you can bet if I was too tired to go to the store to buy a packet of seasoning, I was too tired to go to the store to buy anything, and I just used what I had. It is basically a brown gravy with some spices that you add sour cream to, and then eat with egg noodles. I made Hungarian goulash last night - my mom's recipe - but also with tempeh - and it is basically a red sauce with spices that you add sour cream to. I am beginning to think anything can be made extra delicious if you just add sour cream to it.

Flipping through Please to the Table on a cold, dark, rainy night, in a warm house, with Regina Spektor singing sporadically in Russian on my stereo, Russian and Balkan and Central Asian recipes started to sound very appealing. Of course, Anya von Bremzen's writing could make anything sound appealing!

That is how the quest for tkemali plums got started. I don't actually need them to make any of the Georgian recipes in Please to the Table; Anya von Bremzen suggests plenty of substitutes. But she also writes that you may be able to find dried plums or "sour plum roll." A trip to the Russian store was overdue, anyway. I was out of $4 caviar.

The Roman Russian Market, at 110th and Division in SE Portland, has changed since my last trip, and seems to be equipped with even less signage in the Roman alphabet, let alone English. Fortunately, I took Russian in middle school. Not very much Russian. Just one quarter of seventh grade. So you can imagine it wasn't much of a language education. From that time, I retained the words, "library," "My name is Sarah," and "ice cream."

In my last year of college (the second time), I started a research project on Cakile, a genus of Brassicaceae, on which much of the most research was conducted during the Cold War by scientists in the Soviet Bloc.

A lot of Russian words are actually cognates--words that sound like English words. But they are just in a different alphabet.

So, my memory of the Cyrillic alphabet was put to the test again. I had it printed out and hung on my wall, next to my desk, while I was working on that project.

When I moved to outer East Portland, where lots of signs are in Russian, that knowledge was put to use again. And this is the case every time I visit the Roman Russian Market, perhaps more than ever on this particular trip. Because even less signs were in English than the last time I'd visited.

At first, it was like learning to read for the first time--sounding things out. But by the time we got to the second store, Imperial Euro Market at 110th and Powell, I was starting to pick out words more quickly. When I lived in that neighborhood, the Imperial Euro Market had as its only identifier a sign that said, "русский магазин." This was actually informative, because those are two more words I can read and remember from seventh grade. They sound like, "Roos-key magazine," but actually mean, "Russian store."

Whenever I see the phrase, "русский магазин," I note the location in my memory as a place where I may someday find tkemali plums, as well as my favorite Bulgarian feta, inexpensive cornichons, a variety of ajvar, double-smoked bacon, kasha, and beautiful cookies.

So, my memory of the Cyrillic alphabet is how I was able to find one of the things on my shopping list, паприка, aka paprika. Soon, I was reading the packets of spices, which are apparently all cognates, like a kid opening Christmas presents. "Car-da-MOM! Cardamom!"

I didn't find tkemali, not this time. But according to my receipt, I did pretty well. My receipt from the Roman Russian Market...well, it may as well be in Cyrllic. It reads as follows:
Wallenband
Artek Vafli
kornishony mini
Ajvar Kadushka
Taramosalata 8 oz.

Wow, that was informative!

What is potentially sad is that the last two items made perfect sense to me. Ajvar is a delicious red pepper dip, and taramosalata is my favorite $4 caviar.

There is no grand conclusion to this story. I'm still looking for those stupid tkemali. I'm making a chicken and quince dinner tomorrow, assuming I have the time and energy. I'll probably learn how to say "thank you," and "goodbye" to the clerks at the русский магазин.

Until tomorrow, до свидания!

Through Being Cool

2011-11-14T14:49:00.007-05:00

Today's NaBloPoMo prompt is about overcoming fears. I'm not sure if today's topic quite fits, but it's about overcoming something.

When I started going back to school in January, I realized after a couple of weeks that everyone brings their laptops to school now. One of the results of that is that some professors now lecture much more quickly, too quickly to be faithfully transcribed by hand.

So I started bringing my laptop to class, and I upgraded from a purse to my "ladies' briefcase," a huge black purse with a matching laptop sleeve and lots of compartments and sections, ostensibly for files and folders and the like. Really, the compartment dividers weren't strong enough to stay in place, and it just created a huge mess that seemed to at that moment hide the specific items for which I was searching.

Then this happened. Allow me to refresh your memory, in case you do not recall the time I tried to fix a purse with electrical tape.

So then I tried using a different big purse that was open at the top, giving ample room for things to stick out. That was obviously a bad idea, especially for laptop storage, in a place where it rains a lot. I moved on to a larger bag with a zipper, which I found in storage during one of my trips to New Jersey. One of the seams broke from overuse, and I still haven't fixed it. So I switched to another bag found in storage in New Jersey, but the Velcro is shot and it keeps flapping open during my mile-and-a-half walk from work to school.

Plus, I was starting to realize that walking a mile and a half with a heavy shoulderbag is kind of uncomfortable! Yeah, it took me a long time to realize this.

So, after a series of stylish shoulderbags, I gave up. I gave up on style. I am using a backpack.

But, see, not a stylish backpack. Not even a school backpack. It's a hiking backpack. A Camelbak.

It's a great backpack! It's a special women's fit design, with extra straps so that you don't hurt your back carrying extra heavy things! But I'm not going hiking in it. I'm going to work and school.

I gave up and started carrying it not just on school days, but to work every day. Taking mass transit with a lunch bag and textbooks and emergency rainwear, it's just easier.

Then I realized that when I walk to the grocery store or farmers' market, which can be a mile or mile and a half each way, that shoulder bags and reusable grocery bags aren't really ideal, either.

I started carrying that backpack on my normal errand-running walks to Whole Foods or the library.

And then yesterday, the backpack stuffed to the brim, laden with a 5-lb. whole chicken, a metal tea tin, and other heavy items, I realized I was walking stooped forward, heading dangerously close to a right angle.

It was either my back or my status as a cool lady. And I'd already damaged the latter when I started carrying that backpack around town in the first place.

I clipped the extra support straps around my waist.

I wasn't at Stokes State Forest. I wasn't climbing Mount Hood. I was in my neighborhood.

It's over. All over. I have given up on being cool. At least I won't get a bad back.

The quest for tkemali plums

2011-11-13T02:30:00.002-05:00

So far, I've discovered that when you Google search sources for mail-order Russian/Georgian/Eastern European groceries, what actually comes up are sources for mail-order brides.

My efforts to find the sour plums, fresh or dried, to make some recipes from Please to the Table, have been fruitless. Literally and figuratively.

Seen while shopping in Portland

2011-11-12T21:31:00.003-05:00

Last week, Handsome Man needed to go to Pioneer Place, which, for non-Portlanders, is the name of the mall in downtown Portland. Parking is expensive and stupidly irritating downtown, but there is a MAX stop right at the mall. And we can walk from our home to another MAX stop. It is all in the Free Rail Zone, so the whole trip is free free free. No paying for gas, parking, or the bus.

But HM had never been to Pioneer Place before and had only ridden the MAX once in his life, so he wanted me to go with him. Like a nice girlfriend, I agreed to do this on my day off. (Yes, how magnanimous of me to agree to go to the mall.)

At one point, while he was waiting a long time for something, we agreed to split up. And so, I abandoned HM for H&M. When I first moved to Portland, the closest H&M store was in Seattle. I might have made the three-hour trip up there but for one thing: sales tax. Washington has sales tax. Oregon does not. New Jersey has sales tax, but not on clothing. Thus, I have a somewhat visceral reaction to paying sales tax on clothing.

By the time H&M opened in Portland, it was like the time I gave up chocolate for Lent. I had gone so long without it, that by the time Easter rolled around, I just didn't care about chocolate. And so, I didn't bother going to H&M (especially since I had a phobia of crossing the Willamette) until nearly a year after it opened. When I was visiting New Jersey, I had no reason to go to H&M, so I didn't.

That was how I managed to not step into an H&M for nearly three years.

And when I did last week, my brain nearly short-circuited. I was immediately overwhelmed with feelings of excitement and then euphoria. There were so many pretty things!!!!!

Then I saw this in the retro T-shirt section.

In that moment, I felt old.

And then, when HM was finished with his errand and found me in H&M, I was wandering around, lost, holding the only two items I was considering buying. A berry-colored long-sleeved shirt and a berry-colored tank top, to go with a specific pair of pants and belt and cardigan outfit I have and also just because they are good staples that go with a lot of the other clothing I own. Yup, I hadn't been to H&M for three years and all I could think of to buy were some practical things. I'm getting too old for H&M.

This weekend, I went to DSW with a friend who actually was looking for something. I just had a coupon and thought, "Maybe I'll replace my gray boots that are falling apart, or get another pair of flats."

I own four pairs of the Rocket Dog "Marilyn" flats, plus one pair of the high-heeled style. I know what I like!

From what I could tell, the styles this fall occupy opposite ends of the spectrum, as exhibited in the picture I took of the two pairs of shoes I tried on.

With no in between, it seems women's shoe choices this fall are Blingtacular and Sweaters For Your Feet.

The following is from the nail polish aisle at Fred Meyer, and it speaks for itself.

11/11/11

2011-11-11T20:35:00.002-05:00

This is totally one of those, "I'm writing because I said I would when I signed up for NaBloPoMo." My writing time today is going to be taken up by writing a letter to TriMet. I think it's important to criticize even the organizations one usually supports, because it's important to hold them accountable. That's why I wrote a critical letter to OPB in September...but that's a story for another time. What happened with TriMet is also a story for another time. And my readers and Facebook friends may be aware of how, since June, my love for TriMet came into being and has been growing. But my love is not so great as to blind me to its flaws. In short, I witnessed something last night on the MAX that I thought was very unfair. I'm writing a complaint not necessarily to complain about the employee involved in the incident, but to defend the rider who was treated unfairly and accused of having a bad attitude. And then kicked off the train. With his small daughter. After dark. On a cold night. In North Portland. (Which is up-and-coming, but has some sketchy parts.)

I promise that this whole month is not just going to be, "Big-Mouthed Jersey Girl and her Multitudinous Opinions." I'll go back to pictures of food and flowers and cute stories soon enough.

I have lot more to say but not a lot of time

2011-11-10T09:26:00.005-05:00

I recently read this article in Newsweek and it made me cranky.

I am pretty sure his pieces in Newsweek always irritate me. It's not that I always disagree with him; however, even where I agree in part, I find his presentation to be irritating. I don't have much time to blog today, so I am not getting into it.

Ok, I will a little. The whole metaphor about apps and viruses and rebooting the system was kind of cheesy, in my opinion. It's like that other article in Newsweek by someone else comparing Steve Jobs to Harry Potter. It's a matter of taste, I guess. It's just not to mine.

There are two things that stood out to me when I read the article. One is the way that Ferguson laments the lack of scientific education/knowledge of America's teenagers. In the concluding paragraphs, he decries, "the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science". His choice of language makes me want to ask, "What the f?" (Or, more appropriately in response to an article titled, "America's 'Oh Sh*t!' Moment," I guess I should ask, "What the f*ck?!?") This isn't the first time I've read this kind of point, however. There are some who practically lament the lack of America's budding young scientists. This is the first time, I think, I've read such language condemning the "soft subjects," and I'm a little surprised. Really, Mr. Ferguson? Are English majors ruining America? And if that's not what you're saying, what are you saying?

I would just like to say as someone who values science, who has been described in the past as a "scientist," but also as someone with degrees and knowledge in the "soft subjects," that I think this is a bunch of crap. (Note: I am writing pre-coffee and pre-7 am.) Why do people think our students need more science, or I guess what I am asking, more accurately, is why do people place such a high value on "hard" science not coupled with "soft subjects." This was a subject--the assumed dichotomy between the two--that was near and dear to my heart as a college student working toward two degrees, a B.A. and a B.S. I didn't expect, at the time, this argument would have any serious ramifications, nothing beyond me feeling, at times, like an oddball among my peers in one program or the other. To keep this already lengthy post from dragging on and on, I would just like to say that I think the non-scientific arts, or the softer sciences, have plenty of value. In fact, I would say that one set of subjects informs the other. Learning how to read and write, for example, is learning how to think, how to uncover facts, how to build and argument, and eventually, how to approach and solve difficult problems. The work I do every day, in any type of job I've had, has been informed by the time I spent deciphering things like Victorian novels. The skills I acquired analyzing George Eliot do translate, I argue, into skills that could be used to do something like ameliorate climate change or save a rare species from extinction. I have found, in my working, post-college life, that the more I read and write, the better I think.

I'd also argue that too much evidence on "hard" subjects, shifting the balance, is bad news! It could overemphasize certain types of thinking and skills over the other. Moreover, I'm concerned that there's a correlation between "hard" science and truth. Even though scientists should know that our data does not reflect "truth," but rather a piece of truth, and that science is something that has to be interpreted just like an abstruse Victorian novel, there are constantly assertions in the media, often by non-scientists but sometimes by scientists, that something is hard, factual, definite, truth. Maybe this is a big leap in logic, but I worry that overemphasizing science education might lead to inflexible understanding and interpretations of facts.

I've gone on a little longer than intended, and I still need to eat breakfast! I would just like to touch on the other concern I had, reading Mr. Ferguson's article. Of America's "killer apps" that he listed, I think he left out the most important: FREEDOM!

I'm being silly. But I'm not totally kidding. Perhaps I was just pumped full of propaganda in elementary and high school, but I was taught that one reason the Industrial Revolution was more successful in America than in England was because of America's culture of equality. And considering the crap that came out of 19th century America that passed for equality, that's really saying something. Arguably, we do not have freedom and equality even now. But we're working on it. (The things I linked to were just the first examples that came to mind. I mean, what also came out of the nineteenth century was this beautiful amendment.)

All I will say is this. I read, sometimes in the same magazines, articles about China's prosperity and articles about China's human rights abuses. (For example.) But they are never in the same article. They are never in the same discussion. Why? What impact will one have on the other? Will the public, in a growing economy, finally demand some basic civil liberties along with their cars, flat-screen TVs, and air conditioners? What role do civil rights have in economy?

No, I'm really asking. Because, like I tell my classmates, I'm just a plant geek. This is somewhat new to me.

Prompt of the Day

2011-11-09T13:36:00.001-05:00

When was the first time that you realized that your home was not like other people’s homes?

For this, I have two stories. I am not sure if either was the first time I realized that my home was not like other homes; if not, they were at least reminders.

The first was when I was in first or second grade. Our teacher assigned the class as homework to come back the next day with a list of our family's official House Rules. I was a bit perplexed, because I didn't know of any official rules in my house. We all just did what we were supposed to, for the most part. We didn't have a list posted on the refrigerator (which is what I imagined most houses with House Rules had.) So I went home and asked my parents. Specifically, I asked my father. It is worth noting, however, that my mother concurred with his response.

The next day, I went to school with a list of the house rules. It was perhaps the first time I ever got in trouble for not doing my homework, but I became so upset that my teacher soon realized that this tearful overachiever child wasn't lying. Can you blame her? This was the list I brought into school.

1. No watching bowling on TV.
2. No watching baseball on TV.
3. No country music.

- - -

The next occasion occurred sometime when I was in high school. My friend CC had come over one weekend morning. The two of us had some kind of plans, probably picking a random country road and driving around taking pictures, and then stopping at a small-town cafe to eat lunch and take some portraits of us eating in our fabulous[ly weird] outfits, talking about Art and Life and such all the way.

But before that, we lingered in my parents' kitchen, probably grabbing a snack or drinking tea, talking to my mom. My father was upstairs in their bedroom, which was a loft type thing. The house is small, with one main floor, a basement, and the loft bedroom. It is possible to be heard at all points in the house, if you yell. And that is what my mom did.

"HEY GREG!" she called. "DO YOU WANT MARGARITAS FOR BREAKFAST?"

He responded, "ARE YOU CRAZY!?" He added, calmly, "We don't have any limeade!"

It was not, I must point out, this incident that made me realize my home was not like other homes. I thought the incident was fairly normal. It was CC's response. For he told that story to much of our acquaintance, in days and years to come, and he still tells that story, to this day, to new people that we meet, to the people to whom he introduces me.

Tuesday thought

2011-11-08T22:06:00.001-05:00

I think someone should propose legislation that defines and asserts the personhood of grown women. Or just women in general.

Monday thoughts

2011-11-07T14:39:00.003-05:00

The passion with which I dislike Daylight Savings Time is equal to the passion with which I defend and love the Oxford Comma.

It is still dark when I wake up in the morning. At least the heat was on. (I think someone changed the settings last week so that it would come on later, around the time I am leaving for work as opposed to when I am getting up for work. I haven't been able to figure out how to fix it, mostly because I'm always in a hurry, but if it stays an hour behind, that's fine with me.

It was very light when I left for work, and it wasn't as cold when I waited for the bus. This made me more disoriented than happy.

Because it will just go back to being dark when I leave for work in the morning.

And it will be dark when I get home from work. I do not work late.

On the bright side, I found out today that some construction will be completed in March that will enable me to take the MAX and the streetcar to work. If this is all in the Free Rail Zone, then I won't have to pay to take mass transit to work. Which means mass transit will be cheaper than driving. Yay!!!!!!

There was something else, but I forgot. I'm tired. It is a tired hour-off post-crazy-weekend house-is-messy no-food-for-the-week-got-made kind of Monday.

The Weekend of Not According to Plan

2011-11-06T23:47:00.004-05:00

Walking to dinner, I realized I had not posted yet today! I feel the need to note that the timing on my blog sometimes is set to Eastern time, and sometimes makes it look like I posted a day late when I did not!!!!!

So anyway, here's a quick post before Blogger says I posted on Monday and not Sunday.

The weekend did not go according to plan. At. All. I figured I would get some errands done, relax, get some housework done, and do most, if not all, of my reading for Thursday night's class.

The errands I had planned were not so ambitious that they should have detracted from my ability to do housework and homework and relax.

And there was even talk of going to Hood River with Handsome Man, which would have been a day trip, and STILL having enough time for all of these things I had planned. And relaxing.

Ha ha HA.

On Friday, Handsome Man and I went out to dinner for his birthday. More on that later. I had planned that, when we got home, I would get some stock fixin's in the crock pot for the soup I planned to make for dinner on Saturday night. But we got home late and I was too tired, so that didn't happen.

I arose on Saturday bright and early! I got up and industriously made tea and ate a breakfast muffin. And then...I don't know what happened. Suddenly it was two hours later. I was still in pajamas with messy hair. Nothing was in the crock pot. No laundry was sorted, let alone started. No textbooks were read.

A little later than planned, I was off to the farmers' market! Fortunately, this was late enough that it had stopped raining and my friend and I were able to walk there. We walked a mile and a half to the farmers' market. Then we walked to Trader Joe's. Then we walked to a bakery where we ate delicious buttery sugary pastries, because we had earned them! Then we walked another mile and a half home.

It was just after 12:30, so I threw my bags of food on the kitchen floor, thinking it was cold enough in the house and I wouldn't be gone that long because the credit union closes at 1 anyway, and I grabbed my purse making sure I had two forms of ID and my keys and my phone, and I ran to the credit union to open an account.

