auld lang syne

Happy New Years Eve!

New Years Eve has been one of my more likable holidays. I've had bad ones before but I think that I've had my fair share of good ones too. I would call tonight a good one albeit tame. Several friends came over and we drank and played Apples to Apples (not the kid's version). It's amateur drinking night so we didn't really want to be on the road or pay outrageous cover charges. This was pretty much just what I wanted to go. It's a nice way to start off the year!

by the horse's neck

Somewhere along the road, I think I gave up. I became one of those people who go to bed by 11pm and who rarely go out on a work night. When did that happen?

I used to fight my way to get a workshift that would start at 11 AM at the earliest and wouldn't get over until around 7 PM, if I put in a full day. When I first moved to Portland, I took that shift at the thrift store because nobody else wanted it. I also spent at least four out of the seven nights out at bars. Now, I usually only go out on the weekends if I go out and I head to bed sometimes at 9:30 PM. WTF?

Tonight, I decided that my job is not that demanding that I need a full eight hours of sleep to do it. We went out to the Bonfire for dinner and to a movie afterwards (Zach and Miri Make a Porno which was well worth it!). At the bar, I had a few Horse's Necks, which are basically just whiskey gingers with a lemon peel. Still, the drink was something new and the night was a throwback to something old.

c'mon, get chatty

Today, I joined Twitter...why did I do that?

I have too many social malfunctions already. Why would I add one more?

Technology has replaced basic human interactions. Obviously, it hasn't replaced them completely for most people but it is slowly chipping away at our ability to look someone in the face and carry on a proper conversation. Cell phones, particularly texting, have reduced conversations to acronyms and boiled language down to two to three words sentences. Kids bully each other in chatrooms instead of on the playground where they are able to be so much more screwed up. Myspace allows people to collect friends and gain a false sense of social behavior not to mention broadcast the tastes, desires and associations to the whole world. Now, calling someone or even directly texting one other person is a little too passe. Now we have twitter.

I don't know. Maybe my technophobic nature is just swelling or maybe I will end up enjoying it. One good thing I can say about twitter is that it allows you to catch up with people in a simple and sweet manner and make you feel a little more connected...even if it is to an electronic device. Oh and at least it's not myspace.

Anway, if you want to follow me on twitter, my name is topherdarling.

it's time to celebrate hanukkah

I don't consider myself a christian but I still celebrate Christmas. I don't consider myself to be pagan but I still celebrate Solstice. And I don't consider myself to be Jewish but I will still celebrate Hanukkah. I think I'm just always up for a good celebration. Today was our house's first Hanukkah hosting. Happy happy hanukkah for all of those who celebrate it no matter what you believe.

the walkabout

What a day!

Despite the fact that we got several MORE inches overnight, I still got up at 5:30 am to begin walking to work today. Fate smiled on me and put a bus right in front of me on Holgate which allowed me to bus close to work. I just had to walk 1/2 mile in. Hell, I got there early. The Holgate bus was more like a rollercoaster though. I sat in the middle of the backseat and watched through the windshield as we fishtailed down the overpass! Weeeeee!

I stayed at work for a few hours, got a little bit of work done and a lot of blogging accomplished. After Ashes joined me, we decided to head downtown to finish shopping. After walking on the bridge (in the middle lanes where no cars were going) we headed on a trek around town, almost completely on foot. Our main destinations were the Lloyd Center, the Hollywood Fred Meyers, Alter-Nation on Hawthorne and then back home via walking down 39th. We began walking the sidewalks but soon decided the roads would be easier and took over one of 39th's four lanes. A few other walkers jumped off of the sidewalk and joined us. It was like a pilgramage or a moving herd. I was tired and cold by then but I loved all of the pedestrians!

By the time we got home, I was dead tired. I'm skipping work tomorrow!

the holgate rollercoaster ride

moby in chains

One good thing about the snow is that it gets people walking. As it should be, cars are rare. We walked today to Schucks to get tire chains for our cars. Luckily, they had my tire size. Yet the universe still didn't want my car moved. Ashes put on one chain and showed me how to do the other side. We didn't even get Moby fully backed up before the driver side chain decided to wrap across (not around) the tire. When we managed to get that one off, we still had to try to get the car back into a parking spot. Then the other chain came off. While we did get it in a spot, it's not going until the weather gets a lot better! Oh well, I hate driving anyway!

acclimation

I pretty much accepted today that conditions weren't going to improve and I was gonna have to get in touch with my Midwestern roots and go play in the snow.

