nerd core

i got into an argument with cody about who was nerdier. i won.

today was just as nuts as yesterday in terms of herds and the noise level, but i got through it without incident. someone brought some home peaches and i took a couple home to remind myself that i all but missed peach season this year.

after winding down, i walked across the broadway bridge watching the trains bolt out of the yard, listened to the canadian geese honking at me in the river, and walked through a bit of the pearl district (yuppies!) before my feet gave out and i had to accept a bus ride back home as the sun began to set.

everyone's in the living room watching some tv show about a woman becoming president...i'm not into tv, so i'm hiding out in my room, but i can overhear some of the dialogue.
sometimes i wonder if half of the dumb shit that's happened in the past 4 years would be with us if we had a woman for president. hell, laura bush (in spite of her recent insensitive comment directed at african americans from new orleans) would probably do a much better job of things than her husband...at least i'm reasonably sure she knows how to read, and usually doesn't say anything too retarded (recent incidents notwithstanding) one thing i personally think is beautifully ironic is that several "muslim" countries have had a few women president-equivalents themselves...so i'm waiting...at this point, i'd even vote for a republican if she were female...at least she probably knows how to clean up after herself. (well maybe not --a bunch of rich white people is not exactly the party for me, but it's worth a thought about having someone with a couple of x chromosomes in charge of things for a nice change of pace. maybe instead of preemptive strikes, world disputes could be settled by telling the offending parties "if you don't have anything nice to say to each other, don't say anything at all". better than the usual rhetoric by miles.

but all this is purely within the realm of fantasy. i live in a country that is content to elect a bunch of rich whiny boys who don't even know how to make their own dinners, wouldn't know a sponge mop from a toilet brush, and probably don't have a clue what the difference is between permanent press and delicate. (to be fair, i know guys who do know all of these things, but alas none of them are in charge). my advice about leaders is simple, the prc says, don't trust anyone who doesn't know how to cook their own rice. werd!

the procrastinators

today was nuts. it seems like everyone in the whole school waited 'til today to come in and get their books, on this, the first day of class. "joy to you and me"
so from 8am-6pm i ran a register, checked ids, and scanned scanned scanned. the line wrapped like a snake around the back of the store, back around up to the steps and coiled around again. there was a sea of backpacks by the door. and many disgruntled people who waited for at least an hour in line. the alarm must've gone off a hundred times.
amazingly enough only one person got downright bitchy with me all day. people may have griped and moaned in line, but by the time they got up to me, they seemed to be over it. no one went postal. some people even had an intact sense of humor.

i'm glad that's over for the day. i'll be doing it all again tomorrow. wee.

a few things that definitely don't get the prc seal of approval:

1. commercials: okay so i tend to think commercials suck by default. that's a given.
but lately they've gotten even more offensive by taking songs that i like, taking them out of context and using them to purvey lame capitalist propositions.
case in point: this coors light commercial uses "love train" by the o'jays. no offense, but i don't think the point of "love train" is a bunch of whiteys getting their drink on at a football game.
the other day i heard a ramones song used for something equally questionable and lame.
i'd say i'm going to boycott these companies, but i kind of already am by default. i live in oregon ...i don't need to drink crappy beer, we have tons of fabulous microbrews everywhere, some of them are even organic. the closest to "big label" i get these days is the new belgium product line.

2. norton publishing: don't get me wrong, they put out some fine books, but the barcodes on 'em are worse than useless. after entering in the isbn number off of a particular culprit more than 50 times by my own reckoning in one shift, i just feel compelled to write norton a nasty letter (telling them if they can't figure out how to put a bar code on the back of an enormously popular textbook, i'm gonna be forced to hop a train to new york, walk into their office and set the building on fire).

well that's all i really feel strongly about today besides getting comfy on this couch. i need to save up my energy for the next onslaught of procrastinators tomorrow.

squash pie

nothing's more revolutionary these days than growing your own f%$in food, except possibly remembering to save some of the seeds from the stuff you grew so you can do it all again next year without having to place $100 seed orders. this year i actually used food stamps to buy some of the seed...wonder how many people ever do that?

there's a pie in the oven filled with squash, basil, leeks and tomatoes. brian made cupcakes and cookies and the house smells of them...
i have containers everywhere full of seed heads, pulled while harvesting tomatoes. it's the tail end of farming season here in zone 6 and it's time for seed saving.

a method that seems to work pretty good for most things i use goes thus:

1. pick your seed heads when they're mature, but not overly dried out or moldy. (mold is the enemy of seedsaving).

