Tag: fun

Walking in the snow.

I got up early for a walk in the snow.  Here’s the view from just down the road.  As you can see, there have been few cars, a few people and one bike out and about before me.

Walk sign covered with snow.

Partial obscuring of street sign by snow.

I think that no one will want this couch.

A rare sight in Portland!  A shoveled walk!

Portlenders are very good at hunkering down in the snow.  We’re stalwart through the worst driving rain, but everyone just gives up at the first sight of a flake.  Example:  it’s 7:15 in the morning and I was the first person to walk on this stretch of sidewalk.

It was a blowing snow, so there were some fun shapes.

I shoveled my walk, though.  When shoveling happens only every few years, it’s quite fun.

I set out later for another walk.  Here I cut through a pristine alley.  But you notice a bike has been here before me.

A van, but what’s this?

A bit of snow graffiti.  This was sweet graffiti.  My friend captured a picture of a car where someone had written “PENIS” and another passerby had amended the word to “DENTIST”
More drifts of snow.

Icicle.

Early release due to SNOW!!!!

It’s been very cold (for here) all week, with the temperature hovering in the 20s during the day.  Usually when it is this cold, it’s sunny and too cold for snow.  But not today! Today we got snow.  Here’s the view at work at about 12:15 pm.  The school district called an early release of 1:00 by 10:30 in the morning, so for the first time, I got to experience the process of getting all the children to leave in the middle of the school day.  It went smoothly and everyone was gone by 1:30

I was home by 2:15, stomping the snow of my Doc Matins on the way in.

The kitties were very interested in the snow.

Willy Vlautin author reading at Powell’s

Aside from being the lead singer and songwriter of Richmond Fontaine Willy Vlautin is also an author.  He was reading at Powell’s to promote his new book the Free.  Did I mention he lives in Portland, Oregon?

Mr. Vlautin is a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, which made for a pleasant evening.  He told us he was a painter (the house kind) for twelve years and the happiest day of his life was the day he didn’t have to be a painter anymore.  “Of course, a couple of years later,” he added, “I had to go back to being a painter, but that wasn’t such a great day.”
My favorite gem I’m taking away from this reading?  Someone asked how he knew when he was done revising.  “I stop feeling sick to my stomach and start thinking about a new book.”

2013 Mock Printz

I attended another great Mock Printz Workshop where we read and discuss great YA literature and try to guess what the Printz Committee will pick as the best YA book of the year.
Here was our schedule.

Here were my votes.
After a few rounds of voting we came up with the following winners:
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell with 113 votes
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, by Matthew Quick with 86 votes
Boxers/Saints by Gene Luen Yang with 71 votes.

Now we wait for the announcement on 1/27.

More good finds.

Aside from the Caboodle, I also brought home a few framed pictures.

This is the Residence Assisstant (RA) group from the year at Cottey I was an RA.  I’m thinking the frame was purchased at the store full of good gifts that opened during my tenure there.  Before that, we had to buy all our gifts at Walmart.  And Walmart wouldn’t have such a nice frame as this.
 

Let’s see if I can do all the names.
Top row:  Karen (Robertson Hall Adult), I can’t remember the next lady’s name, (maybe it was Doris?) but she was very cool (PEO Hall Adult) Eden (PEO Hall) Helen Lodge (Director of Housing and we always referred to her by both names)
Second Row:  Eva (Robertson Hall) Teresa (Robertson Hall) Susan (Robertson Hall) Corey (PEO Hall) Kitty (Reeves Hall)
Third Row: Betsey (Reeves Hall) Jen (Reeves Hall Adult) Meghan (Reeves Hall)
Bottom Row:  Jenye (Reeves Hall) Me (Robertson Hall), Jen Comeau (Robertson Hall)
Not too shabby.
 
Here’s a great picture of my brother and myself.  He’s 16 and I’m 18.
 
Our parents let us go to Worlds of Fun, an amusement park outside of Kansas City, by ourselves.  We even got to drive there and back unaccompanied.  I wanted to get our picture taken because we had a family one done, probably at Worlds of Fun four years before, and I felt that too many people had smiled in that photo, making it not authentic.  So we did not smile. 

I also found an early Sue Tirrell.
 

Who knew full well I wasn’t going to be drinking coffee from this.
 

An Amazing Find!

I went looking for some missing letters and journals and was not successful in finding them.  But I did find something else very exciting!

My Caboodle!  Which, as you know, (assuming you are a middle-class white female born in the early 70s and susceptible to advertising) is a handy (and cute) place to keep all your makeup.
 

AND IT STILL HAS ALL THE MAKEUP IN IT!
Note the matches from the Village Inn (from when every restaurant had matches and there were smoking sections, in fact, it was a big deal that there were NON-smoking sections) which were used to melt the eyeliner so it would be easier to apply.
 
Here are the teardrops I would sometimes affix to my face in high school
 
Here are some false eyelashes, an awesome turquoise pick (partially obscured by an excellent primer on eye makeup) as well as more things I stuck on my face and a very cool Avon brush that I had wondered, now and again, what ever happened to it.
 
Plus, two kinds of Avon eye shadow I borrowed from my mother around 1987 and never returned.

“Now you can go fishin’ for man!” Sara commented when I texted her the photos.  Instead I packed it all back up and hid it away for another happy surprise in a few decades.  But maybe I will go back for that brush.

Turkey Trot

Kelly and I signed up for the Turkey Trot back when I didn’t have to wear a coat when leaving the house.  Now I’m wearing a layer of long johns, pants, shirt and a jacket.  It must be Thanksgiving.
 
Some Pilgrims showed up to run.
 
This turkey looks like it’s already been slaughtered.
 
There were a lot of fun hats.
 
And headbands.
 
Pre-race photo.
 
There was an entire group of Thanksgiving dinner items. I first spotted “Sweet Potato” a kid wearing (what else?) an orange shirt.  The later saw Stuffing and Turkey.
 
The Turkey Trot ends in the Zoo and we stopped to look at the Leopards on our way out.  This one is investigating his Thanksgiving surprise.
 
I didn’t realize my camera was on the Fish-Eye setting.
 
Looks like my cat.  But much, much bigger.
 
Kelly’s wingspan is not as great as a California Condor.
 
But she’s giving the Bald Eagle a run for its money.
 

Baghdad Refurbished.


Before seeing a free showing of My Own Private Idaho, I heard the end of the lecture on the history of the Baghdad Theater.  I arrived for the lecture during the period when the Baghdad was going through a transformation to a “multiplex” which meant walling off the balcony for a separate theater and shoehorning a third theater, called the Back Door Theater, behind the main theater space.  All McMenamin’s movie screens show slide shows before their movies begin, and interspersed with the slides for the many McMenamin’s products are historic pictures.  I have been seeing the picture of the Back Door Theater for years and wondered about it.  Now I know.

This picture was a poster for a premiere that happened at the Baghdad:  They Live.  Among other things, this  forgettable movie had the involvement of the man who invented the propeller beanie.  Thus the explanation of the strange juxtaposition of these two pictures.

The history of the theater was quite interesting and I was sorry I didn’t prioritize listening to the entire lecture.