I did not know it was Move Your Money Day.

I was at the credit union for over an hour. With no knitting, no book, no homework, nothing to write on, and a not-so-smart phone that was out of battery.

I spent a really long time carefully reading the credit card application. And, because I was growing hungry and sort of low on blood sugar, I spent much longer than someone with two and a quarter degrees ought to, miscalculating my monthly income.

An hour and change later, I was walking home, not quite crashing from low blood sugar, my spirits and sanity buoyed by the joy of joining the credit union. There were people complaining about their stupid big banks and people wearing signs that said, "99." I was not wearing a sign like that.

Then some drama happened that I shouldn't talk about for awhile, but I promise to tell you someday.

So then I was MAD. and CRANKY. And TIRED. AND HUNGRY. The problem with low blood sugar is that you become too tired and cranky and disoriented to effectively complete simple tasks like reheating soup. (Note: I do not have a microwave.) So after an hour or so (I may have had the pan on the wrong burner for 45 minutes while I typed crankily vague things on Facebook), I ate soup and tried to get things done!

But I had the beginnings of a bad cold! (Yeah, I know...first the flu, now a cold. Well, it's November.)

Today was similar. Long story short, we did not make it to Hood River. We did make it to the mall, however. We rode the MAX, which has not yet lost its novelty for me. Being crowded into a car with booze-smelling people and smokey-smelling people ranting loudly into phone (or worse, into thin air) has not yet made me lose my delight at living in a place where I can take mass transit downtown...for FREE.

(Non-Oregonians, the MAX is not always free. There is just this part of town where it is free. Sometimes, I walk very far (IN BROAD DAYLIGHT NOT AFTER DARK OR THROUGH BAD NEIGHBORHOODS, FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WORRY) to be able to take the MAX for free, instead of riding the bus.

Giving up on productivity, we did not make dinner at home. We ate a snack, and then split some happy hour stuff. Then we went to the BEST ICE CREAM PLACE IN OREGON if not THE WORLD, which I will also tell you about later.

I'm hoping to get my weekend chores done after work tomorrow. If not, well, at least there was ice cream.

The walls of the bathroom at the ice cream place were decorated with reproductions of postcard correspondence from about a hundred years ago. My favorite is the one with the cat and dog, that says something like, "Oh dear, I do wish he would go home."

Possible stories to share

2011-11-05T12:47:00.003-04:00

A year ago at this time, I was in New Jersey for a visit and to visit public gardens to gather information for the place I was working. Shortly after, I became aware that things were going downhill at that place. I was devastated, to say the least. I didn't see alternate paths; I saw a dead end. Now that I'm pulled out of that dim place and into well-lit reality, I see the multitude of paths and options. It wasn't, "Stay in Portland doing this one thing or move back to New Jersey ashamed."

Two years ago at this time, I had just made a dramatic escape. Actually, I was in Honolulu, but a few days before that, I was making a dramatic escape aided by a friend who is no longer a friend. You can see how there are a lot of stories there. I waited to tell the story of that escape because I was afraid of it being discovered by one of the other people involved. But two years have passed, so I guess it's time now. I started thinking and talking about it on Halloween, and I could have written it then as, "a real life scary story." Well, only a little scary.

So in a way, both stories seem to be about making an escape--feeling trapped, like one's options are limited, and finding relief.

And since three years ago, that year I was concurrently becoming miserable in and plotting an escape from New Jersey, trap and escape was an ongoing theme. That's kind of sad!

I don't feel trapped at all now. I'm not longing for any kind of escape. Perhaps that theme has finally run its course. Now is a time to tell you the stories. But first, I'm going to the farmers' market and then, if there's still time, to the credit union to open an account. (I had to really think about this - I didn't want to do it just because all the cool kids are. But the checking is really free and the credit card has rewards AND the APR is 10% lower than that of my current rewards card.) So I guess there's a little bit of escape happening right now - escape from Chase Bank.

Now I present you with a completely unrelated picture of challah bread that I made a month or so ago. That black part in the corner isn't burned bread, it's where I got overzealous with poppy seeds.

It's official!

2011-11-04T13:48:00.002-04:00

I signed up for NaBloPoMo!

That is not all I plan to say today. I just wanted to make this brief announcement!

I am trying to test this badge -it's not showing up in the sidebar for some reason!

Another sunny fall day

2011-11-03T12:59:00.000-04:00

I prepared for rain today, but it's been mostly cloudy, at most. I had a story to write, but today I don't have time, so here are some pictures. Unfortunately, these have been the kind of hazy partly (or mostly) cloudy days that don't appear faithfully in pictures. A stunning sunset, sadly, looks like this:

Even when it's not cloudy, the haze can seriously impede the imposing nature of Mount Hood, which seemed to take up at least 75% of the sky in real life:

The following was bright and colorful in real life. Just trust me.

That is one of the views from The Grotto in NE Portland, a place worth visiting! It took me two years to get there, I'm happy I did, and I hope to go back.

Later fall mornings

2011-11-02T00:01:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's pictures were not actually FROM November 1. They were from last week, one of the few days I went anywhere (since most of the week I was home with the flu.) On November 1, when I went to the bus stop, it was actually dark. Not quite pitch black, but dark blue with a misty fog that hung from the sky to the earth. In the time I have not been writing much here, I have come to really enjoy the view of the city, which now feels like my city, that I have during my morning commute. Even if sunrise was long past, there might still be pink and orange clouds to admire twice - in the sky and in the Willamette, as reflections, over which the many bridges stretch with winking, twinkling lights of their own amidst the steadier lights of cars crossing. More recently, it has been sunrise, or perhaps just before, when I get to witness this, and it is really, really beautiful, from the bus or from a car. When I drive to work, I get to see a slightly different view. I stand on my toes and look over the heads of strangers on the bus to see out the window, like a tourist.

I was almost disappointed on dark November 1st to see that I was going to miss the sunrise over the Willamette. Maybe it was just the fog's fault. In the dark, misty blue, all I could see were lights and faint outlines of bridges and buildings. No pink or orange clouds.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! In honor of this day, I present you and my readers with a bouquet of flowers!

Fall mornings

2011-11-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

It's getting darker and darker when I wait for my bus in the mornings.

I saw this for the first time right after an e-mail exchange with a friend about the Oxford Comma. (I am pro, if you must know. Kind of rabidly pro, so more like PRO!) (My friend is, too. Though perhaps not as emphatically.) I took this picture mostly for her.

It's been awhile!

2011-10-31T00:33:00.002-04:00

I started a post last week, about how it's been sunny, and that doesn't happen very often here, so I've been busy enjoying the sun and not inside on the computer writing. I was going to include lots of pictures of ways I've been enjoying the sun. But the pictures weren't on my computer, and then I was very suddenly struck with the flu and did not have the energy to find and upload and organize the pictures.

I hadn't had the flu in years. Or maybe I have, but only for a day or so, and I've just mistaken a 24-hour bug for a really bad cold. I've had lots of bad colds. But it's been so long since I've had the flu - probably since high school - that I did not know what to expect. For example, I thought I could just stay home from work one day and then be rested and ready to go back into my routine a day later. HA HA HA. It is Day 6, and I'm still not well enough to do very much. I feel okay, as long as I'm just lounging around on the couch. It's driving me a little crazy, not being able to move around and be productive.

I'm debating signing up for NaBloPoMo in a couple of days, since this is the official blog-posting month, but that might be crazy, with a trip planned and some academic deadlines coming up. We'll see. But I will be writing more, about some of my adventures of the summer and whatever comes up this fall.

More later!

A few happy things

2011-09-08T23:03:00.002-04:00

I came home from work today with dinner ready. My Handsome Roommate made these delicious rice paper rolls. They were delicious, filling, and I bet they were pretty healthy.

I went on a walk on my lunch break today. I haven't gone on a walk from work well, ever. I've only walked to PSU after work, but I've never walked around the neighborhood. It was like discovering a new world. I had never gone farther, in one direction, than the end of our block, so I imagined just a black hole after that block, or maybe the edge of the world where, if you kept going, you'd fall off and hopefully land on the back of a giant turtle. When my co-workers talked about a great coffeeshop, better than the one next door, just a few blocks down in that direction, I would just blink uncomprehendingly at them. So then my image switched from a black hole of nothingness to a black hole with a magical coffeeshop in the midst of it. Like there was nothingness, and suspended in mid-nothingness-air was a tiny sliver of sidewalk upon which was perched a coffeeshop with beams of rainbow light radiating all around it.

I found the magical coffeeshop, although I didn't go in this time (too hot), and also LOTS AND LOTS OF HILLS.

This is exciting because I have upped my goal of a 1/2 hour+ walk each day to a 1/2 hour+ walk each day that includes at least one hill. When I'm pressed for time, which has been the norm lately, I just go straight up one street by my house to the top of a hill and turn around and go home. No time for sightseeing. Now, it's getting dark so much earlier that it's hard for me to even fit in my quick hill walk.

And now I have my new work lunch break hill walk. With many, many hills for me to explore, instead of just one. I am so excited.

And finally, I walked to Safeway to get some bus tickets. All summer, I'd been able to use a student bus pass, but it expired on the 31st and the new one won't be available until the 12th. (Dumb.) I've been either scraping together change, because TriMet only accepts exact change, or driving to work when I want an extra twenty minutes in bed and/or can't find any change. (I actually hoarded change when I lived in my other apartment, sorted it by type into empty film canisters, and even divided up a few film canisters' worth of bus fare, all ready to go.) Traffic has been stupid. And hot. I don't want to sit in Friday rush hour tomorrow. Rush hour today was so hot and stupid that I finally got up the ambition to walk to Safeway and buy bus passes.

There was no one at customer service for a good ten minutes, and a bum cut in front of me on line, and a guy was rude to me because it apparently was taking me too long to buy my tickets, but other than that, it was a successful trip because I got a book of ten. (More than I need, but they don't expire.)

The Safeway only had one-zone tickets. I thought, "Well, actually, I do live in Zone One, don't I, because the bus driver never makes any announcement about changing zones, and I have been riding the bus for months now without hearing it."

The Safeway employees insisted I needed two-zone tickets. They were sure I was traveling in two zones. I said, "Aren't we in Zone 1 right now?" "I don't know, I drive now!" said one. Another said, "Yeah, Zone 2 doesn't start for (another twenty or thirty blocks in the direction opposite of that which I travel to work.)

Still, two of the three insisted I needed a two-zone ticket. What should have tipped me off is that when I said I got on the bus at a specific numbered avenue and Broadway, the street that Safeway is on, they looked at me like I had ten heads. As they were repeating to me slowly yet kindly, as though I were a likeable imbecile, the impatient man behind me called out, "Well, I'd like a book of 10 one-zone tickets!"

I didn't realize he was actually cutting in front of me until he reached around me to swipe his card through the credit card machine.

One of the kind Safeway ladies said, "You know what you can do, you can buy these tickets and then just add a nickel when you get on the bus for a two-zone ticket. They'll let you do that!" She beamed at me, and so did her co-worker.

"Okay," I said slowly, tiredly. I was confused because I was pretty darn sure I live and work in Zone 1. Also, it was hot. Also, if I really needed to add a nickel, then I was in trouble because the whole reason I was buying tickets at Safeway in the first place was because I had been failing to locate any nickels each morning.

"Okay? So you just add a nickel when you get on the bus," one of the ladies repeated.

"Yeah! What a brilliant concept!" said the impatient man snarkily, as he grabbed his tickets and dashed out of the store.

The heat had made me so tired, it was not until a few minutes later that I slowly formed the thought, "Was that man being rude?"

I should have known. It's Thursday. I have not finished telling you why yet, but a month ago I discovered that I need to stop running errands on Thursdays.

Anyway, long story short--or at least, less long--on my way home I decided to walk past my bus stop and look at the signs posted.

It is in Zone 1.

I went home and decided to check, just to be sure, that the stop by my office is also in Zone 1.

It is in Zone 1!

So, I don't know what the Safeway ladies were talking about, and I could be disappointed that I have been overpaying by a whole nickel every time I've taken the bus all of the times I didn't have a bus pass, but instead I am thrilled that not only will my book of tickets work, but I also get to save a nickel now every time I take the bus! Hooray!

Not quite the same as my Y is for... post, but a similar topic

2011-09-06T17:08:00.002-04:00

In lieu of my own writing, here's someone else's. From the most recent favorites list posted by Heidi Swanson, I found this great NYT article about "stem-to-root" cooking. Think nose-to-tail, but for plants, and therefore probably less gross. For me this was timely, because I have been surveying the plants in my garden thinking things like, "What am I going to do with the fruits that don't ripen?" and "Why don't we eat the leaves from this plant?"

I will report back to you, in a few months or so, on how pickled green strawberries turn out. It won't be for awhile, because the warm weather has returned to Portland and now there's enough summer and sun left to get the strawberries on my plants red and ripe!

HOT part two

2011-09-04T21:18:00.002-04:00

It's hot in Portland again! But not like last time, when I complained about it. It's not humid this time around. According to the weather thingy on my task bar (or whatever the Linux equivalent is) it's 88 degrees, but it's a dry and manageable 88 degrees. Shade actually feels cool and refreshing and the hot sun, in small doses, feels energizing. I love it! And the nights and early mornings are cool and cloudy. This is what it was like when I moved here two years ago. This is what I was led to believe was a normal Portland summer.

It's a bit late, but I hope this summer sticks around a little while longer!

I do love fall, and I don't mind the rain and gloom, and I moved out here partially because of the mild temperatures year round. But we got a bit cheated out of summer this year, and so as I attempt to sort my office/clothing/everything-that-isn't-shared-or-belongs-in-the-kitchen-or-bathroom room, I look at my favorite fall clothing not with happy anticipation but a loud inward sigh. I'm not looking forward to nine months of rotating the same outfits...gray dress, gray pencil skirt, different top from Old Navy matched with different wacky tights, black sweater dress on the rare below-40F winter days, different pair of knee-high boots. I haven't had enough time to wear my tank tops and strappy dresses.

But forecast for the next few days predicts high temperatures in the high 80's to 90's, so I hope to get my fill! I will wear my strappy dresses as much as possible. Maybe as temperatures cool, I can pair them with tights and cardigans and try to prolong their wearability.

Wow, this was kind of a boring post. After a month of posting every day, I guess I felt the need to check in after a few days. I have a few interesting posts drafted and outlined, but I haven't made the time to edit them yet. Now that there's no deadline, no post-by-midnight-every-day, I won't just post them in a less-edited form...which was a good thing as it kept things from lingering in my drafts folder forever. On the bright side, however, you're saved from some of my inane I-just-need-to-post-something-today posts. And also from the things I write on the days that my opinions are as big as my hair.

For one of my ten readers, I will share the following, as she has told me that my posts about food are the best. We are canning and preserving like crazy here! I think we'll be happy in the winter (and whenever we're invited to a party and don't know what to bring as a host(ess) gift, and when we need some last minute Christmas gifts) when we have jars upon jars of salsa, jam, and pickles, plus vacuum-sealed bags of dried berries and tomatoes. This may be the year that we use our pressure canner for actual pressure canning, not just hot water bath. Whole Foods had a big one day sale on ground beef (grass fed! fitting in with my current craze, which will probably not gradually die down but crash in a fury of styroam-packed Manager's Special pork loin and chicken breasts come wintertime when I'm feeling sunlight-deprived and in need of protein and cranky about how the responsibility for ethical food production has been unfairly shifted onto the consumer) so My Roommate fka Handsome Man is talking about pressure canning homemade chili con carne. We may also vacuum seal and freeze some. My mother gave us a vacuum sealer she wasn't using, and now we are vacuum seal crazed. I found myself thinking today about vacuum sealing some packets of seeds from my garden to mail as gifts to people (not too weird) and then thinking about vacuum sealing ALL of the gifts I want to send to people, like earrings.

Maybe the heat of our oven-like top-floor apartment is cooking my brain a little bit.

Jamming (and getting injured)

2011-09-01T12:34:00.003-04:00

The preserving of our farmers' market bounty continues. Last night, I made some fridge pickles and my roommate and I dehydrated our super-cheap-great-deal heirloom tomatoes. I also started to make jam, but my handsome roommate had to take over toward the end, as I gave myself a pretty bad steam burn when I lifted the lid of our canner, planning to retrieve the sterilized jars into which I'd be processing and storing Triple Crown blackberry jam.

Triple Crown is just a type of blackberries, by the way. If you have a chance to try them, I recommend that you do. They are great. They have a complex flavor and are sweeter than other blackberries, but not so sweet as to be boring. They have the characteristic blackberry tartness, too.

I've been burned by steam before, but never this badly. Now I know why my mother has always been warning me about getting burned by kitchen steam. I ran my hand under cold water for several sets of five to ten to fifteen minutes, and after awhile, Handsome Man made a late-ish run to Fred Meyer to get aloe vera burn gel...and ten pounds of sugar. Because a little superficial burn isn't going to stop me.

I had visions of myself typing with one hand at work the next day (today). I imagined my blistered left hand fingers would go nicely with the large spider bite I've had on my left wrist for close to three weeks now. (More on that later.) But when I woke up this morning, the steam burn had miraculously healed quite a bit. I completely forgot about it until some hot shower water felt extra hot (but not all that painful) on my left middle finger.

So, I will return to the kitchen and the canner tonight. The jamming will go on. This time, it will be strawberry peach from the same farm as the sweet-deal-tomatoes and the Triple Crown blackberries.

After all, I have a full tube of burn gel!

Below, a picture of our in-progress-but-looking-much-improved kitchen and our haul from the farmers' market.

Oops, had no idea those phone pictures were so blurry!

Happy September and enjoy what's left of summer! It's going to get hot again in Portland this weekend!

Multi-tasking

2011-08-31T09:08:00.000-04:00

On Monday night, I painted my nails for the first time in at least two years. I decided last week that I really wanted to paint my nails and I was hoping to paint them gray. I searched all over Portland (well, Fred Meyer) before finding at WinCo some "dries in a New York minute" cheapy stuff in the color I wanted. It's called sidewalk or pavement or something. It is sidewalk-colored and I love it.

It really does dry fast. But in case you don't have that New York minute stuff, or if a New York minute isn't fast enough, there's a kitchen appliance that may come to your aid.

From Miscellaneous

If you were ever on the fence about getting a food dehydrator, or if you'd like to be able to dry tomatoes and blueberries and strawberries and cherries (and make your own jerky! which I'm kind of afraid to do!), I'd like to tell you about another use for this wonderful appliance. While it's drying whatever you've placed inside its flying-saucer-like interior, its low-heat dry air radiates and if you're not careful, will heat up or dry out anything within a few-inches radius.

So, I have some great news. The food dehydrator is also an excellent nail dryer!

Response to comments (on flares, getting old, and getting flares at Old Navy)

2011-08-30T11:02:00.003-04:00

First of all, in case someone doing environmental scanning for Old Navy stumbles across yesterday's post and is annoyed at my use of their image, I would like to note that I am thrilled that Old Navy is selling flares and that they were on sale up to and including this weekend, so that the jeans that were marked $36.94 were actually $19.50 and because I had a $10 coupon, I got them for $9.50.