2. bring them out of the rain and humidity and let them dry out real good indoors (or at least not out in the weather). this was always a slow impatient process in memphis which took weeks, but here things dry out effortlessly in this climate. don't bother doing anything else until the seed heads are dry.

3. get ahold of some collanders, and strainers of various sizes, and some large bowls. hull things that need seedpods removed, then roll them around in the collanders and strainers working your way down in size, until you separate the chaff from the seed. the extent of your effort depends on whether you are planting your seed or using it for culinary purposes. the less crap left behind, the better.

4. once you are reasonably happy with what you have left, you need to think about your long term storage solutions. paper seed packages seem to work best because there's no danger of condensation. an nice environmentally friendly method that seems to work for me is taking the used envelopes out of my recycling bin, cutting them in half, and making pouches that end up being roughly the same size as a standard seed packet. a nice thing about this method is if you use window envelopes, you can actually see what's in there.
if you have lots of small glass jars, you could use those, but don't seal them up tight unless you are sure the seed is optimally dry, and beware of condensation in certain climates. condensation=mold=no germination.
at any rate, i would never never ever put them in anything plastic. that's an almost certain guarantee that they'll mold.
whatever they're in, make sure you label them so you'll know what you have later. you'd be amazed how mysterious those mystery jars of brown crispy things will look come next march.

5. some times you have to watch out for bugs. this seems to be a big problem with beans. there's not much you can do...if you are growing organically you don't want to get into the business of fumigation. about all you can do is try to keep things as clean as possible, and definitely take the time to remove seedpods from things like beans and brassica seeds...those pods always have some kind of insect that will ruin your seed saving projects. just keep an eye on things and if you have tons of one type of seed, make several small batches so if some of it goes bad, you don't lose the whole lot. just check up on things from time to time...if something's getting moldy or "webby" see what you can salvage out of that batch before it takes over.

6. don't forget you have all these seeds at planting time!

seeds are amazing. aside from being symbols of life itself, they're a tool you can use to sneer at the evils of corporate farming...nothing says freedom like growing your own squash, tomatoes and herbs.

*as jb would probably say, there's fancier ways of doing this if that's what does it for you. if you come across this, and get motivated, there's much more technical info on seed saving out there, including heirlooms and hybridizing.
this is my relatively unscietific approach to preserving the bounty of what comes my way, that seems to work well most of the time for the things i usually attempt to grow. i don't bother with a lot of the details that more scientifically minded folks would use because frankly i don't have a lot of time on my hands, and i'm not trying to maximize profit...i'm not developing new strains of anything. i'm just saving my seeds so i can grow the same stuff again next year.
word.

fri(ght)day

whew what a day...shit i didn't know there could be that much hype in one afternoon.

i started the day off by having a somewhat difficult time with my usually reliable form of public transportation. upon arriving 15 minutes late to work, i walked into a scene of impending chaos. the lines, the lines...yep, far more people than i could have ever imagined decided to postpone their textbook purchases until friday. an even higher number than usual decided to pay for $200 books with a wad of five spots. umm yeah, that's very HELPFUL. by the end of the day my register wouldn't even close it was so full of money.

then the financial aid system went down. i spent a lot of time reassuring folks they could come back tomorrow. 4 pm rolled around and kept going, people kept coming in, so finally we had to lock the doors. i left a good half an hour after close after helping a nun look for her bag that never did turn up.

nothing felt as good as getting off the bus, but unfortunately i didn't get to stay home. still though, not having to cook dinner is a plus, having a movie to watch is a double plus plus.

summer is gone. i can feel it now. here at least, the equinox of the fall moon does equate with the beginning of fall. in ashland it didn't really feel much like fall until mid-october and the time of grapes.

