fried day sliced and spliced

I'm walking out in a force ten gale

an' folks driving like maniacs like dey running from hell

caught in the intersection comin' round the bend

And yesterday's headlines blown by the wind

all that for nothing, i shrug and say it

Your voice is rattlin' on my window sill

mlk is crazy as all get out an' i don't play it

I feel like a moving target in a firing range

bag of tomatoes and st johnswort is all i can save
i found it, i found it, i found it but that's

Somewhere I'm not

de Esplanade she is a mighty good ride
and we're still having those hot times on the hawthorne bridge

Any fool can easy pick a hole I only wish I could fall in

$8? you gotta be kidding, what does it look like, i'm rich or something?

Somewhere I'm not

fuck this scam, i'm headin' back home,
spilling out the bar into the street,
no one can bear to mention the heat

The roof is pulling off by its fingernails
Somewhere I'm not

I'm walking out in a force ten gale

Somewhere I'm not, where i was?, where i will be?, but its

Somewhere I'm not

How to Disappear Completely

That there (hype), That's not me, I go Wherever I please (sauvie island),
In a little while I'll be gone (the last gasp of the strawberries),
In a little while I'll be gone (hands full of raspberries)
cabbages cabbages laying out in the field, like big green rocks on the surface of the moon, there's a flat bed trailer full of migrant workers picking cabbage in the sun,
The moment's already passed, Yeah it's gone,
it's gone...

peaches peaches laying in the tree, one day you're green and another you're gone.
sunshine sunshine, laying in the sun, one day you're here and another you're gone
mamas an' babies with hands full berries while i'm out back stealing all of the cherries
The moment's already passed, Yeah it's gone, it's gone...

That there, That's not me, I go Wherever I please,
Bridge, bridge, riding cross the bridge to the land of the rich,
land of flower and land of pearls,
me and my bike with the wheels going round past trees and flowers and jobs and flowers and cars.. I'm not here, This isn't happening

In a little while, I'll be gone (home)
The moment's already passed Yeah it's already gone (tired)
And I'm not here This isn't happening

j california cooper

I almost forgot to mention, J California Cooper gave me three of her books today. She's definitely in good with me now. I've been steadily working my way through her books because the library has a lot of them...if you like African American literature, chances are you'll like her, but even if that doesn't sound like your normal reading list, she's worth reading if you like storytellers, because well that's what she is. A story teller. Her books are pretty accessible and i would even highly recommend them for intermediate-advanced adult literacy students in programs in the south because the vocabulary is not overly demanding and as they say in the industry, they're "high interest". Anyhow, she gave me...

Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns

Some People, Some Other Place

and The Matter Is Life

today's project: vinegar

when you're making homemade wine and things don't work out, you end up with vinegar...having been sick a lot lately, i had a couple of relatively unattended batches that went "bad" and the end result is that i had quite a bit of vinegar lying around the kitchen in huge glass jugs. it was just sitting there until i could think of a good use for it.

well now i think i've got an idea to do with some of it:

today i made the following:

1. rose vinegar: the queen of flavored vinegars. it's a beautiful pink/red color and smells heavenly of roses. i feel so strongly about this stuff that i keep it in a bottle of chambord.

2. rose/sage vinegar: two very interesting tastes together

3. rosemary vinegar

4. mixed herbs vinegar (rosemary, tarragon, thyme, sage)

5. lavendar vinegar: may end up being amazing, we'll see.

