rainy day women driving in chinatown, looking for japanese jobs

it wasn't the nicest weather in the history of the world, but we did all pile in my car and go to the columbia gorge. i was pretty excited to finally see what all the fuss was about. so many waterfalls...and that's where this crazy crazy wind comes from. yessss....

on a botanical geekfest: i also dug the trillium in bloom (it comes in white?) as well as the pink feathery ribes. i'm wondering what the heck that peculiar purple stuff was that looks for all the world like a member of the rubus clan, but lacking entirely the typical flower shape...hmm such a mystery...

but yeah, it rained the whole time. in true oregonian fashion we didn't let it keep us at home.

but you know what, i HATE people. hate y'all. What the FUCK kinda person would go hike all the way up to the bridge at Multnomah falls just to leave a bunch of stupid ass beer cans lying around all over the ground...who ever you are, you are a total waste of oxygen and planetary resources, and frankly your mother should have aborted you from the get-go, so you wouldn't be able to go around leaving your detritus like trails of incompetent shit behind you, in order to mark your pathetic presence upon the face of the earth . I don't mind saying so, but goddamn at times like this I really hate my fellow man...

but seriously, peace, love and the cafe where we played jenga and i drank coffee out of a tree cup and watched the rain fall was pretty damn alright. the strore across the street with the argon lights was a little surreal...and you thought lighting was an afterthought in the shopping experience.

when we got home, i ended up having to heff it on over to chinatown...in a car. scary. rainy day women was feeling mighty appropriate for some reason with all the madness of trying to get things on the level. i found these great stems of mt. fuji cherry blossoms that someone hacked off a tree across the street, so i took them home. they look real classy on my dining room table.

when i got home i found out that i made round two with the japanese embassy. woo hoo! could this be love? oh yeah.

finally! weather! 遂に天気

Austin brought us some great weather when he came out here...すばらしい天気だった。finally a break from the neverending rain parade. 天気は申し分なかった。today was a whole lot better and for the first time since i don't know when i only need a ジャケット jacket and ONE PAIR OF ジーパン PANTS. god i feel ふらつくgiddy.

saturday sucked

saturday was totally hype and crazy, yo i shoulda locked the doors or some shit...people gettin' up all early an' gettin' motivated to come bother me and get all up in my bizness. don't y'all have some teeeveee to watch or some yuppie pursuits to be pursuin'...either give me some coffee to go with all this craziness or leave me alone...
word.

Happy Spring! 春 が きた

Well it’s official…spring is here. 春 が きた
School is over 学校 が 終りAnd it’s time for planting.
Today, at least it feels like spring だから 今日 は 春 らしい に なって
and the weather is nice. 天気 が いい です よ...

And so it goes...for one day at least, the winter 冬 has lost it's grip on the landscape and the usual rain assortment has abated. I felt positively strange not lugging the behemoth umbrella to work. I hear back in Indiana though, it's snowing 雪が降た, which I suppose is to be expected. As for me though, all I want out of life is to plant my peas 豌豆. The sprouts are coming along nicely and I've got a tray of spinach ほうれん草, peas 豌豆, and lettuce レタス that will be ready to go in the ground pretty soon. Just hope they don't get utterly decimated by slugs 蛞蝓, like last year. uggh...蛞蝓 が きらい よ. So yeah, happy spring. Hope you had a good one, whether snowy or otherwise.

no green beer here 緑ビールがない

pretty uneventful day around here.
今日はとても面白くないだよ
went over to portland nursery to check them out,
ポトランド育種所に 見にいく
(when in my life have i ever seen more seed racks?)
after which i got sidelined with a vicious allergy headache. あたま が いたい よ.
something out there just doesn't like me.
So i'm laying low tonight. 今晩何 も しないよ. no irish music アイァランド音楽会がない.. no beer ビールがない. just me an' my roommates and some march madness. ルームメートといっしょにバスケットボールにテレビを見る。

busy times 忙しい

been pretty busy lately...今, ちょうど今は忙しい。haven't had much time for doing anything but school work. 宿題で忙しい。この一週間息つく暇もないほど忙しかった。
as crazy as it all is, クレージーだけど, i'll miss it 寂しがれる because pretty soon, there ain't gonna be no more of that for awhile...

6 random things

1. Pryzemyslaw says there's a bar just up the street that has reggae bands and cheap beer. That sounds like a winning combo to me. Man I need to get out more.

2. Man we had some huge boxes come through here today, I got a real good workout from all that lifting, oh man.

3. I'm finally feeling better--it's about time!

4. The rhododendrons are finally starting to bloom again, yay!

5. Strawberries and popcorn are two of the best things ever.

6. Darn Chinese movies that are really TV drama in disguise. These things should come with a warning: "Warning, this is not a film, but a bad TV series from the mid 1990's. Please note that all special effects are NOT SPECIAL!"