here when i am outside in the morning it's cold and brisk, the leaves of the early maples are stained with red, and the dogwoods are surrendering to similar persuasions. hippocastanea sheds it's spiky balls near the bus stop and i like to pick up the buckeyes and carry them all over town. the fraxinus trees are a brilliant yellow against the clear blue sky and the sunsets are a different sort from the summer hues.

i secretly miss the hidden troves of grapevines though that i used to pick, the late summer teasels full of golden finches up in the mountains and the california quercus and it's many hues. there are lots of little differences between zone 7b and 6.

a new found pleasure is the gaultheria wintergreen berries like little red dots in the landscaping of pcc, huckleberries that pop up a few at a time in my bush, the red blaze of boston ivy and virgina creeper, and the crataegus (hawthorne) trees with their many berries.

zoo-4-2

we went to the zoo! a long standing tradition from the early days of our courtship...when we used to go quite a bit in memphis because of the "free day" that neatly coincided with our respective days off. brian lived right down the street and i liked the change of scenery.
we'd been meaning to go, but waiting was a good thing...with summer gone and all the kids back in school (and too early in the year for fieldtrips), and a weekday to boot, the place was practically deserted.

so we had the place to ourselves and a nice early fall day to roam around and watch the animals. the portland zoo is pretty different from the memphis zoo so it's nice that they have totally different animals. i was giddy all day from watching elephants and monkeys and tigers, and enjoying the developing pallete of fall descending on the landscape. i wish i could have pet some goats, but other than that it was a good time.

it sure was cold by the end of the day. the grey clouds rolled in off the ocean and the chinese buffet was closed. we hit the powells book sale and got a few things, then we ended up going to chino saigon which has the benefit of being closer to home and a change of pace. yum. after all that though i was totally tired...

it's nice to do something together for a whole day that has not been tained with proximity to errands, work or school. there probably won't be too many chances to do fun stuff all that often, at least not once school starts. not to mention the weather is going to get really unpleasant very very soon.

as good as there

went to the tutoring orientation and filled out mountains of paperwork. i guess i'm as good as hired, assuming i don't fail the background check...

now all i gotta do is go get fingerprinted...which i have mixed feelings about. in fact i had a perfectly good track record of avoiding the fingerprinting process in spite of the fact they did it in school every year. it hadn't caught up with me, but one of the "benefits" of being involved in public education is that you have to submit to the same level of scrutiny as people applying for security clearance. yum. part of me understands that my freewheeling way of life is over, but the other part wants to run screaming from that powers that be. fortunately i don't have to pay for the privelege of submitting my biodata to the state, i just have to show up and do it.

sigh.

with that moral compromise out of the way, i simply need to figure out what my opening speech is going to be (welcome to amy's bootcamp of langage arts improvement) and figure out how to get surly highschool students to do things they don't naturally want to do. but if i know anything about me, i'm sure i can make it happen. i'm good at that...and if i could do it in whitehaven, i can do it in parkrose. word.

woah hoss!

guess everyone has textbooks on their mind.

you shoulda seen the lines at the bookstore...they were huge.

i noticed that the price of textbooks has gone way up from what i remember. the science books are pretty much going for about the same prices they always do...right around $100 for most of 'em.

what blows my mind is the flimsy softbound numbers that are retailing for 60-80 bucks. wow. probably won't hold together for much more than a semester either.

with that in mind, i've been ringing up students all day long.

so in case you wondered, how do you get around super high textbook prices? well the bad news is oftentimes you can't if you are doing anything sciency or medical related. that's just a fact of life in those disciplines. textbooks change with the time, and that alone keeps the prices in the stratosphere.
For everyone else, here's a few strategies i used as an undergraduate that worked for me:

1. don't ever buy books for literature classes new...at least not retail. all those little novels on your reading list can be gotten very cheaply at annual library book sales for anywhere between 25-50 cents, or at yard sales if you are intrepid. also try goodwill, or for free you can get them at any library around and just check them out and read them. even if you get a few late fines, you still come out ahead of the game. Depending on the class, this tactic could save you anywhere between $20-50 per class. If you need a norton anthology keep your eyes open, those even turn up used occasionally...If you are an English Lit major, you may desire to have nice copies of books you'll turn to again and again, but the rest of you taking that one required class will benefit enormously.