Because today Portland is behaving like it's not really August--the high is 68 today, and I have seen it warmer here in February--I wore my Hi-Rise Retro Flares to work today. I had an urge to pair it with a scarf wrapped around my hair, like Rhoda Morgenstern, but I resisted. These jeans are so comfortable. I have worn them for at least part of every day since I purchased them. I bought them on Saturday and wore them to opening night of the 15th Ave Hop House. Then I wore them on Sunday's shopping excursion. Then I wore them after work yesterday to go for my evening walk. Today, they make their first appearance in the office, along with my new flats and new gray nail polish. This is the first time I have worn nail polish in at least two years. More on that topic later.

I have always loved flares, and I hope they are here to stay. Boot cut just wasn't ever enough for me. And skinny jeans, too! I love them worn under boots!

Ellen wrote: Now I'm trying to imagine skinny jeans going out, coming back...it's too weird.

I'm sure that will happen someday, but I wish it would not. I for one am thrilled to be living in a world where flares and skinny jeans coexist. Where stonewashed denim is acceptable and so are jeans that might actually be bell bottoms. Where bright colors are okay, too! Happy happy happy!

Elena wrote (and yes, it is not lost on me that my two commenters have similar names.): Flares always annoyed me because they suck for things like hiking where the bottoms of the jeans can be in mud or water.

Elena, you are right. On that note, I would like to point out that flare jeans, as I learned the hard way on Sunday's shopping excursion, are not the appropriate jeans to wear to the bottle return at WinCo. There are some things worse than mud or water into which the bottoms of your flare jeans can drag.

On aging

2011-08-29T21:26:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago, Old Navy sent me an e-mail advertising their upcoming denim sale. What caught my attention was the wording on the following graphic:

You might have to click for that to be legible, but what it says is, "Featuring The New Flares"!!!!!!!!

Does anyone else born in the early-to-mid-80's understand why this was surprising to me? Because since when are flares new!?

Flares were popular for most of my fashion-conscious years. I believe I was in sixth grade when they were first considered in style. This was the same year that "the Rachel" hairstyle was cool. Well, flared jeans outlived the Rachel and claw/butterfly hairclips that were so fashionable in 1996, and their heyday continued through my middle school years, into and to the end of my high school years, and even well into my college years--both times I went to college. It was not until I was near the completion of my second degree that flares gave way to skinny jeans.

Flares had gone beyond being merely "in." They had become the norm. They were as jeans themselves--always cool and simply basic.

I believe there was a time when flares coexisted with skinny jeans, or this may have been after they had shrunken down to "boot cut"'s.

Well, now they're back. Apparently.

I can't say I'm disappointed. They are comfortable and, on hourglass or other wide-hipped figures, flattering.

I took advantage of that denim sale and a $10 coupon and I bought a pair of "new" flares this weekend. These were new-old flares. Old Navy calls them, "Hi-Rise Retro Flare Jeans." They are probably not far from bell bottoms.

But I have to note that I have now lived to see something come into style, be REALLY REALLY in style, go out, and come back again. I think this is a sign of getting old. Moreso than learning to drive a car, or renting one's first apartment, or even working at one's first full-time job or graduating with an advance degree or marriage or kids or owning a home, it is when you have lived to see (and wear) a type of clothing come into, go out of, and come back into style, that you are truly an adult.

The end of summer?

2011-08-28T23:28:00.000-04:00

After all that complaining about the heat, it seems that tomorrow the weather will return to Portland summer cool temperatures. The high for Wednesday is only 68, and it will be under 80 most of the week. I am not complaining! Especially as long as it stays sunny.

A happy summer

2011-08-27T14:06:00.004-04:00

Despite all of the "opinions" I have been writing lately, it has been a happy summer break. I would like to note that my summer vacation only started about a week and a half ago, so that's what I am talking about.

Since turning in my last assignment, I have been able to spend time on the things I like. I have been able to at least partially organize my office - you can now move around in it, and if you can't find something, there are rationally-thrown-together piles in which you can look. (A pile of clothing, a pile of things to sew, a pile of papers, a few boxes of stuff that are organized (such as box of wires), and a few boxes of "unsorted stuff that isn't papers or clothing or office supplies or belongs in the kitchen or bathroom."

I have had time to read on the bus, even though some days my brain is so tired that all I can comprehend are cookbooks and my free magazines from Oregon's tourism board (or whatever they call it.)

Since summer classes ended, I have been working five days a week and starting earlier, which means I am on a different bus route. My morning bus driver is so friendly, I wrote a note to TriMet to tell them about it. It's not just that it's nice to have someone say, "Good morning" to you, it's that it's nice to hear that person be sincerely friendly to other people. I think it puts most of the passengers in a good mood, which makes the ride more enjoyable for all of us.

Going to work an hour earlier wouldn't usually make me tired, if I hadn't been working on projects so much when I got home. Sometimes, my new roommate and I undertake organization or cleaning projects, assembling things from IKEA and then filling them with the contents of our box city. Other times, I or we are spending a lot of time cooking, but then we have leftovers later in the week. Other other times, we are canning and preserving. We have canned marionberry salsa, marionberry chipotle sauce, sour cherry pickles, and tomato salsa.

I keep walking away from the computer in the middle of typing this. Since I started writing, I have taken a shower, eaten breakfast, gone to the farmers market, made several phone calls to New Jersey checking on the status of Hurricane Irene, picked most of the tomatoes off of the dehydrator trays, and eaten lunch. So I am going to wrap this up.

The tomatoes can be a good thing to talk about, briefly, as a small sample of my (potentially our) happiness. We have made so many good salads. We have dehydrated all that our dehydrator could hold. (We have not canned any whole or frozen any, not yet. We need another box.) The best two salads have been a vegan version of my grandmere's tomato and egg salad (subbing avocado for some of the egg and soft tofu lightly sauteed in canola oil with asafoetida and mustard seed for the rest of the egg - some people thought it WAS hardboiled egg whites) and #15 of Mark Bittman's summer salads from two years ago. Cut cherry or grape tomatoes in half; toss with soy sauce, a bit of dark sesame oil and basil or cilantro. I love this — the tomato juice-soy thing is incredible. I have been on a toasted sesame oil kick this summer, and I ran out. So I toasted some sesame seeds and mixed them with cheap-o Hy-Top brand canola oil. Guess what? It worked! We had cilantro from WinCo (not only is it $0.38, but it lasts forever. Why is this? Is WinCo cilantro radioactive or something?) and Thai basil in the roof garden.

Another small thing that represents all of my big happiness is that Thai basil. This is the first summer that I have managed to plant Thai basil and actually get it to grow. I have a large plant. And now that I have so much of it, I am overwhelmed. I am at a loss for what to do with it. Aside from making a big Thai feast, or tossing it into small salads, I don't know what to do with it besides admire its purple and green beauty.

I am reading good books, but more on that later.

HOT

2011-08-26T11:12:00.007-04:00

is what Portland is right now. HOT. And for Portland, that is not a common state.

What's more uncommon, and what's made the heat somewhat unpleasant, is that it's muggy.

I thought I was losing my mind. Or that perhaps so many summer weeks below 80 degrees had turned me into a baby, had made me lose my East Coast tolerance for heat. You see, typically Portland summers are a pleasant 75-83 with occasional 90's and a very brief spell in the 100's, but typically Portland summers are also our dry season, without humidity and therefore such high temperatures are tolerable.

The one note I will make, however, is that the sun is very intense in a dry climate. I don't know what it is, but in very sunny places on summer days, even when it is not quite 80 degrees, I feel like I am baking, like the sun is chasing me, and because I am not used to dry heat, I get very dehydrated.

The past few days, it has been in the upper 80's, which would be miserable in humid New Jersey, where I've always felt that once you hit a certain threshold temperature, like 86, it was all the same. 86, 96, and 106 in New Jersey are just hot, sticky, and uncomfortable. Typically, I wouldn't even think that the upper 80's were hot in Portland, not unless I was in a car oven or in a place with a lot of hot, black pavement and not a lot of trees.

I could not figure out why I have been so hot. I thought perhaps our apartment just has that oven effect like a car would have. Or that maybe it's because I wait for my bus in the afternoons on a bench in the middle of some highway interchanges, so there is a lot of blacktop and not a lot of shade.

I drink water constantly, but every day headaches have plagued me and I am starting to think it is from dehydration.

A friend inquired yesterday, was it just her? had she become intolerant to the heat? and my boyfriend responded, "It's been muggy, too."

Muggy! The quality that makes upper 80's heat unpleasant or even unbearable. Of course!

The three of us all said YEAH! IT HAS BEEN MUGGY. It was as though I had been refusing to acknowledge this because my little brain couldn't fathom that summer in Portland could be hot AND humid. My brain had previously been limited to the belief that in Portland, humidity only comes with the rain or with the morning marine clouds and can not coexist with the sun.

It has been the kind of hot in which no deodorant, no end of reapplications thereof, is at all effective. It is a great equalizer; we all stink. Rich, poor, homeless, jobless, well-dressed commuter whose ID tag, hanging from the same lanyard as their transit pass, reads, "Head of _______ Department." The city buses are traveling bins of B.O. rolling through the streets of Portland. It's okay, though, because everyone's noses have adapted. The extremely smelly people now blend into the wave of sweat stench hanging in the air above the city sidewalks and are for once indistinct from the crowd.

It is so hot that when I come home to find the air conditioner left on when my boyfriend went to work, I do not say, "Why does Handsome Man hate the Earth?" but instead, "That wonderful Handsome Man wanted me to come home to a cool bedroom."

Long tired day

2011-08-25T00:51:00.001-04:00

I feel like its biggest accomplishment was the purchase of a muffin tin for $1.99 at Goodwill.

Still responding to comments

2011-08-24T12:15:00.003-04:00

Last week, Ellen commented on my post about cooking Rocky Mountain yak oysters. She wrote, "As always I love your cooking posts the best." Ellen has expressed such sentiments before, but I always forget. My posts about cooking, especially when they don't include a silly mishap, are usually my filler posts. When I have nothing else to write about, or only things to write about that will take more time than I have, the one creative outlet to which I consistently have access, is cooking, and so I default to writing about that. It is nice to know that readers like those at all, especially "the best"! Also, Ellen, I enjoy all of your posts, and it makes me happy, when I look at my blog statistics, and I see that one reader from Macedonia and I know who exactly who it is.

Between the Facebook comments, blog comments, and e-mails, you have all convinced me that while the skins of tomatoes will not poison anyone, it's better not to include them in my canning, and it's not even a big deal to remove them (as my handsome roommate had me believe.)

Canning tomatoes: Do I really have to peel them!?

2011-08-23T00:17:00.002-04:00

That's all I have to say for today. I pose this question to the blogging world. I got a great deal on a big box of tomatoes at the market on Saturday, and I want to preserve some of them before their delicious peak-ripeness caves to rot and mold. I would love to can them as plain old summer tomatoes, not mask their delicious flavor with spices to turn them into salsa or something like that. But all of the recipes, and people we know, say that one must must MUST peel the tomatoes to can them.

Why?

All I can find is that is has something to do with texture. I never peel or seed tomatoes when I am told to do so. I don't see the point. I like them.

But before we go messing with this, I wanted to make sure that canned tomato skins don't do something horrible like grow a hateful soul and taint the cans with the taste of rotten eggs, or give everyone Zombie Botulism.

What do you think, bloggers and canners?

What character would you want to have over for dinner and what would you cook?

2011-08-22T11:20:00.002-04:00

The title is today's prompt from NaBloPoMo. My answer is Anne Shirley and an Indian curry (mild, with hot sauce on the side, for the late nineteenth century palate) with all the appropriate first courses and sides. Because it would blow her mind, and then she'd have a really great way of describing it. I'd love to hear her "poetical" description of dal.

A correction!

2011-08-21T14:33:00.005-04:00

So, it turns out that Trader Joe's refused to sign the agreement, but that doesn't it's supporting unethical tomato growers. They released a statement which seems perfectly reasonable to me, explaining what they actually do in terms of tomato purchases, and why they will not sign an agreement that they describe as, "overreaching, ambiguous and improper." Thank you for your transparency, Trader Joe's!

(I think I might change my "rant" label to just "opinion.")

Continuation of yesterday's comments

2011-08-21T13:41:00.004-04:00

I was originally planning to continue to write about how there is no cruelty-free diet, because even in the production of plant-based foods, animals die. We can only do our best. We can't be perfect.

More importantly and more immediately, there's cruelty in our diets from the vegetables we eat that I find difficult to ignore, and that's cruelty to humans. I have a vague anxiety whenever I consider buying conventional tomatoes from Mexico in the wintertime, ever since I read The Death of Ramon Gonzalez by Angus Wright for an ecology class in college. I recall either from the book or from the class discussions that followed, hearing that the tomato fields of California aren't that much better. Laws exist in the United States, but they are broken and not enforced. I hadn't thought much about Florida.

I listen to The Splendid Table when I clean or cook, when I want background noise that is calm and pleasant and not going to cause me anxiety like the news might. However, I had to stop listening in the middle of this week's podcast because of the first topic--winter tomatoes from Florida. At first, I was cleaning, thinking, "Yeah, I know, cardboard, blah blah blah." Then came the discussion of pesticides. Not exactly pleasant or calming, but I thought I knew what I was going to hear. And then I heard the account of three pregnant women who were forced to work in the fields, where laws regarding pesticides and human workers are consistently broken, or they would lose their homes. All three women gave birth to children with awful birth defects; one died.

That's the real cost of winter tomatoes. While the cost of organic vegetables seems outrageous, I think that human cost is what's really outrageous.

But let's be realistic. Most people can not pay that former outrageous price. They are stuck with the latter. And this doesn't just come up with respect to cardboard-tasting fresh tomatoes in winter, something we can arguably live without. The circumstances are not always identical, but choices between cash costs and ethical costs arise with food besides animals and tomatoes, perhaps all of our food. To choose not to support such practices costs more money than a lot of Americans can afford to spend on food. That's a battle that's worth fighting--making a less cruel diet accessible to people who want to make that choice, regardless of income.

"Grow your own and then can it" is not the answer. For many people, that's not a viable choice, either. I'm tired of hearing that argument.

So, back to The Splendid Table. After the report of pesticides and the three pregnant women, I got to the part about slavery. That's when I had to hit pause, because this podcast was neither calming nor pleasant! I definitely didn't know about modern day slavery, in America, as a widespread factor in the production of winter tomatoes. Tomatoes definitely aren't worth that!

Before I wrote about it, I decided to do a little research so I could provide you with some text. Here's something brief from NPR. What I learned from that link is that McDonald's and Burger King have signed an agreement not to work with "growers that support serious worker abuses" and even better, to pay an amount of money for their tomatoes that will enable growers to pay the workers a living wage. I think that is great!

But Trader Joe's won't sign that agreement.

Trader Joe's, I am very disappointed in you. I feel let down. I've always admired you for making ethical food choices available to people who aren't wealthy (or in their twenties with low expenses and/or parental subsidies.) You were my favorite grocery store. I don't care if Whole Foods charges more for the same exact tempeh that you sell, Trader Joe's. I'm going to think twice about buying your tempeh if you continue to support slavery. Whole Foods signed that agreement! Please prove me wrong, and go back to being my favorite store, and sign that agreement! Those tomatoes taste like cardboard, anyway!

Instead of boycotting Trader Joe's, maybe I'll bring them one of the letters you can print out from this website. Maybe I'll bring one to Fred Meyer, too, to get the message to Kroger (who has not refused to sign the agreement, by the way. They just haven't yet.)

Comments on Y is for/nose-to-tail and the book I finished yesterday

2011-08-20T16:36:00.003-04:00

I intend to write a short post today. I'm writing now, before I start my weekend chores, because if I wait too long I might forget and ruin the whole NaBloPoMo thing, and because I've noticed from monitoring my pageviews that no one really reads blogs that much on the weekend. Even though that's when I have the most time to write something lengthy (and that tends to be when I catch up on blogs), it's when people have better things to do. In fact, so do I. Now that school is really over for the summer (coinciding with back-to-school sales and everyone everywhere except Portland writing about how "summer is over") I have hikes to take and bread to bake and piles of junk to unmake. (Those first two rhymes were unintentional, but then when I noticed they rhymed, I thought, "instead of 'crap to unpack,' why not keep the whimsy going?"

I intended to just tell you, sticking with the fiction theme of NaBloPoMo for this month, about the book I finished reading on the bus yesterday. But I got some comments on yesterday's post, and I want to address those, too. And talk more about the last book I read. (Which was actually nonfiction.)

One friend commented that she is eating more vegetarian lately, which I did not know. She wrote, "I think I worry most about my meal living a miserable life; I'd almost be happier eating an animal that enjoyed its life!" The "almost" is what got me thinking. Most people don't say that; most people just preach about the wonders of eating happy animals. Which brings up question that not many people ask. Except maybe my mother, who won't buy meat at the farmers' market because they always include photographs of the happy little cute piglets and how can you buy bacon when you are looking that cute little piglet in the face!? Pine Mountain Ranch does not do any such thing. It's just coolers and text. GOOD.

That question is, "If the animal is so happy, why is it humane to slaughter and eat it?" Why not just leave it alone?

It's worth interjecting right here that there is no cruelty-free way to eat and therefore, live. Even if you are vegan. Lots of living things die in the production of your plant-based diet; even organic isn't pesticide/killing free. (Which is why I think the no honey rule of being vegan is kind of BS. JUST THE HONEY PART. Not all vegan things.)

Oops. It's time for me to clean the kitchen now. I guess I'll finish this thought tomorrow. Now I know what I'm going to write about tomorrow! So I'll end on that contentious note in which I might piss off the vegans who probably aren't reading my blog on a Saturday anyway, and tomorrow I'll pick up on the cruelty-free eating/meat topic and also respond to another comment. And also tell you about the latest book I read, In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, which I finished on the TriMet bus yesterday.

I also want to tell you that I had a bad dream last night that instead of merely writing about my experience cooking yak testicles, I also wrote a lot about human testicles, including lots of over-the-top crude humor and maybe some personal details, and it was only after some family members read it that I realized my horrible mistake. I woke up with a slight feeling of dread, and when I read your comments, Meg and Ellen, and realized I'd only written about yaks, I was quite relieved.

Y is for...

2011-08-19T13:00:00.001-04:00

Today's NaBloPoMo prompt is, "Do you like paper books or e-readers?" My answer is, "Yes!"

