Category: All (-ish)

Third floor, corner room.

A long shot, so you can see how the new building is stacking up to the house next door.  That house was for sale a few years ago, and it turns out to be a good thing I didn’t buy it.  It’s pretty easy to look in the backyard now.  I still like the green tin roof, though.

But here’s the small (and out of focus) detail for today.  I’m very interested that these corner rooms seem to be triangle-shaped.  So far both the second and third floors are like that.  I’d like to see them from the inside.

And these telephone poles have appeared in the lot across the street.  I can’t tell if they have anything to do with this construction or not.

Massachusetts is the last glass standing.

This is one of four glasses given to me for Christmas several years ago by regular commenter Sara.  I had one glass for each state I’ve lived in: Idaho, Missouri, Massachusetts & Oregon.  Oregon and Idaho were the first to die, victim to my regular level of klutz. Then there was a respite of a goodly amount of time until today.

The glass was sitting on the counter and I reached up to the pot rack for a colander. When I pulled the colander down, the hook came too, then detached itself from the colander and BAM! A frontal assault on the Missouri glass.  Glass went everywhere!  It blew pieces all over the kitchen and the top part of the glass precariously on top of the lower part of the glass.

I cleaned it up and now Massachusetts is the only one left.

I’m not taking the blame for this glass going down.  I’m placing this firmly in the category of “freak accident.”

Camisole part II (big fail) pattern weights and two napkins.

When we last saw the camisole, I was waiting for the arrival of the stretch lace.  It arrived, and last weekend, I attempted to sew it together as was called for in the instructions.  The machine kept jamming and I decided I was not in the space for sewing, and put away the project for the week. 

My brain kept things on the back burner though, and I remembered reading that backing the lace/unstable item with tissue paper might help.  I did this and voila!  It worked!

I then sewed the lace to the camisole.  Note.  This was not the right way to do this.  We’ll talk more about this later.

Straps were attached (wrong, ripped out and reattached) and I noticed the lace sagged instead of standing up and meeting the strap.  So tacked them.

When I tried on the camisole, I found some problems.  First of all, the lace folded up together.  That wasn’t right.

Also, by the time I had adjusted everything to proper height,  the sliders on the straps were all the way to the front of the camisole.  So I ripped out the straps again, shortened them and reattached.

I tacked down the lace on the bottom to encourage it not to roll together and that sort of worked.  But the top stuff flopped over.  So that wasn’t good.

Overall, neither of the camisoles turned out to work for me.  The gapped a bit at the underarms and my bra is so full coverage, I had to wear them really high. And my bra straps still showed, which I have a problem with.  So they’ve been reassigned to the role of pajama tops when the weather gets warmer.  Rather disappointing, but all part of the game.

I hung up the instructions with the camisoles and a few hours later noticed that I put the lace on wrong.  I attached at the mid-point of the lace, but I should have attached at the bottom of the lace.  Sigh.

I did have success in my quest to use up bigger “bits” of leftover material.  I now have three pattern weights.

And two napkins.  So there’s that.

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.

Postcard from Minnesota

This arrived today.  Each of these beautiful scenes are “wraps” for uility boxes in Sara’s neighborhood.  I hope to see them this summer in person.  My favorite in this series is the photo booth one.

Astute readers might have noticed that my Postcrossing postcards have not been coming from far-flung countries.  That’s because I took a haitus from Postcrossing and when I started up again, I was in a postcard deficit.  I had received more than I sent.  So I had to send a few without getting any in return.  I’ve evened everything up and new postcards from people I don’t know should be arriving soon.

Changes afoot close in

Watch out, Burgerville, that those buildings don’t swallow you whole!

This is just south of the Rose Quarter.  Construction has been going like gangbusters in this area, which makes sense because it’s so close-in and has very good access to public transportation.  When I moved here in 2001, there was a new-construction condo for sale in this neighborhood for $84,000.  Too bad I wasn’t in the market then.  I’m quite sure units in that complex aren’t going for that amount anymore.

The building being constructed in the back of this picture is the other side of the building that is swallowing Burgerville.  I love the old-school nature of the two buildings in the foreground.  Both the architecture and the fact that both of them have signs telling you what they are.  “Professional Building,” “Dental Building.”  I’m quite certain neither of these is long for this world.