2. A lot of non-science textbooks are often in the library. If not your library, somebody's...try the interlibrary loan service to bring it home. ILL is a wonderful service that most people don't take proper advantage of. If you are especially studious, you may even find some science textbooks in your college library, but you have to be intrepid to get your hands on them.

3. If you are really poor, try asking your professors to use their extra copies of the text. Publishers will often give them half a dozen free samples...which may well be collecting dust somewhere in their office. If your financial situation would make for a good tearjerker, give it a try. You have to be a trustworthy reliable student to get away with this, though. Plan on having perfect attendance in this situation.

4. Classified ads. Post your "books wanted" flyers around campus and see if anyone who took the same class last semester wants to sell you their books. A compelling factor may be the fact that they won't get more than 30% of their money back if they sell them back to the bookstore. If you sweeten the deal, you might benefit from what otherwise is a bad situation.

5. If you have to buy books at a bookstore, go a few weeks before class starts so you have a fair shot at getting them used. If you wait til classes start, you've probably missed the boat.

Well, that's my two cents. I've noticed that a new trend this year is that almost all the new books published this year are bundled in shrinkwrap with workbooks and cds, and cost way more than those of yesteryear. word to the wise, don't open that bundle of joy until you are sure you're taking the class. you open that shrinkwrap and those hundred dollar beauties are yours for life, they can't be returned for a refund.

happy birthday brian

a few things we did for brian's birthday...

1. go play basketball in the park with steven and sara. note to self: my basketball skillz need some serious work.

2. laze around the house...sunday's a darn good day for that. love that slack.

3. eat more icecream cake. in case you are wondering, it was for lunch. yep.

4. go eat at todai.

5. go see a bad movie. (you can tell oscar season isn't here yet since currently showing movies are only so-so)

i wish my birthdays had nice pleasant weather and were filled with delightful outings...but they don't. i guess one of the benefits of being born in september, is that you have things a lot bettter than us late winter babies...the number of pleasant things you can do to commemorate your date of birth are vast by way of comparison.

praxis madness

yo, i musta been crazy.
what was i thinkin' takin' two big ol' tests like that in one day?
i did the double AP test back in '95 and you'd think i'd learned my lesson...

so yeah, against all advice, i took two sessions of the praxis II in one day.

the multiple choice one wasn't so bad. not nearly as many grammar questions as i had expected...and i kinda wish there had been more because i'm good at that sort of thing. good thing i reviewed "literary terms" the night before because those were on there with a vengeance. the other questions of course, were about books i haven't read since my senior year of highschool which was years ago. the questions weren't detailed, but you had to have read the books, and retained some of the information or flavor of the book.
the tricky thing is the stuff they're reading in highschool now is quite different than what was "required reading" in my times. i would love to have read the stuff on the reading list now. but multiculturalism hadn't hit our neck of the woods yet. so some of the stuff was beyond my ken.

running into brian was a nice unexpected bonus. i needed a hug, and lucky for me, my husband was right there.

the essay portion was hard. not for reasons i could explain very easily. i'm good at writing essays but not in timed intervals. poem interpretation is something i can do but i'm not stellar at it. the hardest part was the list of novels for the last question included primarily novels i was never exposed to in school. again because of my vintage i guess. makes me wish i had visited the juvenile fiction section of the library a little more frequently while i worked at "the misplic". i wasn't in lit though...i was rockin' black's legal dictionary, the cole directory and the community information database. hmm. so yeah, if you are planning on making the praxis language and literature, composition test a part of your future, review your highschool reading, and read all the stuff the kids are reading now, for good measure. you never know what might turn up on that thing. the other tricky part was figuring out how long to make the responses. the fact that they give you 5 pages to write on is a bit intimidating. the second part is the first time in my whole life i didn't finish the test a half an hour early. nope my pencil was moving when time was called.

we were released, and i was never so glad to go home, but i was so tired and out of it that i couldn't figure out quite how to do it. the bus way home and the car way home are two different creatures. they barely intersect. i got it all muddled up. my brain positively hurt after all that standardized testing. i had to take a nap for sure when i got home.

i'll be perfectly happy to do some non-academic reading only until class starts. i think i've done enough for an entire year in the past two weeks.

