A day in the life of Maye, a woman grieving her recently departed Aunt Amanda, who was a studio musician drummer. As she packs up the house, a variety of people stop by to help or detract from the job. As usual with DuVerney, watching for the subtle change in emotions is the thing to do.
Cost: free from Netflix
Where watched: at home
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/intl/uk/2015/testament_of_youth.html
It was rather unfortunate that I was suddenly called away to the airport with ten minutes of this movie remaining. Because those last 10 minutes really pack the punch and it took me some time (like a week) to get to watch them. Overall, very good acting, very sad, but not so terribly sad I was unable to function.
Cost: free from Netflix
Where watched: at home
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/intl/uk/2015/testament_of_youth.html
Needing something that takes up a lot of space in the garden, I settled on squash. I planted my last five Oregon Sweet Meat seeds (the variety was selected and developed by Carol Deppe, my favorite gardening writer) and also started a few delicata seeds I’d saved from a few years ago. They sprouted! I moved them to the back porch and have been covering them at night with Nancy’s Yogurt containers to keep them warm. Fingers crossed!
Time for more stamps. Here we are waiting for our tour of the Crystal Ballroom. And here is yet another stunning light fixture in Ringler’s Pub.
The brewery at the Crystal Ballroom. This totally counted as a brewery tour. Score!
Our guide leans against a pole in Lola’s Room, the smaller concert venue. He apologized for being under the weather, but still managed to tell us many interesting facts. 
The Crystal Ballroom is not impressive to Matt at all.
These fabulous chandeliers, of which they are two, were in storage at a bank. McMenamins bought them and installed them. That bank missed out, because that’s hand-blown Italian glass by some important dude. Because not too many examples of his work exist these chandeliers are worth more than a million dollars. (Note to self. Make quick notes of tour facts so you can be more precise when writing the blog post.)
Self portrait with Matt on stage at the Crystal Ballroom. This is where I saw .fun –or use this link if you want to actually see the pictures–and Matt and I saw Cake.
Girls pose on stage.
A view from the balcony. 
After getting our stamps for the Crystal Ballroom, Lola’s Room and the Brewery Tour we headed over to the Crystal Hotel. Here was the answer to the photo quiz.
Then we had to skulk about waiting for Al’s Den to open. I loved reading about Club Portland which was the gay bathhouse that was the previous tenant of the Crystal Hotel. It was still Club Portland when I moved here.
And I adore this clever advertising for the four club baths. See how the picture changes for each location?
Crystal Ballroom and Hotel completed, we popped over to the Barley Mill Pub to get our last stamp on that page. We stayed for dinner and our free fries or tots. Here, Matt reads the “One Day” column from the Mercury to me.
There is a lot of Grateful Dead stuff at the Barley Mill Pub.
Including this great collage of Grateful Dead tickets. I was pleased to find that the show I saw (Eugene ’94 with Cracker) was in the lower left corner.
We are getting closer and closer to completing our passports.
It’s time for another Spartan Race. (You can also read about a prior race. I think there have been others, but I was not athletic supporting, so do not have photos.) Matt has been training for this race with a trainer named Candice. That’s her in the photo below. Candice is great at making varied workouts that Matt really enjoys, plus, she is incredibly strong and fit. 
At the start of the race. Matt and Candice ended up racing with the heat of people who had been volunteering. Here they are answering a question posed by the announcer. (I think it was something like “As a Spartan my job is to” and he instructed them to say “a-hoo, a-hoo, a-hoo”. This answer makes no sense, but so much about this race makes no sense to me.) The three shirtless boys on the left were fun to watch and also served as an anchor point later on. It’s because of them I knew I hadn’t yet missed seeing Matt at one of the viewpoints. 
After the start (my start line photo was not very good and is not included) I sat on a picnic table and ate my lunch. I was delighted to find myself sitting behind this white guy with a black hoodie quoting Malcolm X about capitalism and racism. This is not typical Spartan Race fare. Other things I like about this photo: the two people looking for their racer while the little brother entertains himself with a tablet. Watching out for your athlete is a big part of being an athletic supporter.
Sandwich eaten and port-a-potty visited, I settled in to wait for my athlete. It was a very long wait. Matt and Candice were in one of the last heats. After the 2:00 group went, the race people started packing up the start line.