It was the answer to yesterday's prompt that led to the incident about which I am going to write today. Yesterday's prompt was, "What was the last book you read?" and my answer was The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. As I mentioned yesterday, Kimball's writings on fresh, local food, and the at times joyous preparation of it, had me dreamily picking up bundles and bags of all kinds of unplanned things at three farmers' markets last weekend. I erroneously wrote yesterday that we'd made a stir fry with yam leaves. I did buy yam leaves, but I completely forgot to use them in the stir fry. What we actually stir-fried the other night was half a bunch of lamb's quarters that I'd forgotten I'd bought. When I was searching for greens to complement the purslane in the fattoush I was making last night, I thought, "It's weird that these yam leaves have flower buds on them that kind of look more like amaranth flowers than anything else." And then I realized there was another, larger bundle of greens at the bottom of the crisper drawer, hiding under the celery. Oops.

I told you that I'd purchased two three letter words that begin with "y-a" at the farmers' market that weekend. Yam leaves (which we still haven't eaten) and the second was to be a surprise.

Pine Mountain Ranch has a table at our local farmers market. It was from them that I bought the chicken about which I raved back in the fall. They also sell beef and meat from a variety of other animals such as bison and yak.

In addition to waxing poetic on the pleasures of eating pasture-raised meat, Kristin Kimball also writes, in a short section of The Dirty Life, about her forays into nose-to-tail cookery, making it sound more pleasant than you'd expect. She writes particularly complimentary things about Rocky Mountain oysters made at home. Her description of that experience made it sound, to someone who has had that dish at a restaurant only, kind of like an appealing adventure. It was with this in my head that I approached the Pine Mountain Ranch table last Sunday, originally planning to only buy a steak.

Yup.

I hadn't actually planned on buying them. I just commented on their presence on the price list, and the girl said, "Oh yeah! we have those!" and grabbed them out of the cooler, an innocuous-looking package that belied the blood and flesh within. She plopped them next to the package of skirt steak I'd already picked out. The white paper of the package was stamped with the word, "YAK," below which was written in neat black Sharpie, "testicles."

Nose-to-tail cuisine appeals to me in theory. It's something I've tried to get myself to toughen up and start doing. It's one thing to eat organs and such; it's quite another to make them yourself. It's not the amount of blood in the package, but the appearance of the meat itself, looking less like a steak and more like a disembodied fragment of something that was once alive, that makes this act feel a bit strange. Even though, I tell myself, it should not be strange. What is really strange, I say, is not acknowledging that the thing you are eating is a formerly living animal. That disconnect is strange, and the reconnection is what is truly normal. Yeah. In theory.

I talked about my yak ball ambitions throughout the week; I may have even boasted about them. Until Wednesday night, after a discussion with Handsome Man in which we decided we'd have them for dinner tomorrow along with the fattoush (Lebanese purslane and pita salad) I'd planned to make. At this point, I started to get a little nervous about our planned dinner adventure, and thought I'd better do some research and perhaps find a recipe. This blog post, reporting on how, of all the balls you can eat, yak balls are the greatest!, alleviated my concerns a little bit.

Then I opened the package. [Note: I made the picture extra small, since most people don't want to look at pictures of raw animal junk. But if you're reading this for some information on cooking this very thing, then go ahead and click the picture or the link for some pictures. So you know what to expect.]

From Yak balls

I'll spare you most of the details, but I will tell you that, based on what I remember from having Rocky Mountain oysters at a restaurant, I sliced them. Which was weird. I made a simple batter out of flour, cornmeal, salt, pepper, a beaten egg, and--when I realized that you're supposed to dip the thing you're frying into the egg and then the flour, not make one cement-like batter -- I added yogurt whey to the batter to make it thinner. This is not because I have an affinity for yogurt whey. It is because we are out of milk, cream, soy milk, almond milk, or anything faintly resembling milk other than the watery whey that had separated from the rest of the contents of a Brown Cow container. Then, I fried them in canola oil.

They were delicious.

We are going to ask the farmers' market staff for advice - such as if I was really supposed to skin and slice them - and we are going to make them again.

The last book I read

2011-08-18T13:48:00.006-04:00

Today's prompt is, "What was the last book you read?" Funny you should ask that, NaBloPoMo, because that is relevant to what I planned to write about this week. The last book I read was The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, a memoir by a city-girl-turned-farmer (to oversimplify things) about her first year with her now husband, starting a community-supported full food farm in upstate New York.

The book describes, along with the trials and tribulations of farming in the 21st century, the wealth of delicious food that comes with a lifestyle that in all other respects would be viewed as anything but wealthy, and the accompanying joy the preparation of that food brings. These descriptions are probably what inspired my crazy farmers market shopping spree last weekend. We have been enjoying the benefits (and work!) from that all week. In some ways, we are rushing to prepare it all before it goes bad. With farmers market produce, you never know if it's going to last a really really really long time, because it's so fresh, or if it's going to go bad in a day, because it is some special variety that maybe tastes great but doesn't last long and also it was picked at the peak of ripeness and then rode in a truck and then sat in the hot sun and then bounced around in my market bag all the way home. At least, this is my experience.

The book made the preparation of such food for someone you love seem like such a joyous act. It made me want to do that very thing! So I bought some grass-fed steak. More on that later.

When I go to these markets, I also impulsively purchase things I've never heard of before, especially if they are only $2, whether the farmer tells me it's something wonderful and special or even if the farmer (who is really a hired market helper) tells me, "I have no idea if that's any good. I've never had it before." In that category this week, I have two kinds of greens--bietola, an Italian green, and yam leaves, about which all I currently know is, "Use them in stir fries."

Last night we had the yam leaves. They were good! That's all I can tell you today, because I have another writing project to work on. But I can tell you that my next adventure, which I expect to report back to you in tomorrow's post, was inspired by the last book I read, involves something purchased over the weekend at the farmers market, and it begins with the same letters as the thing I just told you about (yam leaves). See you tomorrow!

Correction on French Cuisine and TriMet

2011-08-17T14:47:00.008-04:00

Earlier this month, I wrote about and posted my grandmere's recipe for clafoutis. The translated version I had was from my mother, and it was incomplete. My mother wrote to include the previously omitted details, and now I am sharing them with you.

Below is the revised Recette de Clafoutis:

CLAFOUTI-MIMA's

10 TBSP FLOUR
8 TBSP SUGAR
6 TBSP MILK
4 TSP OIL
2-3 EGGS
1 TBSP
BAKING POWDER
VANILLA
And according to Grandmere the most important ingredient, a pinch of salt!

MIX AND ADD FRUIT.
COOK IN A PIE PLATE AT ~~I don't have that. oops.~~Temp 450 degrees for 15 mins and then 325 for 45 mins to 1 hour or when cooked.

If you cannot stomach the pits of cherries, other fruit works well in this recipe. My mother recommends pears. Peaches also work.

Also, I spoke too soon about the bus. Perhaps not my recent praise of TriMet, but my evaluation of my new bus route and driver was premature. The same driver took me home yesterday, and he was neither as friendly or as calm as he'd been the day before. He scrutinized my bus pass (which bus drivers never do; you could show them a credit card or a post it note and they'd probably still let you on) and then, as I walked to my seat, called me back so he could see it AGAIN. Dude, you saw it yesterday! It wasn't a problem yesterday, was it? And I know I made myself memorable, because I have big hair and crazy boots, I was running, and I am the only person at this stop! After that, the driver who had such steadiness and serenity the previous afternoon became possessed by a fever of brake slamming. Even after the passenger who reeked of his own urine left the seat next to me and the bus altogether, I felt dangerously nauseous due to the the constant jerky brake-slamming. I never get carsick. Very little reading of months-old Newsweek got accomplished during that bus ride.

Today's prompt is: Talk about your favourite bookstore. I wish I had a good answer for this. I just don't have one. The closest thing I have to a favorite bookstore is the Multnomah County Library. Of course, like any book-loving Portlander, I like Powell's. I like the Hawthorne location, because it's smaller, more manageable, with a great selection of postcards and locally-designed greeting cards. I rarely leave that store without making an unplanned purchase.

Right after I got my drivers license, I liked going to the Montclair Book Center, a huuuuuuuuge store on Glenridge Ave with lots and lots and lots of used book center. Before I had a drivers license, my bookstore of choice was the small store in my hometown. Every summer after I turned fourteen, I would bring to the store a typed copy of my resume (which at that time consisted of things like, "4.0 GPA" and "Youngest assistant editor of SHS Art and Literary Magazine since 1979"). Every summer, they would politely tell me that they did not have any openings, and I would wonder, why!? couldn't they just give me a few hours a week anyway!? Because I knew nothing about business. Not until I was sixteen and started running my own. And even then, when I had a successful piano teaching business, I would still bring my resume to the Sparta Book Shop at the beginning of every summer.

5 Things for Tuesday

2011-08-16T01:45:00.008-04:00

1. NaBloPoMo Daily Prompt Today's prompt is: Do you prefer to own books or borrow them from a friend or the library? My answer is that of those three things, I least prefer to borrow books from a friend. I am too afraid of damaging them. Why I do not have this fear when it comes to library books (other than the fact that those books are usually hardcover and plastic-wrapped) is a mystery. Maybe it's because I can hide behind the semi-anonymity of a many-digit library card number. I don't mind owning books, especially e-books, but because I have moved so much in the last two years, I try not to acquire too much bulky stuff.

2. More Love for TriMet My new hours at work have me taking the bus at different times. So far, the morning and afternoon bus drivers are friendly and polite. No break-slamming pedestrian-narrowly-missing crazies. You know what I'm talking about, if you've ever taken TriMet (and probably other city buses will give you the same experience.) The bus drivers that are drunk with their newfound power and seem to relish barking at riders to get behind the yellow line, if they take too long fumbling for their bus fare; and shaking the head, with a smile, as they close the door in the face of a running would-be passenger. The ones that, if you pull the yellow cord too late, say, "Sorry, I can't turn back time!" Um...anyway. None of those on my route. The nice thing about the earlier times, too, is that there are seats on the bus, both ways, so I can read my outdated Newsweeks. I just read an article about how Osama bin Laden was still at large.

3. More Nonfiction Another of my odd choices of bus time reading is travel magazines. Except not the ones you pay for. The free ones that some Oregon agency puts together and has out at rest areas. I always have collected them (recycling them at appropriate times, not hoarding them) and on our last Southern Oregon Adventure (to be documented in full shortly), I actually read some of them and they came in handy. That was how we learned about things to do in and around Klamath Falls and that was how we learned about Newberry Volcanic National Monument. It finally dawned on me that this knowledge will be of more use to me if I have it before we set out on, or even start planning trips, instead of while we're on the road and short on time. At first, I thought it might be too dorky to read these touristy things on the bus, but then I thought, "Who cares?" People bring trash bags full of recycling onto the bus. Yesterday I saw a guy with a huge container of animal crackers. There is a guy who wears pink and pigtails, and I saw him again wearing a fashionable combat boots and green jacket ensemble. (I wanted to tell him that his eye makeup looked great, and that I thought he looked good, like some male rock stars, but something tells me, based on the previous pink and pigtail outfit, that he might not have found that last part to be a compliment. Well, the outfit worked, is my point, but that doesn't mean everyone thinks so, or that people won't stare.) My point is, there are plenty of odd things for people to look at besides my dorky guide to Central Oregon that is full of ads for resorts and expensive stuff in Sunriver.

4. This morning, someone asked me if I lost weight. I think this was the first time someone asked, and I said, happily, YES!!!!

5. Experiment in Baguette Baking I'm warning you now, you might not want to look at the picture. I tried to make buckwheat baguettes, and not the recipe from Local Breads that so many food bloggers have raved about. (That was all that came up when I searched for a recipe.) So, I used my best judgment and the notes on my baguette recipe for "adding up to 1/3 of an alternate flour."

First of all, they didn't rise, after I'd rolled them out. For some reason, I rolled them really long and thin, and they were too long for my pan. I tried to braid or roll them, but I was too rushed to do so carefully. Also, buckwheat flour is a dark gray, almost black.

The result is not quite aesthetically pleasing. And one final warning, the first thought that came in my head when I saw them was, "These baguettes look obscene!" I feel like certain judges would express disapproval, if they saw them. Perhaps because they reminded me of a prompt for drawing that I once saw in a party game ("Squiggly lines having sex"), the first words that popped into my head were, "Condemnation of these baguettes has ancient roots. Thirteen states have prohibited these baguettes, and four enforce prohibition against these baguettes." So, now that you have been warned, scroll down IF YOU DARE.

Here is a picture of my new kitchen as a buffer:

AAAHHHH!!!!!

But they tasted good!

TriMet + Sarah = BFFs

2011-08-15T16:15:00.003-04:00

Today's NaBloPoMo prompt is, "What is your favourite place to read?" (Yes, it's spelled the British way.) I had to think about this, because lately I grab my time to read in short bursts. I read before I fall asleep at night. Sometimes, I read on my lunch break, so the place would be the break room. Neither of these are my favorite, but are rather the places I read out of necessity. I'd love to say that I read in the park, and provide both a poetic description and sunlit, green photos of that park, but it doesn't exist. I can't recall the last time I read in a park. Unless the Park Blocks at PSU count. And then usually I decide it's quiet and less filled with panhandlers to just go inside the Student Union Building.

My favorite place, at least for now, to grab a few minutes to read a few pages in between tasks and places, is the bus.

For the first three months of my job, I drove. It didn't occur to me to take the bus, because the only bus stops near work, of which I was aware, were for lines that don't run within a mile of my house, or they were on the other side of a highway that would be treacherous, if not impossible, to cross.

Then my car started stalling. First, it stalled downtown, near campus, when I was trying to find a parking spot. I kept driving it. My worst nightmare, I told everyone, was that it would stall on the upper level of the Marquam Bridge in Friday rush hour, in the traffic backup where people are entering the freeway from I-84 at the same time other people are trying to exit I-5 for I-84. And then someone would rear-end my car and it would go flying over the guard rail and into the Willamette River.

And then all of that happened, except the car accident. It stalled on that bridge, in that spot in rush hour traffic. The only certified place I could take it was in Beaverton. So, for about a week, I went without my car. I borrowed Handsome Man's a few times, and I also learned how to take the bus.

I'd taken TriMet plenty of times, and often found it a hassle. But not anymore. It turns out there it a stop only a few blocks from where I work, on a line that stops only a few blocks from home. I have to leave my house half an hour earlier than I would if I drove, and I get home as much as an hour later than I would if I drove, but to not have to concentrate on traffic and to be able to read, it's worth it.

I read, this weekend, in She Just Walks Around With It, the following:

I started my own, totally independent work life and public-transit commute in a city that was no longer a strange place to me. I can't even begin to express how oddly validating of my new life it was to take a city bus to get to work.

I had been thinking that for a few months now, but not until I read that did I realize this was something people thought. As she notes in the same post, people say that it takes two years of living in a place for it to feel settled, for the place to feel more like where you live and less unfamiliar. I've heard that a few times in the last year. Now that I am barely past my two-year mark, I can say that it is also true for me. And it was around that time that I started taking that city bus.

I used to malign your twenty minutes between buses, and your lack of north-south lines on the East side, but TriMet, I was wrong. You and I belong together. You take me to work and you take me home. Even on days that maybe aren't your best, you provide me with stories to tell. (I'm talking about crazy drivers and crazier passengers. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw some kids lighting stuff on fire on the back of an 8 bus? And the busdriver didn't even bat an eye?) Best of all, TriMet, thanks to you I can finally read. I am getting caught on magazines that I've had since 2009. I actually read more than just the cover of my library books now. I get to use my Nook. Now that school is over, I may become so caught up on my Newsweeks that I read them during the actual week that they are mailed to my house!

Thank you, TriMet.

Happy Time Running Errands

2011-08-14T16:43:00.003-04:00

It is summer at the farmers markets now, too, even though it is a lovely, cool 68F right now. Farmers market season is when I become happily overwhelmed, with the potential of making myself miserably overwhelmed if and when things start to wilt in my refrigerator. My Newest Neighbor and I walked to two different farmers markets today. That made three farmers markets this weekend, making up for all of the weeks this summer I was not able go to any.

But yeah, overwhelming....For example, as soon as I stop typing this post (which is short, and may not be the only thing I post today), I am going to get up and make bread from scratch. Which would be enough for one Sunday for some people. But I am going to try to make two kinds of bread--pita, and baguettes. And then I am going to try to prep some other food for the week, and also organize the parts of our apartment that are still Land of Dangerous Box Stacks and Mysterious Piles and oh yeah, I have to finish the draft of a grant application, too...

With three minutes to spare...

2011-08-13T23:58:00.000-04:00

We have shelves in the kitchen now!

And a garden hose that connects to the sink!

We got shelves for the bathroom too!

And lots of great vegetables at the farmers market!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!! Happy Saturday!

Wild time running errands

2011-08-12T18:14:00.000-04:00

My grandmother has a rule. You might call it more of a superstition. I've always made fun of her for this rule. It is, "Never cut fabric on a Friday." For some time, I believed this rule was universally French. Or perhaps a universal superstition of seamstresses. A few years ago, I learned that it was only my grandmother's rule.

My grandmother has had this rule since she was a child. She was riding her bike one day, wearing a newly homemade dress for the first time. She fell off her bike, which caught on her dress, tearing it beyond repair. The fabric used to make that dress was first cut on a Friday, and it is because of this incident that my grandmother believes it is bad luck to cut the fabric to sew any garment on a Friday.

I used to laugh at my grandmere's Friday rule, but now I have my own similar Thursday rule. Yesterday, I decided I am not going to run errands after work on Thursdays anymore. The day seems to be cursed for me. I'll tell you later about what happened yesterday, but first, I want to tell you about my Wild Time Running Errands two weeks ago.

I left work at 3pm to run an errand for my upcoming move. I first stopped at Fred Meyer to pick up a few things.I expected it to be a quick, uneventful trip.

I stopped at a specific Fred Meyer, one that is closer to work than home, for two reasons. This particular Fred Meyer always has a giant bin of free boxes by the cash registers. The other reason was to return some specific ginger ale bottles to the bottle return at that Fred Meyer, because the machine at my home Fred Meyer didn't accept them, but I know I had purchased that four-pack of ginger ale at this specific Fred Meyer. [A note for my readers in NJ and other places without a bottle deposit law: In Oregon, you can only return bottles to a store that sells that exact item. It doesn't have to be the store where you bought that item, but they have to carry the same brand and type of soda, beer, whatever. The corollary to this is that stores are required to take back containers if they charged you the deposit. I guess if they don't have a machine, you have to return it to someone by hand. I don't know. I'm still learning.]

Of five bottle return machines at the Fred Meyer, four were broken.

Had this been all, today's post could have been a post about the bottle deposit, how this was only my second trip to the bottle return in more than two years of living in Oregon, how Oregon pioneered the Bottle Deposit Law, and bottle deposits and their consequent quirks are something I am still getting used to. In Oregon, machines exist for the express purpose of counting your bottles, cans, and plastic containers. They have computers in them that scan the labels. Most people I know never get their deposit back; their $6.99 six-pack of beer really costs $7.29. Most people just sort their bottles and cans with the rest of their recycling and put it out on trash night. That explains the existence of what I consider a quirk of living in Portland; every week, on trash night, a group of people go up and down your street going through everyone's recycling. Frequently, the same people visit the same neighborhoods each week, so you'll start to recognize the characters. For example, on my street, there is a woman in a motorized cart who wears what appears to be a child's hat with Eeyore ears.