ode to our tomatoes

my new favorite thing is picking the mass of ruby red paste tomatoes we have growing in the garden, and roasting them in the huge cast iron skillet in the oven until they are a wrinkled juicy mess of warmth and succulence.

paste tomatoes are a new experience for me. we have a lot of heirlooms that are quite lovely. paste tomatoes look like red jewels hanging on the vines in their big clusters. we're really starting to get a huge crop of them now that it's nearly october, and i could easily pick 50-100 a day. with any luck there'll be enough left to make glorious pasta sauces and soups all winter long.

financial aid madness

i knew it would be crazy...
so my first day at the bookstore was a leaning process in the fine tradition of the trial by fire school. naturally i had forgotten everything in the intervening week...so my first several transactions were all learning as we go.
i screwed up some things, but nobody complained too much about my ineptness with the unfamiliar cash register. the lines were enormous, and the students had no idea what they were doing. it was a very special kind of chaos. when i was younger i never would have had the balls to wade into the depths of this sort of thing. now i shrug it off and do what i can. at this point, life to me, is about doing what needs to be done. i need money, and i'll make it any way i can.
i practically needed a nap after it was over. i drank a quart of water, and had talked more in 5 hours than i had in weeks. riding the bus home was downright relaxing. no lines here...

noise ordinance variations

woke up this morning to a horrible sound. you'd think people would be into sleeping in on a saturday morning...guess not.
then i thought maybe someone next door was using a gas powered blower it would quit soon, but nope.
it turned out that someone nearly a block away had a mulch blower hard at work at 7:30 am. oh joy. didn't get any sleep until they quit sometime around 8:30. grr. i get up at 6 every day. would have been nice to sleep in this morning. wahh wahh wahh. okay i'm done complaining.

so it's been a quiet day every since. i got my winter clothes out, but forgot the vacuum cleaner. i roasted tomatoes, and made a pie, and watched the clouds drift by. talked to the neigbhors. managed to not go to tiny's all day.

next week i'll be working a bit. i'm a little worried that i'm gonna forget how to do everything i learned last week but that's life. i need the money and it'll be nice to get some. i sure hope i get something more stable going on though. maybe the sun school will make the right choice and call me back.

a little while ago, there was a band playing at the house of the loud mulch offenders. but now it's quiet again. maybe outdoor music in this weather is not as compelling as it seemed when they planned their party. it's cute house, with a backyard full of garden like declerye and little structures scattered around...but i still think they're lazy for blowing their mulch in with a giant hose instead of grunting around with piles and shovels and wheelbarrows the old fashioned way. hmmpf!

Yay!

i just found out that my friend in new orleans is okay. woo hoo!

i was really starting to worry...

ironically, it turns out he's in san antonio so maybe i should hook him up with liz (who probably would love to play ambassador anyhow) and would appreciate hanging out with someone who's interests don't involve predigested foods, or juvenile delinquency. of all the places to get stuck where you don't know anyone, i would imagine texas would be one of the weirder ones.

now if i just knew what was up with kenny...

After the flood: Reflections on the Fate of New Orleans

After the flood: Reflections on the Fate of New Orleans.

New Orleans, the fabled southern city of jazz and good times, has since become a surreal underwater “dark hell” crossed only by army vehicles, and populated by “rotting corpses and armed gangs." Like anyone else, I find myself riveted to the stream of information and events coming out of the aftermath of a city (i once knew and loved inspite of itself)…here’s a few things I’m contemplating at the moment:

A popular theme in most post-apocalyptic scenarios is the question of how human society might go about reorganizing itself after annihilation. As a person who is perennially interested in communities and how they work, I thought this was interesting: Spontaneous communes "pockets of the funky, the hardcore New Orleans types, who in the midst of disaster have set up their own communes in the French Quarter...since then, they've swept up debris from the streets of the French Quarter, and even cleaned up Jackson Square. They also marched in a scaled-down version of Southern Decadence, mini-gay pride parade usually held this time of year...'' Its reaffirmed my faith in people. It's extraordinary. I've never seen anything like this,'' Derek said. ``We're all going to walk away better people...''

