catch of the day

pretty self explanatory.

awkward advances...sometimes they're cute, but usually they're just--well---awkward. a few i could think of
(while working at a vegan restaurant) "i like vegetarians"
(while riding the bus) "can i get off at your stop?"
(while at work) "I like tulips too" (while I was standing next to some LAVENDER)
and the list goes on.

halfway there

today was all about unpacking some boxes.
damn we got a lot of shit.

took a bunch of stuff to storage as well. i'm loving rolling carts and freight elevators.

now all we gotta do is get everything together and we'll be moved in.

if only getting a job were this straightforward...

eating ethiopian food reminds me of memphis a whole lot. in a good way mind you.

the moving saga

well here goes...we did the round trip to Portland yesterday (insane) and got the Uhaul, so here it goes.

emptied out the storage unit quickly, so all that's left is to get the rest of the stuff out of this apartment, and then there's a cleaning extravaganza we've got a date with. i got farrah to take a bunch of plants so at least part of that is out of the way, got the community garden to take a couple of things, and then gave a bunch of stuff to the upstairs neighbor. The rest of the plants actually fit in the truck.

i hate moving.

after marathon cleaning we packed it up and got rolling. unfortunately it was pretty hot, and my car was acting up and overheating, so i had to drive with the heat on when it was already 90+ degrees, so i felt pretty crappy by the time we made it to portland. ugggh.

but we made it and that's all that matters.

after a celebration round of sushi, we called it a night.

umm...where's the trailer

WOW...

(This trailer park moment just needs a trailer park and we'd be all set). yeah... so the guy down the way starts lighting off fireworks while i'm talking to the neighbor (sounds pretty normal so far doesn't it)?

And it turns out the reason has nothing to do with the 4th of July.

Apparently his pitbull likes to attack fireworks. Woah buddy. Let me guess, he also fetches crack pipes and plays with shotgun shells. yeah.

THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL. I think i totally need some pbr right now. this is too westside double wide for the city of ashland. yo.

got a home

found our po'tland new home this weekend. i'm pretty excited about it. it's a cute victorian house, although this definitely ain't a picture of it...
i think it'll be good for us.

glad we got that problem out of the way..hello graduate school.

judge roberts

Roberts is a man with a "a wealth of experience" (if that's what you want to call two years on the bench). Thankfully he appears to be more than adequate at representing the interests of oppressed mining companies, and has a knack at defending school segregation and rolling back affirmative action. Just think of what he could do for your corporation... In other news, coathanger sales will no doubt increase in the future, with that pesky Roe V Wade decision overturned.

Thankfully the Senate Judiciary committee has agreed to just going to lie down and roll over and let the republicans have whatever they want. (Y'all are off the Christmas card list this year). Besides, why be surprised...we all know that rich boys from Texas get whatever they want, you can buy all the government you need.

rant #744

confession time--

I TOTALLY HATE STYROFOAM! IT'S SO HIDEOUS!

seriously...i hate it.

nothing's grosser than coffee with a nice plasticky-petro flavor...but my least favorite part is that i can't help thinking about how it's going to be around FOREVER.

one thing i just love and adore about ashland is that we have a styrofoam ban. no nasty styrofoam containers anywhere to be found around here. I remember back in 1990 McDonald's finally quit using styrofoam..."probably a result of the McToxics Campaign, coordinated by the Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW). This effort included a boycott as well as a campaign to get consumers to send their styrofoam trash from McDonald's back to the company". 15 years later, and i'm thinking, a whole lotta good that did, because as far as I can tell EVERYBODY ELSE IS USING STYROFOAM. yep. you can't hardly go to a restaurant without being handed some nasty styrofoam container. the other day i had some icecream and they were handing out the styrofoam bowls LEFT AND RIGHT. ewww. i'm so paying extra for that waffle cone.


maybe it's just me here...(and it probably IS just me), but if i see another freaking styrofoam container i'm gonna get downright cranky. yeah, i know they're cheap and that's why everyone uses them. (kinda like prison labor, migrant workers, and child laborers) but yeah, you tell that to your grandkids "oh yeah we don't give a shit about you, so we all did the styrofoam thing so we could save a couple of bucks on packaging at the restaurant supply." gee thanks. i'm thinking most places could afford to suck it up and pay the extra 8 cents for something a little more biodegradable.

so i'm thinking from now on, i'm going to save up all the retarded styrofoam containers i receive (whether i want them or not), and return to sender with a nice note attached. "gee thanks, i'm so glad you thought i needed a disposal problem. funny thing, the recycling center won't take these, and well they don't compost so well in my compost pile. here you can have them back. have a great day."