Oregon is very proud of having pioneered bottle deposits, and I have been told that I will get kicked out of the state if the wrong person hears me say the following: I hate the bottle deposit. I am sure it made sense at some point. But now people recycle their bottles willingly, without the monetary incentive. Where I am from, people recycle their bottles even though no one pays them to do it. That's why the people who go through trash cans on trash night make enough money to justify the time they spend doing it. I heard a guy once bought a car with the money he'd saved over the years collecting and cashing in other people's bottles.

So anyway, two Thursdays ago, I waited with my cans and bottles with a crowd of people. Most of them seemed to be the type who had collected their containers from other people's recycling bins. All of them were very agitated. They were angry that four of the five machines were broken. Three had broken all at once, so all three had lines of people waiting for them. They were angry that only one person was there to try to fix the machines. They were angry at each other, for those who were lucky enough to be in the line for the one machine that was still working were not offering their spaces to people in the other lines who had been waiting, in futility, first.

The people around me yelled at each other and at Ivan, the employee who had been sent out to try to fix the machines, their faces twisting in rage and impatience. My initial reaction was that they all seemed totally crazy, and I reminded myself that they are people, just like me, and I should try to consider things from their perspective. It was hot outside. They had gone to the trouble of bringing shopping carts and black trash bags full of containers to Fred Meyer. They felt that they had done their part, and now they were not getting money in return.

Meanwhile, Ivan was trying several different things at each machine, systematically going through some procedure. After he had tried so many things on a machine, he could give up and start collecting and scanning people's containers by hand.

The machine I was waiting for started working. A woman from the line next to me had been eying me dangerously while Ivan was fixing the machine. My initial thought was that this was a reason not to let her have my space on the line. My second thought was to honor the fact that she'd been waiting for the machines longer than I had. When I asked her if she'd like to go ahead of me, her demeanor changed. As Ivan went through the last steps to fix the machine, the woman, with a huge smile, began to show me some of the bottles she had in her cart and tell me about where she had collected them.

"This one's from my daughter," she'd say. Proudly, she showed me a special edition Rogue beer bottle. "I found this one in an alley!" She laughed with incredulity, as though we both were thinking, "Who would throw something like that in an alley!?"

The woman was able to put two containers into the machine before it spit out a receipt for $0.10 and shut down. But because it had been working, technically, Ivan couldn't start hand scanning her containers without going through the exact same series of attempts to fix the machine.

At some point, a woman with a large bag of bottles and a child in a stroller approached. She looked young, maybe my age. She was wearing a beat-up straw hat. She did not have a full command of English, as she kept pointing to the machine that takes cans, reading, "CANS", and pointing to people's cans as if to say, "Why don't you use this machine so we can all get out of here?"

I tried to explain to her that the machine wasn't working. Obviously, she couldn't read the sign. Everyone else, however, started yelling at the woman all at once. It was a cacophony of, "IT DOESN'T WORK, DUMMY!" and "IT SAYS 'OUT OF ORDER'" and "IT'S OUT. OF. ORDER!!!!"

I waited at least half an hour for that machine. When it was my turn, I deposited my first container. The machine spit out a receipt for five cents. Ivan had disappeared into the store. I pressed the button to call him. The phone rang and rang. Everyone began yelling, at each other, at the machines, at the woman who could not speak English (but would occasionally sound out what the signs said, trying out the words that she could not yet comprehend), and at the absent Ivan. Even I had begun to raise my voice. After a half hour standing with the heat and frustration, I had become one of them. The people I had thought were so strange to be so angry; now I understood. I, too, was asking, "Where's Ivan!?" and angrily showing people my $0.05 receipt. When my father called my cell phone, I told him, "You're lucky you live in New Jersey where you can just recycle your bottles LIKE NORMAL!"

The machine, when Ivan got it working, still did not take my bottles of Reed's ginger ale. I thought, "Maybe there actually isn't a deposit on these!" My receipt from what the machine did accept was for a mere $1.50. Guess I won't be buying any cars with that.

I then went inside the Fred Meyer store to finish my errands. After waiting so long in the heat, I was thirsty. I bought another Reed's ginger ale for $1.24.

---

Later, I approached the checkout lanes, ready to make my purchases. The three express lanes had very long lines. So, I went to the closest available non-express lane, where the checker was halfway through checking out only one person with a very full shopping cart.

Have I ever explained to you my Supermarket Theory? My theory is that what takes the most time at the checkout lane is not the scanning of groceries, but the payment, especially with coupons and with the various types of cards and various scanners that all work different ways and with the customers objecting to something about their bill. So, my Supermarket Theory is that the express lane is not fast if it is crowded. If many people are waiting in that lane, it will not be a fast wait. The corollary to my Supermarket Theory is that if there is only one person in a regular lane, no matter how many groceries they have, it is faster to get in line behind them, if there are two or more people waiting on the express lane.

Occasionally, when I try to act in accordance with that theory, the cashier will stop in the middle of checking out the other person's groceries, eye up my handful of twelve or less items, and suggest I go into the express lane. They look at me like I am an alien when I say, "No, that's okay," or "No, there was a long line and I think this will be faster." But that's all they do.

Not this time. This time, the cashier actually stopped to get my attention. Whatever he said, it startled me to the point that I thought maybe he was trying to close or something. "No, I'm open," he replied testily. "But there are a bunch of express lanes open!"

"Oh," I replied, "They all have long lines. I think this will be--"

But he cut me off, perturbed. With condescension in his voice, he said, "Sweetheart, Lanes 2, 3, and 4 are all express lanes. It will be a LOT faster."

It was rude in the way I hate most, which is rudeness that hides behind a friendly and helpful mask. If I had been my normal self, I would have stood my ground by staying in the line. I probably would also have calmly said, "Please do not talk to me that way or call me sweetheart. I don't know you." But the experience at the bottle return had me too beaten down. Meekly, I moved into the express lane, from which I could see the rude cashier finish checking out the next customer in line before I had even made it to the register on the express lane.

The bin of boxes by the cash registers was empty.

The same Fred Meyer that won't take back my bottles of Reed's Ginger Beer charged me a 5-cent deposit on the bottle I purchased that day.

---

I left Fred Meyer, hot and dejected. My car had turned into an oven in the parking lot. I was too low on gas; I didn't want to risk turning on the air conditioner. It was now rush hour. Traffic was slow, and it was awhile before I got to the gas station.

Later, waiting to pull out of the gas station and onto Broadway, I saw a three people, two men and a woman, walking down the street together, toward my car. They looked around my age. I have no reason to believe they were homeless or mentally ill. But something about the purpose with which they were walking and the way they were staring into my open car window gave me a slight sense of dread. I dismissed this as silly.

From the events at Fred Meyer and the long car ride in the heat, I was tired and my defenses were down, when the approaching men and woman stopped by my car and one of the men yelled into my window, some incomprehensible gibberish about the Blind Onion pizza place (which is also on Broadway). I was too exhausted to respond. They kept walking behind my car, where they could see through the rear windshield my old license plate which I have retained as a decoration. Spying this, the second man yelled, "JERSEY SUCKS!"

The day had beaten all the Jersey out of me. I should have put the car in park and leaned out the window to yell something stereotypically Jersey, but I could think of nothing to say except, quietly, only to myself, "It doesn't...."

One think I can say about Jersey is that in Jersey, you never have to wait half an hour only to find that the store won't let you cash in your ginger ale bottles.

New masthead! And more!

2011-08-11T10:09:00.003-04:00

Today's prompt is: Unpack the statement: truth is stranger than fiction.

I'm not sure I can unpack it, but I could provide plenty of examples. This seems like a good day to tell you about my Wild Time Running Errands, but I have to get ready for work. Maybe I will write it on lunch and post it by this evening. In the meantime, my new masthead is now here!

It was made by My Handsome Roommate with photographs he's taken in Oregon. He took the photo of Crater Lake and all of the things floating in front of Crater Lake. He added my friends and me swimming in Crater Lake. We were really swimming in a different lake.

New things coming soon

2011-08-10T13:54:00.004-04:00

My new roommate is working on a new blog masthead for me. For months, I had a boring, weird, depressing picture of a January sunset in Eastern Montana. It had nothing to do with big hair, Jersey girls, or Oregon. My favorite is probably Summer 2010's (that lasted until winter), in which I gigantically loomed over Trillium Lake at Mount Hood with a big smile, a sparkler, and a flag painted on my arm. But that is too much ME ME ME. So I switched back to the first ever Big-Haired Jersey Girl in Oregon masthead, which you see right now.

He started making it with a picture of me that he thinks his very pretty. He combined it with a picture that he took of Crater Lake, which is also pretty. That seemed to be it. I thought it was too pretty.

"Where's the big hair? I know you think I am pretty, but that's not what Big-Haired Jersey Girl is about! It's about...you know! that time we went camping and had to carry those burning logs and the tent almost blew away and I thought a crazy person was going to come get us! Tripping and falling down! Things like that! And also traveling and plants and big hair!"

I drifted off to sleep and woke up seeing something more promising. But he left before I could upload it. Plus, I have work to do. (This is just a short break.)

Today, before the whiteboard got totally erased, I finally transcribed a list of "Things to Write About" from March or April. So those might be coming soon. It includes such topics as "Anacardiace-cake" and "Lively Art of Writing/Portland-NJ." In my drafts folder on blogger, the two most recent incomplete posts are titled, "Life-changing cake" and "Wild time running errands."

Just so you have something to look forward to.

What do you think about white lies?

2011-08-09T15:22:00.003-04:00

That is today's prompt from NaBloPoMo. This month's theme is fiction, and while today's prompt takes a turn from last week's book-themed prompts, I can see how this relates to "fiction." Unlike the book-themed questions, I actually have an answer for this one.

I've been described by some as a Rules Person. My new roommate likes to tease me for refusing to jaywalk. I describe myself as pedantic when it comes to rules. It may seem incongruous with the above to announce that I think white lies, and even lies that aren't white, are at times perfectly justified.

The logic behind my pedantry, when it comes to rules, ethics, and morality, is somewhat deductive. It starts from a broad premise and then works its way down. If there is some other broad moral premise before you get to the question, "Do I tell the truth or lie?", I believe that this broad moral premise overrides the moral statement, "Lying is wrong."

The example that comes up most often in my life and my advice to others is privacy. You have a right to privacy. I have a right to privacy. The First Amendment even protects that right! (Sorry, school is in my head too much lately.) If someone is asking you to tell you something that is none of their business, it is not immoral to answer them with a lie, white or otherwise. Because the overriding moral here is your right to privacy, and the fact that certain things are none of anyone's business unless you deem it to be so.

If my phone battery hadn't used itself up calling people from my purse yesterday, I could have ended this with a picture of some hydrangeas in my neighborhood that are so blue, it seems surreal.

What do you think about white lies?

I've picked the song for my next big karaoke performance

2011-08-07T16:52:00.005-04:00

A few clarifications from yesterday's post. First of all, I did not intend to suggest that anyone I know falls particularly into that category of global-warming-believers or pro-or-anti-abortion-rights who is more interested in their own ego or their own affiliation with a group, than they are in the actual cause. So, do not read that and think I am talking about you. I'm probably not. I do not read your writings about global warming and roll my eyes.

A second clarification is to give credit to the Multnomah County Library where that credit is due. Though it won't get my anti-feminist book for me so that I don't have to pay (aside from taxes) to read it, it is in most respects a wonderful library system. (So are New Jersey libraries, so I've been pretty spoiled.) Anyway, I can't criticize you too much, Multnomah County Library, because you got me Iggy Pop CDs.

It all started because I was listening to David Bowie a lot. Thanks to the Multnomah County Library, again, for supplementing my current option of Aladdin Sane with a two-disc collection the name of which I have forgotten at the moment. What started that, most likely, was a party that The Roommate fka Handsome Man and I attended in late April. It was David Bowie themed. I dressed as Sarah from the Labyrinth. Why, yes, there are pictures! I look like a marshmallow in them. (And I can't find any on my computer, so I'll have to get them from TRfkaHM before I can share them with you.) Anyway, listening to the CD from the library, I stopped one day and thought, "Wow, I forgot about these songs! I really like them!" One in particular was "China Girl." I became interested in the lyrics, to which I'd been only half-listening. From the depths of what I heard as, "blahblahblahblah little China Girl, blahblahblahblah," some words stood out and grabbed my attention.

As a side note, I still hear the song (both versions--but I'll get to that later) as something like this:

I hhmm hmm blah bmhmhmhmm, Little China Girl.
La la doo doo la la hmmm hmm, Little China Girl.
I hear her heart beating, LOUD as THUNDER! [note: maybe neither Bowie nor Pop emphasizes that line so much--but I do. When I sing in the car.]
Hrrrm crashing hrrrmmmmm.
I stumble into town, just like a sacred cow, visions of swastikas -Wait, WHAT? What about swastikas!? blah blha blha BLAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Hmm hmmm hmm China Girl, you shouldn't mess with me.
I'll ruin everything you AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRREEEEEEEE.
Blah blah blah blah RULE THE WORLD! blah blah blah blah China Girl
Blah blah blah blah SHHHHHHHHHHH.
SHHHHHHHHHHH.

One day, in between packing, avoiding reading judicial opinions, and a few drinks*, I thought, "What the hell is this song about? Ruling the world? Swastikas? Cows? or is it Clowns?! WHAT?"

*Actually, in between the consumption of the one beer it now takes to get me tipsy.

The Wikipedia entry told me nothing, except that the song was actually co-written by Iggy Pop, and then I was like, "That's right! I used to listen to Iggy Pop! I love Iggy Pop! AND David Bowie! I used to have Lust for Life and Raw Power. OMG they aren't on this computer!"

Multnomah County Library to the rescue. This Saturday, I marched to the library quite purposefully at quarter to 6, scooting in the door at about five of, and from the holds shelf obtained both Lust for Life and Raw Power, and I'd already gotten The Idiot a week previously.

And that is why I had three Iggy Pop albums to listen to while unpacking and organizing my office this weekend. Thank you, Multnomah County Library.

Sunday Thoughts

2011-08-07T13:25:00.005-04:00

I have started reading books with which I think I will fundamentally disagree.

I've been kind of busy, so I haven't gotten very far on this project. When the library refused to get The Flipside of Feminism from Interlibrary Loan based on their rule that they do not get books published in the same year as the interlibrary loan request (note: What the hell!? Thanks a lot, Multnomah County Library! Like I'm going to have an easy time convincing Portland libraries to purchase a book subtitled What Smart Women Know and Men Can't Say on some editions and on other editions, the "Smart" is swapped out for "Conservative"), I mulled over whether or not I would want to pay money for such a book, and only got as far as reading the free sample for my Nook.

I came up with this theory awhile ago, probably a revival of something I started thinking as early as high school, that much of the disagreements about politics, economics, all that "how stuff works and how it should work and what should happen" kind of stuff, is based in semantics. For example, Group A and Group B are arguing about Topic C, and Group A is dead set on Solution A; Group B is dead set on Solution B. They all agree that Solution A and Solution B are fundamentally opposed, because one is called A and one is called B and B basically means, "Not A"! But if both groups sat down and started listing the characteristics of Solution A and Not A/Solution B, they might find that there is a lot of common ground. Or they might find that Solution A and Solution B are exactly the same thing.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit, especially now that I am in Government School (aka The Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. From now on, I will refer to it as "Government School.") (This is partially because I keep having to double check if Mr. Hatfield's name is spelled "Mark" or "Marc.")

I think that's where I'll end for today. Otherwise, this could turn into a full-blown rant. Not just Rant with a capital R, but a RANT. Because my views on this matter are not all touchy-feely we-all-are-the-same-on-the-inside we-can-all-just-get-along. One thing I feel very strongly about is that the reasons for all of this, disagreeing based on semantics--what you want to call an issue--and not on the actual issue, are in fact selfish and narrow-minded. It has to do with people's tendency to classify others as The Other, and to dislike that Other, and to be very dismissive of that Other. I started writing about this with a friend because I read this NYT piece by Nicholas Kristof. One thing the article discusses is how religious people and non-religious (potentially anti-religious) people work toward the same issues, but will not work together. Mr. Kristof sums it up better than I do, writing, "Because religious people and secular people alike do fantastic work on humanitarian issues — but they often don’t work together because of mutual suspicions. If we could bridge this “God gulf,” we would make far more progress on the world’s ills."

His term for it, "mutual suspicion," is a lot nicer sounding than my choice of words like "selfish" and "narrow-minded."

My friend, CC, wrote in response to my e-mail (including the link to the Nicholas Kristof article), "A few years ago it struck me that there were many parallels between Christian-community groups rejecting consumerism and corporatism, and the very similar mindset of hardcore-punk kids. Of course, the two groups regard each other as opposite poles... up to a point where they converge."

There are cases in which Solution A and Solution B are actually exactly the same, or at least, there's a 90% overlap. I also think there are cases where Solution B really is Not Solution A, but up to a certain point, Group A and Group B can find something to agree on.

An example of the latter is people who are really really really opposed to abortion (Group A, although I suppose Group Not A would be a more appropriate abbreviation) and people who feel that abortion should never, ever be illegal (Group B). With maybe a few crazies who are the exception (like people who believe in eugenics or forced sterilizations), no one in either Group A or Group B thinks abortions are great. Most people in Group B think it must be an option, but not something you want to get to go through in your life. No one is going to get pregnant just to have an abortion. It's not on anyone's life To Do list. Ok, I think I've made my point, and I can move on.

I think it would be great if Group A and Group B could set aside their differences, could put down their signs and their graphic pictures of aborted fetuses and e-mail forwards from the point of view of an unborn child saying, "Why doesn't Mommy love me? I only wanted to live!"...whoops, I got carried away again. Anyway, I think it would be great if these two groups could get together and say, let's brainstorm some solutions we can both agree on. Like, how about, let's come up with ways that help prevent individuals from being in the situation to make that choice.

That wouldn't exactly be easy, of course. You could very quickly get into an argument about the morality of birth control. Or the effectiveness of abstinence-only education. Or that the "adoption" choice results in overpopulation. The environmental impact of overpopulation (to which I'd say, "Sorry, I think that's only a few steps removed from arguments in favor of forced sterilization and eugenics.")

Or maybe everyone would, once they started talking, stop hating each other, stop deciding they are in favor of Solution B simply because of their affiliation with Group B and that such an affiliation means Hating Group A Just Because Of Who They Are.) Maybe a few people would say, let's find something we can agree on, like some community improvement of which we all approve that indirectly relates to our purpose because it makes the community a nicer place to bring children into.

From Kittatinny Valley State Park

Here is a completely unrelated photo of Asplenium rhizophyllum to distract you from this controversial issue.

