mountain goating

Last night was probably my first real night of "I'm too old for this."

Andrew and I went to see the Mountain Goats which was fun. It didn't change my life but it was entertaining. The main guy was impressive, especially his solo stuff. However, during one of the songs that I was hoping they would do, Up the Wolves, I realized I was done. I hadn't had too much to drink but I started to ache and feel dizzy. My tailbone hurt. I was standing. How the hell does that happen? Anyway, we left early. I don't think I've ever skipped out early on a show that I've paid for but I just knew I couldn't last. This was also my first show with Andrew unless you could Cirque Du Solelil. I was hoping to stick it out but fortunately, he was fine with leaving when I was.

Oh well, I can say I saw them and next time, I'll just know to get there early enough to get a seat.

What else?

I don't have any excuse as to why I haven't at least kept up-to-date via twitter but on Thursday, we double-dated with our former real estate agent and his boyfriend. It was nice and I typically don't like meeting new people but I enjoyed this.

On Friday, I tried the beverage above which is as refreshing and wonderful as it looks.

Oh, and regarding Tuesday's post, I heard back! She thanked me for my rational, thought-out, and personal email and said that it's given her something to think about. Let's hear it for open communication!

conversations on the higher order

Sometimes synchronicity is quite obvious. Last night, I started reading Dan Savage's latest book, American Savage and in particular his chapter on his mother and Catholicism. That night, I dreamt about going to communion and feeling slightly guilty about it since I haven't been to church in a long time but I was given a large communion wafer. Then today, I received an email from a nun. I have a distant family member who is a nun in Chicago I believe who occasionally sends out mass emails. Usually it's about the meaning of holidays or reminders to keep disaster victims in our prayers. Every year, I get a birthday email from her. It's never personal. I don't believe that we've ever met but somehow, from some relative, she got a hold of my email address. I haven't really given any of the emails much thought until yesterday when she sent me a prayer pledge regarding the Supreme Court's decision on same sex marriage.

In the email, it states that the fight against same sex marriage is a fight for truth, for our children, and our country's future. There are times where I ignore this kind of hate because I feel that the person isn't worth appealing to or that it could damage our relationship if I challenged them. However, I don't have a real relationship with this nun and I would be interested in hearing her side and having her hear my side so I wrote back. I remained civil but was quite clear that I thought that the fight against same-sex marriage was more damaging to children than same-sex marriages could ever be. I got a little personal in it, relaying my own experiences with the church's hate but again, I kept it civil.

As of yet, I haven't heard back from her and I'm not sure that I will. But I can sleep easier knowing that I tried.

from fireworks to bubble baths: memorial day weekend 2015

I planned to do a post every day and it's even easier for me to post since Andrew fixed my computer last weekend. However, time got away from me and I decided to do a wrap up of the weekend. Here we go:

On Friday, May 22nd, it was the start of the Rose Festival so that meant fireworks! Andrew and I bussed to the waterfront from our house and then met others there. The fireworks show was, as usual, awesome but that wasn't my new thing. My new thing was sitting in a bench I haven't sat in before at Nayar Taqueria. Nayar is one of my neighborhood joints and I've been there quite a bit. However, I've never sat on the bench. It wasn't life-changing but it was a different perspective and really, that's what this whole "one new thing a day" idea is all about. Change it up. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering, just different.

During my class of my graduate program, I wrote a paper on how I will avoid burnout and cited doing one new thing per day. I didn't mention the blog because I hadn't written that favorably about the class here but my professor liked the idea. He said that if I don't "run with the idea" and write a book around it, he may just steal it. I don't think that it's worth a book but I do think that it has validity. We get stuck in ruts and fall into familiar patterns way too easily. This is a way to shake things up, even if it just means finding a new seat.

On Saturday, Andrew wanted to plant our tomatoes and peppers in the garden and I felt like helping. I recently listened to a Joe Rogan podcast with Ron Finley about gardening and it made me want to get into it more. But I had another assignment. Since we have our bike shed in the backyard, we needed a good path to get from the back gate to the bike shed. Andrew had moved some flagstones there but wasn't happy with it so he bought some proper path stones (and moving them from Home Depot to the house was my new thing on Thursday). Being the Tetris fanatic I am, I instantly took to playing with them to derive a pattern that would meet our needs and came up with our path design. It came with its initial frustrations with the stones having to be under the swinging gate but not too low that it was a big drop-off at the start but I eventually found my groove. I didn't quite finish it on Saturday since we ran out of stones and we had friends coming over to visit so I had to clean up but I finished it on Sunday.

