I accompanied current and retired librarians to a showing of the documentary the Librarians. That was a fun group to watch the movie with.
The documentary follows different librarians as their states and well-funded interest groups attempt to control what community members can access.
There are some people I was surprised agreed to be interviewed, and there was an interesting turn with the lady with the red hair. Overall, it was rough to watch librarians lose their jobs, get called pedophiles, and face community censure, but there was some hope to cling to in the end. Recommended!
Afterward, there was a Q&A session, and the MCL library director was one of the speakers.
It’s budget meeting season at work, which means time for me to do some Zentangling while the meetings happen.
It had been some time since I tangled, and I had to remind myself how to do a few of the tangles.
It was also Election Day!
I transported ballots from the Northwest Library again. This was the last election at this location of the Northwest Library. They are opening a new larger location in January on NW Pettygrove.
It was fun to watch the ballots come in for the last 15 minutes people could turn them in. There were more than 10 ballots that appeared in the book return. Apparently turnout was very low overall (we only had a parks bond renewal to approve or reject—the easiest ballot I’ve ever cast), but it didn’t feel like that while I was waiting for the polls to close.
We only had to drive to the Elections office on Belmont (rather than the Yeon building, like the 2024 election) so I didn’t make a ton of overtime, but the money is just the cherry on top. I would transport ballots for free.
I sent Boise tea reports to a tea-drinking friend. The previous day at the bacon restaurant, I received a paper cup with water and one tea bag, while the coffee drinkers had ceramic mugs and unlimited refills. Tea discrimination!
At this family style restaurant I got a ceramic mug, a hot water pitcher (that they refilled) and THREE tea bags. Tea appreciation!
Because of the way the calendar fell this year, I was in Boise the last day of October and the first weekend of November, which meant different things were available than when I visit around the 20th of October.
We stopped by the Eagle Holiday Bazaar, a staple of my childhood. It had all sorts of things, none of which I brought home. It was fun to see the creators creating in between helping customers at their booths.
What I discovered is that at Eagle High School, seniors each get their own parking spot. This was not a thing when I was in high school. We just grabbed whatever space was available.
And what’s more, their spaces are decorated. I thought perhaps by the students, but my tea-drinking friend said it might be the parents. Apparently someone wanted to call out Deuteronomy 4:29 (“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul,” according to the first Google search result).
Someone is into the lord. Either the student or the parent.
This post brought to you by Sara’s game of “Send Me the Most Idaho Picture” while I was visiting in Boise.
I didn’t send her a picture of the Don’t Tread on Me license plate I saw in the wild because I was driving at the time, but I did tell her about it. Then I looked up when that plate had gone into production. Answer: relatively recently.
That sent me down a path of looking at ALL the Idaho plates available, which are many, some of which are pictured here.
I’m from the era when there was one plate: the white and green Famous Potatoes plate. In 1990, we could get the centennial plate, which is what most of the above plate are based on. And that was what you got. I don’t mind that people can pick their plates, and that organizations get a cut, but I do miss the uniformity.
Most interesting discovery: There is a Pearl Harbor Survivor plate available in Idaho. I’m guessing the number of people who have that plate is in the single digits, if not zero. There are only 12 survivors left nationwide.
The Guardian has a new game called Film Reveal in their Guardian App. You get three actors and three categories and then must guess a movie that fits the nexus of the two. The less common your guess, the higher your score.
Here’s a finished one:
It’s very interesting to see what category is hard. Sometimes it will be an actor I can’t picture in any movie, much less in a specific category. Sometimes, I will get stuck on just one film the person is in, and can’t for the life of me think of another.
I’ve also learned that it’s best to look at the different categories before committing a movie to a specific one. I might be able to think of several two-word titles, but only one film between 1990 and 2000. If I’ve committee that one film to the two-word titles, I gnash my teeth.
This was a particularly good score that I got at the very end of the puzzle day.
For decades before 8004 was built and before I lived there, the neighbor’s walnut tree has been part of my visual landscape. It doesn’t show up a lot in photos, because I’m usually standing on the back porch looking at the point in the backyard, but you can see the edge of it in this post about Matt’s pandemic haircut.