canned heat

going into today i knew that it was supposed to be at least 105F. predictably we were all really excited about watering. someone set up a mister. and i'm sure i was in it every other minute. it got pretty hot by 1pm, a bit earlier than it usually does.
i got a bit bored standing around drinking water, so i followed matt and justin over to where the production crew was canning up some groundcovers. there was a real nice breeze over there too, so i got motivated to do some production work (for a change of pace).

after awhile, i realized that in the right circumstances, 100F is not so bad. i remember a friend telling me he was going to go work in a machine shop (that was that hot all the time) which i thought (at the time) was beyond human endurance. it's not. you just drink gallons of water, and try to keep near a fan or a breeze.

so yeah, folks, drink your water and be sensible. with water, all things are possible.

hwy 238 revisited

went out to williams today for probably the last time in a long while, at least that's how it feels...it's a place i like to go, but i have to have a good reason to justify the trek out there. it's usually worth it though.

went over to sherri's farm. been wanting to for awhile but it's not like we have the same days off during normal times.

what a fun place: she's got all kinds of chickens running around, a crazy rooster that won't quit crowing (he just figured out how and i'm guessing he's pretty excited about it) and a couple of horses and some darn cute dogs n' cats. so i got to pet the horses, and play with the dogs, get licked by a crazy cat, and well sherri's fun to hang out with anyhow...

but lordy was it hot! i'm guessing it was over a hundred, because when i got back to ashland it was 105 or 106. wow, my car sure wasn't liking it and neither was i (no ac). it was a nostalgic drive back home though. i began my time out here driving that road, and ended it on a similar note. i'll miss the applegate valley...

Here's some fun quotes from the original Charlie and the Chocolate factory:

Willy Wonka:

We have so much time, and so little to do!

Willy Wonka:

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

Willy Wonka:

The suspense is terrible . . . I hope it'll last.

Willy Wonka:

If the good Lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller-skates.

This version's pretty good. I figured Tim Burton could pull it off, and who makes a better weird recluse than Johnny Depp anyway? Lotta kids and crying babies in that theater...whatever were their mothers thinking? This ain't no kids movie. I laughed my head off. As you may imagine there's lots of pretty things to look at too.

sour plums/酸っぱい 梅

apparently nobody likes those 酸っぱい 日本 の 梅 sour japanese plums but me. i just love their puckery taste and i'll go out walking around in search of the distinctive purple-leafed trees in the summer, when they set their small similarly colored fruit.
it seems though that no one else is even remotely interested in plums...except for these random kids i ran into at lithia park one time.
walking across the bridge, i saw a branch of plums hanging down and reached up to pluck one, tossed it in my mouth and ate it. 美味しい! these kids were standing around wide-eyed "you can EAT those?" the fact that they're sour didn't seem to stop them a bit. after that they were like squirrels in a nuthouse.

lately the Prunus cerasiferas have been kicking out the plums around here. I don't remember them being this late last year, but then again it was a cold spring.

I guess ultimately i should be glad nobody else likes them...I have them all to myself.

will work for water

another super-dooper hot day up on the mountain for us.

it tends to be bearable until about 1pm, then we start diving for the water bottles, spraybottles, and watering plants starts sounding like a darn good time.

then we give up and sit in the office with the ac on, and hope nobody wants anything.

yeah, it's been over 100 for the past couple of days. not exactly ideal working outside weather.
i have sunburns on the back of my legs and nowhere else, oddly. i drink about a gallon and a half of water a day now, and it's so dry you don't sweat...you just kind of evaporate. every time i see mark, he's dousing himself with water.

to amuse myself, i've been taking pictures of the blooming flowers, watching the butterflies, and picking plums out on the treeline.

i came home half an hour late to burritos and an invitation to go sit in a nice airconditioned movie theater (ac is lacking at home) and watch "howl's moving castle). i love miyazaki

pauls birthday is hot bizness

today was pauls birthday. being the punks that we are, we filled his office up with balloons and waited very impatiently for him to show up.

now there's balloons floating around all over the place.

pretty quiet day otherwise. it was hot so we did as little as possible.
i took pictures of blooming flowers til the batteries went dead.

seems like everyone's getting married right now. god bless all you crazy people. i'm glad i'm done with it.

the 13th of something...

boy was today a weird one.

went out to get in the car to go to work and it wouldn't start. my best guess is not being used for two weeks, it just wasn't feeling like going anywhere today either.

so i got a ride with april. poor april. she's always rescuing me from my transportation dilemmas.

the morning was quiet and uneventful.

the afternoon was just the opposite.

i had the fun task of breaking the news that i'm quitting in two weeks and moving to portland.

i'm sure pat's thrilled.

i'm really going to miss everyone a whole lot.

today i played plant doctor for the first time in awhile. now that we're out of fungus season, it's bug season.

i think if i had THAT hard of a time with grass i'd grow something else.

plums are fun to eat. the crab apples on the snowdrift crab apple are surprisingly good too.

what a totally weird day.

