I hosted Easter this year, and the only picture I have is this one that shows off a new method I tried for dying eggs: eggs rolled in salt that has food coloring in it.
I won’t use that method again. The color didn’t stick very well, and I had to have Matt wrap all the eggs in paper towels so we could properly play the egg game without getting red dye on our hands.
The meal included: ham steaks with madeira sauce, roasted radishes and radish greens, asparagus and mushrooms, funeral potatoes (my first time eating and making), and cheddar kale roles where the dough was rolled in a butter/kale/mustard concoction before being baked in a cast iron skill it.
Linda brought pie for dessert (cherry, quince, and apple) and Rick brought homemade ice cream. Present but not pictured: me, Linda, Rick, Matt, Kelly, my mom, and Aunt Pat.
The first is a bit of a deep cut. It depends on you knowing that Robert Kennedy Jr., gave a very uninformed speech about people with autism, and that’s what Matt is referring to. The sign also encapsulates Matt’s indifference toward baseball and his dislike of poems.
The other side references his sadness over the loss of Greater than Games, a company that has supplied him with many fun hours of board gaming.
This next poster covers what a lot of us are really angry about.
And its obverse records Matt’s annoyance at doing his civic duty by serving on a jury.
I took my friends through the house and when we got to the basement, one of them marveled at the door. Isn’t it great? So very wide.
It’s also perfectly weighted and makes a satisfying clink of the latch falling when it closes. I’m guessing this door was salvaged from some other building, but it might have been bought new for the house.
It needs some reglazing, and perhaps a paint job, but I enjoy that when my brother duct taped the cracks in the middle window, he made it look like a figure kicking up its heels.
Antares was sunning himself on the back porch, and I was typing away at my computer when I heard a growl.
Who should be in the back yard but yet another black cat.
While Antares isn’t into making cat friends, I’ve been trying to befriend this cat for some time. He doesn’t often come through the back yard during my work hours, but when he does, he shows no interest in befriending me. He usually looks annoyed when he sees me and then he speeds up his trotting. So I was surprised to see him so close to the house.
After the initial growl, there was a long period of staring, then the visitor noticed me and excited the yard quickly.
This picture also features Antares’s lump on his tail. His heart isn’t strong enough to have surgery to remove it, and it continues to grow. I’ve found that cutting the hair around it makes it less irritating to him as the fur doesn’t get stuck in the scabby lump. Though it also makes it more prominent.
The house is creeping closer to being ready to sell, and I took some pictures of some small details I love.
The fact that there is a utility room. Everyone has always called this the utility room, something that I didn’t realize was nomenclature of the period until I was reading a small booklet about Richland Washington’s Alphabet Houses, and noticed that all the plans had utility rooms. It would be called a laundry room now.
But also I love that cake cover style light cover, which is probably original to the house.
Here’s a closer look.
In the grandpa bathroom, a tiny room off the utility room, no one ever cleaned out the grandpa medicine cabinet, so here it is, last used in September 1990.
It includes a handy list of first-aid hints held up originally by cellophane tape. The other taped up item says, “Yet, it’s a pretty good and very simple remedy. It is not infallible, but very frequently will settle a queasy stomach. Use a two per cent salt solution (one-half teaspoonful of salt in three ounces of water). Then take a tablespoonfull of this solution.”
At some point in possibly the Oregonian, the was an article about someone in real estate (agent? photographer?) who kept a collection of cool light switch plates. I understood the appeal.
Here are two very cool light switch covers. I didn’t notice until I was taking the picture that they have mirrored backgrounds.
And here’s one of the two probably original bathroom switch plates. (From the other bathroom, not from the grandpa bathroom.) This one is cracked, and the other is not, but the picture of the non-cracked one came out blurry, so you will have to make do with the cracked one.
I also like the grooves on this switch plate.
Grandpa also had grandpa items in the big bathroom. Here they are, patiently sitting there since the George H.W. Bush administration.
I took the medicine cabinet contents home and put most of them out on the street for people to take as needed. They were all gone within hours, even that empty English Leather bottle.
