at the backfence

Laughter is too greatly underrated, at least for me. I forget how great it is to laugh uncontrollably. I get happy, I smile, I am filled with joy but I just don't laugh whole-hardheartedly often enough. Luckily, I did something about that tonight.

Sophia had got tickets to this event BackFence PDX for us tonight. Unfortunately, she ended up having other plans so she couldn't make it. Fortunately, Jennifer took her spot and Tim also joined us. Backfence is basically story-telling on stage in an every-other-month event. This time, it was held a the beautiful Portland Center Stage. It was my first time there. They had six people signed up to tell stories (I think they were ten minutes long) about a certain topic. Tonight's topic was 'I didn't think this through.' The stories couldn't be memorized, couldn't be written down, couldn't include props and had to be factual. Being funny isn't a requirement but all of tonight's stories had a funny edge to them.

I don't know how they solicited the storytellers but they did a good job of getting a mixture of different types of tales and different types of storytellers. During intermission, they also gave the audience members a chance to sign up and tell a one-minute story. I signed up but didn't get called. I'm glad I didn't but I wanted to at least try.

Overall, I really really enjoyed the event. The last storyteller almost killed me. I was laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe. I guess I'm a sucker for vomit stories.

What else?
Before the show, we went to the new Sizzle Pie location in Southeast where Rocco's used to be. I miss Rocco's.

Yesterday, my new thing was meeting Andrew's friend, Kurt. Andrew and I headed to Back Stage where we ran into Kurt and played our Battle Line game. I have to say that I'm really enjoying seeing Andrew on a weekly basis now.

just one new layout

Since this is a blog about new things, I decided that I needed to change it up a bit and update it. I looked around at new layouts but I wasn't really sold on any of them. I'm more of your basic black with accent colors anyway. I have been wanting to get labels on the front page though so the page will be easier to navigate. It's something I've seen on other blogs and I like it. However that meant doing a lot of work on previous posts.

I went back over each post and categorized it. You can see that I have several categories. I took some liberties with some of the assumed definitions of the labels too. "Food" also encompasses new drinks. "Family" can include close friends and pets but not Dean (who surprisingly on has 17 posts about him). "Holidays" can include birthdays. Home maintenance includes lawn maintenance. "Stores" includes new businesses. Actually, maybe that's what I'll call it.

Not surprisingly, "Work" had the most posts so far with 62. I spend the majority of my waking life at work and my work isn't typical from day to day so it provides me with a lot of source material. Proudly, I can see that "travels" was second with 42. I love traveling and almost every European post was labeled as such. Food and "Local bars" tied for 3rd with 40 posts each. Again, that wasn't surprising. "Transportation" (planes, trains, autos, scooters, bikes, ferries) and "music shows" (mainly Riot Cop Europa 2007) came in fourth with 37 posts each.

There were also some items like "plants" (working with my houseplant) and other items like "games" (Mafia [not the facebook version]) which sadly only had one post each. I like games. Maybe I should try new games more often.

Anway, it was a relatively weak new thing but it was nice for me to reflect. I actually do really like this blog. Sometimes it may feel like a chore but I basically use it as a source of documentation, not as revealing as my journals used to be but it's still good to look back on how I've been spending the last two years and three months.

three stories

I don't usually use my blog to tell stories but it's my blog and it was a funny day so here we go. I was driving out to Clackamas today and a jeep pulled up next to me. The guy in it was this big, trucker-looking guy. I'm in my white Lincoln with my pink shirt, big sunglasses and techno bumping. He looks over at me and then looks ahead of him. I thought that he was giving me a 'damn queer' look but then the car in front of him turns right and he pulls up a bit. When he did, I was able to see one of those mudflap decals on his back window. You know the ones with the busty lady in the seductive pose sitting down. Well, this one was of a muscular dude. It was awesome. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to my camera quickly enough.

Later on, my friend and I were walking towards the pub and we passed by some Mormons. I don't know what happened but all of the sudden I started to trip over my own two feet. I was able to catch myself just before I fell over. When I recovered and we passed them by, she said that the Mormons did it to me with their mind because I was a non-believer. I thought, if Mormonism involved telekenisis, I'd convert.

Afterwards, I was leaving the pub and walked by two guys playing pool. These guys were very straight-looking and most likely were straight. One guy was older, gruffer and looked like he probably worked construction. The other guy looked like a beefed up frat boy. Anyway, the older guy was bent over the pool table, lining up his shot. All I heard him say as I was walking out was, "Looks like you lost your rubber." The other guy who was standing behind him responded, "Yep," I walker. by and try to hold in my snicker. As I was leaving, I heard the second guy say, "You know, that sounded really bad," and the other guy said, "Yep." Funny funny funny.

It's not a new thing and I did do a new thing but I liked these stories better.

feeling poetic

The day waned in a blue-grey haze, suppressing my energy and numbing my senses. I resigned myself to avoiding it all. My disillusioned heart and empty wallet became the wardens in my self-imposed prison. From my window, the world has lost its heart. A beckon from a kind soul calls me out of my solitude. I grab my bicycle and trudge out of the back gate with my head lowered.

Stepping out into the road, I look up to the west and see the final struggle of sunlight for the day. Its vibrancy penetrates over the West Hills and the evening light shines from my brow to the bridge of my nose. I stand on my bike and I can see more. I pedal towards the flames beyond the cloud cover with rejuvenation. I find a familiar coffee shop on a new night where I can listen to old friends and new acquaintances sing their follies and their heartaches and I revel in the heart of it all.

parting

I don't like hype. That's why I resisted reading Harry Potter until book four was released. Then my friend Sarah was talking about it one night and I decided that I could give it a shot.

I love reading and I love anything that gets more people reading. There's definitely still a lot of hype around Harry Potter but it's a good thing when people that I don't normally talk to approach me simply because I'm reading the book. It's a beautiful thing when, in this age of flashy pictures and catchy tunes, a book can cause such a stir.

I finished the last Harry Potter book today. It was the last I will ever read of him. I'm willing to count this as my new thing. I've never written a tribute to a book before.