back home again

it sure is nice to be home again.

spent all morning unpacking tons of bags and doing tons of laundry.

got some food so we'd have something to eat around here. we even went to the farmer's market to get some produce so i could make curry, so brian got to have some of the heavenly donuts that i eat all the time. no grateful there though...i wonder where he's been-haven't seen him around in a few weeks.

then i went to class for the first time in awhile. found out sensei's finally gotten a green card. you go girl, i know that had to be hard and frustrating. the ins pretty much sucks from what everyone tells me. it was nice to be back in my usual element.

went to the bakery and caught everyone coming out of the nursery. so i got to talk to kris, trudy and dan, and waved at marsha driving off. i hear diane's gone. i'll miss her. she's such a trip.

yep, it's good to be home but i totally miss my memphis crew as well. wish i could bring them with me...

tsa is your friend

i'm sure tsa wondered what the hell a flat piece of 10 cast iron was doing in a suitcase.
turns out it's nothing more exciting than a recent find at the lodge outlet in pigeon forge, tn. but i'm sure they had to see for themselves.

other than that our flying experience was totally uneventful, albeit tiring as usual. so this time around we got to go to cincy, slc salt lake city, and of course lovely medford.

i was sure glad to be outta that plane by the time we got to medford.

sure is good to be back in the rogue valley, and see all the mountains again. i sure have gotten used to them.

one little bitchfest: why the hell is all the food at slc sooo expensive? hey not all of us can afford to spend $9 on lunch, dawg. ended up getting around it, but it took some serious effort.

the long road home

lost sea caves are a cool cool place on hot july days.
chatanooga is a surprising place nothing like i would have expected. a bit more user friendly than memphis that's for sure.
alabama is the land of bad stereotypes and don't hate y'all me but everything i saw while i was there lived up to them...it was scary. and i've seeen scary.
kudzu monsters are invading the south and leaving no trace. i can completely understand why people are obsessed...i think brian wants to do a low budget horror flick about kudzu monsters.
miss those mountains when you are in the flat lands...i got all excited about the smokies because i got to missing the siskiyous. once you get to alabama it levels out again. back to the delta
you know you're in the delta...the air gets a certain look to it, and the vegetation changes. the land stretches out forever looking mysterious in the humidity that hangs on it like a skin. when the sun sets the fog looks like ghosts...only here does the sun look like that, a big looming burning thing.
everyone in mississippi has a tractor in their front yard, and i mean EVERYONE
there and back again, back in memphis with hot 107 going in the rental car. what a week.

cristin, jano but no elvis

got back to memphis on monday... since cristin and jano had some time left before they had to fly home, i got to show them around town a little bit. always wished i could have done this before, but that's how these things go.

we tried to go to pho hoa bin again (apparently its virtues are not just apparent to me) but it was closed. pho pasteur had moved, and i was all out of ideas. i had kinda forgotten it was the 4th of july and a monday afternoon to boot, but it wasn't the end of the world. we went to viet hoa while we were in the catholic charities vicinity and boy has that place gotten huge. i saw a familiar face in there...an old housemate who's back in town.

we headed down vance so i could see the antebellum house by orleans, and went down by beale for awhile. it sure felt hot, although at the time we didn't have a clue that it was really 100 degrees out, and here we were foolishly walking around outdoors. boy has this part of town changed since i've been gone...and barely even a ghost remains of beale streets far more interesting and shady days...after kicking around there for awhile, we went to the peabody to see the ducks, and by that time, the afternoon was over and it was time to go back to the airport.

i thought for sure i could just take the bus back home, but silly me, I had no idea mata wasn't running to the airport (i had seen buses all over town and figured it was a safe bet to go to the airport and ride from there). hah, the joke was on me and i had to call for a rescue ride.

leaving tj's last night, the winds started rising, and trees started shaking. driving down east parkway, and down southern, a huge storm blew up out of nowhere...and mini-tornadoes of trash and dust followed me down southern past the eerie dark of the freightyards illuminated by the lightning of the storm and fireworks going off nearby. i made it to the safety of the house just in time and saw everybody hanging out in morgan's yard in a pool, was handed a watermellon slice, and hung out on the porch with derek and tim and amanda and jb. we sat on the couch and watched it rain and pour out in the street, and listened to the frogs gettin' ecstatic about finally getting some moisture. we watched that unexpected monsoon unleashed from the sky until it was far past my bedtime. getting home was hairy because the underpasses were flooded as they often do at times like these, and there were rivers of floodwater going down the street.

ahh this is what i missed, a real good memphis summer thunderstorm. we never have these in oregon and i miss them.

