Flower sale. My last one.

I’m ending my tenure as a Youth Advisor at my church after seven years and this Easter was my last flower sale. I will miss some things about YRUU, but I can’t count the flower sale among them. It is usually wet and cold and in the past few years the youth don’t show up to help. All of those things were true today and I froze, while silently cursing all of the above. We didn’t even make that much money. Another thing done!

Trains on the bus mall, oh my!

Trimet has decided to add Max trains to the Bus Mall mix. I think this is a dumb idea, but they didn’t ask me specifically, and so they just kept keeping on with the idea. Dumb idea or no, I got excited when I saw one today. They don’t officially move there until August/September, but they are training this month. My line is one that is shifting from the original tracks to the “Transit Mall” as it is referred to now. On the one hand, my walking commute to work will be shorter, but on the other, I will have to walk out of my way to go to the library and church. Also, the beginning of the line won’t be as accessable to me. I don’t like that so much.

Bus tips: Tuck in.

This photo was taken (all stealthy like although that guy sitting below noticed me doing it) on the #6 bus. You remember that bus, right? The super crowded one that has all sorts of interesting people? This woman was using her bag as a defensive maneuver to avoid someone sitting next to her. I find this rude, especially on a crowded bus line like this one.

So here’s the deal. When you have a bag (or more than one) it is your job to keep it in your space. Your space is defined by the line separating two seats. If there are other people on the bus, it is your responsibility to stay within the bounds of your seat. This helps not only to pack the bus efficiently, but also to keep people from having to ask if they can sit there.

And men, that line is there for you too. Just because you think you have to sit with your legs spread wide doesn’t mean that you actually get to. Tuck in. Seriously. Also, both men and women: if you bring more than one bag on the bus, it is still your responsibility to keep all your possessions in your space. If you can’t do this, it is your responsibility to send out massive apologetic vibes to everyone who eyes the space you are taking up.

Dead Relative Tour 2009

I love cemeteries. They have so many interesting things to see. Here is a smattering of them:

I plan to be cremated, but if I were buried, the last thing I would want is this heavy slab on top of me.

No, not that Jimi Hendrix

“Is that a…?” “I think it might be….It is a coyote in an urban cemetery!”

The whole road through the cemetery is lined with these highly pruned holly trees. I kind of like their super structure.

Christ!

I took this picture just to hear Matt say their name with a German accent.
Which he did without prompting.
I know him well.

Either Mrs. or Miss Fenstermacher was a member of the Wahkeena Chapter of the DAR.

Oftentimes it is fun to say the names on the gravestone. Say it with me: “Slack.” I also like Mrs. Slack’s name: Nettie Elnora.

I was surprised by the very Disney looking Bambi carving on this stone, but this must have been before Disney started cracking down on its copyright. Or maybe they had a whole line of Disney themed gravestones? That wouldn’t surprise me.

Poor Leo. It looks like Mrs. Schlesinger found another place to rest her head. Also, I like the simple flower carvings and the font.

The section of the cemetery we visit has more than a few abandoned husbands. Mr. Van Winkle is not going to wake up from this nap.

These are fake flowers, but I did check to see who had this grave. Most of the graves in the section we go to aren’t very decorated.

It turned out to be a baby’s grave. Those are always sad, but someone hasn’t forgotten this child.

I can never resist taking pictures of the mausoleum where my Great Uncle Tom is. Swinging early 70s meets quasi religious touches meets a TON of artificial flowers.

Marble AND a brass chainmail curtain? I love it!

“We’re not religious, but we will throw some stained glass up for those of you who are.”

Different cemetery: The MAunts (looking more and more like my grandparents every day) decorating Grandma and Grandpa’s grave.

My Grandparents’ view.

The only problem with cremation is you don’t get a gravestone. They always look so nice to me.

Their neighbor

I initially stopped because I liked their last name because it reminded me of the nursery rhyme.

But I liked what they had carved on their gravestone. For Jean: wife, mother, teacher.

For George: Father, Musician, Horseman. (I’m trying not to be annoyed that he hasn’t listed “husband” to go with his partners “wife,” because overall, I like the concept.)

It is back to the bus mall!

