the seattlites

my friends jenny and rebecca are coming to visit me this weekend. i am so excited! i really have missed my college buds a lot so i am definitely looking forward to this!

yay goaty frolickness!

ressurection of the bike

after being idle for about a year, i've finally got my road bike back up and running. it took some serious wrestling with the tire levers and i ended up with tons of grime on my hands, but i've got the tired changed out and ready to go. woo hoo, now i can go on some hardcore rides and not get so tired so fast.

after being relentlessly hot all week, it's finally cooled down to something a bit more reasonable. the past couple of days have been in the 80's which is way better than 100.

before going to bed, i strained out the pulp and filled up the carboy with 5 gallons of blackberry juice. i should have some serious blackberry wine in no time. this of course makes me want to go out and pick another 10 lbs of blackberries. it's so easy when they're everywhere... the himalayan blackberry is the scourge of the pacific northwest, but this unwanted bramble is a good friend of mine, so long as it doesn't take over the productive side of the garden. but growing alongside the road, i walk along and pick the profusion of berries. like any good blackberry they stain the hands and mouth, poke me in inconvenient places, and sometimes are a bit too sour, but for all of these faults they make a good snack, and a wonderful wine. their prolific ways make them perfect for a 5 gallon batch because you can pick enough to do it in one week, a few quarts at a time and they don't cost a thing...they grow all by themselves and are of economic interest to no one. when they are done, i will mercilessly hack them back to the ground, and like magic (of a dark sort, perhaps) they will be back as vigorous as ever next year. if only the other rampant weeds had such a good use...

atsui da yo

Frankly I've lost track of how many days it's been over a hundred degrees every day here. The heat has an effect on the thought process. Or maybe it's the mojitos. Who knows. Our pre-modern dwelling comes not equipped to deal with this sort of climatic occurrence. We sleep on the living room floor at night with the fans pointed at us, and open every door and window in the house in hopes that the heat will dissipate. There has been no breeze in some time so it does nothing to help. During the day we sit around languidly sweating until it can no longer be borne and trudge out in search of an airconditioned respite. I've seen more bad movies and restaurants than i care to shake a stick at.

"But it's never been this bad before".

all the old timers say that. I guess this is what global warming looks like. Four horsemen of the apocalypse, I'm thinking.

rant #312

弟 はイラクへ行きなさいよ? そんな場所へ行くべきでないよ。
my brother? going to iraq? you gotta be shitting me.

FUCK THAT! くたばれ!

Big ol' bikeride

Today Sarah and I went on a huge bike ride:

1. We started off by crossing the Broadway Bridge
2. Then we went downtown to Westbank Waterfront Park
3. We rode down the trail until it ended and cut through the south waterfront until we picked up another trail that follows the river.
4. We took that trail all the way to the Sellwood Bridge.
5. We rode across the bride (which was a bit terrifying due to the narrow space).
6. We rode past Oaks Park.
7. We took the Spring Water trail up the East Bank Esplanade and went back home.

hooray for camping

yay camping!

we ditched the city and went to ainsworth state park out in the columbia gorge for the weekend. unlike our last camping trip back on memorial day weekend, the weather was fabulous. we managed to get a site without much trouble, and spent the whole weekend going to benson, hartman ponds, the sandy river, and hiking around at angel's rest. the waterfalls were pretty crowded and i've seen them a million times so we didn't really get too involved in that this time around. the campground was nice and quiet (except when the union pacific trains go by at night) and full of thimbleberries and blackberries that i made a point of snacking on. the nice thing about being out in the gorge is that it stays fairly cool out there so it's a good respite from the city, not to mention it's absolutely beautiful.

portrait of a day in july

walking past roads lined with queen anne's lace 人参花, thimbleberries 紅荊棘黒苺 and the first ripening blackberries 黒苺 of washington county.

discovering the disconcerting truth of why hazelnuts カバノキ科 cost so much...ouch

the strawberry 苺酒 and rhubarb wine 大黄酒 is already working its magic, swirling around in the glass jugs 酒甕, getting unruly at times. messy but satisfying.