the aftermath of the wedding

whew i'm glad all the wedding chaos is out of the way. ;) with the pressure off, it was nice to just visit with everybody, hang out with the kids, and shoot the breeze. even for such a casual wedding, i managed to get more stressed out that had ever seemed possible. i'd hate to imagine what people go through when they have to endure those "fancy weddings".
unfortunately the memphis kids were all gone, but i got to hang out with liz, cristin and jano and mike and eva for a bit, play with my nephew and talk to everybody. it was a lot hotter than the day before, so i think we got lucky.
went to play frisbee golf with the guys, and rick hit me in the back of the head with the disk but i survived and we played about half the course before it started getting dark. i think frisbee golf is pretty cool...way more environmentally friendly than regular golf, and being in the shady woods is a nice bonus.
went on a late night walk with cristin and jano that was quite like old times. ostensibly we were on a search for armadillos but i think we've long since scared them away from the cabin area with all the chaos going on around there.

Keep Me Fully Glad

Keep Me Fully Glad

Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand. In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing. I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast. Make my life glad with nothing. The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full my heart with nothing but my own depth of joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

wedding bells

feelin' rough: i knew i shouldn't do it, but i stayed up way too late the night before. not having a bachelorette party, i couldn't resist kicking it with the girls for awhile, and actually the going to bed late part wouldn't have been the end of the world if i would have actually gotten some sleep at all. but i couldn't. i was too nervous and the lack of sleep combo just made me feel worse. so by morning i was a groggy nauseated mess. not fun.

i got my wedding gear on without incident, and let jb and shawna and cristin stick flowers in my hair and work on getting the veil on. jb got to work on my hair, and that got everyone motivated. next thing i know jb's hair salon was open for business and everyone was in line. i had fun watching her go at it, while i was nursing my ginger ale. i've never seen her do that before but it was pretty cool.

the major concern of the day was, "Where's the wedding cake?". Apparently it was back in Millington, and my dad was sent after it. Although I was freaked out by the delay (one thing i had really wanted was for the wedding to be over with before it got hot out) but in retrospect, i realize he was the only person who would have known where to go. So the wedding got started an hour late, which will probably generate a fair number of jokes, but other than that, it went off without a hitch. my dad said the sweetest thing while we were walking down the aisle and morgen was just cute.

I can't remember a whole lot about the ceremony because frankly i was so focused on being nervous and trying not to cry all at the same time. but i made it up to the altar without doing anything crazy. richard seemed nervous, and brian just looked totally amazing to me. i think i was probably pretty oblivious to a lot of what was going on around me because i was looking into brian's eyes the whole time. people afterwards said they thought it was a really nice ceremony though, so all i've got to say is, let's hear it for the library book! watching the video later i got a better idea of what it was like...

although i couldn't do it much justice at the time, we had a huge buffet reception after the wedding, and as far as i can tell they did a good job of getting it set up quick. i hadn't quite recovered at that point but nobody else seemed to have any trouble finding the food. i wasn't involved in the preparations, but as far as i could tell, it seemed like things went smoothly and people sat wherever, and doing things completely without the usual "reception formalities" worked just fine for us. i've been to tons of weddings where you have formal receptions, and would have to say that this worked a lot better for my liking. nobody complained about having to wait forever to eat, and i'm sure people were a whole lot happier just doing their own thing.
i was pretty happy that i didn't have to sit at a wedding party table and be the center of attention all night, put up with speeches, or have people sticking cameras in my face wanting me to kiss brian...not that i have any problems with kissing brian...just not on film with guacamole stuck to my nose, please.

boy everybody was all about some of tj's hummus. i'm glad she made it and brought it down there because i think people will probably be talking about it for years, based on the number of times i heard someone talking about it at the reception. yep, i knew all along that it was good stuff, but nothing like having about a hundred people tell you that! even my middle eastern relatives were impressed if that says anything. casey's tabouli was enormously popular too. at any rate, aside from these two declerye classics, we had lots of food at the reception, and i don't think anyone was in any danger of going hungry.

afterwards i had a good talk with kiah down by the boat ramp, and later on we went down to watch the fireworks the park decided to rustle up and set off. there were also shooting stars above us, and the less subtle dance of fireflies in the dark. it was a beautiful night.

rendevouz at point bravo

today's the big day to head down there to "a camp" and get things rolling.

it'll be a relief of sorts to know where everyone is and what they're doing. the trade off, of course is that this means everyone is gonna want a piece of me. i'll live, i'm sure...
so far my sanity is still intact, and i haven't blatantly forgotten anything major, but it's still kinda nervewracking dealing with so many variables, people, requests, etc. my ordinary life is quite simple compared to this weekend, but as they say, "this too, shall pass".

it rained this morning, and cooled things down for awhile, but now it's gonna get hot again i'm sure. hopefully not as lethal as yesterday (i needed a jumex just to walk down the street) but again, hotter than anything i'm used to.

Time to see what the troops are up to, and when the caravan is rolling out of memphis.