Another issue that I get all fired up about, because of this very same issue (Group B opting to be Group Not A), is global warming. Have you noticed that you pretty much never read those words on this blog, unless I am making a joke about something? That is because I am actually quite enthusiastically annoyed about the way in which people with whom I otherwise agree on environmental issues, insist on using that term and on arguing with people over the existence of global warming. And then other people are like, "blah blah blah, global warming is madeup." "Look at the data! If you think that even looking at this data, you're an idiot!" "No, you're an idiot, you stupid hippie!" Who cares what you want to call it? We can all agree on certain man-made environmental ills. Let's talk about those, and try to address those together. The term "global warming" is polarizing. There is a time and a place for it. There is also a time and a place for just agreeing to disagree about that term, and focusing instead on something like air pollution or the finite supply of nonrenewable resources. (I first read something to this effect in No Impact Man, but it was so long ago that I do not know in which post he wrote it.)

This got way off track from what I originally wanted to write about, which was comments I've been hearing about free birth control. Since it would involve looking up some quotations and citing sources, I'll save that topic for another time. We have a whole long blogging-every-day month ahead of us!

I have started reading books which with I think I will fundamentally disagree, because I am looking for the things with which I can agree. I am looking for the buried meaning hidden under all of those labels, under the semantics. At some later time, I will write about my initial thoughts on the free sample intro of The Flipside of Feminism, and if I can convince the Multnomah County Library to get it, I will read it and write my thoughts about the whole book!

Here is an unrelated picture of water lilies:

From Kittatinny Valley State Park

Saturday thoughts

2011-08-06T14:29:00.003-04:00

I missed the bus again yesterday. When I got my bus pass, I vowed to use it enough to get my money's worth. This was about 7 bus rides a week, so if I took the bus four out of five weekdays, I would come out ahead.

Well, these past two weeks of moving and settling in are probably the reason that I only took the bus a handful of times. I think I drove to work every day that I went to work. Oh well. It's nice to break up routine once in awhile, to sit in traffic that's getting worse every week, but to only have to travel five miles in it; to listen to my own music; and to have an extra twenty minutes or so at home in the morning. As a side note, even with the extra driving these past two weeks, I have only put four hundred miles in my car since my last oil change. Which was on May 11th.

Anyway, as I was driving home yesterday, stuck sitting still in traffic atop the Marquam Bridge, I could see Mount Saint Helens faintly to the northeast through hazy clouds, and I could see Mount Hood to the southeast through some kind of grating on the side of the bridge. In that moment, I felt not stuck or hot or impatient but lucky. I get to see these beautiful mountains from something as prosaic as Friday evening rush hour. It is also not lost on me that I am extremely lucky to live so close to where I work. I am lucky that, when I miss the bus, I have a car to take to work, and I feel the most lucky that I live on a bus line that goes right to work. No transfers!

I came home to a big package of toilet paper and a bouquet of flowers that My Roommate fka Handsome Man picked up while I was at work!

Then I got to make dinner, which was something I actually wanted to do. It was the first time for two weeks I'd been able to make dinner without feeling rushed. I made a variation of this with vegetables from our gardens. I used Swiss chard, really strong bolted arugula leaves, chives instead of scallions, carrots (from a five-pound lasts-six-months bag from Winco, not from anything remotely homegrown or fresh), and snap peas instead of sprouts. I added garlic and ginger and chile powder, and served it with some sriracha-ish hot sauce we got from a guy in NJ who makes it himself.

While the sesame noodles were chilling, I went for my evening walk around the neighborhood and the adjacent hilly neighborhood of mansions near us. That's where I saw these interesting flowers.

I have no idea what those are. Except some kind of aroids.

[UPDATE: Thanks to my friend and former housemate Allie Z, we now know that these are Zantedeschia albomaculata. The spathes, with the deep purple toward the base, also remind me of Zantedeschia 'Picasso.' For more info and pictures, check out this page about Zantedeschia.]

Some places in Portland don't feel like a city at all. Some spots in the city feel like the Northeast forests I used to wander in when I was a kid, which I used to pretend were enchanted forests. Some spots in the city feel like enchanted forests, like this tunnel of gardens (if you ignore that the path is actually a sidewalk.)

It is blurry. I will have to try taking that picture before 8pm sometime. (Note to family members on the East Coast who worry about me-we are further north here and it gets dark pretty late in the summer, like after 9!)

One final picture of the lovely flowers to which I came home.

Clafoutis Made Vegan

2011-08-05T11:06:00.003-04:00

Since the recipe only calls for 6 TBSP MILK and 2-3 EGGS, it's pretty easy to make this dessert vegan. Except I'd never tried to replace milk in a recipe where I couldn't just use coconut milk. While I'm sure it would be delicious, I didn't want to make a coconut cherry clafoutis. Thanks to Google, I learned that soy milk is the best, and almond milk is a close second. I was worried that the soy milk might impart a funny flavor to a dessert like clafoutis, with such little added flavoring in the dough. Also, I didn't have time to make a fresh batch. What truly pushed me in the direction of using almond milk was botany. Cherries and almonds are botanically related. They are both Prunus. A slight almond flavor would not overwhelm a cherry dessert.

Now I can't stop drinking almond milk. I wonder if it's easy to make. If so, Bag of Almonds from the WinCo Bulk Bin Flopping Around in the Freezer, I've got plans for you.

Replacing the eggs was easy. I did what I always do, grind flax seeds and whisk them with water like I'm making mayonnaise, until they start acting like egg whites. The Post Punk Kitchen explains it well!

It was delicious.

Thoughts on French Cuisine

2011-08-04T10:39:00.005-04:00

In particular, these are thoughts on French recipes.

I have not used enough French cookbooks to have a basis for comparison, although I have noticed that the Provencale cookbook I purchased in France shares with my family's recipes the quality I am about to describe for you. In short, French recipes are extremely precise on certain points, and incredibly vague when it comes to others.

Take, for example, my mother's cousin's recipe for the pickled cherries written about here. The recipe states how much vinegar to use, how much and exactly what type of sugar to use, that exactly three pinches of cinnamon must go into the pickling solution, and exactly how many days the jars must sit "dans le noir" (in total darkness.) It even cautions you that the pickles, once the jar is opened, will be very strong, "like a new pot of mustard." But the recipe fails to include a detail that, by some standards,is vital.

Nowhere does the recipe tell you how many cherries to use.

My family's recipe for vin de cerisier or pechier (cherry-leaf or peachtree-leaf wine) is similarly composed. I don't have it on hand, but I do recall that it says to pluck exactly sixty leaves from your desired tree in the month of September only!!!!! (However I have witnessed my mother's other cousin picking cherry tree leaves for this recipe in October. October!!!!!)

Now, I turn to my family recipe for clafoutis, also spelled clafouti, pronounced by my family as "cleff-foo-TEA" but pronounced by the Barefoot Contessa as "claFOOty." I think of it is as a light, cake-y dessert with lots of fruit and less cake. Mark Bittman described it in How to Cook Everything as like a giant pancake baked in the oven with fruit. Either way, it's delicious. It can be made with pretty much any fruit. It's usually made with cherries, sour cherries (or as you Oregonians call them, "pie cherries"), and one distinguishing characteristic of clafoutis made with cherries is that you do not remove the pits from the cherries. It would change the way the dessert bakes. Or something. I don't know. I have had it both ways, and personally, I like it the old-fashioned way. It helps the fruit retain its structure and prevents the dessert from turning into messy pink mush.

Once pie cherries (oops, I mean, sour cherries!) came into season and were available at my local Whole Foods, I planned to make clafoutis. The recipe is not, as I suspected, on my computer. I've had my grandmere recite it to me over the phone before, but sometimes she changes her version over the phone. I wanted to find the original, as written and retyped into Gmail by my mother. Trying both spellings, I finally stumbled across the following. You will note that it shares with the other French recipes mentioned in this writing a strange lack of detail with reference to how much fruit you are supposed to use. But it was the last part of the recipe that had me the most dismayed.

CLAFOUTI-MIMA's

10 TBSP FLOUR
8 TBSP SUGAR
6 TBSP MILK
4 TSP OIL
2-3 EGGS
1 TBSP BAKING POWDER
VANILLA

MIX AND ADD FRUIT.
COOK IN A PIE PLATE AT I don't have that. oops.

[Updated Friday morning to include a picture of the finished product ready to be baked!]

Miscellaneous photographs from recent adventures

2011-08-03T18:26:00.001-04:00

As my final week of summer classes keeps me busy, I will be posting photographs of things I've seen recently, and some from the traveling I've done, but barely documented in words, since last spring.

Today, I am going to share with you one of my favorite places in the world, Leonard J. Buck Garden in Far Hills, New Jersey. A short drive west will take you to Willowwood Arboretum in Pottersville, NJ, another beautiful and peaceful place to spend time.

An insect I am no longer able to identify, hanging out on an iris.

Adiantum pedatum and other ferns, not so restrained as yesterday's fern baby.

Taken from the ground, looking up through the leaves of some kind of begonia.

Here is where my camera went wacky. The camera I bought last February has some kind of film transport issue which the camera store has been unable to fix.

The witch-hat-shaped insect leaf gall that gives witch hazels their name, with a gate from Willowwood superimposed over half of the picture.

The result of my broken camera is that while it sometimes operates just fine, it also sometimes gives me pictures like the following:

Gate and flowers at Willowwood Arboretum.

Well, I will save more of Willowwood Arboretum and other adventures for another day.

By the way, today's NaBloPoMo prompt was, "Have you ever wished you could enter a book?"

I'm afraid my answer to that question is a very uninteresting, "NO!" I am too pragmatic. Much as I would like to have the opportunity to befriend Anne Shirley, to have her confirm my suspicions that I am a kindred spirit, and as much as I would love to see the wild places of 19th-century Prince Edward Island with my own eyes, I wouldn't want to hang out there very long. I'd start to miss things like indoor plumbing, my e-mail, and readily-available ethnic food. This may explain why books and movies about characters who inadvertently get trapped in their favorite stories have always made me very anxious. I am ashamed to tell you how much time I spent, while watching Lost in Austen, thinking, "Yeah, she gets to smooch Mr. Darcy, but doesn't she miss flush toilets and hot showers?" (How did I get from pictures of beautiful gardens to THIS?)

Who is your favorite author? Lights on or off?

2011-08-02T20:58:00.002-04:00

Today's prompt from NaBloPoMo is, "What's your favorite author?"

I answer this question similarly to yesterday's question. How can I have a favorite author!? That's like choosing a favorite flower!

(I wonder if psychologists have a name for people who can't choose a favorite anything.)

Some writers I did not mention yesterday are Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. I can't really be sure that Jane Eyre is my favorite book, however, and none of Jane Austen's stand out as my favorite.

Does anyone remember those "get to know your friends" e-mail surveys that used to go around? There was one in particular that I would get every six months or so. This was the pre-Facebook Internet time-waster in which, like Facebook, you got to talk about yourself and share that information with your Internet friends. Sandwiched in between innocuous questions such as, "What is your favorite author?" "What is your favorite color?" were oddly placed questions about one's sex life. Sometimes they weren't so explicit as to be obvious, questions such as, "What's your number?" could naively be answered with one's lucky number or phone number. "Lights on or off?" would just confuse the survey taker, but once they got to "Shirt on or off?", they might have started to catch on.

Anyway, when I took those surveys, I usually answered, "What's your favorite book?" or "What's your favorite author?" with whatever I was reading at the time, if I liked it, and if not, I'd answer with the most recent book I'd read and enjoyed. Come to think of it, I did this on Facebook, too, when I kept that part of my profile regularly updated. (Before things like Facebook Photos and the status update were around to occupy my wasted time.)

Currently, I am reading a lot of Supreme Court stuff and some books on grant-writing. The last book I started reading was My Antonia by Willa Cather. The last (and only) time I read that book was in tenth grade. I certainly appreciate it more now than I did as a sixteen-year-old, although at that age, while I felt that the book was slow enough to be dry and a bit too sad, I did notice that the imagery was wonderful, written in beautiful language. Now, I understand why my tenth grade teacher read My Antonia herself, every spring, and why it was her favorite book. The language is not only beautiful, but it is also original. Willa Cather's similes and metaphors are so, so, clever, in a way I've never seen before. Perhaps later, I will type up a few examples to share on this blog.

In a few weeks, summer classes will be over, and perhaps I can pick up My Antonia again. And then, I will read through the other twenty-four novels in the 99-cent collection of classics I bought for my Nook one late, sleepless night. (This is a benefit of the Nook 3G as compared to the Wi-fi-only Nook.) Or perhaps I will seek out some Willa Cather that is new to me, something other than My Antonia or O Pioneers! (which, despite a title that sounds like a parody of Boring Stuff You're Forced To Read In High School, my tenth-grade self enjoyed much more than My Antonia.)

For the record, My Antonia is still sad to me, even when I know what is going to happen. (I have forgotten much of it, including the ending, so this isn't quite a spoiler. I forgot if the ending is sad. There are just sad things that happen in the book.) One thing it makes me think about now, which I didn't consider as a tenth grader, is the issue of immigration. The Bohemian and Scandinavian immigrants in the nineteenth century Midwest seemed strange to the more established Americans in My Antonia, even though they themselves descended from immigrants who could not possibly have come to the United States very long before their own lifetimes. The prejudice they exhibit toward their new neighbors is ridiculous, and I think it says something about issues this country faces today. European immigrants would not face the same negative treatment today as do the characters in My Antonia, yet immigrants from other parts of the world do. Someday, those prejudices will seem pretty ridiculous.

And now, here is a picture that is completely unrelated to anything in this post, but it was just something in the "to blog about" pile.

Not only did I think the fern was nice, since I have a thing for ferns, but what really led me to take the picture was when my friend, E, remarked, "That's the only baby you want!" At the moment, that's true!

Who is your favorite author? What are you reading now?

New apartment, new month, new goal

2011-08-01T13:04:00.003-04:00

I am officially moved out of the studio of my dreams and into the two bedroom upstairs with My Roommate fka Handsome Man.

As I set up and decorated that apartment, I took lots of pictures, saving them to an album called House Tour. I was convinced that I had written at least one post accompanying all of those pictures, but I guess I did not!

I will not be doing any such thing with the new place for at least a couple of weeks. Because we have moved right in the middle of the final paper due dates of my summer classes.

That is still no excuse not to try NaBloPoMo. After all, I have Internet! I can post at least a short message, or maybe just a picture, each day. And there are always the NaBloPoMo prompts.

This month's theme is fiction, and today's prompt is, "What is your favorite book?" A nice, easy question to start off the month. Or is it!? Who has a favorite book!? Maybe I should narrow the focus of that question? Who, with an English degree, has a favorite book? Do any writers have favorite books? Do people who love to read ever have just one favorite book?

I never have a favorite anything. I can tell you some books that, if I had a favorite book, might be in the running. I have read and reread Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi many times. I'd like to read all of the books referenced by that book, too, but so far I haven't even read Lolita. George Eliot is one of my favorite writers, but that might be based on an average of things I liked from all of her books I've red and passages of books I never finished. I'm not sure I could really say that The Mill on the Floss or Middlemarch really is my favorite book.

When I was younger, my all-time favorite author was Tamora Pierce. Picking a favorite book out of a series is not something I can do, but I can tell you that I preferred her first quartet to any others. The Song of the Lioness books, of which I have signed copies in New Jersey, will always be special to me. I have never reread them as an adult, and I suppose I should.

Here's something you might not know--when I am under stress from school or from other things in life, my secret (well, not so secret anymore!) retreat is to reread books I liked as a kid. And then I started reading children's books I had never read before. That is how I finally read books I somehow missed out on as a child, such as Catherine Called Birdy and Little House on the Prairie.

Readers, what is your favorite book? Do you even have a favorite book? How can you choose!?

5 Things for Wednesday

2011-07-28T13:15:00.003-04:00

1. Fava Shoots. You may be asking yourself, "What does that mean? Is that a sentence!?" It is a noun, a type of vegetable. At one of the farmers markets in town, there is a stand that always has interesting things that I've either never heard of before, or have heard of but never had the opportunity to see in real life or try before. Usually, it's somewhat pricey, but not a lot of money. Like $3 for a small amount of something. So, if you wanted a lot of that thing, it would be pricey, but $3 is not a lot of money and, in my opinion, worth it for nice, fresh produce and trying something new. The bag of fava shoots that I purchased from that stand nearly two weeks ago was huge, however, and the shoots kept. I was able to try them a number of different ways. The woman who sold them to me told me to, "use them like pea shoots," and when I told her I had never eaten pea shoots before, she gave me some suggestions. I made them into a salad with arugula from my balcony garden. I grilled them. I made them into a salad by themselves. (Actually, Handsome Man did.) Finally, last night, I used them up by making a pesto. It was really good, and really interesting. So, if you ever find yourself with the opportunity to try fava shoots, I recommend it. They taste familiar, yet I'm having trouble describing them. Sort of green, sort of earthy.

2. Things Happening In The Balcony Garden Speaking of legumes, my pea plant is finally producing some pea pods. I think I counted three yesterday. And after several weeks of being lushy and leafy, my zinnias and nasturtiums have flower buds. My crocosmia started bloomning, at least two weeks later than anyone else's in the neighborhood, while I was out of town. My mustard greens, lettuces, and arugula, on the other hand, bolted. They flowered before the things I wanted to flower showed the tiniest suggestion of a bud.

3. The Summer That Isn't. Speaking of the slow progress of my north-facing balcony garden, this has been one of the least summery summers I've ever known. This isn't to say we've had beautiful weather. A sunny, cloudless sky, with temperatures in the comfortable 70's and a light breeze is nothing to complain about. But it hasn't even reached 90 in Portland this summer, not once. For someone used to summers with temperatures nearing 100, and the percentage of humidity nearing that number, too, it's just strange. Sometimes I think that the weather in Portland is just fall or spring, for twelve months.

4. Best Baguettes. Speaking of things you can do when the temperature is below 90 degrees, I made baguettes. This is kind of an ugly picture, but I don't care. I am so proud of my baguettes.

From Food

5. Change First of all, you may note that while the title refers to Wednesday, today is actually Thursday. This should tell you something about my life right now. (Or, well, all the time.) One reason for a short, list post. Also, I've drafted some posts from the list posted yesterday, but I want to wait until the pictures get developed and uploaded to Picasa before I post all about the Southern Oregon Adventure. Things are changing now, and the biggest is that tomorrow, I can start moving into the new apartment with Handsome Man. I asked Handsome Man if I can stop calling him that on this blog, and just use his real name like normal life. He wavered, and so from tomorrow on, Handsome Man will be referred to as The Roommate.

What We Did On Our Trip To Southern Oregon

2011-07-26T14:08:00.013-04:00

Many things to write about resulted from this trip. For now, the short version is here, in list form.