I've been putting off my holiday shopping and walking Dean until the snow melts down but we got dumped on again today. Before noon, I got out there and started shopping. I got most of it done on Hawthorne and then walked down to the liquor store and got my peppermint schnapps (to complete the mood). Then I walked back home. Dean and I headed to the park and he was thrilled. He ran up all batshit to other dogs at Reed and they bounded around each other, all excited over the snow. He hasn't seen that much snow in his life. We only spent one full winter in Nebraska together before moving up here. He LOVES it although I could easily see it wearing thin after a while. When we returned home, he had snowflake eyebrows and icicles hanging from his chin. But he had a big grin on his face too!

i-panick

I am not a materialistic person but there are a few possessions in this world that I can't survive well without. My i-pod is one of them. While driving around to my stores yesterday, my i-pod shuffle ran out of power. I ran home quick and grabbed the charger. However, I forgot to bring it into the office when I headed back to work. That night, I went to plug the i-pod in and I couldn't find it. I tore my room apart and search all of my jackets and pants. Today, I searched my car, my office and even drove home in the middle of the day to look in the driveway but I couldn't find it. I was pissed.

I hate hate hate losing stuff. I bought the shuffle at Goodwill so it's not like I paid a lot for it but I use it a WHOLE lot. Compared to my last I-pod, this one has been pretty indestructible which made it highly valuable to me. It bugged me so much that I shopped around on the internet and I found a comparable i-pod at Freddies so I decided to go buy it new.

I don't like it as much. You have to plug it into a stand which in turn plugs into your USB port. My old shuffle plugged right into the USB port with no additional device. But it's all I got...until Sophia came over. My housemate picked her up in my car and brought Bastard and her back to our place. When she got out of the car, she spotted my shuffle on the ground. It survived overnight outside. I'm returning the new one tomorrow. It has more memory but it's not my old shuffle and any little music machine that can survive in the snow outside over night is the one for me!

crazy little thing called pub

I love the pub. I've been trapped inside for the past several days except I'm getting out for work. None of my clients came into work on Monday, several of them were there on Tuesday (but the weather was too bad for me to go to any of my stores) and most of them called in again today.

Anyhow, we decided to hit the pub at the end of the universe after work today just to leave the house. The pub is like a warm little sanctuary. To make the place even more homey, we met the owner tonight. She's owned the pub since 1979. She was awesome. Victory asked if she could make anything like a hot drink and the owner came up with hot chocolate and irish creme wine. After she checked with us to make sure it was okay, she said she was going to put it on the menu. I love this place!

snow dogs

Snow is typically a rare treat in Portland. Therefore, it's more enjoyable and also more of a hassle. People aren't prepared here for it and tend to freak out. (Dean freaked out today but in a good way!). Ashes pointed out to me today that around 48% of the people living in Portland aren't from Portland but around 70% of those people are from Cali so snow in town is a foriegn concept to a lot of people around here.

While it's beautiful, it also made regular tasks very challenging. I picked up the food donations in the midst of snow for the first time. Fortunately, I'm a cyclist and so is my food partner so we were able to figure the flattest path to the store and the drop off site.

boppin' bo's

A free meal is a free meal but I've gotten spoiled by work Holiday dinners in the past and was looking forward to something nice this year. However, I got a fifties retro restaurant in a strip-mall in Vancouver.

Today, I went to Boppin' Bo's where I had a veggie sandwich which was basically a salad between two pieces of bread and some decent fries. I gorged myself on a blackberry malt and could have been rolled out of the place. As unappetizing as the place was, I still enjoyed myself. I love hanging out with my co-workers and I am truly grateful to them for saving this meal.

back to school

My boss walked by me today and told me to come see her before I leave. Instantly, I'm thinking that I did something wrong and trying to come up with excuses for everytime I was on the internet or the extra errands I ran on my way to visit stores. It turns out that she wants me to get CRC (commission on rehabilitation counselor) certified. In order to do that, I have to have a Masters in counseling. Therefore, my work is going to give me a scholarship to go back to school.

I still have nightmares on occassion that it's close to the end of the semester and I just remembered that I had a class (usually biology) that I forgot about and it's too late to drop and now I have to face the professor. I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

However, I was reassured by my boss that the university that she wants me to attend has a great classroom structure and it won't interfere too much with my life or my job. And hell, in this economic market, it's not only reassuring that my boss and the president of the company thinks highly enough of my work to give me a scholarship but it's also comforting that they are going to invest more in me which will make me more of an assett and harder to let go.

So I'm going to do it!

you are about to enter...the cal-zone

I haven't done a food post in a while so I figured I was due to try a new recipe and this one turned up. I made calzones tonight. I found a similar recipe on-line but with different ingredients. Basically, I made it up. I had veggie steak strips from the food box last week and decided to get creative.

I used Trader Joes' pizza dough for the crust and filled the calzones with the veggie steak strips, portabella mushrooms, black olives, pizza sauce, shredded asiago, provolone and parmasean and artichoke hearts. Once I got the dough flattened, it really wasn't that hard.

I also got some different kind of brandy today. Lately, I've become addicted to Hot Toddys.