6. mint vinegar

7. fennel vinegar

salad dressings will never be the same around here...when i get a chance, i'm also gonna do raspberry and blackberry as well.

i picked about 3 lbs of oregon grapes which i hear make a decent wine. i'll let you know about that...

i also harvested a huge quantity of st. john's wort on the way home from work. as advertised, it stains your hands red after awhile. i infused one batch in oil and the other in wine. we'll see which one turns out better, but here's to the rainy season. i figure by then, who cares about photosensitivity, there ain't gonna be no sun to speak of.

nihongo wa jozuu desu にほんごはじょうずうです

a fair number of japanese people come into work from time to time. i love having an excuse to use my rusting language skills even only if for navigating the customs forms. today i had someone come in from okinawa. we actually got to talk about non-customs form related topics which was nice. i sure miss it.

after work, i walked around all over the neighborhood. it was warm but not as unbearably hot as the previous 4 days, so i enjoyed being out. i went and picked amelanchier berries around the corner until my hands were good and stained.

i tried infusing some linden blossoms, rose petals and lavendar, and some blueberries. we'll see how that goes.

then i came home and rigged up sarah's birthday surprise: a two-layer chocolate torte with raspberry sauce, strawberries, and rose petals for garnish. it was very pretty and quite tasty too. then we sat around and watched bee season. someone should have warned me it was a movie about "people with issues" as opposed to a movie about a spelling bee champ. lots of issues. and some kaballah thrown in just because they felt the need to complicate matters even further. compared to these folks, my life is totally drama free.

hotta than bisquits!

yo it's super hot here. Today was day three over 100+ degree (38 c) weather. I realize of course that there's many places on earth (such as Iraq) where this is neither remarkable nor unusual. However here in Portland, it IS worth noting when it gets above 80 (27 c) degrees.

This is one of the few days i can remember in a long while I can remember being excited about going to work on Monday morning. Why? Because we have copious A/C at work. Nice lovely A/C. No sweatin' like a hog over there. No siree. Just hit the juice and cold water in the fridge from time to time and bask in the glorious flow of cold cold air.

And to think I used to work outdoors when it was like this...granted about half of the time I had a hose in my right hand and it was on...you can imagine what else I might've been a waterin' along with them plants out there in the field.

I saw a woman pop open up her hood right after pulling up out front and she reached in and opened her radiator cap. Those of you who know a thing or two about how operating vehicles with internal combustion engines might recognize this as the highly dangerous activity it is. Yes, you guessed it, the contents of her radiator came gushing out like a fountain. Right in her face. I'm happy to report that she survived without receiving third degree burns. She probably lost a few years off her life though, poor thing. I hope she's okay.

I came home an a hour after my normal end of shift. Who really wants to ride on a city bus with questionable A/C on a 100 degree day with a pack of sweaty bodies, some of which could use a little quality time with soap and water, even under normal conditions. Combine that with the liquid stench of chronic alcoholism and well...you can understand my desire to wait it out for an off peak commute.

Back at the homestead it was as hot inside as it was outside. Which was not so cool as the sun was out for 4 more hours. So we set up camp over at Tiny's and waited out the worst of the heat with some cold beer and took advantage of their A/C. Here it is now 10pm and the house is still unbearably hot. It'll be hours before I can go to sleep. Uggh.

sunday

Heard that it was supposed to be hot hot hot today 101 degrees worth of hot. Which makes it an exceptionally good day to go on over to Hagg Lake. While I was there, there was an incident of demographics...people whose vocabulary includes more 4 letter words than 2 syllable words. Whose idea of a good time is cursing at each other. Who are far too dysfunctional to have a successful picnic. And of course these types always breed. I had always heard that much of Oregon was settled by poor bible thumpers originally from places like Arkansas. I think this group of homo sapiens was living proof of that theorem. (Disclaimer, I actually happen to like Arkansas and people from Arkansas, but it's a good example of a well-known stereotype)

I came home just when it was starting to get unbearably hot and can you believe it, my roommates are turning on the oven? Craaa-zzzzzyyyy!

Figured it was time to walk the plank on ove to Clackamas water park along with thousands of children and boys and girls with titties. Now before you jump to any wild conclusions, I will say that never in my life have i seen more examples of man titties. Keep in mind I used to live by the beach, but this was in the days before 50% of the US population was morbidly obese. And not that I particularly care about body image and whatnot, but you gotta admit a large number of folks have more than a passing familiarity with supersized meals. And many of these are children. Scary. I saw plenty of kids under 12 that weighed more than I do...and I lift 80lb boxes for a living. word.