From Southern Oregon Adventure July 2011

1. Handsome Man and I left Portland at about 4:30 on Thursday.
2. We stopped at the Santiam rest area, where I saw a rainbow!
3. We drove to Albany and stopped at a Fred Meyer for some trip essentials.
4. We drove to Market of Choice in Eugene for more trip essentials (beer and hot sauce.)
5. South of Eugene, we left the freeway for Highway 58, the most direct route to the North Entrance of Crater Lake, which goes through the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests and therefore, would take us by lots of cheap, no-reservations-required Forest Service campgrounds. This is what I thought.
6.ODOT was doing nighttime road work and paving on Highway 58, causing us to get to our campsite very late.
7.We didn't get to set up camp until 10:30pm. In the darkness, we did not know we were camping right by lovely Odell Lake which reflects majestic Diamond Peak. On the bright side, we were less than two hours from Crater Lake.
8. On Friday morning, we got back on Highway 58, heading for US-97, the Dalles-California Highway.
9. We stopped in a town called Chemult to eat breakfast at the Big Mt Cafe
10. We went to Crater Lake National Park and went on a hike.
11. We swam in Crater Lake. I did not know that was possible. In fact, I was thoroughly convinced that you could not swim in Crater Lake! (You can only get to the shore and swim in the lake in one place, Readers, so don't get any ideas!)
12. We drove completely around Crater Lake.
13. Starving and tired, desperate for cheeseburgers, we drove another hour south to Klamath Falls, the seat of Klamath County, 20 miles or less from the California state line...a city I never planned on visiting.
14. We went to The Creamery, the restaurant/brew pub of the Klamath Basin Brewing Company.
15. We got fried mac and cheese. It deserves its own list entry. Trust me.
16. The next morning, we explored downtown Klamath Falls before stopping for breakfast.
17. We started driving back north toward Portland, passing Klamath Lake and many other beautiful things I'd like to someday visit again.
18. We decided to bypass Highway 58 and stay on US-97 a little longer, heading for Bend and for the Newberry National Volcanic Monument in Deschutes National Forest.
19. We hiked the Big Obsidian Flow trail at Newberry National Volcanic Monument. It is as awesome as it sounds.
20. We continued driving north, bypassing Bend and stopping instead in Sisters, where we ate dinner at Three Rivers Brewing Co.
21. We drove west on the Over the Rivers and Through the Woods Scenic Byway, through the Santiam Pass and more national forest land, toward I-5, toward Portland, and toward home.

To the person who found my blog by searching for "harissa ice cream"

2011-07-26T00:33:00.002-04:00

Who are you? I think we should be friends.

Also, please let me know if you were successful in your search for harissa ice cream. I still haven't tried to make it, but I'd like to someday. I haven't found a good recipe yet!

To the person who found my blog searching for, "toestes aperitif," ........ what????? What does that even mean? I wish I could help you, but I have no idea what a toestes is and when I did the same Google search, Google asked me if I had really intended to search for, "testes aperitif." I am not sure I want to know what that is.

To both of you, I am just thrilled with both of you, for not having found my blog by searching for "high school girls thighs" or any variation of "haired girls." These seem to be common lately.

Back from Crater Lake

2011-07-25T03:24:00.001-04:00

We made it to Crater Lake!

And now I'm back in Portland!

More later!

A new announcement and an old story

2011-07-19T17:31:00.008-04:00

I'm moving again. This time, it's just upstairs. I'm in the same building, I barely have to pack, and I won't even have to change my address. It is a bigger apartment, big enough for two people. Handsome Man and I are moving in together, in the apartment upstairs from where I live now.

In light of these facts, a specific story seems appropriate. It's been in my drafts folder, and it's been on my To Write About list since April. As I assess what I have, what Handsome Man has and what we share, and how they will all soon be under the same roof, it seems like the time to write about some specific objects and the events surrounding them.

One day in April, my boyfriend told me about a cryptic phone conversation with his mother. It was shortly after my birthday and shortly after his parents, who had been visiting Portland, had returned home to Colorado.

"She said she's sending a package to me and to open it at your house," he told me. We wondered what it could be and what was the reason for these cryptic instructions.

It became more cryptic still.

"Whatever it is, is for both of us, but we have to keep it at your house."

"Okay."

The final instructions were that, "We can open it at either house, but we have to bring everything to your house and that's where it is supposed to stay."

Finally, the box arrived. It was a sunny day, so I had walked from my house to my boyfriend's instead of driving. This takes more like thirty minutes instead of five, so by the time I arrived at his door, he was overcome with impatience. Two giant boxes waited on the table.

One box was actually for someone else in the house, but this had me temporarily confused.

I was directed to the correct box. "Let's open it!"

Inside the box was paper, for padding. We moved it aside and found another box.
We opened the second box. Again, more padding. We rapidly tore through it, hurling it around the living room. We found...

Another box!

Even more quickly, we tore into the third box, expecting to find a fourth box buried within. Instead, we found dishes!

Beautiful dishes, in red and white to match my kitchen. With a red and white serving platter to use and to hang on the wall when not in use. Plus two beautiful wine glasses and two tall Tom Collins glasses.

(The platter is hanging on the wall above all that other junk.)

I was nearly speechless, so surprised by this generosity.

Here's a shot of the Tom Collins glasses:

"What's Spanish Fly?" I asked, reading the label on the Tom Collins glasses.

Handsome Man was speechless now.

"Is it some kind of drink?" I asked.

It is not. Handsome Man directed me to the Wikipedia page. One of his roommates had joined the conversation at this point. After we both read the Wikipedia page, his roommate asked, "Why would your mother send that to you?"

"I bet she didn't see that," Handsome Man answered. "She must have just saw that they were red and thought the zipper was cute and didn't read what it said."

A closer look:

On Easter Sunday, Handsome Man's mother called. The subject of the glasses came up. I heard Handsome Man say, "It's something to get you turned on."

At that point, one of his roommates peeked into the room. "Are you still on the phone with your mother?" she asked.

He nodded.

She was incredulous.

Soon, he got off the phone. "It was what I said. When she brought them home, my father said, 'Why did you buy that for Sarah and Handsome Man!?'"

Apparently, after learning what Spanish Fly is, Handsome Man's mother decided to send the red zipper Tom Collins glasses to us anyway.

I would have done the same thing.

Here, the perfect place for that red and white platter. A few hours after I moved the refrigerator to hang it there, I learned that we would be moving upstairs! Oh well.

Stability and Quality of Life

2011-07-15T17:36:00.005-04:00

Frequently, these past couple of weeks, I have stopped to think about my quality of life. I reflect often on my improved quality of life this summer, as compared to July 2010. At that time I was at kind of a crossroads, and a year before that, I was just arriving in Portland and getting used to a new life. I've thought the most about this time of year in 2010, and that's what I'm going to write about today. My thoughts about July 2009, learning to accept that I had a new life, and learning to be an Oregonian, are worth writing about, but some other time.

About a year at this time, I was in the midst of moving. Also, some medical stuff was going on, and is still, in a way, going on, but a year ago, it was really just beginning and consuming my thoughts much more than it is today. Additionally, this was before I had any job security or even, technically, a job. I was still considered an intern at that time. It wasn't until August that I had a six-month contract and a real position.

At that time, I was afraid to go home. I was living out of an overnight bag in someone else's home. I took any opportunity to house sit that came my way, so that I'd have a bed to sleep in, a shower to bathe in, and a kitchen to cook in, without fear of harassment in what was technically my home or of intruding on someone else's home, which is how I felt making myself too much at home in the place where I was staying--with a friend who had lots of roommates.

Now, I never worry about harassment at home. And that is just the beginning of how my home has improved my quality of life.

I realized yesterday, during my lunch break, that I have a strange habit of going to work with my own fork and cloth napkin in my purse. I started to ponder how I developed such a quirk. It was a habit I formed at the place I worked last summer. How did that happen? It may have started because I stored some of my cookware at work. There were two reasons for this. When I wasn't really living at my home, I wanted to be able to use certain things, like my coffee grinder and my French press. I didn't want to clutter up the kitchen at the home where I was staying, and I also found that keeping my French press at work meant I could wait to make my morning coffee until I got to work. When I moved to the next place, where I did not feel harassed, I still felt that there wasn't a lot of room in the kitchen for me to store, use, or clean my things, so the French press and coffee grinder continued to live where they did until this winter, when I got my own place. (And soon after, quit that job, although the French press most likely had nothing to do with that.)

Anyway, those are the reasons I initially brought kitchen items to work. As I felt less able to prepare my daily meals and coffee at home, because of harassment at home or because of a crowded kitchen at home, I brought more and more items to work. To prepare my workday lunch of tempeh-avocado-arugula sandwiches with ease, I'd stop at Trader Joe's before work, buy my sandwich components, and at lunchtime, open the desk drawer where I kept a chef's knife and a bamboo cutting board for slicing the tempeh and the avocado.

It felt normal at the time.

---

I actually might have started bringing my own forks and spoons to work before even that! This habit was actually related to the workplace more than my home. The kitchen at the last place I worked--and this is no reflection on the staff--was often gross. No matter what the staff did, things just happened, such as inexplicable sink clogs. For awhile, however, the real reason I brought my own silverware to work, was that we never had any dish soap. It was always watered down inside a bottle that had probably been in that kitchen not only before I started, but probably before the at-the-time executive director had started. It may have been there, perhaps, before I moved to Portland. While the organization, much like my life at the time, was in transition, the dish soap did not get replaced. The same bottle became empty, and subsequently became filled with water, its contents growing weaker and weaker. It was because I never trusted that my forks got clean, or that the fork I was eating off of from their drawer was clean, that I would bring my own clean fork to work and then bring my dirty fork home to clean.

You can see that I had to REALLY think about this! And it felt normal. As normal as keeping a cutting board and a chef's knife above my hanging file drawer.

Things feel stable now. I suppose I can start leaving my forks at home.

Checking in

2011-07-13T15:05:00.000-04:00

So much for NaBloPoMo this month. I should have known that, with a broken laptop and no Internet, that goal was unrealistically ambitious.

The good news is that my laptop has been fixed! I'm still relying on other people's and other place's Internet, so posting may be a bit sparse for awhile. I planned to write drafts at home, to upload later, but it has just been so nice out. Too nice to sit inside and type any more than what I am required to do for school.

So I will share with you some pictures from this summer to give you a preview of what I will write soon.

Strawberry lemonade cupcake. I think it was even topped with a Hood strawberry.

I am learning to grill!

The first strawberry of my balcony garden!

Lacking Internet at home, I have time to do things like clean out, organize, and label the contents of my freezer.

Well, I hate to end on such a riveting note as organizing my freezer, but class is starting!

Trillium Lake

2011-07-01T15:53:00.002-04:00

National Blog Posting Month's theme for July is "swim," and today's prompt is, "Where would you love to go swimming?" My post title is my answer.

Around this time last year, my friends and I started to make use of my new Northwest Forest Pass to go to Mount Hood National Forest, frequently stopping at Trillium Lake to walk around, picnic, and even once, swim.

Where I am from, you can swim in lots of lakes. Here, I have never found a lake that anyone would normally want to swim in. The water comes from snow melt on the mountains. It is always ice cold.

Except once. Portland had its yearly summer heat wave. All my friends and I wanted to do was swim in a lake. It was so hot, that even glacial Trillium Lake sounded nice. And it was. Nice, but not glacial. It had been so hot, that even the waters of Trillium Lake were warm. We swam in waters that reflected the towering Mount Hood, like a white and silver snow-topped pyramid.

It would be nice if I could provide illustration for this, don't you think? The pictures exist, but they are locked on my main laptop, which is currently in a near-dead state and in the hands of a friend who may be able to revive it. If he succeeds, I will come back and add photos to this post.

A Worthy Organization, Followed By What Should Have Been My Graduate School Admission Essay

2011-06-30T08:58:00.000-04:00

The following is a post sponsored by Yahoo! Every time someone clicks here to make Yahoo! their homepage, they're showing their support for Girls For A Change.

I was selected for this opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I learned about Girls For A Change from this opportunity with the Clever Girls Collective, and after studying their mission, I visited their website to learn more. Girls For A Change describes itself on their website as "a national organization that empowers girls to create social change. We invite young women to design, lead, fund and implement social change projects that tackle issues girls face in their own neighborhoods." Under the subheading "Our Mission," the organization's activities are described as follows:

GFC empowers girls for personal and social transformation. The program inspires girls to have the voice, ability and problem solving capacity to speak up, be decision makers, create visionary change and realize their full potential.

This language employs, as do most mission statements, powerful yet nonspecific words. My work in nonprofits and my coursework in Nonprofit Management has led me to scrutinize such language. Any organization can claim an important, attractive mission, and point out the ties between that mission, their local, community-based activities, and a broad, far-reaching goal that contributes to the general saving of the world. The implementation of mission-related activities is what really matters, in my opinion. And that is why I would like to call your attention to the following language from the Girls For A Change website that describes their specific activities:
Today, in cities across the country, Girl Action Teams of approximately 10 girls and two volunteer women Coaches meet to identify an issue or problem that they want to impact. The Coaches then teach the girls essential project planning and execution skills to aid them in designing ang implementing their social change project. [...] Every year, thousands of girls learn how to tackle community problems such as gang violence, low self esteem, and environmental degradation.

What I would like to point out is the way in which the specific activities of Girls For A Change address multiple community needs, not only in the content and broad range of the projects performed by the Girl Action Teams, but also by providing training to girls in effective leadership and management of these projects. Too often are well-intentioned projects inefficiently and ineffectively implemented, and such training not only avoids this problem in the short term, but helps to ensure cumulative benefits in the long term, as with that training, these young women can continue to work toward positive change in years to come. Positive change that takes place once is just that. It only happens once. It does not ensure sustainable outcomes.

The young women themselves benefit personally by gaining skills that they can carry with them throughout the remainder of their school years and into their adult lives and careers. What a great program!

This sounds much more effective and organized than my own youthful endeavors as an activist.

When I was in elementary school, I constantly tried to start clubs of which I was the President. I started my first club, the Cricket Club, when I was seven or so. I distinctly remember how I came up with that name. Riding in my parents' car, we passed a building with a sign that I saw a sign advertising a Cricket Club, and I liked the sound of that. My parents tried to explain to me that the club advertised by that particular sign was a group of people getting together to play a game called cricket, which was "like baseball" and therefore totally uninteresting to me, since watching baseball was against our House Rules. This wise advice fell on deaf ears. I liked that name and would not be moved.

I am not sure what the purpose of Cricket Club started as, other than a thing for which I must serve as President. I think it had something to do with all of my friends gathering under a metal playground structure that resembled something you'd see at Storm King. I think it also had something to do with magic rocks. These were any pebbles selected from the myriad colorful pebbles that covered the ground of our playground, which were especially colorful or beautiful and therefore magic. I have one specific memory of a magic rock that looked like a hot dog bun, and was supposed to make food magically appear if you knew how to use it properly. None of us did.

Sometimes these magic rocks turned out to be dried up wads of somebody's spat-out gum. That was always a disappointment.

The Cricket Club eventually disbanded after all of my friends, sick of the President's hyper-bossiness, quit. At some point before that happened, however, our purpose shifted from magic rocks to social change, which I called Saving The World. A pretty ambitious goal for a second grader.

About a year later, with my best friend Ruthie, I started the Save The World Committee. The title of this one was a bit more to the point. We didn't last long, however. Our parents made us disband when my father overheard us list, among our goals for saving the world, "telling the President to make it so a girl can marry a girl and a boy can marry a boy if they want to." My parents in particular felt it was an inappropriate cause for an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old. My parents weren't homophobic, so I never have been certain of the motives behind this seemingly out of character move. I think it was because, although Ruthie and I didn't know this, our cause had to do with sex, and it wasn't long before we would, had we continued on that track, found out that people didn't just get married because they were really good friends, so why couldn't someone marry their best friend if they want to?

What shortly followed was the formation of the World Committee. All of the girls in my neighborhood and a couple of friends from school were members. I was the President, of course. I do not remember who was Vice President or Secretary, but I do know who was Treasurer, because of what happened to the club's entire general fund and eventually led to the organization's demise.

The members of the World Committee were savvier than the members of either the Cricket Club or the Save the World Committee. We knew that saving the world was a long process, and a small group of fourth and fifth graders had to start small. So our first order of business was to create a strategic plan, and we decided that the first project we'd undertake was going to be planting a tree. The benefit to the community would be improved air quality for the local population, as well as the environmental benefits of wildlife habitat and the cultural benefit of a tree's scenic beauty.

Lacking in our strategic plan was what type of tree we would plant and exactly where we would plant it. We did not determine from which nursery we would purchase the plant, nor did we ask a specific nursery for sponsorship. One of us must have visited a nursery with her parents, however, because at an early meeting, it was entered into the minutes that the average cost of a young tree was about thirty dollars. Thirty dollars became our goal.

We had a plan to raise thirty dollars, a plan that would engage the community. We went door to door. We did not solicit donations, and in fact, when our neighbors simply handed us a five dollar bill, we were astonished. Ours was a fee for service model. We offered to rake leaves and walk dogs in exchange for whatever our neighbors felt they could pay.

All went well, aside from one of our clients inexplicably ignoring our phone calls and visits without having paid us $10 for walking her dog. We even exceeded our thirty dollar goal. By now, it was winter, so we used the excess for some Christmastime local charity and held on to the thirty dollars, waiting for spring to buy and plant the tree.

But it was not to be. One day that winter, the Treasurer called me with unhappy news. It was a Friday night and her family had ordered pizza delivery. When the pizza arrived, her parents realized that they did not have enough cash to pay the delivery boy. Despite the Treasurer's protests, her mother took seventeen dollars out of the World Committee treasury. She replaced the money with a post-it note I.O.U.

A few months later, the entire family moved to Belgium. The Treasurer's mother never returned the seventeen dollars to the World Committee. We never quite recovered from this setback, and shortly after, we disbanded. It may also have slightly had something to do with the President being too bossy.

With that, I had my first lesson in the disappointment and disillusion that can accompany working for social change, in or out of the nonprofit sector. Yet today I am a student in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government Nonprofit Management program, so I didn't give up, and it's because of effective, inspiring examples such as Girls For A Change. Remember, you must use the link provided at the opening of this post to be counted, and you must do so by July 1. Time is running out, so spread the word!

Homemade soy milk

2011-06-28T20:16:00.003-04:00

I am still in a low Internet state. There is temporarily no Internet at my house, and my laptop isn't working. I can get online with a phone and a Nook, but the keyboards on those are not ideal. So I found my eeePC laptop, a mini laptop I had been ignoring because it had been going through a temperamental phase in which it didn't want to connect to the Internet and froze randomly. Now it occasionally gets slow, the word processor changes the fonts of sections of my document to DejaVu Sans for no reason that I can ascertain, and the Back and Forward buttons on Firefox aren't working. It is better than nothing, and I am happy to have it.

From Food

Above is a photograph of what the title of this post suggests I am going to tell you about. That big long plastic container houses all of the strawberries I picked in NJ and brought back to Oregon in my checked bag. The farm says they only last about three days in the fridge, yet I have had them for more than a week and not a single one has gone bad. I eat them every day, and there are still so many left. It is neverending strawberry happiness.

But I will write a novella about strawberries for you later. I even have a draft that I wrote by hand. Yes, on paper! That's what having no Internet at home and a bad laptop will do to you.

So, the soy milk. I am not a vegan. I am not even a vegetarian. I don't believe people who say that humans should not drink another animal's milk. I don't even drink soy milk that often. I don't seek it out in cafes or at the grocery store. I'm also not a passionate soy milk hater, either. If it's there, I'll drink it. But I never thought of myself as a big soy milk lover either.

