ikea'l you

Box stores are exhausting. Sophia and I went to Ikea today for my first time. We were looking for curtains for our living room and we foolishly thought that Ikea would have something decent. For the record, their curtain selection sucks and just getting to that sucky section was a cumbersome process. Still, it was an adventure and we did end up finding nice light fixtures. Also, I was comparing what I saw there to what I saw at the Whole Nine Yards in Portland and that's not a fair comparison.

The Whole Nine Yards is an awesome fabric and upholstery store. They don't sell curtains but they can make them for you. However, it would be a six-week wait and we were tired of having our living room be completely exposed with no coverings. We plan to continue the hunt for cool curtains but not today. Ikea kicked our asses.

What else?

I ended up doing a lot of new things today:
* Dean and I discovered the Sue Parman field just five or six blocks from our house where he could run around.
* Sophia and I went for brunch at Utopia for the first time. I loved their potato pancakes.
* After striking out at Whole Nine Yards and Ikea, Sophia and I unsuccessfully shopped at the Ross Dress For Less by the Ikea store.
* Ashes, Victory, Sophia, Atomic and I met Justin and Jenn at Bazi Bierbrasserie to watch the Timbers win their first away game since going MLS.

the last spell

Tonight I saw my last Harry Potter movie in the theater. It's odd to think that all of the HP hype is over with. No more books, no more movies. It went out with a big bang although they deviated from the text greatly to hype up the action. I was disappointed in that. I was also disappointed that they included the last chapter from the book in the movie. All of the characters looked ridiculous and everyone laughed through the scene which was supposed to be touching. It was also funny because there was a collective groan when the title shot for the last scene came up. I'd have to say that I liked the first part of the film better but maybe that's because this one relied on it so heavily. Still, I'll miss the magic and the wonder of it all and the way that the whole franchise made reading popular for kids again.

changing tastes

I can remember a time when eating mushrooms was torturous for me and every meal had to include some form of dead animal. Oh, how I've grown. Today, I got a mushroom, asparagus and peanut gluten-free pizza from New Cascadia Traditional bakery and it was an absolute treat!

turning negatives to positives

I used to be a bright and shiny optimist. Somewhere along the lines, I became a whole lot more cynical. It wasn't a conscious choice. It just happened. This morning, I decided to reach down deep into my core and bring forth a little optimism. Yes, I am still thrown off-guard by what my dog did yesterday and over the weekend. However, until I can figure out why, I decided that maybe he just needs a new routine that he would enjoy. So we're walking.

I love walking Dean anyway but it seems like time is never on our side. In order to make a little more time, I got up this morning at 5:30am, got all of my stuff ready for work and then walked Dean up to Mt Tabor. We ended up walking 3.2 miles and he got some off-leash time around the reservoir. Until now, I haven't wanted to walk him to Tabor because I thought it was a bit far for him and his bad legs. However, he's proven that he needs to burn off energy and since I'll be gone for several hours at work, the morning seems more of a fitting time to wear him out.

It was a great walk and it made me feel fabulous. When I got home from work today, I didn't see one thing torn up, moved or disheveled. Yay for easy solutions to odd problems.

What else?
I did my country fair laundry today. I realized how much pink I wore there because it turned the laundry water pink and all of my white pink too. Now I have a lot more pink items which I have again determined to view optimistically. I like pink!

commitment's responsibility

This afternoon, I came home and I let Dean out for a quick potty time before I got ready for our afternoon walk. When he re-entered, I noticed that his hind-quarters were wet. If he cleans his bottom, he usually gets the area under his tail wet. This time, the area above and around his tail were drenched. I looked around the house for what he could have gotten into. It was then that I noticed all 19 pairs of my shoes (yes, that's a lot of shoes) and three pairs of my socks were sitting outside my closet. He had taken each and every shoe out of the closet and made a relatively neat pile on my bedroom floor. I looked at each of them while I put them back and didn't find a single tooth mark on them, even my dress shoes.

That still didn't explain why his backside was wet though. I went into the bathroom and saw that the tub was covered in dog fur. Sophia had just cleaned it over the weekend so I knew this was a recent development. In the ten years that I've lived with Dean, he has never once picked up one of my shoes and moved it. He has also never played in the bathtub. After seeing this, I was awe-struck and couldn't do anything but sit there and stare at him, pondering what could be going on in his mind.

