Category: All (-ish)

Goodbye to Ektorp Couch

Matt’s mom Linda bought us this couch in 2007 and it’s been showing its age for some years now. The cushions are shot and the covers don’t come off anymore so I can’t wash them, and I’m ready for a new couch. Happily, my friend has one to give me. Now just to get rid of the current couch.

I put it on NextDoor and eventually on the Buy Nothing group. Even at the cool price of free, I worried that it wasn’t going to move. But it did! A woman came by to grab it for her kids’ room and I helped her load it into her minivan.

While we wait for the weekend when we will help get the couch, I moved the chairs over so we had something to sit in while we watch TV.

Goodbye to Bear Lake Magnet

Back in 2010, we went to Colorado for Matt’s brother’s Thad’s wedding. With that trip came a visit to the beautiful (and wonderfully organized) Rocky Mountain National Park and a day of hiking that included Bear Lake. I bought this magnet to commemorate it. (There’s a picture of me from that trip being the bear at bear lake that I’ve always enjoyed.)

But the Bear Lake magnet does not want to stick to its front. I’ve tried the glue gun approach, and that worked for a time, but even the glue gun glue has given up its grip.

So it’s goodbye to this souvenir.

Arbor Lodge Jazz Concert

Matt, Laurie, and I headed over to Arbor Lodge Park for a neighborhood jazz concert featuring The Lorna Baxter Quintet.

The concert had been moved from a date earlier in the season due to excessive heat, and this was a perfect day.

The quintet kept us in good tunes.

The neighborhood association had streamers they handed out to the children atttending. It was very fun to watch them dance around.

SKS: Shark Pun

Sara wishes that I have a lovely four-day week after our three-day weekend. Her hope was that I would receive the postcard during the four-day week, but alas, it arrived at the beginning of the five-day week after the four-day week that was after the three-day weekend.

For their three-day weekend, Sara and Shawn visited Sonoma and had a great time.

Badass Cross Stitch Sampler No. 6

Tassels! So fun! I’d not done them before.

The stitches this time were:

  • Knotted ladder (purple)
  • Pistil (pink)
  • Cable chain (teal)
  • Love chain (yellow)
  • Tassels (blue) with needle weaving cap (pink)
  • Bullion (blue, small near the tassels)

This was one where I finished and was glad that most of these just get rolled up in a “Done!” tube.

I didn’t love the color choices I made. It’s one of Stich Palettes color combos. I like the individual colors, but I don’t like how it all hung together for this.

Of the stiches I only really loved the cable chain. The knotted ladder I ended up cutting out and redoing and I still didn’t love it. The pistil stitch will come in handy in the future though.

For the needle weaving with the tassels, I watched the video and then let three days go by before I attempted. I think the result speaks for itself.

Also, I don’t love how my lettering turned out.

It’s all an experiment though, so good lessons learned. And it seems I’m better a bullion stitch (the one stitch I’d done before) than Shannon is. So that’s fun.

The Fever by Northwest Classical Theater Collaborative

The Northwest Classical Theater Collaborative (which once upon a time we knew as the Northwest Classical Theater Company) performed Wallace Shawn’s The Fever and I reserved a ticket. The collaborative staged the play in a variety of locations. I attended a performance at the Lloyd Center, in the former Victoria’s Secret store.

Before the play started, I took a loop around the first floor of the mall. The Lloyd Center hasn’t fared well in the pandemic and very few stores remain. It was nearly deserted on a Sunday evening, so deserted that the cleaners had already started sweeping the main drag 15 minutes before closing time.

Loop finished, I headed into the theater. It was a long walk from the front of the store to where the play was.

Having taken that walk, I really liked how they used the bones of the old Victoria’s Secret store for their stage.

There were about ten people present for the performance, which was directed by Patrick Walsh and starred Paul Susi as the main character.

I wasn’t familiar with this play and found it churned up quite a bit of feelings.

Thanks to the NWCTC for another good performance and unique setting.

At the end, we all exited together through the service corridor (another fun thing about this performance.)

Books Read in August 2022

Picture Books

The Notebook Keeper
Briseno & Mora
Read for Librarian Book Group

Noemi and her mother take a long walk to get to the U.S. and while waiting at the border, they meet the notebook keeper. This book is made more compelling in that it’s based on an actual notebook and the keeper duties that were passed along.

Middle Grade

In the Key of Us
Mariama J. Lockington
Read for Librarian Book Group

Camp story! Duel-narrator that works well. The perspective shifts week by week over the course of the four-week camp. A solid middle grade growth story.