watching the sun set over the columbia is delightful, clouds lined with gold casting reflections over the steely blue gray water reflecting the orange cliffs of multnomah falls.

finding forgotten blueberries わすれた の ブルーベリー in the trunk of my car and eating them all the way home listening to the beastie boys with the windows down.

a day of action

it sounds like a mobilization of some sort but it wasn't the best or most fortuitous start to a day. after pouring water over my tea i looked outside to discover that the street was wet. rarity of rarities, it was not only cloudy outside but raining. raining in july is almost as singular as the temperature which had to be low 60's. decidedly bizarre in my range of experience which is much more accustomed to something in the 90's.

i wore a jacket.

who knew i would end up getting so much packed into one day? driving was unfortunately on the menu. i hate the 26 with a passion, and for a good reason. almost every time i drive on that road, there's a near death experience coming my way. this time it was on the way home when a car stopped dead in front of me on a wet road while i was going downhill. guess what? my brakes DO work. fabulous.
things got a little strange out at 185th. maybe we didn't have the same things in mind, or maybe it's a language barrier or crossed wires or trading places with some other piece of fate. either way i don't think anything's bound to lead much of anywhere. i settled for picking up my check before limping back home.

no need to get off the train of action. it was barely 11 am. i managed to wrestle a transcript out of pcc and took it over just in time to catch charlie before he waltzed out the door towards breakland. i need to figure out how to work some guanxi magic becuase there's one individual i need in my corner if i'm going to square off against the forces of bureaucratic inertia. but the piece of paper moved towards the manila file that has been eagerly awaiting it's arrival. on the ride home i got to reflect on how no matter how bad you got it in this world, someone has always got it worse. that's comforting. i'll keep that in mind when financial aid is howling with laughter at my feeble attempts at continuing education in a world where things just cost too damn much to think about. sigh.

sarah and i went out to sauvie island for some blueberry-vs-raspberry action. everyone's a winner when you are standing out in the midddle of the field grasping at blueberries and raspberries. and the rains didn't come, though the sky looked rather threatening growing cloudier and cloudier. the foreboading weather make the fields as empty as a keg in a fraternity house on sunday morning.

raspberry season is almost at an end...they're starting to look a bit worn out after producing for over a month and a half. the cherries of course are long gone. sauvie island is loaded with cherry trees and my life goal is to be out there on a bike in june with a huge bucket that i will fill with cherries and eat them until i can't stand them anymore. I spent the rest of the afternoon making strawberry and rhubarb wine, processing berries and just relaxing.

woah, crazy time

it was looking like a fairly typical day...the midafternoon lull had arrived and i was quietly working on the mundane business of processing some PSO's when lo and behold, right outside the window, the air is rushing out of someone's tires...no wait, there's a guy bent down over the tire, and oh look he's doing it again. i couldn't believe it.

some crazy fool is popping tires right in front of me. then he stands up and i can see for the first time who it is...

the homeless guy who's always digging around in our trashcan. holy shite!

we have a fair number of homeless regulars that hang around this shopping center. most of them need a date with some soap and water and have a solid relationship with bags full of cans, but overall are relatively innocuous, but this guy stands out. i see him every day, almost without fail. he's got really wild hair and a bald spot on top of his head. you can see him digging in the trash on most days, consuming leftover drinks and used cigarettes. gross but predictable enough. then you'll see him over in the corner talking to himself. he has an almost sixth sense and magically shows up every time my coworker is out on a smoke break. out of the 4 guys i see all the time, he's definitely the most sketchy.

so here he is wielding a knife of significant size, vigourously popping the tires of every car in the parking lot in broad daylight. yelling at him does not deter him in the least. if anything he works more efficiently, popping two tires on each vehicle all the way down from bally's to albertsons, approximately 50 cars or so until a mob forms and chases him down to the smoking corner by albertson's.

eventually the police came and took him away. i'm sure he will not be missed by any of the 50 or so people who are now on a first name basis with les schwab. i'm sure the only people sending him thank you cards are towing truck drivers.

