Wonder if the company in charge of the Jantzen Beach redevelopment planned from the beginning to lose the historic carousel. Get grumpy. 
Walk the secret hallway between the D-E and the A-B-C gates. Enjoy how deserted it is. 
Covertly watch this mother and son entertain themselves pre-flight, by taking pictures. Enjoy how the son narrates his thought process as to why he was taking the pictures.
I procrastinated a lot getting ready for my vacation, at one point thinking, “Why am I going somewhere else? It’s so much work!” But I eventually got around to getting everything done and by the time I found myself at the airport (thanks Matt, for dropping me off) and made it through security, my mood rapidly improved. PDX is awesome! They had a piano player right outside of security and his cheery take on “Ode to Joy” calmed my frazzled nerves. And I noticed this amazing clock! It’s a tremendous specimen and I had a great time studying all the details.
Then I found the poster with the explanations. 
Also, the Portland Airport has Cafe Yumm! I love Cafe Yumm and bought an Edamame Bowl to eat on my flight.
A-hem. Can we have the copy editor at the Oregonian reinstated? Please?
I 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.
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. 
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. 
Why heat up the big oven to cook your pie crust, when you can instead use your toaster oven? 
Laundry! Dried outside. In about 10 minutes. I washed ALL of my bedding. 
For some time now I’ve wanted to crunch the numbers on this equation. The avocado on the left costs $1.25. The one on the right costs $0.99. Let’s break this down. 
Here we can see that the pits are similarly sized.
The large is 2.75 ounces bigger than the small.
Overall, the large avocado gives us 6.5 ounces for $1.25, while the small gives us 4 ounces for $0.99.
Crunching the numbers: Large is $0.19/oz
Small is: $0.25/oz.
Large is the better deal.
However, I also conducted a taste test, and I liked the taste of the smaller avocado better. Someday I should do a blind taste test.
I already had a basic sketch of when we would be where. Now I know where we will stay in our travels outside of Minneapolis. And I have interesting things marked onto index cards in the towns we will travel through. It’s time to get excited about vacation!
Think about it. Every stop in the metro area has at least a piece of paper saying what routes service the stop and the stop ID number. Bigger stops have a full poster including bus schedules for all routes. Train stops and some transit centers have multiple posters with schedules. Who are the people who are always making sure these are up-to-date? Today, I caught a picture of one of them.
I spent the weekend at the Holiday Inn in Wilsonville with other writers, discussing craft and learning a lot of things.
Richard Peck was our keynote speaker. He gave us many pearls of wisdom from his long writing career.
My last dance recital was in 1990 and we performed two numbers. One was “You’re the One that I Want” from Grease. The other was to a contemporary piece, though I can’t recall which one. Our performance took place at Boise High School’s Auditorium, which was a marvelous, creaking place with backstage filled with dozens of girls in costumes, shrieking, giggling, being all sorts of excited. I did my best to ignore the dance teacher’s son, who was my age, but went to a different school and had started dance one year before me, so was in a different class. He had a harem of girls around him at all times, so I didn’t think I stood a chance, but it was kind of thrilling to have him around. 
This one was much more low-key. We did have outfits, black pants, colored shirts, jean jackets. This time our recital was at a community center gymnasium. We waited in the audience, and moved to the hallway when it came close to our time to perform. Most of the audience chatted throughout the performances, which drove me crazy, but I tried to roll with it. We were one of two adult groups to perform and our tap dance performance to Tracy Chapman’s “You’re the One” was well received. When I came home, Matt had roses for me.
