Postcard from Finland.

Here’s my first art postcard!  It’s from Juulia who is 11 and has great handwriting.  She says, “I hope this card is unbroken when it comes to you.  If here is falled letters, cards says: “Muffini” and that means cupcake in Finnish.

As you can see, nearly all the letters made it to me.

Also, this stamp makes me want to visit Finland in the summer.  Though I imagine their summer beach weather is not much different than the Oregon Coast, temperature-wise.

Two headlines from today’s paper

Reading this, I audibly gasped, mostly because I’ve been waiting for years for male athletes to start coming out of the closet.  Also: same last name!
 
Oh Grant Butler.  A few years ago you decided to experiment with being vegan for a few months and I thought, “I hope you can make it that long without cheese” because cheese is the number one reason I don’t want to be a vegan.  The number two reason is that I don’t think it’s actually a healthy way of eating.  But you, Grant Butler, took to it like a duck to water and now your write columns that amuse me such as this:

Now I don’t mind a good veggie burger now and then, but really, the bun?  The bun is the best part, in fact,  the main reason for eating the veggie burger.  When you get right down to it, I would eat the bun with a bit of butter rather than the veggie burger wrapped in lettuce or what have you.

Three sentence movie reviews: P.S.

I hadn’t heard of this Laura Linney/Topher Grace 2004 effort, but it was free, so why not?  It was a very interesting story (40-year-old woman believes 20-year-old art student is her dead ex-boyfriend reincarnated) and that kept me watching.  I think the whole movie could have explored a bit deeper, but overall, I was engaged the entire time.

Cost:  free because I had a gift certificate to Title Wave Bookshop
Where watched: at home.

Portland Center Stage: Clybourne Park

Clybourne Park is about how neighborhoods change over the years.  Outside the theater was a map of Portland where people were invited to write their comments.
 
Here’s my neighborhood.  The yellow post-it says “the cows used to travel through here.”  I didn’t focus the camera enough to be able to see what the blue post-it said.

As for the play itself, it was very good.  The writing was both funny and uncomfortable, which meant I laughed and felt twisted up the entire time.  That said, I recommend you see it not only for the subject matter, but because over intermission, the crew “ages” the house that is the main setting 50 years and it is fascinating to watch.  That alone is worth the price of admission.

I attended this play to see Andy Lee-Hillstrom (the mashed potato eating actor who inspired my current Lint project) and he was fabulous as Jim/Tom/Kenneth.  But Sal Visccuso was brilliant as Russ/Dan and Sharonlee McLean was also incredible as Bev/Kathy.  I had last seen Brianna Horne as Laurie in Oklahoma and it was fun to watch her transform from “getting along” maid Francine to empowered Lena.  The rest of the cast was also wonderful.

Because of the uncomfortable subject matter Director Chris Coleman had a talk back after every show.  It was interesting to hear about how the actors felt about their characters.  Also worth the price of admission was the essay “The House on Clybourne Street” by Beryl Satter which discussed the only way black people in Chicago were able to purchase a home in the mid-twentieth century.  The essay was a punch in the gut for me.  I understood that things were unfair, but was outraged at how unfair this particular practice was.  Do yourself a favor and read the essay.

I make a pizza.

Matt is out of town and I have the day off, so I will make pizza for dinner.  It’s also the end of the month which means there isn’t much left in the grocery account, so I’m going to make a pizza with what I have.  I picked some asparagus from the garden and sliced that up and sprinkled it on. Then I opened a can of sardines and added them.  There were Lima beans that needed to be used up, so on those went.   I had some leftover shredded mozzarella, which was good.  Then, after I baked all of that, I cracked four eggs on top.

This was a very fine pizza.