what started the whole thing was our friend with the shopping cart was confronted by management over at albertson's because he was amourously harrasing a female employee. (hey ladies, he's a real catch, if you know what i mean). apparently he didn't take the rejection too well and went apeshit on everyone's tires. i guess it is a small comfort that at least he didn't hurt anyone.

in such a small suburban community, this incident will no doubt be rehashed for at least a week if not indefinitely, after all not much happens out there. it made the news, i'm told, and probably will do a lot to make the lives of the other homeless people in the area less comfortable. i particularly worry about people harrassing john because people who weren't there are still asking me if it was john who caused all this to-do. i'm happy to clear up this misunderstanding, but not everyone will ask first...

garlic thyme!

now the peas 豌豆 are almost through for the year, and although they are still producing here and there, the vines are starting to yellow and wither. i spent some of the morning pulling up spent vines and watering before shuffling over to watch the final match of the world cup over at the community center with my roommates.

today was one of those days where it wasn't exactly blazing but it was hot enough that everything looked real wilted by midafternoon. while i was out there i noticed that the calendulas 暦日花 were finally blooming. i planted mine real late so the whole rest of the neighborhood was graced with them for months, and they've been blooming since before the time of california poppies 花菱草 (i had typed poopies and that's more fun, i'll admit). mine are just starting here in july, a few days after 七夕(たなばた). we are also starting to get the first of the tomatoes and should have a ripe one tomorrow.

i also happened to discover that today was the day to pull the garlic 大蒜. the tall stems had all fallen over sometime between yesterday and today telling me in no uncertain terms it was time to pull them up before they withered and disappeared. many of them are small, but some turned out to be quite large. i've never had much luck growing garlic of a decent size, so i was quite pleased to have so many plump ones.

here's my creative solutions for undersized garlic:
1. snip off green parts while the garlic is still growing or at the time of harvest. you can use this like green onions to flavor up stir fry or pasta sauce but you end up with the flavor of garlic cloves instead. if anything this seems much easier than using the cloves because you don't have to do any peeling or mincing. just snip and fry.
2. infuse undersized garlic in olive oil and use the oil whenever you want a garlic flavor. it's especially good on bread with rosemary and thyme.
3. stick it back in the ground and let it grow for another year.

i planted these guys last fall and here it is, time to start all over again. at any rate, there'll be a new batch of garlicky olive oil around here, just in time too, my old batch is all gone.


i also discovered that some of the chard has some nice seed on it, so i pulled a batch of that to dry, and checked out the blackberries while i was over in the corner of weediness. they're starting to ripen, so i need to come up with a plan to horde them for making wine, all while having no storage space to speak of. hmmmmmmm...

gotta get myself right outta here

saturdays are starting to become something i dread.

I usually have to work on saturdays and let me tell you, people that come in on saturdays are the worst. Okay, to be perfectly fair 50% of the people who walk in the door are perfectly reasonable decent human beings, and don't give me a speck of trouble. But if that were the only types i dealt with all day, i would not be writing this post, now would i?

With all of these less than savory incidents in mind that ruin Saturday after saturday for me, here are my suggestions for appropriate consumer behavior on weekends.
Of course no one who actually needs this information will be enlightened enough to come across it, but it's worth a try just the same:

1. Congratulations! You are today's lucky winner. You have managed to situate yourself in one of the few remaining 9-5 M-F gigs left in our economy. You are so lucky. go give yourself a cookie. Now realize that at least half of the workforce is not as lucky as you. Go lightly with the talk about your fabulous upcoming weekend itinerary. It may not have occurred to you that I'm stuck here working while you are recreating happily, doing whatever it is people do when they have two days off back to back. Share your tales of beachside frolicking with a more suitable audience.

2. On the opposite note, directed at the overachievers, learn to relax. If you treat your weekends like another workday full of deadlines, you probably already have ulcers and no doubt will probably die before you are old enough to start recieving AARP literature in the mail. Your sense of urgency may not be shared by the world around you. Showing up at the store 15 minutes before I lock the gate is the sort of behavior you should save for getting highly covetted concert tickets...not mailing out your bills when you should be relaxing at home. If you need some relaxation tips, feel free to ask. I have some pretty good ones.