This is the last weekend I will catch the bus on Third or Fourth avenues. Very soon, the bus stops will move back where they belong: on the bus mall. There will be a summer of “only” buses, cars, pedestrians, then in August and September the new Max lines will also join the cars and bikes and buses on the “transit mall.” We shall see how that goes. At any rate, I’ll be glad to be back on the mall. The sight lines are much better there.

The song I can’t get out of my head right now.

This came about because I wanted to hear the song “I do” by J. Giles Band. When seized by this desire of late, I have taken to finding the song on YouTube. If there isn’t an official video there, someone has done their own mediocre slide show/video that I can not watch while still hearing the song. While listening to “I Do,” I stumbled across someone’s 80’s play list and it was quite good. I YouTube spiraled for a bit until I stumbled across this song.

Reading the title, I thought to myself “I have no idea what John Couger Mellencamp song this is.” I hit play and dimly from the back crannies of my mind remembered it from so long ago. And bam! Stuck in my head. I really like the lyrics, though. In a sparse song way, they rightly capture young love and all its fumblings

Three sentence movie reviews–Wolverine


This movie was a hot mess which gave me time to contemplate many things including: why did Liev Schreiber torture himself with the bulking up and the high protein diet when he wears an overcoat for 98% of the movie? And: Could a movie as cool as Star Trek be made if the male-to-female ratio was reversed? That’s right, I was contemplating gender theory of an entirely different movie, which means that this movie is a waste of time.

Bechdel score: Two women: nope.

My first fully “read” audiobook: Th1rteen R3asons Why.


Audio books aren’t my thing. For me, the act of reading has to involve my eye moving over a page of some sort. I don’t count audio books as reading and I’m a bit of a snob about it. For me, reading is the one thing in my life that I do by itself. When I’m reading, I ‘m not watching television, or washing the dishes or cleaning, it is just me and the book, on the couch, relaxing (or on the train, or waiting for an appointment, etc.) Smoking used to provide that time for me in my life, the do-nothing time, but I’ve sacrificed that vice for my health. I sill miss the not-doing time. There is no way I’m going to take time away from do-nothing reading time and replace it with do-something audio book time.

I don’t think I’ve ever voluntarily started an audio book, but this one came recommended by An Embarrassment of Riches, which is a blog written by our librarians. Because of the like in the post, I was under the impression (misguided, as it turned out) that the book only came in Audio book form. Plus, it was the dreaded spring pledge drive and I had cooking to do. One can only listen to so many hours of reasons why you should support OBP (and you should, don’t get me wrong. And I do.) So away we went into audio book land.

So Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, is probably a really good audio book. The premise is that a teenager finds a package addressed to him containing seven audio cassette tapes. When he plays the first one (in the garage because the old stereo in the shop area is the only one with a tape player) he hears the voice of Hannah Baker, the girl who committed suicide two weeks prior. She explains that there are thirteen reasons why she ended her life, and each one is a person. Each side of a tape discusses one of the thirteen people and every person who received the package must listen to all of the tapes and then send them to the next person on the list. If they do not do this, then the tapes will be released in a very public way.

So wow, good premise. And good reading by the two actors who played Clay and Hannah. Maybe a little too good. They perfectly captured the adolescent angst of both teenagers, with Debra Wiseman particularly hitting the mark of Hannah. Aaaaaand that was the problem. Hannah Baker drove me crazy. By person/reason four all I could think was “Seriously? You ended your life because of this? There better be something really good later on, because this isn’t cutting it.” I think if I had been reading the book, the voice I supplied for Hannah would not have been as grating. Debra hit her mark, alright, but the sarcasm/angst/anger level she hit was hard to listen to for six hours, even if it did feel authentic.

One of my fellow workers actually read this book recently, no foolin‘, because her 12 year old daughter read it and told her mother she must read it, it was such a good book. The fellow worker correctly summed it up as, “entirely unfulfilling for adults because there is no adult translation of those very strong adolescent feelings. They are just very present.” And that was what drove me crazy. Still, I kept listening, at first to see what number the main character was, and later because I couldn’t stop. There is something fascinating about listening to a voice from beyond the grave, especially if that voice is explaining why she is now beyond the grave.

In book form, I probably would have consumed this in a day. In audio book form it took me about a week, which gave me more time to think about different parts of the story. When it was all over, I still wished I had read the book.