So now I'm left with the question of what to do with him. While I was at the fair, our neighbor had agreed to walk him. She met him the day before I left and he seemed cool with her. She also has four dogs of her own so I figured it would be okay. However, he barked at her the first day and wouldn't let her put him on a leash so she couldn't take him. After Sophia got home, they managed to work it out but then he continued to act out. Between the time she walked him on Friday and when Sophia got home in the evening, he tore a gash in my new/used luvseat and threw the stuffing around the room. He also took all of the bedding off of my bed and off of Sophia bed, pushed all of our rugs out of the bathroom and drug his doggie bed into the kitchen.  What the hell?

I understand that this move has been a drastic change for him. It's a new house with less people and a slightly different schedule but, damn, how do I adapt? Am I supposed to completely adjust my living situation around my dog? He is my one and only true responsibility in this world. If armageddon comes, he's the only being that will be relying on me and me alone. However, am I suppose to sacrifice my freedom, my job, my friends or my social life so I can stay home with him? Am I supposed to buy him a new home with a new yard? He didn't even like our yard at the Long House unless one of us was out there with him. This is why I can't have kids. I can't handle commitment or the responsibility that comes with it.

So, I stopped panicking and I looked at my options which are: dog therapist, doggie daycare, quitting my job, moving or getting another job. I can't afford any of those options though so I'm going to go with Sophia's approach. After he waged war on the house's linen and furnishings on Friday, Sophia took him for a six mile walk on Saturday which wore him out to the point where he didn't have the energy to take anything apart. Starting tomorrow, we're going to go on long walks in the morning.

never where

The nice thing about the Oregon Country Fair is that it has gotten better every year for me. However, that also means that it's harder to leave every year.

I finished Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere on the road back. I absolutely recommend it. It was a beautifully written, whimsical adventure and the end packed a particularly powerful punch because it mirrored my own feelings around leaving the fair. Without giving anything away, when I got to Portland, I was metaphorically scratching doors into brick walls, begging for someone to let me back in.

Not since Europe 2006 has a departure been so hard for me. I'm hoping that I can adjust better than I did to returning from Europe that year though. In 2006, I pretty much blamed everyone and everything for me having to be here instead of Europe. I caught a glimmer of hope though this evening as Sophia and I drove to meet up with friends at Hungry Tiger Too. A guy on a red scooter with a side car passed us by and he had a black lab sitting in the side car wearing red goggles. If I can't live at the fair, at least I can live in Portland.

What else?
I had my last meal at Hungry Tiger Too today. We ordered the Tofualo Wings today (the vegetarian Buffalo Wings). However, they came with a leg of a chicken in the basket. My biscuits were also burned on the bottom and the scramble just tasted off. Maybe, just maybe, I'll go back there for the vegan corndogs but I think they must cook everything together if we ended up with an animal appendage in our food.

fair thee well

 

Today was wonderful. Going into fair, I was planning on wearing my pink clothes on Thursday because I wasn't that excited about the outfit. Then I discovered these hotpants! Whenever I stopped to have someone take a picture of me with my cell-phone so I could update my facebook, I had other random people snap shots of me. I was also walking down through the fair with friends when the dragon came parading by. A hot guy in a kilt told me that I was definitely wearing a parade outfit so I needed to join them. I danced along with the parade and absolutely loved it.

Sunday is typically a fun day because it's the day that we get visitor passes so our friends show up. This year, Jesse, Gail and Tim all came down. They seemed to enjoy it and I loved taking them around. I love seeing Jason Webley on Sunday too. Today, he did a cover of Piano Man called "Accordian Man." He pulled up people to represent each of the characters in the song. My favorite was "John at the bar" who's quick with a joke. His joke was, "So, this baby seal walks into a club..."  He later on inspired a parade of accordian players and enthusiasts to take over the drum tower!

Later on, Victory and I went to Webley's 11pm show at Shady Grove. It was my first show in the 8 at night. Webley is an awesome storyteller but he's had a rough year and is taking time off from touring. He says at least a year. It'll be sad not to have him at the fair tomorrow but it was beautiful to be able to attend his late night show at OCF.