Lots of people probably don’t realize that there have been, all along, a number of very interesting squatter communities and “communes” in New Orleans. Part of me thinks that whatever long-term solutions come out of this disaster, will come in part, from the spontaneous interactions between people who have shared stakes in rebuilding their lives together.

The Prison Bus It’s never too early to start thinking about incarceration…I had thought the first thing to be rebuilt would be Walmart…I was wrong.
Apparently in New Orleans, they are using the Greyhound Station for a temporary jail. “the downtown Greyhound bus station, is now a jail. The bus stalls are still numbered 1 to 16, but now each number hangs over a cage hastily constructed from chain-link fencing and razor wire.” Kind of ironic, considering that most of the people I’ve run into in the bus station in the past are probably pretty familiar with jails.
The New Orleans PD is pretty beat up at the moment, "..."New Orleans Police Department...now has only a few hundred officers, after numerous resignations...So the jail is being run largely by prison guards brought from the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola". Now there’s a controversial institution if ever there was one…"The 18,000-acre prison is a former slave plantation that was a private prison, said to be under the direction of a former confederate general, until the turn of the century”.

Toxic Soup "The water that still covers about 60 percent of the city is highly contaminated. It's full of raw sewage, gasoline, chemicals from factories and bodies." "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says its initial testing in New Orleans waters shows very high concentrations of lead and of E. coli and coliform bacteria."
So naturally they want to pump all this back into Lake Pontchatrain, and by association, straight into the Gulf of Mexico. “Lake Pontchartrain is the largest estuary in southern Louisiana. It is an important recreational, commercial and environmental resource for New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana.”
I realize of course that the water has to go somewhere, and I’m sure everyone’s eager for it to go somewhere and go somewhere right now, but it seems that as a long term solution, this is a poor one. "The dirty New Orleans water is being pumped back slowly to the city's Lake Pontchartrain...the pollution runoff could poison the Gulf of Mexico, whose fisheries are already threatened by chemical runoff from Midwestern U.S. farms..." Yuck.

Get out! "Local officials said…they would begin forced evacuations of all residents, including people living in dry and undamaged homes." Why would anyone want to stay? It’s hard to leave behind the only place you know. For a lot of people their sense of identity is firmly anchored to place. “I haven't left my house in my life. I don't want to leave,' said Anthony Charbonnet, shaking his head as he locked his door and walked slowly backwards down the steps of the house where he had lived since 1955. "Nobody really wanted to leave, everyone had reasons…Mostly, it was the realisation that the homes they were sitting in were all they had in the world". Another reason is that hurricanes are a fact of life that most coastal dwellers are used to psychologically. "They…survived Betsy and they survived Andrew and Camille and that they just don't want to go." Although it seems irrational at times, it seems to be a pretty normal response to surviving a disaster. For some of these people they’re gonna have to herd them into trucks with guns to their heads. That’s a disturbing thought.

Political ramifications: Politicians of course like to use these scenarios to their best political advantage. W doesn’t miss a beat--a perfectly good chance to say something completely moronic fortunately, does not go to waste. “Bush said, ‘We've got to solve problems. We're problem solvers’. Glad to know that some things never change.
Here’s a quote by a survivor, that mirrors my thinking on the subject…“I'm not blaming Bush, I'm blaming our government as a whole. We are too busy minding other people's business than to help our own people." Yep, so much for homeland security. A leading Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, seems to agree with me on this and “called the response "woefully inadequate." "If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy," Collins said, "how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible?" With most of the military overseas defending our strategic oil interests, there weren’t too many people around who were able to mobilize quickly. Whatever you may think about the desirability of the military to intervene/help at times like these, you gotta admit they sure can mobilize pretty darn quickly when they need to. (Compared to politicians who need focus groups, polls and committees before they decide its safe to act).
My thinking on this is that the government was “out of order” when the shit hit the fan. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Hillary Clinton, a senator from the other team says that "The people that I met in Houston – they want answers…want to know what went wrong and they want to know what they are going to be able to count on in the future." Naturally a perfectly good opportunity to “launch investigations” and form panels won’t go to waste here. Hillary’s wry comment on this I think pretty much says it all…"I don't think the government can investigate itself." I’m sure all the politicians and pseudo politicians will use the situation to their best advantage and the refugees of New Orleans will go on being poor, black, and now homeless to boot. Cynically, I suspect that things will go on pretty much as they always have, but hopefully many people will realize that this was a well needed wake up call.