On Sunday, I also worked on our dingo-proof fence. My hammock rigging is on the front porch but I really want hang out with Ava while I'm in the hammock so I came up with the idea of a barricade on the porch. I was going to buy a bigger piece of lattice, trim it, and then frame it but Andrew suggested the smaller, pre-framed style which worked out perfectly. I was able to finish the path and get the fence installed all before heading over to Muffin HQ for some board games.

I love gaming on a three day weekend. I love gaming anyway but it can eat up most of a day and then I have guilt but when I've got three days, it's all good. We played Agricola which I love and did a fairly good job in this time. We also played Samurai which was new to me. It's a challenging and unique game which I will play again.

On Monday, I used the stain that was left with the house from the front porch and I stained the fence to match it. It may have well been my first time staining anything since shop class in high school. It looks so good now. We also went for a bike ride down the Springwater Corridor to Sellwood where we went to the Muddy Rudder for the first time. Andrew had been there before but for some reason, he just now introduced me to the place. It's right off the Corridor and I love it. I will definitely be more eager to go for a ride knowing that this place is there. At the Muddy Rudder, I won our first annual Memorial Day cribbage tournament although no drinks were won. Still, I have bragging rights now.

And then I ended the weekend with a bubble bath. I haven't been sleeping great. I will stay up later and then wake up pretty much as soon as it gets light out. Sometimes I can fall back asleep but not always. A combination of some manual labor, a bike ride, a few drinks, a light meal, and then a lavender salted bath had me so relaxed that I'm sure I'll be fine tonight. It was a fabulous weekend. There are things that I could have added on like dancing, a hike, shopping, etc. but right now, I'm completely content.

neighbors

When we first moved into our new house, this guy pictured above was the first neighbor to greet Maria in the backyard. They get along fine and I'm happy to see him whenever he comes around. This morning, I picked him up and he climbed over my shoulder and started kneading my back. A good neighbor gives back massages.

We also had some other neighbors come over for a visit. A few months ago, we were biking by a house on our street, maybe 10 blocks away, when the guy living there called out to Andrew. He was someone that Andrew knew from a previous job so today, him and his wife came by to sit in our backyard and chat. It's a lovely day for backyard sitting and I love this neighborhood. It's so quiet and friendly and safe for animals to wander about.

What else?
We also tried Gladstone Pizza for the first time. The crust was great but the toppings on the Greek pizza were a little salty. We'll try it again but just with different toppings.

On Thursday, I tried a homemade egg white drink that Andrew had made.

On Friday, we walked to the Eastport Cinema for the first time where we bough tickets and saved seats for our friends so we could all watch the new Mad Max together. It was pretty awesome. Not quite as fun as Pacific Rim was but close. And it had a better feminist message.

On Saturday, I tried the fried cauliflower at Slingshot. I won't be doing that again. I don't like tahini that much.

to wal-mart for work

I loathe Wal-Mart. Our new house is within a 5 minute bike ride to Wal-Mart and today was the second time I have been there. I don't have a good excuse for the first time other than JoAnn's Fabrics on 82nd sucks and told me (incorrectly) that I could find the crafty thing I was looking for at Wal-Mart, instead of at the craft store where it should have been. However, today I had a good excuse. My office-mate is out on maternity leave and I had to meet a client of hers and that client chose to meet at the Subway in Wal-Mart. I didn't even know that Wal-Marts had Subways. Fortunately, the meeting was quick and I didn't have to be there that long.

What else?
I had two drinks coming to me; one was due to getting a 10,9,8 run in Battle Line right off the bat, and the other was due to skunking Andrew in cribbage. I collected them at the Richmond Bar which was good and strong so I was a bit tipsy. I like it better as the Richmond Bar than I did as the Matchbox but it kind of gets lost in the total face-lift of Division which happened recently. If I lived closer to the Division renovation hotspot, I would easily have a new thing every day but I would also have less money...and probably a drinking problem.

some don't like it hot

On what was the probably the warmest day so far this year in Portland (or at least so far this month), we introduced Ava to snow.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, I love having a hiking dog. I will love her when she gets too old to take long walks but I'm going to enjoy this time when she runs trails and expresses pure pleasure at her freedom in the woods. We took Ava to Umbrella Falls and Sahale Falls, both of which were gorgeous! They're on the other side of Mt Hood, up high enough for there still to be snow. We know next to nothing about Ava's life before she came to us, other than she was kennel trained so we don't know for sure that this was her first time in snow but, as Ava and not whatever she was named before, we know this was her first time and she loved it. The picture above has got to be one of my favorite pictures ever.