After more than two hours the athletes appeared. I passed the time by reading a few sentences/scanning the racers/reading a few sentences/scanning the racers. Also by watching other athletic supporters. Two people near me chatted for quite some time and then the woman said, “I wonder if we missed him?” which is a common thought among athletic supporters in these races. After more than two hours, I was having that thought myself.
But I hadn’t missed them! Here is Candice:
And here is Matt. This is one of those obstacles where long legs make things more difficult. But he did it! As you can see by the mud, the two of them had already completed many obstacles by the time they got to me.
Climbing the rope. The super saturated color is because I accidentally had my camera set to “poster” so the colors are very bright.
Matt doing 30 burpees because he did not successfully complete the obstacle. Candice entertains herself while she waits. She very quickly climbed the rope. I barely had time to take a picture.
Matt climbing up.
Candice coming down. This is one of my favorite photos.
And so the two of them continued on their way. I wandered around planning out my next series of photos and picking my vantage point. On the way I caught these kids wallowing in the mud. I was greatly amused by them.
At my vantage point I could see these athletic supporters. The man was smoking a cigarette and the woman passed the time by dancing. Their athlete turned out to be a teenager, possibly their son. 
It was only another 45 minutes or an hour before Matt and Candice appeared again. Here’s Matt sliding down a mud embankment.
Candice already made it under the wood wall.
Then it was up the incline and back down.
And under some barbed wire. Matt crawled the entire way. Again, not one of those obstacles where the long legs are an advantage. I think women have an easier time with this anyway. More power in the legs, lower center of gravity. I saw quite a few men log roll through this.
Two more obstacles happened. I did not get them on film. But we’re nearing the end. You can see the state of our participants by looking at the photo below.
The boulder carry involved picking up a big round “boulder”, walking it to the end, dropping it, doing five burpees, picking it back up and walking back. For Matt, it also involved a shoe tying. He swears he wasn’t tying it for the reason I retie my shoes (I need a rest).
Walking back with the boulder. See his raw power!
Over the fire!
And done.
This photo sums up how the two participants completed the race.
Showing off the medals.
Post-race mud and curl in the middle of the forehead.
Then it was back into the car for the drive back to Portland.
I watched November Rain last night for the first time in a couple of decades. And Man! The production values! I’m quite certain that Kevin Smith made Clerks for a fraction of what this nine-minute video cost.(Image from: http://i.imgur.com/fuKhG.jpg)
I’m keeping up with it this year. Here’s today’s harvest. Every two to three days I get a handful like this. It’s pretty awesome and has been a long time in coming.
Because if you do, you might get a front page cover story, that continues for another half-page inside. And also a reprint of a past concert review.
Here are my Prince memories:
I grew up in Boise, Idaho, but my grandparents and aunts lived in Portland so we visited at least twice a year. Portland was the big city, where you always locked your car in the mall parking lot, where there was a bus system that people actually used, where I routinely tried not to stare at skinheads and homeless people.
In Heavier than Heaven, Charles Cross’s biography of Kurt Cobain, he describes Portland in the late 80s and early 90s as (I’m paraphrasing here) a city, but a blue-collar city, still showing its roots in logging and shipping. And that’s what I remember of downtown Portland growing up. Sure, it had Meier and Frank and the ten stories of goods, plus a fancy restaurant to replenish your appetite during a day of shopping. But it was also full of buildings like this one, single story and dingy looking and in need of a face lift. My memories of walking around downtown Portland as a child are gray (probably because of the perpetually overcast skies) and crowded (many Portland streets are not very wide).
Those dingy buildings are disappearing so quickly. Just looking at the edges of this photo you can see the changes happening. The shiny building to the left of the Passport Photo place was a similarly dingy restaurant equipment supply store until a few years ago. And in the upper left you can see additional stories grafted onto a building on the Park Blocks that has been purposed into mixed-use condominiums. On the upper right is a huge condo complex the likes of which I will never be able to afford and I can’t even tell you what kind of buildings used to be there.
It’s a time of big changes for the blue-collar logging town. Some of them I love, some of them I don’t. I just hope that through the changes Portland says a city I’m crazy in love with.
I think this is the first time I watched the tv series followed by the movie, as I’m pretty sure I watched the movie having not watched the show. I think it works well as a stand-alone, although why anyone would want to only watch the movie when there are fourteen fabulous episodes of quality TV is beyond me. This is the movie where I learned Joss Whedon never gets overly attached to his characters.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2005/serenity.html
(wow, do I not like this poster. The other two were not good either.)
