Category: All (-ish)

March 2026 Vacation: A Visit to the Deschutes Historical Museum

Matt and I stopped by the Deschutes Historical Museum and found many fun things.

Among them:

This eighth grade diploma test for grammar.

I really enjoyed it because I’ve been teaching myself how to diagram sentences which is where you learn all the stuff they are asking questions about. Since I would get to skip two, I would not answer numbers 4 (my brain goes blank when I have to come up with different uses of a word) and 11 (I apparently haven’t learned what “principal parts” are?)

There was also a great display about Camp Abbot, a training site during World War II. My favorite detail was about the Great Hall.

Camp Abbot didn’t have an Officers’ Club, and the officers weren’t much fans of that. So they had one built. After the war, Camp Abbot was razed, but the Officers’ Club wasn’t on the plans, so it wasn’t taken down. You can still visit (or rent) it; it’s located in the Sunriver Resort.

Matt got caught up in the Don’t Be a Sucker film. It was engrossing (and perhaps relevant to today). You can watch the 22-minute film on YouTube.

And this is just a fraction of what we learned about while at the museum.

HH outside of Boone’s Treasury

Our vacation has begun! Matt and I stopped at the two Salem McMenamins to get our stamps (and our sandwiches.)

While at the Boone’s Treasury location, the server told us that Herbert Hoover’s initials were on the side of the building. She also told us where to find them.

And here I am pointing to the faint HH.

A Mirror at Third Rail Repertory

This was the program we were handed for the performance of A Mirror. It definitely set the stage.

I really enjoyed how this shifted back and forth several times in the play. It was engrossing from start to finish.

There was a talkback after, and we also got this reading list, assembled by Danielle Jones, with whom I rode with to the play.

Books Read in February 2026

*Book group selection | bolded means favorite

Picture Books

*Croco by Azul López and Kit Maude, translator
*Many Things At Once by Veera Hiranandani and Nadia Alam
*Kaho’olawe: The True Story of an Island and Her People by Kamalani Hurley and Harinani Orme

Middle Grade

*D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T. by Abby White
*Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan

Young Adult

*Under the Neon Lights by Arriel Vinson
*One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller
*Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories, Cynthia Leitich Smith, editor
*Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemalan Genocide by Pablo Leon

Young People’s Nonfiction

*Hick: The Trailblazing Journalist Who Captured Eleanor Roosevelt’s Heart by Sarah Miller

Grownup Nonfiction

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton

Funny Internet Things February 2026

This month’s roundup.

As an eater of a lot of cheese, I approve of this message:

What cheese will you eat first to celebrate this study?

For a brief, shining moment, the Oregonian would feed me Alexandra Petri‘s humor column in the Washington Post, and those were good days. I’m glad she has a home at the Atlantic, and this reminded me of how fun she is.

Want more? I can recommend her book Alexandra Petri’s US History Important American Documents (I Made Up) as a laff riot.

We really need to move away from the tipping system.

Just pay people the wage they deserve.

SKS: Social Justice Kittens and Puppies

Sara sent her thank you for her birthday gift in the form of 8 (or possibly 9) postcards. I received numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 today. The rest will pile up at the post office because Matt and I will be out of town for a few days.

I find these hilarious, and Sara pointed out how it was fun that the cats were the oppressed and the dogs were the oppressor.

International Analog Day

What’s International Analog Day? It’s a day where we spend time doing things that don’t involve technology, where we party like it’s 1903. The day was created by Shannon Downey and friends, and promoted on her Badass Cross Stich site.

Matt and I decided to celebrate.

The Wednesday before the party, I still hadn’t figured out what food we were serving. But it was a day I went into the office, and also a day I forgot to bring my phone with me when going to the office. At lunch time, I realized I didn’t have anything to read, so I went out to the new books section and grabbed a book about party food, thinking it might inspire me. Instead it gave me my entire food plan: a mug party!

What is a mug party? The author had a tiny apartment when he first moved to New York City, and liked to entertain, but found that while people were happy to perch anywhere, it was hard to deal with plates and utensils while sitting crisscross on the floor. He had a lot of mugs, so he invited party food that could be served in mugs.

Et voila! The menu! Grapefruit mules, mozzarella sticks with marinara, a very green minestrone, one-pot broccoli shells and cheese, and a seven-layer sundae bar. To this I added a crudité platter, hummus, crackers and five bowls of noshes from the bulk bins at WinCo.

I was worried about the mug situation. Due to my constant discarding, we had four. Many people had not RSVP’d, so while I could tell the people who had RSVP’d to bring mugs, I was worried we would run out if a bunch of non-RSVP’d people showed up.

But! Walking back from New Seasons to buy the mint we needed for the mint syrup, Matt said to me, “Should we bring home these two boxes of mugs?” And there, sitting out for us to take, were about 12 mugs that someone was discarding. The party gods had provided!

Matt was an excellent sous chef, and I enjoyed the food prep.

As usual, I forgot to take photos when people were actually attending, but we had a good turnout, and the food was delicious. Sadly, I forgot to put out the coconut cream whipped cream for the sundaes, but everything else went smoothly.

What did we do at our analog party? As you can see, Matt made it very easy for people to play games. We also did knitting and embroidery. And I unknit a blanket Gail was making with what turned out to be not very good yarn. Kevin brought a Lego kit to assemble.

A good time was had by all.

When the party was done, we washed the mugs, and returned them to the curb for others to enjoy.

In Clay at the Broadway Rose Theater

Here’s the set for In Clay Broadway Rose’s current musical about the ceramist Marie-Berthe Cazin. Set in the 1930s, the one-woman show (Malia Tippets played Cazin) covered the artist’s life.

While musical theater is always a feat, (singing and dancing and acting all a once?) this was an impressive performance because Tippits also threw two pots on stage while singing.

This was a good window into the life of an artist I had not heard of. I do wonder if the French accent was the right choice.

SKS: Bow to Him

Sara is quite good at finding humorous postcards. There is, for sure, a god of yarn and sticks I need to bow down to.

This image was created by Sean Tejaratchi and originally posted on Twitter. There’s another poster in the same style, if you want to go looking.

Sara reports the postcard is part of some fun sets Shawn got for her (and we now see how she finds these sorts of cards: Shawn). She reports that her grandmother might have had such a macramé.