fair and easy camping

One of the reasons I like "camping" at the OCF is that it makes camping easy. In my tent, I have a mattress and sheets. Next year, I'm not going to bring a sleeping bag at all. I'll just bring extra quilts. My morning routine consists of walking into the 8 where I can have a shower and sit in a sauna with people singing spirituals.  I grab an almond roca latte on the way back to our camp.  I also have access to the RV so I can cook meals there if I choose to. However, for the most part, I just eat in the fair. It's not cheap but it's delicious. Today, I had an Eggplant Parmesan sandwich from Gritz La Ritz for the first time. At night, we all walked around with the jellyfish again and I had an awesome mojito courtesy of a fellow fair-goer. It was fabulous. I wish all camping was this easy.

moonalice, the opening ceremony & my time as a jellyfish

When I was in high school, I really started to feel the social isolation of living in a small town so I subscribed to Details magazine. It wasn't a great magazine by any stretch of the imagination but it did have interesting stuff about fashion and music that I appreciated. One day, my mom stated that she didn't care for the magazine as she thought it was influencing me too much. I quickly dismissed her concern but then I got the next issue and it talked about living in a hippie commune. I got momentarily excited which she instantly caught onto. 

I've always enjoyed the hippie culture. I don't subscribe to it completely because I like my modern day conveniences a little too much but I like the idea of it and the Oregon Country Fair definitely gives me more than a small taste of what it's like. Last night, I was wandering through the 8 (the main fair area) and came to the Main Stage where MoonAlice was playing.  After I went down to visit fair for the first time in 2008, Raven brought me home a poster from a band that I thought looked cool and I appreciated the gesture so I've hung onto it. I just happened to wander into that band's show tonight (and get their latest poster) so I stayed for the show. They were a jam band and I wasn't completely sober so I was digging it. At one point, I looked around me and realized that I loved the crowd as much as the band. Here I was, dancing to the music of a jam band after midnight in the middle of the woods in Oregon with a crowd full of hippies. It was awesome!

 

The next morning, I got up and into Community Village early so I could participate in the opening ceremonies. We were told weeks ago that we would gather at Community Village in the morning, do our normal opening which is beautiful and then head to Main Stage where an indigenous elder would perform the opening ceremonies. The ceremonies involved recognizing the four elements; earth, water, sky and fire. This year's would focus on water though. Still they encourage everyone from the village to wear colors for their chosen element. I had a neat green skirt that I like so I chose earth (although I'm an Aquarius).

First off, I just love the opening ceremonies for Community Village. They are so heart-warming. We typically sing this spiritual verse which goes like this:

I'm gonna let life move me.

I'm gonna let life stir me deep.

I'm gonna let life wake me

from the ancient sleep.

I'm gonna laugh all my laughter.

I'm gonna cry all my tears.

I'm gonna love the rain as deeply as

the sun when it clears.

The ceremonies at Main Stage were neat too but it felt more like a production for the public whereas our community village ceremony felt a lot more personal and beautiful.

Then, that night, I became a jellyfish. After the fire show in the parking lot (which I didn't attend this year for the first time), I went and helped the security crew get everyone back in. I enjoyed doing it last year and plan to keep it up every year I go. After we got everyone in, two of my camp-mates, Aaron and Robin handed me a jellyfish puppet to control. They made maybe seven or eight jellyfish. They consisted of slow-strobing lights in a balloon which was covered with a light fabric jellyfish costume. These jellyfish were attached to the end of a retractable 30 ft pole which you couldn't see at night. It was an awesome spectacle to see, especially when it was pitch dark. We went to Chela Mela, which is a meadow in the 8 where DJ's perform and people with glow-sticks gather. They loved the jellyfish. I was able to make it dance with the other jellyfish and also drop down into crowds of people. This enabled me to hear bizarre lines that I will never be told again like, "Dude, you dipped your jellyfish in my beer!" I love fair and this was definitely a day of highlights.

fairly fashionably forward

I don't come to Country Fair just to have people tell me how much they like my outfits but, man, that is a big perk! I got sooooo many compliments on my ensemble today! It was wonderful. At the end of the day, I was leaving the fair area (which is called the 8 because of its shape) and a lady came up to me and said, "Oh good, I'm glad I got to see you again. I just wanted to tell you that I saw you earlier today and I've seen most everybody else here and you by far have the hottest outfit of the day." Suddenly, I'm on cloud 9.

What else?

 My new thing today was meeting Trystan, the newest addition to our camp at Far Side at the fair. Trystan is Dave and Sarah's lil guy and is absolutely adorable. I love babies!

fairly comfortable trip

We made it!