I hated (hated, hated, HATED!) the poetry interludes from the camp’s point of view. So cringe-y.


A Duet for Home
Karina Yan Glaser
Read for Librarian Book Group

Hang out in a family shelter that is helping people move to secured housing. Unfortunately, the mayor has an idea of how to fix homelessness and it’s not great for the residents.

Given that one of the gubernatorial candidates in my state is running on a platform to make unhoused people accountable (whatever that means), this was depressingly relevant.

Answers in the Pages
David Levithan
Read for Librarian Book Group

I had trouble connecting to this book at first. Beginning with three different stories was a heavy lift. But I settled in and was rewarded by a good look at late-elementary-school censorship. There’s been a trend of YA authors writing middle grade. Often their characters seem older than their age—more YA than middle grade, if you will. This book also followed that trend.

Young Adult

Sway with Me
Syed M. Masood

I love Masood so much! Arsalan is a believably quirky character and it’s fun to go along in his journey to somewhat normal teenager. Grief and growth with a Pakistani family. I also though the ending was realistic and hopeful.

Zyla and Kai
Kristana Forest

I don’t often come across teen romances where the male part of the equation is the one who falls in love with love. This book expertly captures complex feelings about love experienced while one is also a teenager.

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet
Jen Ferguson

The page I was on when I realized this novel is set in Canada: 38.

I’ve always thought that the summer after high school and before college is a great time for a YA novel and this story proved me right. Working in the family ice cream stand, worrying about bio-dads, readjusting to an old friend back in town. Plus a bunch of other things. There’s a lot going on in this book and it’s all well balanced. Plus a First Nations character! And I learned that perhaps moving to Canada would not solve all my problems. Though I probably wouldn’t bankrupt myself due to healthcare.

The Honeys
Ryan La Sala

A fantastical summer camp story that explores issues of gender identity. I really felt the pull to be part of a hive (though perhaps not the one in this story). Really great endpapers.

Grownup Fiction

Elders
Ryan McIlvain

Come along with two Mormon elders on their mission in Brazil. McIlvain provides great descriptions of the day to day of a mission and the mental state of the two missionaries. I found the crisis point at the end to be rather cliched.

Less
Andrew Sean Greer

A short book that follows Arthur Less, kinda failed author, as he travels around the world to escape his ex-boyfriend’s wedding ceremony. This was an amusing (much quiet chuckling on my part) and an enjoyable read.

Mika in Real Life
Emiko Jean

Mika is a loveable drifting thirtysomething until her daughter—the one raised by adoptive parents—pops back up in her life. Aside from being amusing and getting the Portland details right, this puts a microscope on the hurt that adoption can cause.

The Second Season
Emily Adrien

The mark of an excellent writer is one who draws me in and keeps me reading even about subject I do not care about. (In this case, NBA broadcasting.) Seeing Ruth at a crossroad in her life was engrossing, and I felt the usual rage I feel when women have trouble doing the things they love because the thing they love is supposedly just for men.

Young Nonfiction

Queer Ducks
Eliot Schrefer
Read for Librarian Book Group

Schrefer carefully lays out many examples of animals who don’t hue to the heterosexual norm. There’s also a really great unpacking of how societal norms shape what we see in science.

Action: How Movies Began
Meaghan Mccarthy
Read for Librarian Book Group

McCarty’s picture book about movies starts chronologically and then jumps all over the place.

Grownup Nonfiction

Heart Rate Training
Roy Benson, Declan Connolly

The authors walk the reader through heart rate information and then set out training programs for a variety of exercise modules.

How to Draw Almost Every Day
Chika Miyata

I enjoyed how the author broke down each thing to be drawn into simple lines, and I found it fun to draw a long with the day’s lesson. The items to draw were somewhat random for me. They were based on what the author had been doing, but I didn’t have those same connections. I also found that the not-drawing of “almost every day” kept falling on days when I wanted to draw. Overall, this was an enjoyable quick (mostly) daily activity.

Roger McLain’s Memorial Service

Roger McLain, father to friend Laurie, died in July and today we attended his memorial service. I loved this picture on the front of the program.

The service began with family members bringing in items and setting up an altar of things Roger loved. I liked that detail.

Along with the full mass came singing along with “Shiver Me Timbers” by Tom Waits. After the service, we went to the parish hall to tell stories and eat Roger’s favorite foods: pizza and strawberry shortcake.

I also loved this sculpture at the church.

Farewell to Roger, who lived a good life and left many people who will miss him.