While waiting in line to go down the waterslides, I got to wondering, how many people get stuck in the water slides and have to be rescued...

Well afterwards we were all wet and tired and boy did it feel good. I came home and was originally gonna go see a movie, but the minute I sat down, wham I was tired and ready to pass out.

i'm sleepy now goodnight

16 tons

they threatened to come back and they did. 16 tons and what do you get, the songs asks. In my case it was over a dozen 80lb boxes. The really impressive part is that the guy who brought them in and lifted them up onto the scale was old enough to be my grandfather. That dude was hardcore.

i had the best busride home ever. no they weren't giving away free beer but the driver was really courteous and announced all the stops and wished everyone a nice weekend when they got off. amazing. he was like the poster boy for the public transportation experience.

today the weather was perfect. completely perfect. i found an amelanchier growing around the corner from new seasons and gorged myself on the fruit, explaining it's charms to passerbys. there was a show at red and black but it didn't quite turn out as advertized. we sat outside and conversed over the the best ipa ever until we eventually had to go home and get ready for another charming workday.

sakura no hi

i can't recall the last time I wasn't at work on a thursday...it's a weird day to have off.
giving way to whatever impulses struck, i went on bike rides up to alberta. a little while later i ended up over at pcc and went to see what tanya was up to before hitting the library.
i discovered a secret patch of raspberries and spent the rest of the trip home walking down vancouver and picking cherries sour and sweet all the way down the line. there's a lot of cherries in northeast portland...

solstice ride bike yay

yay bike ride. after a boring boring day at work, it was just what i needed to lift the spirits.

this was really one of the first recreational rides i've been on all season, having been sick for quite a long while. the weather was quite lovely on the day of summer solstice. i caught the tail end of a pedalpalooza event and went on this litle group ride that widened my horizons of what is arguably relatively limited knowledge of places to ride my bike other than down to the transit center. so now i know all about the walkways over on the west bank and the east bank esplanade. I had no idea it continued on all the way down by hawthorne. awesome!

sitting there by the hawthorne bridge watching the sun set over the backs of people rowing skiffs was rather sublime. i rode across the hawthorne bridge for the first time and down through the fountain at the bottom before heading back home.

gnarly bloodbath

today had all the makings of being an uneventful tuesday. after a relatively quiet day at work, i came home and waltzed up to alberta to go to the bike coop to get some parts for my miscreant bike and hit the library. i came home and worked on my bike, or thought i would at least, but unfortunately i am missing a tool, so i didn't get real far.

had to settle for pumping up my tires on the bike with the rusty bizness going on...it doesn't ride real well at the moment but i can get from point a to point b. i was kinda hoping to get my shit together for pedalpalooza but on account of being sick all month missed out on 90% of it. I've only got a couple of days left to get my bike on. i needed a better chain than what i've got to work with, so a little while later, while the sun was still out, i hopped on my bike and rode up to walgreens but they quit carrying the choke chains i've been using to lock up my bikes for the past 5 years so it wasn't real successful either.

what is it with today? can't do shit...

on the way back home i saw a gnarly bike + auto accident on the corner of broadway and 8th.
a greenish beater pickup truck collided with a cyclist in the bike lane and the road was full of glass. not sure exactly how the whole thing happened but i'm guessing the truck had pulled into the bike lane to make a right hand turn without checking to see if there was anyone IN the bike lane at the time. from what i could see, the guy was under the backside of the truck and his friends pulled him up out of the street onto the sidewalk.
there was blood and glass everywhere. he was dazed and bleeding, unaware of what had just taken place a moment before. the driver, fortunately didn't leave the scene...it looked like a guy and his wife and kid. they came out and the cops were called and they must've been nearby because they came in record time.
i went and got a bunch of napkins and a cup full of ice in case the wait for medical assistance was a long one, but this ain't memphis and the ambulances arrived in less than a couple of minutes late ( i was duly impressed with the response time. heck back in memphis you can't even get through to the operator that fast, much less get a fully functional response in less than half an hour).