For us, the trip to fair has a history of breakdowns, either before fair or afterwards. This year, most of the problems started before we even left town but Ashes got them fixed. Since I no longer live with them, I pretty much just came along when everything was up and running. To contribute though, I pulled some hair out of my head and tossed it out the window as a sacrifice to the interstate gods when we passed by the Pine Cone Diner which is where we typically break down. We didn't break down there either but we did have a slight detour in Coburg where some mechanics assessed the RV but it didn't absolutely need repairs so we were able to make it to fair after all! Hooray!

It feels sooooooo good to be back here. This year, Raven's friend Mercury joined us as well as Bastard's significant other, Anna. Another change from previous years is the wristbands are cloth instead of plastic. There's also a slight tail on them. Hence, the first picture above of the sign. I could tell that they weren't going to be ideal so I got my name badge today which is pictured below:

skirting the issue

In my mind, I'm already at country fair. I have to go to work tomorrow but today I'm doing my laundry and packing for fair. I bought a straw cowboy hat and some pink and leopard print sunglasses for fair. Since my mind is already there, I decided to let my legs be there as well and put on a skirt while I do laundry. I seriously hate modern societal conventions that prevent men from wearing skirts. The Romans were really onto something with their openness about male & male sexuality and their permissive attitudes regarding skirts. Besides the fact that they're cuter than pants, it's just damn comfortable.

What else?
Today's a holiday but I couldn't care less. Actually, that's a lie. I do care in that I hate it. The 4th is now my least favorite holiday, replacing Valentines Day because at least people aren't as loud with their stupidity on V-day. Dean comes from hunting parents who I'm sure were acclimated to loud noises which he has apparently inherited. The fireworks bother me a lot more than they bother him.

from tot to teen

Around seven years ago, I moved into a house with three people, one of which was a six year old. In the initial stages of discussing the potential of us all living together, Ashes said, "You know I have a six-year old, right?" At the time, it seemed as though it may have been a deal-breaker. However, because of my oldest niece, I kinda like kids but I'm not too sure about teens. I've said before that, if I had a kid, I would have to give them away before they became a teenager because I can't stand the teen's attitude. However, Raven kind of changed that and today, we celebrated him becoming a teenager. Wow, how time flies...

Raven started acting like your stereotypical teen a while ago with the attitude and the voice changing and making his parents feel uncool. Shit, I know I was an ass when I was a teenager. However, watching Raven grow up and living with him for his formative years, I've had a change of heart. I still think that I don't care that much for teenagers as a general age bracket. Raven's a lot different though. He's a good kid who may have some attitude but it comes from a real place and he never gets mean and nasty, like I remember teens being when I was one of them. Initially, I was hesitant about moving in with a kid but I'm glad I did. I'm glad I got to help enrich his life and I'm glad he got to enrich mine and I look forward to seeing him become an awesome older teen and (OMG) one day (soon) an adult.

For his birthday, we went to Glowing Greens mini-golf course for the first time. It was okay although it did separate out his party quite a bit and it didn't allow for good picture taking because it was all in a black-light-lit basement. Afterwards, we went to the park for celebratory donuts. Next year, I'll remember early enough and bake him a cake.

What else?

 A handful of us continued on afterwards and headed to Circa 33 where we had the Blind Pig punch in a carafe for the first time. It's a nice place to drink at with the back porch and all.

like a G-6

On Wednesday, I came home from work to find that my computer had updated itself, restarted itself and was stuck. This is as a result of the virus that appeared on my computer a year and a half ago. It invaded my boot-up systems and the anti-virus programs have all said that they have to reboot to fix the problem but they can't successfully reboot due to the problem. It's so damn frustrating.

I fought with it all evening Wednesday and on Thursday. I tried to restore it from 12 different restore points in the thing but it wouldn't take. I tried every other option it gave to me to fix it and when that didn't work, I brought the machine to work and had Ashes give it a go. Nothing was working and I was all out of ideas. Luckily, I had everything backed up from my last virus scare so I even had the option to wipe it completely. For some reason, that wouldn't take either though. Since it was all backed up, I just decided to replace the whole damned thing.

Laptop's should last longer than two years but my Acer isn't completely useless. Ashes is willing to keep trying to work on it so I can eventually sell it. In the meantime, I bought a HP Pavillion G6. It has Microsoft 7 on it so it's hard to say if I like the machine a lot more or just that I like 7 more than I liked Vista (which I truly hated). Anyway, I had received my check from work for my last quarter of school for the year so I had some cash on me and I think it was a good investment...and a fun new toy!