WWLouisArmstrongD? At the end of it all, though, I have a lot of faith in humanity. So here’s to all the people who will “Keep on Keepin’ on.” The other day while walking down the street, I heard a Louis Armstrong song and it made me smile.
”Do you know what it means, to miss New Orleans,
And miss it each night and day--
I know I’m not wrong, this feeling’s gettin’ stronger,
The longer, I stay away--
Miss them moss covered vines, the tall sugar pines,
Where mockin’ birds used to sing,
And I’d like to see, that lazy Mississippi, hurryin’ into spring
The moonlight on the bayou, a creole tune that fills the air,
I dream about magnolias in bloom, and I’m wishin’ I was there…”

i'm only happy when it rains

whew, summer's almost over. steven says that the rain's coming soon according to the weatherman. all i know is the moon's not full, but everyone's acting ultra crank-deluxe today, which makes me think that the city is collectively experiencing "end of summer angst". people are dusting off their cloud day faces, and grouchy rainy day attitudes.

not me. i'm fully aware that this weather is fabulous, and do appreciate being dry. while i won't claim to love the rain, i have already come to peace after working outdoors in all manifestations of weather and climate.

one thing about clear sunny days is that i'm not well grounded when the weather's like this. at least when it's cloudy i feel more grounded, reflective and in touch with reality.
i tend to display my more socially unacceptable piscean tendencies when i'm not well grounded. as much as i enjoy my alternate realities and the quirky insights they bring me, i'm sure everyone else finds them completely and utterly annoying. there just isn't much tolerance in this world for people who aren't firmly grounded in ordinary reality, so i can't really expect to get away with it more than once in awhile. which is tragic in a way. i'd rather indulge my more whimsical mystical abstract side, something i think that makes me unique. unfortunately, there isn't much call for these attributes in the modern world of linear reality. and if i indulge in it too often, i might end up being labelled "insane" by somebody.

looking over my shoulder, i can see smokey the cat, who looks really cute laying in a sunspot at the foot of the stairs. for someone who has been incredibly naughty for the past day or so, she looks really sweet and innocent right now. i'm sure it won't last much longer.

brian says everyone has been really mean to him today. normally i would just attribute some of it to his sensitive nature, but what kind of evil trolls is he working with? they obviously lack a sense of humor. i find his sense of humor amusing, but i have ample proof that i'm not the only one. i can put up with anything--all sorts of sociopaths really--but people who have no sense of humor scare me. not only do i feel sorry for them for missing out on one of the greatest joys life has to offer, but also i wonder how they cope with the absurdities of life?

the garden has a population of rats that i've always heard but never seen. you hear them scurrying away when you open the gate, and you hear them over in the bushes if you stand still quietly, but today i actually had one run across my foot! (good thing i was wearing shoes!)

portland appears to have more rats than any city i have ever been to, except possibly new york. i don't know why this is. curiously the only wildlife we have are rats, crows, pigeons and bluejays. i'm sure there's some kind of meaning to this, but i don't know what it is. the pigeons i don't mind. a lot of people think of them as rats with wings. i guess maybe my respect for the pigeons is based somewhat on the premise that i don't find rats all that disturbing (given that they aren't in the house, mind you). i think of pigeons as having a lot of desirable traits that should be emulated...they're resourceful, they don't expend a lot of unecessary energy (flying away only when they really need to), they live in groups and come in many different colors, they make a pleasant cooing sound (unlike the discordant shrieks of the blue jays), and as far as i can tell, harm no one (unlike blue jays which raid other birds nests and eat the baby birds, eww). maybe i'm weird (always a possibility) but i like them in a strange sort of way.

i found a copy of nappy roots in the library today. how exciting. my cd was stolen years ago when the crackhead broke into my car...it'll be nice to have some dirty south back in my life. kinda appropriate after a day riding past COGIC churches, chicken joints, and other familar southern institutions. it's nice that these things are always with me, proving once again, you can take the girl out da south, but you can't take the south out da girl.