that was a pretty sobering experience. i trepidatiously rode back home looking all around me the whole time.
a nasty run in with a car would be enough to put me and my poor little family out of business for a long long time. uggh. at least i have some accident insurance but who knows how good it is. knowing my luck i'd get stuck with the entire bill on a technicality of some sort. the guy who got hit looked like he was in his early twenties. i bet he didn't have any insurance unless he was a student and still on his parent's policy. poor kid.

car drivers are a dangerous bunch. i see it all the time. folks just gabbing away on their cell phones driving around oblivious. it's scary out there. i don't think most drivers have a clue how lethal their innattention is to us unarmed pedestrians...no clue at all.

yo--it only takes a second to garner yourself a manslaughter conviction.

word.

hang up and drive

so i was on the 6 this morning for about 5 minutes. standing there, i saw that the bus driver was fully engaged in a cellphone conversation of a decidedly non-emergency nature, so i decided i better get off and ride the train instead...

today was the nearly perfect day. the coffee i had was pleasant, the workload was just right, the conversations were good, and nothing unpleasant happened all day. then i came home and pulled weeds outside for hours, then called it a night. things are looking better out there but the weeds are still a force to be reckoned with.

not bad for a monday. maybe this week's gonna be better than most of the recent times i've had.

i just thought of a name for where we're going

i actually feel a bit better today...(finally!)

spent most of the day bottling up 3 batches of wine. some of it didn't work out so i have a lot of vinegar these days. ;) the gorse wine turned out really good, by the way.

spent the rest of the day out pulling weeds and planting some beans and corn. i attacked the militant himalayan blackberries with pruners, and harvested a bunch of peas and chard.

a little while later i walked up to the secret cherry tree and with my handy rig, i was able to pull the branches with their big fat cherries within reach and filled up a couple of bags.

it's the first time i've felt even remotely better. maybe i'm on the cusp of improvement...just in time to go back to work. sigh...

because we have no way of communicating with the outside world...

saturday mornings at ups can be a horror. today was no exception. a fine mix of the uninformed and unprepared, international affairs, and uppity rich ladies who have nothing better to do than pester me with their petty concerns...i was quite glad to go home at the end of it all, believe me. some days my tolerance is fairly low due no doubt to lack of caffeine, and it gets worn down by the overt neediness that i encounter while out there on the front line.

i celebrated my escape by going to sauvie island with brian. we picked blueberries, hung out at the ponds, got cute with the cows grazing off in the fields under the endless cover of blackberry vines, watched birds fly around, picked cherries by the roadside, and came home and watched bad movies washed down with beer and popcorn. it didn't start out so promising, but saturday ended up being an alright day after all.

aww yeah

You Are Lisa Simpson

A total child prodigy and super genius, you have the mind for world domination. But you prefer world peace, Buddhism, and tofu dogs. You will be remembered for: all your academic accomplishments Your life philosophy: "I refuse to believe that everybody refuses to believe the truth"

The Simpsons Personality Test

strawberry time

I'm definitely still riding the sick train...I woke up pretty late and slogged through the rest of the antemeridian before getting motivated enough to go outside, do some perfunctory weeding (my half hearted war against the weeds who are clearly winning most if not all skirmishes reminds me of the same way the US perfuctorily is fighting a war in afghanistan). After calling for a retreat, I shuffled on over to the bank.