3. For the caffeine addicts: don't bother coming in before you've had your daily dose. Your crabbiness is not appreciated. For your information, there are no less than 3 locations within walking distance that you can caffeinate at, before you darken my doorstep with your cranky withdrawal symptoms.

4. Preparation: It's okay not to have your shit together. After all it's Saturday, for god's sake, no one is expecting much. I don't mind if you need a moment to get things together. But if you want to return something to QVC or HSN or whatever, it would be a major help if you at least had the item in a box or something. If everyone came in like they just fell outta bed, it would take forever to get things squared away and I'd have a line going out to the highway.

5. Authority. It's fine if you want to ask me detailed questions about things I don't have any knowledge about. In the same sense it's fine to ask your building janitor about the finer points of your employee health plan. Just don't expect to get a useful answer at times like this. Sometimes it's important to realize that us low level employees are not the final authority on much of anything, and that it would be vastly more appropriate to take your concerns to a more suitable party for resolution.
As you may have already suspected, these more appropriate parties tend to work on weekdays like you and are not sitting behind the counter on a saturday morning. surprising, i know.

6. In the world of logistics, very little occurs over the weekend. No matter how stressed out and angry you are, the package isn't going to move an inch until Monday afternoon. This is especially true if you insist on missing the pickup time. Learn to accept this with a zen-like calm befitting higher life forms. If not, consider it a learning moment about why it's important not procrastinate in the first place. If you are in situation where you need to get something there tomorrow, clearly you have waited too long to do it in the first place.

7. Misers. I can appreciate that you want to save money. But there's cheap and then there's inadequate. If you are too cheap to spend the money necessary to properly send a gift to someone, you would really be better off sending money or a gift certificate. For example, if you are sending someone a $50 glass vase and you've got it shoved into a shoe box with 2 pieces of newspaper and some scotch tape, you obviously were planning on sending someone a crappy box full of newspaper and broken glass with which to make terrazzo or a mozaic or something. If you are going to go to the trouble to send something at all, at least send it in a fashion that it will arrive intact. Yes it will cost extra, get over it.

These are just a few helpful hints that should make saturday shopping more enjoyable, not just for you, but also for the legions of underpaid store clerks who have the misfortune of working on Saturdays. By doing me a favor, you are doing yourself a favor...

ancestral homeland

what a better way to spend your first anniversary than with many of the people who were present for the wedding? we made the trek to indiana to catch the annual family reunion.

flying from portland to louisville is actually less pleasant than it sounds. sleeping in airports is rather difficult due to the constant announcements and the blare of cnn. but we made it safely there without incident, and arrived in a familiar humid climate.

the definition of surreal is going to a super walmart. as i often forget, this behemoth institution defines the shopping experience for much of the rest of the country, particularly so in rural areas. it's a far cry from going to the co-op or big city produce or new seasons or goodwill. the senses are assaulted the minute you walk through the door. the combination of sight and sound made my head spin. the reek of the chemicals in the garden section overwhelm the nose and lungs. all i could think was a person could easily get lost in there and be press ganged into employment. surely this happens, no?

it was nice to leave all of this behind and spend a few days in the utter tranquility of green green leaves. my entire family was there all at the same time. for a person who lives a quiet life in a city full of strangers, i probably spoke more in 3 days than i will all of this year. there were dogs and babies, aunts, uncles and cousins. my four year old cousin reminds me utterly of myself as a child. it's surreal to watch sometimes. there were walks to the cemetery, walks to the creek, walks to the bridge, and running around with kids. i sorely missed all of these people, not having seen them for an entire year...in many cultures the most tragic of fates is to be separated from your clan, and often i am inclined to agree.

wineries in indiana are beginning to proliferate. apparently there is one near bristow that makes fruit wines, so i got a few bottles to try out. maybe my idea of dropping out of life and being a vitner is not such a mad proposition...

we had such a good time that it was positively heartbreaking to leave, but if it's any comfort i can go back for thanksgiving. i'm glad i got to take brian during the summer though, because rural southern indiana can be quite alluring in the summer.