It’s been changed over the years. The owners of the motel next door didn’t like a branch hanging over their roof, so that branch was removed. But it’s been a pleasant visual companion and has fed generations of squirrels with the walnuts it produces.
“I heard a very loud noise the other morning,” Matt said one day. He couldn’t identify what it was. A few days later, I went outside and noticed a very large branch had fallen off the tree and was covering most of the back yard where the tree lives. That probably solved the loud noise mystery.
Today, I realized I’d been hearing chainsaws for some time and got up from my desk to investigate. I was horrified to see the walnut tree as only a stump, and caught this picture about five minutes before I heard the loud “thunk” of the trunk coming down.
I’m not one to be sentimental over trees. I celebrated when the huge oak in my mom’s back yard laid itself down in an ice storm. But this had been such a big part of my life at the Orange Door, both indoors and out. It provided a nice green blotch on the southeast part of the property, and I’ve watched from my desk as squirrels run from the fir tree in Leo’s yard along the fence to the walnut tree and back.
What are all those squirrels going to eat now that their walnut source is gone?
I almost wrote the title as “51st Birthday Cake” but I don’t think I’ve had 51 birthday cakes. It’s probably something close to that number, probably. But there were the college and post-college years where I didn’t have a cake for every birthday.
But here it is!
It’s what Vintage Cakes calls “the Classic”: Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
Given that the cake is such a classic, I assumed I’d made the Vintage Cakes version. But I had not. The recipe had me whip cream into the batter, so the finished cake was very moist.
I used the classic confectioners sugar/butter “buttercream” recipe for the frosting, because that’s my favorite kind of frosting.
It was delicious!
Aside from cake, we had a nice lunch from Pollo Bravo which is my favorite good food/not fancy restaurant.
No pictures of the meal, but people present: me, Matt, mom, Aunt Pat, Linda, and Rick.
I don’t go to protests. I don’t think they help. So while I’m happy to have all the protesters who want to protest go to protests, I’m not one to go.
However, things are so bad that I felt like I might as well do the thing I don’t think works, because nothing else seems to be working right now. The October 2025 No Kings Protest was my first official protest.
Matt came with two signs, one for his backpack and one to hold in his hands. Rick also attended, and here’s our picture before we headed over to the assembly space.
In the assembly space, I saw my favorite shirt: Be patient with me, my mom took Tylenol.
The assembly space by the convention center gradually filled up, and it was time to walk to the main starting point across the river in Waterfront park.
Here are two people who neglected to make a sign for the back of their protest signs. They also use very fancy toilet paper. I never did see the front.
The approach to the Steel Bridge. We were in the middle, with a ton of people in front and in back. And people came from two other assembly areas. It was a huge crowd.
Waiting for the protest to start took a goodly amount of time, but allowed me to capture many signs include my favorite sign that day: It’s the cruelty that bothers me the most.
The inflated animals were out in full force. This was a fun development that came from the Portland Frog Brigade, but whimsical protest has a long history as explained here.
I loved this person’s jacket, and wondered if they made it. Later, I saw they were embroidering (while standing!) so my guess is yes.
I enjoyed the wide variety of signs, from collage, to perfectly laid out, to scrawled quickly in Sharpie.
Matt was glad to see that Jesus was endorsing AOC in 2028. (There were many Jesuses walking around.)
Vaccines cause adults was another of my favorite signs.
We really laughed at this one, and saw a few on the theme.
Portland Frog Brigade crocheted head covering!
When looking at other people’s protest pictures on Instagram, many of them saw this very big frog too.
It was overall, an impressive turnout and a very long day. I think next time, I will volunteer to support the protest.
Sara sent this from Scotland and it’s dated 8/29/25. I can’t read the postmark, but let’s assume it’s from early September at the latest.
So this postcard has been hanging out in that Postcard Void that the readers of this blog are all so familiar with.
Sara writes that she enjoyed these pieces and thought I would like it too because it’s all embroidery. They are by Phoebe Anna Traquair and the pieces are (I assume) a collected work called The Progress of a Soul, with each individual piece named the Entrance, the Stress, Despair, and the Victory.
I especially enjoy Despair.
Here’s the stamp.
Sara wrote part of the postcard on a bus to Stirling Castle. Apparently the whole wedding crew were traveling together on a coach and a van. It’s about 75 guests, so a big crowd.