Ready for a date with the petroleum purveyor I cranked up the resting beast and ambled down the road towards sauvie island. i had a greater mission, the mission of strawberries.
in this time of linden blossoms, strawberries are at their peak on the rolling plains of sauvie island, and today was the perfect day for picking...a day that was cool without being cold, neither rainy nor sunny, just the dull grey of cloudy skies, gentle on heads and eyes, and backs bent over the fields with dusty hands. It took me only half an hour to pick 12 gallons of strawberries.

one thing i have never noticed before is that when you pick strawberries, they make the most satisfying "snap" at the very moment you pluck the berry from the stem. a lovely sound indeed.
it was most pleasant to drive down the lanes of corylus alone but for a tractor, and stand in the field listening to the gentle swish of the sprinklers running, with only the flies for company.

i came home awhile later and plucked the fiesty mustard greens and some peas and brought them inside to make a stir fry with phu's leftover tofu. The mustard is beginning to bolt so I must redouble my efforts to eat it.
Later I ambled over to pick more linden blossoms, and walked home once the rain reappeared, passing by some more cherry trees and a woman with a shopping cart calvalcade. We discussed our mutual illness and i headed for home before the rain really began to fall.

The rest of the afternoon was rather uneventful. Before tackling the mountain of strawberries, I amused myself with this. Then it was time for action.

illicit berries

Word to the Wise DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT pack GLASS or CERAMIC items for shipping in paper or newspaper. You think you can protect them with that and you are sooo wasting your time. If it ain't wrapped in bubble wrap (or at least some clothing if you're being cheap) you might as well drop it a few times before you even stick it in the box just to get a feel for what it's gonna look like afterwards. Really folks, paper doesn't do SHIT to protect glass. Nothing. Nada.

Now that I've gotten THAT out of the way...

Here we are in the month of June, still a cold cloudy rainy month here in lovely Portrainland, but nevertheless the cherry trees are laden with cherries. I found a few strawberries in the garden but they were nothing much to look at. Over by the vacant lot, there are filbert trees and all along Vancouver i walked with my bag picking linden blossoms and cherries. There are some FINE looking cherry trees in this city lurking in abandoned spaces and vacant lots, with limbs and boughs full of impossible to reach, but tempting cherries. I walked all over picking them, sour and sweet, seemingly the only one (besides the birds) who has discovered their bounty.

I also discovered a raspberry vine on this stroll which was my first clue that raspberries are ripening here. When I lived at Declerye we had a huge lovely patch of black raspberries growing on the west side in the shadow of the magnolia tree. Year after year, around this time, I would walk out the back kitchen door and sneak over to the bush and pick a handful every morning while they lasted.

After I left Ashland, I never dreamed I'd have access to fruit again. Living in the city, it can be hard to come by, but if nothing else there's the endless profusion of Himalayan blackberries when they are ignored and allowed to take over. But it's nice to know that there are also salmonberries, rubus calcynoides, wild strawberries, walnuts, hazelnuts, cherries, kiwi, plums, and service berries growing within a 6 block radius of my front door. If I walk a little further, I know where a grape vine can be found next fall. Ah illicit fruit. You are a fine tradition. We go back to the days when I heisted raspberries out of Myles Brand's garden...

end of class

last day of class was fun:
1. we had a potluck (Phu brought sticky rice, that's so rad)
2. we watched the Touger Xiong video (which is hilarious)
3. my cd refused to be read and I had an unsuccessful date with a powerpoint presentation so I had to stand up and talk without pretty pictures...darn.

after all that i went and caught the county budget hearing, to show support for our lovely SUN program.
I went mainly to submit comments in writing, but also to add a visible presence. turned out one of the kids testified. i know i've said it a million times but not everyone gets the same life chances, and you'll have a hard time convincing me that a kid whose parents do meth and don't have a stove in the house has the same life chances as little johnny rich whose parents spare no expense for his afterschool activities. reaching out to at risk kids is worth doing if for no other reason than that if you don't, you will pay for it with drug treatment for the lucky ones and crime and punishment for the rest. prevention is cheaper in the long run. giving kids a safe space and some help with their homework is part of the prevention puzzle.

back in the saddle

can't say i'm healthy as a horse, but i'm back on my feed. still get a bit winded, but i made it out of the barn.

all these cheesy horse puns aside (blame it on the bill dorrance book i'm reading), i am feelin' a bit better today and a lot less sniffy sniffy coughy coughy. still gotta blow my nose every five minutes, but i felt up to doing a number of chores around the house, and went over to see the roses at penninsula park. i walk kinda slow and can't get too far from a box of kleenex but i'm doing as well as can be expected.