So, I'm not quite sure why, when I read a recent Bust magazine article about making your own soy milk, I became overwhelmed with the desire to try it. Something about the recipe just made it sound so appealing, as well as easy. And it was. In case you can't get your hands on a copy of Bust from a few months ago, the same recipe (with more detail and more pictures) is here. When I brought my food processor/blender from NJ this winter, I was unable to fit the blender attachment in my bag. It wasn't until my most recent trip that I was able to retrieve that blender, and I held onto the soy milk recipe for all those months. In fact, the soy milk is the first thing I made with that blender since moving it across the country.

You just soak the beans, drain them and puree them with new water in the blender, then put the mixture in a pot with more water. Bring it to a boil while stirring the pot, then let it simmer for 25 minutes. Add sugar and a little salt. All of the measurements and ratios and times are in the recipe linked to above.

I didn't have cheese cloth or anything that I thought of improvising at the last minute, so I just used a mesh strainer. The result is a few bean pieces in my soy milk, which is fine when I'm just using it to reheat oatmeal on the stove.

Note. Even if you are not as prone to kitchen katastrophes as I am, do not leave that soy milk unattended when you are waiting for it to boil. Not until you have it lowered to a simmer should you turn your back on that pot. Just trust me. Something about the soybean and water mixture makes it come to a sudden and explosive boil. I mean explosive. I didn't even leave my kitchen this time. I was right next to the stove, rinsing a dish, when I heard the clang of the pot lid and saw an eruption of milky foam leaving sticky soy milk and chunks of soybeans all over my stovetop, under the burners, and on my kitchen floor. It leaked into the oven. It leaked into the drawer under the oven. I had just deep cleaned my kitchen this weekend!

Prior to this incident, however, I hadn't realized the parts of my stove that could be taken apart to be cleaned, and now I have a new project to take on when I am cleaning to relieve stress. So perhaps it wasn't all bad!

I decided I was not to be deterred, so after I cleaned up the kitchen karnage, I set out a new bowl of beans to soak, and that was how I was able to take that picture above. It was really, really good hot, when I had first made it, and it was good cold in iced coffee and in my oatmeal with strawberries.

Back in Oregon

2011-06-25T00:24:00.003-04:00

Hello!

From Sunrise Mountain

I'm back! But with very limited Internet capabilities.

The time when my posting began to dwindle was marked by lots happening at school, lots happening at work, car trouble, and even some doctor visits. Then I went out of town and stayed in a place with spotty Internet. Then I came home to a house with no Internet. I don't plan on getting Internet for awhile, not until there are more people with whom I can split the bill. Plus, it's summer! It's too nice out to be on the Internet all day. I live in a city! If I need Internet, there are plenty of places I can go get it.

From Kittatinny Valley State Park

I've been getting Internet, however, with my Nook or my not-so-smart phone, which means I haven't had much access to a real keyboard or the pictures I've wanted to upload.

From Storm King

So for now, I'm just posting a few pictures. More stories later!

From Storm King

Portland

2011-06-23T23:19:00.001-04:00

The billboard on the right is for Coca-Cola, of course, and the billboard on the left, showing a picture of a soda bottle, reads, "YOUR KID JUST ATE 16 PACKS OF SUGAR."

June and Thinking about Change

2011-06-02T02:46:00.002-04:00

Happy June! We are supposed to have sun this weekend. I am very excited. Maybe soon we can even turn the heat off!

I should probably change my winter, snowscape masthead soon. I don't know if I have the energy to make a new one yet.

Also, I'm thinking that I'd like to change the name of this blog. Big-Haired Jersey Girl was supposed to be temporary. I feel like the use of "haired" as an adjective is kind of awkward; plus, lately there have been more and more people finding this blog because they searched for something with "haired" and "girls". Ewwww. There have also been a lot of searches about high school girls' thighs since I wrote this post. Ewwww again. It is only a matter of time before "thighs" and "haired" come up in the same search term that leads someone to this blog.

What do you think, readers? Should I change this blog's name and if so, to what? Or is this blog title too closely linked to its identity?

Some signs of summer this Sunday

2011-05-31T23:11:00.003-04:00

It wasn't all bad this Sunday. Despite all the cold and rain, there were these signs of summer. Those are Hood strawberries and baby summer squash from the farmers' market, surrounded by the many seeds purchased at Portland Nursery this weekend.

Endless Winter

2011-05-29T21:02:00.004-04:00

This weekend, as I re-unpacked my down comforter to put it back on my bed, I realized that I had been taking for granted as normal that it is almost June and the heat is still on in my apartment. I have had to keep my heating vents closed to keep out unwanted air from another apartment (a topic I'll elaborate on only at a later date), and I have spent much of the weekend freezing.

We've had some relief this spring, a few days in the 60's and 70's with sun. But for the most part, I've come to expect temperatures in the 50's and if not rain, at least clouds.

This isn't very different from a Portland winter, and I can at least be thankful that normal winter temperatures here are 40's and 50's and even sometimes 60's, instead of 20's and lower. The effect this has on me, a person who is currently wearing the same long-sleeved shirt and jeans I would have worn in February, is to make the whole year blend together as one long season until that shorter second one when the sun is out every day, the air is drier than anything I ever experienced in New Jersey, and sometimes it even gets up to 100 degrees.

It was sunny most of yesterday, and it may even be sunny tomorrow. I'd also like to point out that this spring and last spring are not typical; everyone is saying that we're in an especially cold and wet cycle. My first summer here was brilliant. I got plenty of sun yesterday; now I am just feeling a little stir crazy.

I thought about changing my masthead, which is currently a picture of a Montana snowscape taken from the Empire Builder last January (having nothing to do with big hair, Jersey, girls, or Oregon), but since today feels like winter, that masthead fits my mood.

Book Review: Jeremy Chikalto and the Hazy Souls by T. S. DeBrosse

2011-05-29T13:29:00.008-04:00

Early in Jeremy Chikalto and the Hazy Souls, the main character, a teenage boy whose paranormal encounters have marked him as different, is traveling far from his home to boarding school. Sound familiar? Well, that's pretty much where any similarity between T. S. DeBrosse's debut novel and Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone ends. Oh, also, both novels came from the pens of talented individuals who write under their initials. Cajjez Jeremy Chikalto, who in the opening scene the reader witnesses abusing his servants, more closely resembles Harry Potter's bratty cousin Dudley, the one you probably love to hate, than Harry Potter himself, who has managed to grow up kind, humble, and moral despite his unpleasant upbringing. Jeremy Chikalto is a different kind of hero, one whom you may at first dislike. And that is kind of refreshing.

The hero of DeBrosse's novel is a brat, for sure, but he is a brat with redeeming qualities. Kind of like brats you might know in real life. He is a departure from the humble yet valiant hero around which the genre of science fiction and fantasy more commonly centers. He is complex, a good person with believable flaws.

Another intriguing character I'd like to highlight is Maren Nononia. She is in some ways an unlikely heroine. Maren, too, represents a departure from the narrowly defined roles most women in the genre are allowed to occupy. She is not conniving and catty, she is not airheaded or weak, and she is not the blindly courageous, hot-tempered, self-confident heroine busting through boundaries in a man's world, and then saving the world while she's at it. Though having nothing to do with fantasy or science fiction, think of the personality of Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Maren is more like another Jane Austen character, the unsung heroine Fanny Price of the lesser-sung novel Mansfield Park. She is timid, yet principled, and able to speak her mind and stand her ground where it counts.

At face value, the debut novel by T.S. DeBrosse features a vast multitude of the tropes of many beloved sci-fi and fantasy classics all in one novel. Jeremy Chikalto and the Hazy Souls includes a prince, magic, space travel, prophecy, monsters, and even talking cats, although DeBrosse would probably correct me on semantics. The "prince" to whom I refer, Jeremy, is actually the Cajjez of the planet Watico; the "monsters" are really abominations; and the talking cats are not cats at all, but fizdrufts. This might seem like too much, like a mishmosh of too many fantastic elements, but DeBrosse is able to make it work. Instead of the work of an unskilled fantastical fiction fan throwing all of his or her favorite fantastical ideas together in a busy, uncoordinated, eye-roll-inducing mess, Jeremy Chikalto and the Hazy Souls represents skillful balancing of all of these elements. That DeBrosse is able to seamlessly combine them amazes me, personally; it is a testament to the writer's talent.

Speaking of testaments, the prophecy to which I referred in the previous paragraph isn't completely some story DeBrosse dreamed up, or a tired reiteration of the standard plot in which an Evil being is going to destroy the world unless the Chosen One intervenes. Closely tied to Jeremy Chikalto's fate is the Old Testament of the Bible. While the Watican Bible varies somewhat from that of Earth, it is the same religion. The moment that this connection became clear to me, the reader, I stopped and thought, "This book is really well constructed!" Because here was yet another element added to the mix of space travel and talking cats, and still, nothing stuck out and everything fit. The addition of recognizable religion to the book also sets it apart from others of its genre; in my mind, this is what makes DeBrosse's book really original.

In fact, the Earth we know exists in this novel and parts of the novel take place on Earth. Which reminds me of another thing that makes this book great. Have you ever read a science fiction novel where characters from a distant planet have an uncanny ability to speak English? Well, Jeremy Chikalto and friends do speak English, but DeBrosse even has a plausible explanation for that.

Because this is such an original piece of writing, I'm not telling you anymore. I don't want to give away anything about the plot. Being surprised by this unique novel is part of what makes it enjoyable, and I wouldn't want to ruin that for anyone.

Jeremy Chikalto and the Hazy Souls is available in paperback and e-book form. You can find it at Amazon (Kindle and print), Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. Hey, Portlanders! Powell's has it too!

Highlights from the Blog Revision Project - 2007

2011-05-29T12:11:00.006-04:00

Above, what I looked like after one year of Botany School

This project began at the end of 2010, when I didn't have school to take up my time. The project is an attempt to make the older writing on this blog, from the days when I had no readers and no expectations of attracting any, accessible. This means correcting the grammar and typos (when they don't contribute somehow to the story or style), adding some formatting (just HTML codes for paragraphs so that there are indents and line breaks), and adding descriptive tags to each post. In some cases, I've even retroactively added pictures--usually photographs from the event actually being described in the post. Now, here's where it gets a little sketchy; I am actually editing some of the text. I'm taking out references to anything with the smallest chance of being incriminating, mostly about my family, friends, or former employers. I've taken out anything that I've decided I now want to keep a secret because frankly, that is my right. Most of the textual changes I've made have been clarifying stringy, rambling sentences.

Which is why 2007 was such a challenge. My writing that year was marked by rambling. It's taking me, me! the person who wrote all of this!, so long to edit these posts because so much of my writing at that time was a wall of where-am-I-now-and-where-should-my-life-go?-P.S.-Nature-is-pretty text that even I find inscrutable. In a lot of cases, I've decided to just format the paragraph indents and leave everything else alone.

So I've stopped in the middle of August. Here are some of my favorites.

Love and Value-Added Agricultural Produce
Mixed Up
Sleepwalking Strip Malls I feel like I should re-read this every three months or so to remind myself of some things, especially as I continue to pursue a life with Dorothea Brook complex.
On Not Being a Snake or Termite

And, in case you were not reading in late 2010, here are Highlights from 2006.

UPDATE: After going through what remained of 2007, only one other post belonged on the "favorites" list, so there will be no Second Half of 2007 highlights.

A revision

2011-05-28T01:33:00.004-04:00

I've revised and retitled my most popular post. It is now just called, "The Time Someone Told Me To Straighten My Hair." I have been checking the stats of my blog ever since I started writing sponsored posts (thanks to the CleverGirls Collective! See that nice yellow badge over there on the right?) and observed that by a rather large margin, "The Time Someone Told Me To Straighten My Hair" is the most widely read, or at least, the most clicked-upon single post of this entire blog.

That post was written in the good old days of 2006, when no one read my blog and no one cared if I wrote about being drunk at a work function. (Note: It was a work function at a bar, a place where people tend to get drunk. I wasn't the only one, and no damage was done. On the contrary, I entertained the clients.) Now, I'm older and have more readers and there were parts of that story that made me cringe a little. I've taken out any details that I thought were too specific to the place I was working at the time. I write on this blog with my first and last name, so my readers already know who I am! It's my former place of employment that I didn't want to be identified.

In case you're wondering, my co-worker friend and I are still friends. He has read the post and has told me that he remembers a different version of that evening's events. He has not yet told me what that version is, and I wish he would so that I could share it with you, readers.

Perhaps someday in the next installment of Testing the Limits of How Much My Next Job Will Care About My Online Presence, I will tell you about the funniest time I had to go to work with a bad hangover, in spite of which I was still very productive!

And more

2011-05-28T00:45:00.003-04:00

I forgot to share this. Now I want to read The Flipside of Feminism, which I'd like to point out, while the image in the link above shows the subtitle as, "What smart women know -- and men can't say," an alternate edition has the subtitle read, "What conservative women know -- and men can't say" (emphasis mine.) Since feminism isn't strictly limited to non-conservatives, I wonder how conservative women would feel being generalized and lumped into whatever the message of this book is. The Bust writeup makes it sound incredibly distasteful, as do the comments made by people who read and liked the book, but lately I've decided that if I want to get anything done in the world, I have to familiarize myself with opposing viewpoints and maybe even learn to respect them. The Multnomah County Library doesn't carry this book, so I've requested it from Interlibrary Loan. I'll report back once I've read it!

More interesting things from the rest of the Internet

2011-05-27T20:37:00.002-04:00

Allergies and allergy medicine are making me too loopy to write a good story, so here's some other interesting writing.

Top 50 Women in Food. I'm linking to the Bust blog that links to the actual list, because that's how I learned about it. The Bust blog post opens with, "Everybody loves Jamie, Gordon, Emeril and Mario, but food isn’t a boys club by any means. While the cult of the celebrity chef has its fair share of males, the contributions of women to American food are undeniably important in shaping our food culture and community." The list is interesting, and even though I think some women were unfairly left off the list, I'm kind of glad Julie Powell is on it. I've written here multiple times stating that, while she's not my favorite writer and I don't agree with her on all things, I feel like she gets way more crap than she deserves.

The very existence of such a list, Top 50 Women in Food, or Top #### Women in Anything, touches on something that annoys me, and maybe only me. This is the reason I included the opening lines from the Bust blog post. I'm sort of getting tired of seeing Best Women or Top Women anything. Why can't we just say, Best People or Top 50 People? Why do we have to divide men and women so much? Are people afraid that women will be underrepresented on such lists? If they are, so be it. That's an indication of a problem and it makes the problem more difficult to ignore. (The problem could either be that women are underrepresented or that the person/people/institution responsible for the list fails to notice the presence of women in whatever field.) I am starting to feel like all of this Best Women stuff is further widening the gender gap and further keeping women in a subordinate status. Am I alone in this?

My thoughts on an article I recently shared, about baby Storm and his/her family, are connected to this. That's all I'll say for now.

Also from Bust, there is now academic proof that the very existence of plus size models is responsible for an increase in obesity. I've actually had this on my "To Write About" list for a month. When I have some time, I'd love to find the actual study that "found" this, and see how this could be "proven." It's not just that I disagree, it's that I don't see how you can prove something like this.

While I'm already talking about feminism, did you know that women who change their last name to their husband's upon getting married make less money than women who keep their last name? If you're reached your New York Times monthly article limit, you can read about the same study covered by The Wall Street Journal instead. It's tempting to say that this is one more reason to keep your name, but really, it just represents an alarming trend and a stupid prejudice!

So, Readers, what do you think of all this?

Broken Photo Links

2011-05-27T16:50:00.003-04:00

I am attempting to re-organize some of my online albums, so you might see some broken photo links in this blog, especially older posts. Feel free to contact me about them if you'd like! I'll be more quickly fixing the links on posts that actually get read frequently.

More about choices

2011-05-24T17:49:00.002-04:00

My last post about technology, relationship with nature, access to nature, and education, was essentially about personal choices and how well-equipped are young people to make these choices; similarly, it questioned how well-equipped adults (including but not limited to parents, educators, and other professionals) are to make these decisions for young people.

That is why I see a relationship between that post (the articles linked from it and the ideas expressed in it) to this article about a couple in Canada who strive not to project gender norms on their children, so much so that they are withholding the gender of their baby from nearly everyone who asks.

I won't tell you what I think of this yet, because I have to go back to work and because I'm more interested in learning what other people think. What do you think? What are your initial reactions? Is this a good idea in theory? Is this a good idea in practice, in this particular situation? Would it be a good or bad idea in a different situation? Is Storm being given the freedom to make his or her own choice, or are choices being made for him or her? What about Storm's brothers -- are choices being made for them by their parents or any other entities besides themselves?

"Unschooling" is a whole separate issue that comes up in this article, but it relates to choice, too.

Big-Haired Jersey Girl

Christmastime Road Trip Adventure: Introduction

Dreams of academia

12 things

To wyome

Road Trip Update #1

When dreams resemble reality and reality is like a dream

Theory

Coming Soon: Adventures in Frugality

Welcome home and Happy December

Daydreaming about the future

Final Day of NaBloPoMo

Trying to post from my cell phone in traffic on the way to Newark Airport

5 Things About Reading and Writing

10

Saturday Morning Miscellany

Writing about writing (other people's)

An early holiday card

Happy Thinksgiving from Planet Rock

My beautiful home

A very late correction

Sunday of Errands

Pound

Today's Prompt: What has been the happiest moment of your life thus far?

No time to write!

Quick note

Going to the magazines

Through Being Cool

The quest for tkemali plums

Seen while shopping in Portland

11/11/11

I have lot more to say but not a lot of time

Prompt of the Day

Tuesday thought

Monday thoughts

The Weekend of Not According to Plan

Possible stories to share

It's official!

Another sunny fall day

Later fall mornings

Fall mornings

It's been awhile!

A few happy things

Not quite the same as my Y is for... post, but a similar topic

More canning questions - this time pie filling

HOT part two

Jamming (and getting injured)

Multi-tasking

Response to comments (on flares, getting old, and getting flares at Old Navy)

On aging

The end of summer?

A happy summer

HOT

Long tired day

Still responding to comments

Canning tomatoes: Do I really have to peel them!?

What character would you want to have over for dinner and what would you cook?

A correction!

Continuation of yesterday's comments

Comments on Y is for/nose-to-tail and the book I finished yesterday

Y is for...

The last book I read

Correction on French Cuisine and TriMet

5 Things for Tuesday

TriMet + Sarah = BFFs

Happy Time Running Errands

With three minutes to spare...

Wild time running errands

New masthead! And more!

New things coming soon

What do you think about white lies?

I've picked the song for my next big karaoke performance

Sunday Thoughts

Saturday thoughts

Clafoutis Made Vegan

Thoughts on French Cuisine

Miscellaneous photographs from recent adventures

Who is your favorite author? Lights on or off?

New apartment, new month, new goal

5 Things for Wednesday