I’m a Portland Monthly subscriber (support local media!) and received two different offers in short succession. One promised me the lowest rate you will receive, the other was alerting me to the fact I could save 67% off the newsstand price.
I don’t think I’ve ever paid the newsstand price (I went online to subscribe), so that was a moot point. But comparing the two offers, I did catch Portland Monthly in an untruth. While the three-year renewal rate was $42.00, thus $6.00 less than the $48.00 off-the-newsstand rate, and the two-year renewal rate of $32.00 was $4.00 less, the one-year subscription renewal was $20.00—$4.00 less than the lowest rate I will receive.
Which letter did I respond to? After checking my records and discovering I’ve been a one-year-at-a-time subscriber, I went online and renewed there. Where the rate was $20.00. The same rate I’ve been paying annually since the genesis of my subscription.
I do not recall where I bought this BCBGMaxAzria shirt, but it was either at a consignment store or thrift shop. I really liked its color palette and its Mandarin collar and its swingy A-line shape.
As alluded to in the title, it’s also a shirt I wore to three interviews, and for all three interviews I got the job (X-Ray, MFA, and my current job at the library).
However, it’s been many years, and it’s time for this very fun shirt to move on. Thanks for being a great shirt.
Our room at the Linq was on the same floor as the spa and gym, which was near the elevators. That meant that every time we took the elevator we looked at this Windows start screen and marveled at how wrong the time was.
My timestamp on this picture is 8:25.
We went to wait for the shuttle bus to the airport, and eventually it found us. Turns out the signage at the hotel directed us to the wrong location. I’ve learned that when I’m getting off a shuttle bus, I should ask where that shuttle bus will be picking me up for the return trip.
One of our shuttle bus companions spied my CPAP carry case and excitedly held his up. “It changed my life!” he said. I smiled and said, “Medical devices don’t count as carry-ons!” I’ve not found the CPAP to be life changing, but I’m glad he did.
I really liked the signage at the Las Vegas airport, though apparently not enough to take a picture. Each gate is clearly marked with the departing flight destination and pictures of landmarks from that town. Ours had the Portland sign, among other things.
We did a ton of things in Las Vegas, though didn’t gamble at all, and learned a lot about that weird down in the desert. Matt even came home with money; someone left a voucher with five cents on it, and he cashed it in before we left.
We ate breakfast at Mandalay Bay, mostly so we could ride the tram to get to Mandalay Bay.
Our Las Vegas vehicle count: plane, shuttle bus, hop-on hop-off bus, cab, Uber, monorail, tram, feet. We missed the Duce bus and the rentable bikes. They were in the downtown area, and we only experience that area via the tour bus.
We had some pool time and then rested, and then went to the Horseshoe to play black light minigolf at Twilight Zone mini golf.
Here we looking like Cheshire cats. We had a lot of time to contemplate the murals on the wall depicting scenes from the Twilight Zone and realized neither of us had seen the original series.
It was a slow course. The people in front of us took a long time, so we played every hole twice until the people behind us caught up. They were not playing correctly; each player would hit their ball until they sunk it, and then the next one would go. So then we felt the pressure to hurry through, though the people in front of us didn’t.
As per usual, my score was off the charts, and Matt missed Astronomic Ace by only one point.
We decided to check out the original Twilight Zone series when we get back to Portland.
After that, we ate in the food court at the Horseshoe, which had the same food as at the Luxor, and went to the Flamingo to see Piff the Magic Dragon, a magician Matt discovered through Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, probably not in this episode, but you get the idea. Our seats were all the way in the back (although I pointed out to Matt that every theater we had been in had good seats, even in the back), but when we arrived, the usher asked if we wanted to sit in the front row. We did! See how close we were.
Piff was his curmudgeonly self, and we enjoyed Mr Piffles and Jade Simone, the over-the-top showgirl who brings their combined enthusiasm levels to average. My favorite trick involved an Apple Watch and eventually a jar of peanut butter. Matt enjoyed a trick with a fortune cookie and a fortune that was both unreadable and ~~magic~~ readable. Matt likes how Piff the Magic Dragon makes objects disappear and then turn up in unusual places.
One last picture, and it was time to head back to the hotel. But first we got some fun dessert. Alas, not pictured.