Prop 187

I don't often talk about class, but sometimes it's really amazing. Last night we were watching a movie about Prop 187, which was all about outlawing bilingual education in California.
I'll just be a big jerk and say for the record that I don't care what YOU think about bilingual education and immigration issues...I've got my own outspoken ideas on this topic, and frankly I think outlawing bilingual ed in California is possibly one of the stupidest ideas California's ever come up with...and Californians are known for doing dumb ass shit like electing movie stars for political offices. But slagging of the great state of CA aside (there are some good things there, it's just not always obvious what they are), it reminds me a great deal of the current uproar that has manifested all of the current meanspiritedness of my fellow Americans into this thing called the Sessenbrenner bill.

We were shocked to find out after class that M.E. was There...wow. That ads a whole new dimension to the topic.

So I guess for me, the 5 million dollar question is why the heck would someone be even remotely interested in teaching ESL if you have ambivalent feelings on the subject? Seems kinda weird to me. But yet, I see it all the time...on tv and real life.
All I can say is, you can't do something you don't believe in...whatever it is.

And no I don't really hate California...I just think some of y'all are...a bit "special". Maybe it's the cumulative effect of living in a mostly frost free climate...who knows...

pizza shmizza ピーザ ピーザ

since sunday always turns into chore-a-rama, about the only thing i'd like to mention about today is that i made pizza completely from scratch. that was an quite an undertaking, but the results were tasty. i decided to go with a pesto sauce with summer squash and mushrooms and spinach.

now if only i had a hobart so i could just cram all the dirty dishes in there and they'd more or less clean themselves...sigh. i love cooking, but i hate cleaning up.

会談, Madison 英会話高校, 観梅

job interview 会談: yo! check this out, i had a job interview at Tiny's! you know I had my card ready to go.

traffic sucks: traffic in portland on friday is ridiculous. why oh why didn't i take the MAX? contrary to my assumptions, i would have been waaaay better off not driving.

madison 英会話高校: so my site visit today was at madison. again, confidentiality reigns supreme but i will say that i'm glad i did two of these, each 英会 ESL classroom is profoundly different. i got to see a low-level and a high-level class, so it was a really good experience.

paper: i managed to finish my paper before the 5pm deadline. i'm still in shock...

果物: god i love 果物 produce at new seasons. i had not realized how amazing that place really is until i went to albertsons...night and day. what do you mean you only have oranges? just one kind (as if navel were the only kind)? and not organic? i'm sooo glad i have options. if i had no choice but to do my shopping at albertsons all the time would just うっとうしくていやですね be depressing. everything really looks like it's been through the industrial revolution...and by the time it's on the shelf it's not all that appetizing. i had no idea i was 甘える so spoiled, but you know, i really am all about having 6 different kinds of potatoes, and 5 different varieties of 蜜柑 tangerines...
while i'm being a food snob, let me just say, salad is the perfect food when you are tired of riding the perpetual wintertime starch train.

観梅: outside the trees are blooming away. the 梅 plums have been at it for a couple of weeks now. when i look outside, a new one has started to join in the palette of pink against the mostly still grey/brown backdrop of the city. then the 梨花 pears started up this week. and i'm seeing forsythia's blooming around too. 桜 cherry's are probably gonna be next. yay, 春 spring!

the morning after

too much of a good thing...way too much of a good thing. i'm feelin' the hurt.

i had a date with an ELL classroom over at ockley middle school. i won't say too much about the classroom or the students because i'm sure there's a certain ammount of confidentiality that needs to be observed. but i will say that i had a lot of fun and thing the teacher is doing a great job, and i envy her students that they get to have that much fun while learning english.

didn't feel very good but i went to class anyway. was tired and felt crappy but i survived. we had fun talking about how we were going to do our acting scene...i can hardly wait to ham it up for a grade. totally took my prof up on her offer to turn our papers in on friday. because i've been so busy this week that i haven't had time to do much more than arrange my ideas.

きょうは私の誕生日だ。

Had a pretty good day at tutoring. Most of the kids were on task and I didn't have to get on anyone's case too much because I think everyone who was there realized how deep in the hole they were. R- was staring off into space for half the session...reminds me of the saying, you can lead the horse to the water but you can't make him drink...

Probably the most exciting venue for a phone interview is on a city bus. yep. Didn't quite make it home before I got the incoming call. So I tried to conduct a coherent conversation through a couple of transfers and the usual hype that you get on the bus...i was so absorbed in the conversation i managed to miss my stop and had to walk a couple of extra blocks home. Does that end up making me look like the queen of multi-tasking or a space cadet? It's a fine line, friends...

So lo and behold I actually do something on my birthday. What a concept! I ran into the neighbor's kids while i was out cultivating so i kicked it with them for awhile, then talked to liz, then brian took me out to dinner. then we came home and i opened my two presents and watched chicken run. not bad for a weeknight...