Oddly specific fundraising mailer

IMG_3661I worked in the library at both colleges I attended for undergraduate work.  UMass is pretty persistent in the fundraising, despite the fact that I only made one donation once, to the history department.  It was weird to see the tagline “Happiness is…a job at the library.”

Yes it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give you any money.

Friday Project and how to stay cool in the heat.

The Friday Project this week was hemming two pair of new pants I bought. I found great tutorials here and here.  I also took up the shoulders in a shirt I purchased.   IMG_3656

It’s hot, especially for Portland. If I can keep the heat out, our house is pretty okay.  Here’s how I attempted  to keep it at bay.

This is the only south-facing window in our house.  If I close the curtains, it helps a lot. Antares doesn’t mind the heat, though.  He will happily sleep on the sunny side of the curtain. IMG_3658

Why heat up the big oven to cook your pie crust, when you can instead use your toaster oven?   IMG_3660

Laundry!  Dried outside.  In about 10 minutes.  I washed ALL of my bedding.  IMG_3657

Not actually made a pie.

IMG_3304This is one of those objects which purports to make a difficult process easier, but actually just makes it harder.  If you’ve ever worked with pie crust, you know how temperamental it can be.  And sticky.  I’m guessing this works well 5% of the time, and the other 95% just causes a lot of swearing.  Plus, you have to store it somewhere. My recommendation is to: Stay. Away.

Things from the paper.

Holly explains to her mother why she could get A’s on her mid-term, but chooses not to.  This was my philosophy in high school also.  Although in college I did a one-eighty and spent a lot of time doing things.

I probably shouldn’t encourage Jeff Baker, but his opening sentences of this review made me laugh.

Later in the same movie review section, Jeff Baker has this call to action came at the end of the review for The Hunting Ground. Hear hear!!!

I enjoyed this picture of protesters because it was such a small number of people and also take a closer look at the woman on the right.

I’m pretty sure she’s taking a picture of the news photographer taking a picture of the protesters.

Last day.

Just in case this was Kitzhaber’s last day as Governor, I took a picture of the front page.  And indeed, by 12:15pm he had announced his resignation, though it won’t take effect for a few days. 

Though I think the Oregonian spent an excessive amount of time covering the things that were being uncovered, I place the blame fully on Kitzhaber.  For the past few weeks, whenever I unfurled or logged on to the paper and saw the day’s new headline a line from the song “I wanna get better” by the Bleachers would pop into my head:

…I was losing my mind,
because the love,
the love,
the love,
the love,
the love
that I gave.
Wasted. On a nice face…

In his resignation letter Kitzhauber wrote: “I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved.  But even more troubling — and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of public service to Oregon — is that so many of my former allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value.”

And that struck me as a the biggest F-you to the media and his colleagues I’ve seen in years.  But the fact of the matter remains that John Kitzhaber has been in politics for 35 years.  He is (or should be) familiar with the ethics guidelines that govern representatives of our state.  He chose to be in a relationship with a woman who seems to have not followed those guidelines, he chose to refer to her as first lady, and he decided that what she was doing was okay. 

It’s never good for a politician to be investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, the State Attorney General, and a Federal grand jury investigation.  And with every question asked of Cylvia Hayes’ role Kitzhaber has minimized evidence that has been presented. 

This scandal put me, a single working female professional woman in a long-term unmarried relationship, (Cyliva Hayes is all of those things too) in the uncomfortable position of thinking things like “why doesn’t he just marry her already?” and various other ridiculous thoughts that left me feeling like I was betraying the sisterhood.  But the governor can’t have it both ways.  Is she the first lady, doing deals and making contacts as the first lady?  Fine.  Is she a professional woman, head of her own company that benefits from her knowledge of and access too political contacts?  Fine.  But they needed to be very clear which hat she was wearing at which time.  And they weren’t.

Is she a member of his household, even if they are not married? Fine.  But to say that the first lady is just a ceremonial role when questions come up about contracts and other dealings with Hayes’ company is false.  And, frankly, ridiculous.  If there was a firm line drawn by either the governor or Cyliva Hayes then we wouldn’t be swearing in a new governor next week.  But there weren’t and while Kitzhaber seems to have acted above board for his 35+ year career, the woman he has associated himself with for the last ten has raised an incredible amount of red flags. 

And just because they aren’t married doesn’t mean we don’t get to say, “Not good choices, Governor Kitzhaber.  Please go.”

I sat through four wasted years of a neutered Sam Adams as mayor of Portland after his scandal.  I don’t need to sit through four years of an ineffective governor.  The state’s got too much to do.

I wish Kitzhaber a good life, with or without Cylvia Hayes by his side.  I personally would suggest without, but I guess he knows her better than I do.

The preferred method.

This is a moot point because I’ve switched over to an electronic calendar, but I need to point out to nearly all of the planner makers that the above is a better setup than five days the same size and Saturday/Sunday sharing one space.   We have things to do on the weekend.  Lots of things.  It used to drive me crazy, having acres of space to write things Monday through Friday and then squeezing in the Saturday and Sunday details.  Here Monday through Thursday share one page and the remaining three days share the other.

Hopefully in 30 years this will seem ridiculous.

Can you imagine paying $43,016 per year to become a dentist?  That is an insane amount of debt to take on, even if dentists do make a lot of money from the get-go.  What’s even crazier is the jump from $15,000 to $43,000 in just ten years.
I’m hoping our student-loan-saddled generation can make things better for the next one, because something has got to give.