I will definitely be back on this hike. I love the Gorge but it's a different and pleasant feel on Mt Hood. It's more arid, more open, and more chill. Plus there's less people which makes for a better time for Ava, being able to be off leash the whole time. We ran into only five other people (and saw two on a bridge) and there was a dog for every one of them. One couple had two little deformed dogs that had white curly hair and looked like lambs so it's not a surprise that their owner was nervous when a wolf-looking dog charges at them full speed. However, Ava just wanted to say hi.

It'd be a crime of the heart to leave her on leash during a walk like this after seeing how much she gets out of the independence and how well she listens to us. It was probably a 4 mile hike but Andrew hiked ahead of me (since I'm slower and wanted to stop and take pictures all of the time) and Ava spent a lot of time running back and forth between us. She had to have walked around 15 miles and ran around 5 miles. She was delightfully tired when we got home. And so were we. We went to the movie Some Like It Hot which I haven't seen in around 25 years. It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.

day of ava

Yesterday I worked a 12 hr day and the day before that, it was over 9 hrs so today's 6 hrs day was a relief, especially since most of it was spent with Ava. I had to visit to different families in two different towns so I brought Ava along with me for the ride. We went to two parks that were new to Ava and one that was new to me, Dairy Creek Park, the other one being Creston Park. One of the families we saw asked if Ava could come inside which was a first.

 Despite the damage that she has done to my car in the past, I still trust her as a copilot. And I was very impressed today how she interacted with my customer's family. Some might consider bringing a dog with you on work trips to be unprofessional, but in my line of work, it helps to build trust and bond with my customers. Or at least that's what I thought about it today when she was so good. It's also good for my sanity. After having to rough days at work , a day spent with the dog was just what the social worker ordered.

new approaches to old stomping grounds

When I lived at Long Haus, I would occasionally walk Dean to Woodstock Park via Reed College. This was before his legs started to bother him and he could go the distance. It was a completely different experience with him because we would approach the park through a different street and Dean would only express a slight interest in the other dogs. It was really just another place for him to walk off leash. It's not fenced in but Dean was so mindful that I never really worried about that.

On the other hand, there's Ava. This was the first time we've walked to Woodstock Park since moving into FoPo and I'll admit that I almost passed it by. It's been so long since I've been there but it was also a different approach to it so it looked all shiny and new. Plus I had to consider Ava's needs. She doesn't mind so well so I couldn't let her just wander about with the street being just beyond the bushes. Also, there weren't a lot of dogs there so she didn't want to stay very long.

Yesterday, the movie we saw was called Ex-Machina. Without giving away too much, it's about an android who is supposed to be the first true artificial intelligence (AI that can pass for human) and it's in the form of a woman. There are control issues with the AI though and the creator has to tell her to stand down and ends up yelling her name. Her name is Ava so Andrew and I got a good laugh out of that. Our Ava is deceptively intelligent too and is the strong female presence in a house with two guys so the similarities weren't all that far-fetched. One day, she will probably reveal her true intentions and she will be in control without any pretenses of being "a pet."

night falls i fall

I used to be a night owl. I would blame the shift to an early bird on the 7 yr job at GW where I had to be there by 7:35am or I was considered late but I think that I've just gotten older and I'm less willing to put in the effort. I've also done a pretty bang-up job of isolating myself from the world outside of my house. I go to work but I don't really socialize with my co-workers. Within the last two weeks, two of my co-workers have left my job (one to move to SF and one went to a higher paying job) but I didn't go to either of their going-away happy hours. So I guess it's not just that I'm an early bird, it's that I've also been nesting as well. I really would just rather be around the house and around Ava and Andrew (and Maria).

It's Saturday night and I went to a movie at 4:45pm, did dinner around 6:30pm, and then we biked home to retire for the evening. I'm hardly raging against the dying of the light here. It's more like I'm putting a sleep mask on and pretending it's already dark. It feels good to put this out there tho. I feel like I often just post vacuous events or meals I've experienced without any real insight. While I really enjoyed my Peanut Butter Veggie Burger at Killer Burger, it's nothing I could write a lot about.