maybe now i'll get motivated to dust off my iron steed and get my tires fixed and start going for rides again...

still on the hack hack

sick bed haiku--
the cold weather fades.
not going to seattle.
sick not sleeping.

the garden report:
the peas are bustin' out of the vines,
waiting impatiently for the chard and leeks to go to seed.
the mustard's mature and we have spinach leaves the size of dinnerplates,
earwigs are attacking the basil (as always) but it's hanging in there,
the tomatoes are getting happy now that it's warming up,
i'm harvesting seed off last years brassicas for a fall crop of kale and collards,
and waiting patiently for the first tomato

the rose parade

no shit, there's people camping out all along mlk in tents and rvs having cookouts on the side of the road and shit.
i'm sure the demographics of our neighborhood have temporarily done a 180 because frankly i don't know where all these crazy white folks came from. there's even some white girls camped out on la Esquina (the journaleros corner)...puts a whole new meaning to "workin' the corner".
all this for a parade...
what is this, mardi gras or something? shit.

thank god i don't have to work tomorrow, i bet things are gonna be hype around here.

so much for seattle

*warning ranty with a dose of persecution complex*

i'm so disappointed that i don't get to go to seattle and see rebecca. sniff sniff. well that would be my nasty mucus filled nose makin' that sound, but i feel pretty frustrated since this was my only weekend off this month. looking at the schedule i'm the guest star for the whole rest of june. blehh. can you believe this shit? it's not like i EVER get to go ANYWHERE besides work work work...and the last time i tried to do anything involving having fun, and it ended on a similar note of utter universal opposition. and once again all the forces in the universe are laughing at me.

i figured if i slept all day maybe this shit would go away but the viruses of death are only laughing at me harder. my phone rang off the hook this morning but i didn't pick up any sub jobs today and slept until noon. i forced myself to get up and eat something but after that i went back to sleep until 3pm. i've been awake since then but honestly it'd be just the same if i went back to sleep. what a dumb way to start the weekend. why do i even bother having days off? it's so pointless.

sick again

i can't believe this shit, i'm sick AGAIN! How lame is that?
the best part is that both this illness and the last illness started out with a sore throat...can't i at least get a little variety here? it sounds like the guy downstairs has it too, i can hear him coughing and that's exactly what i've been doing.
guess who ain't goin' nowhere...

The triple six

Saturday sucked but the past couple of days have been a lot better. Today on the triple six, we were busy as hell (no pun intended). Don't think I sat down all day but at least I can say that I didn't have any psychologists raising a firestorm. (In case you ever got to wondering about the exciting world of postal dilemmas, § 215. Obstruction of correspondence is the applicable section that applies when you have to make the call on whether or not to open a poorly addressed package, rather than return to sender...and don't look at me, I ain't even trying to be in that position. Ain't no cardboard box worth it to me). My other general comment of the day is that things work best when one person works on them, rather than three people. Perception matters. Interpretation is highly personal. Things fall apart.

Did you know that the *funnest thing* about being an adult is that instead of doing things you might want to do in your free time, you are perpetually stuck doing things you HAVE to do? (Ah if only someone could have warned me...but would I have believed them?)

E- thanks for calling me last night. I missed you.

Riding my bike across the broadway bridge, I watched the sun set into the silvery blue waters of the willamete before dipping down into the greyhound station. That's right, I get to go somewhere. I'll be in Seattle for a couple of days to go to my former roommate's graduation shindig. Passing the gallery of sleeping bags and tired bodies, I swung back across the river and headed for the barn. It's been a long long long day.

I still have faith that this week will be better than the last one. Lets see if that pans out...

time warp

umm how did I managed to get to work and open the store an hour early--again? There seems to be some kind of time warp going on between northeast portland and beaverton on saturdays...
weird.

ain't nothing i can do about it now...i'm just going to go with it and let everyone laugh at my zeal to get in here so early.