the thing that sucks about working full time is that you often don't have time to eat very healthfully, as steven observed this morning. i remember that phenomenon well. i've grappled with it all of my adult life. i have discovered that it is worth every effort to attempt to keep up a routine of eating healthfully even when you are very busy. some strategies i've developed to deal with this are:

1. always bring your lunch/meal to work whenever humanly possible. not eating out all the time is a surefire way to keep on the right track. not only is it more expensive, but restaraunts stay in business because they sell food that tastes really good. the way they make their food taste really really good usually involves using larger amount of saturated fats and things like msg than any normal person would ever use in a home setting.

2. when you do cook, make twice as much (or more) than what you really need. take the leftovers to work for lunch, or freeze a portion or two for times when you are really desperate for food.

3. if you bring decent water to work with you in a convenient bottle, chances are you'll drink it...a lot more than you would otherwise. when you are not dehydrated you feel better. if you aren't thirsty, you will be less tempted to buy sodas, which of course are very bad for you. and when you get sick of water, buy a largish bottle of juice (the real stuff, not the food coloring and sugar water) and drink that.

4. if you normally don't have time for actual meals on your work breaks, bring snacks that you can eat while working, but things that are reasonably healthy...not crap like potato chips or candy bars. my personal favorites are trail mix and granola bars, but veggies and fruits work well too.

i used to do all these things while working in a variety of white collar and blue collar jobs. my coworkers always thought i was a little crazy for putting that much effort into bringing home cooked food to work---but
A. i got more mileage out of my breaks because i didn't have to wait around for food to be served. i didn't have to drive anywhere, wait in line, etc. all i had to do is dig it out and eat it.
B. i saved quite a bit of money...even the cheapest fast food is no match for the kind of economic leverage you gain by cooking at home.
C. nothing makes you feel more smug than being the only person on the production line who has a thermos of gourmet coffee, a really nice sandwich, or something like lasagne for lunch. some of my more ordinary lunches could have passed for swank picnics.

i've been doing this for a really long time and it has worked very well for me.

read read praxis praxis

so i have to take the praxis pretty soon. which means i have to do a lot of reading. A LOT of reading. most of which makes me wonder what any of this sociolinguistic babble has to do with what actually happens in a classroom. but like many others, i will jump through hoops, and regurgitate jargon and names when asked to.

unfortunately i will have lots more of this stuff coming my way. and i've been skeptical of a lot of it from the very beginning. just my nature to distrust these sorts of enterprises. but they must be endured just the same.

die Besucher

got a visit from the newlyweds today, working their way back north after a week of oregon fun. (i will admit that i wish it were me, i'd like nothing better than to go camping for a week instead of sit here and read these boring books about pedagogy that i tend to disagree with anyhow) that aside, it sure was nice to hang out in a more normal setting than at a wedding...although weddings are fun in a different way.

so we went over to chinatown and hit the fake meats place, then watched a movie that sarah rented that was hilariously ironic. (i think i'm the only one who thought it was all that funny, but oh well i have a pretty warped sense of humor).

then we got up in the morning, read the paper, hit tiny's and went over to powells. (poor brian i really shouldn't subject him to these kinds of things) ah it's nice to have people dropping in...

unexpected training

working my way through some kozol, it's a good thing.

i had one of those conversations at the bus stop...the ones that could only happen here. it was such a pure moment. i'd like to think that this sort of thing could happen all the time, random strangers would just talk to each other, about completely normal things, in a way that's not scary or weird. and who decided it was so weird to talk to strangers in the first place?

glad i came prepared...although not by any intention of my own. what i thought was an interview was actually a training session. okay fine. my legs still ached viciously from the day before. should know better than to go on death marches, you would think. my thermos of tea and leftover panaderia snack came in handy. but when i went home i was so tired i had to take a nap. couldn't keep it together without some coffee so i drifted over to tiny's, and got it on with a cup of caffeinated bliss. (i love their coffee, it's perfect)

the rest of the day was uneventful in a way that's neither good or bad. what more can you ask for at this point?

my brother's at hatteras. lucky dawg, i wish it was me. happy birthday kiddo.