I've been meaning to take a picture of this for a long time. I wasn't sure how well it would show up.

This is the side yard. If you see that darker green line that starts at the lower left and curves up towards the back — that is an animal trail.

When I first noticed it, I thought it was from yardwork but later I noticed it was there all the time. You can see it in the back, too and it leads up to a big gap between our back fence and the next door neighbor's garage.

I'm not sure if it's raccoons, opossums (wolves? deer? rhinoceros?) or both but this must be the neighborhood crossing spot. There is some open space beyond the street behind our house. Since we've lived here we've occasionally seen raccoons and opossum in the yard usually after dark.

Several years ago there was a dramatic baby raccoon rescue in our backyard. I used my barely-there photo and html skills to write about it here but at some point later I deleted it. I just dug it out and tried to improve the photos and you can see it here.

The Hound of Mapleton: there are actually two hounds but I did a lousy job of picture taking.

Yesterday and today's photos taken in Florence, Oregon

I'm despairing over whether I'm ever going to have time to write a decent post again. I'm sitting on a couple of ideas but I can't seem to put together enough time to get them organized and I have other priorities right now.

Also, that thing is happening where I wake up and can't get back to sleep. I woke up at 4am a couple of times and that wasn't too hideous. I woke up yesterday at 3am and that wasn't even too bad. I've been able to monitor and the birds start singing between 4:06a and 4:11a.

This morning I woke up at 2am and that was completely gruesome. I feel like I spent the night dancing on a barstool and swilling tequila from the bottle. I did have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. How come straight sleep deprivation feels like a badass hangover?

Big Yellow Dog
On Saturday I was working in the front yard and I saw this big yellow dog come scampering down the street. This was the happiest dog you've ever seen in your life. He bounded from one yard to the next bouncing in circles sniffing every wonderful hedge and tree trunk and marking his territory as needed.

Since I have adult onset fear of dogs all my brain was computing was "Omigod, dog with no people. He is going to run over here and bite me."

He was too involved in his smell inventory to even notice me. My next door neighbor was much quicker on the uptake and I heard her yell, "He's over here." Then I clued in that there were kids at some distant location calling for the dog. She yelled again and the dog ran over to a red pick-up truck and set to work checking the smells on the tires.

My neighbor jumped in her car and drove towards the voices and a few moments later these two kids came sprinting down the street, huffing and puffing.

"Are you looking for the dog?" I asked.

"YES!" They said, together.

"He was just over by that truck." I pointed.

Moments later the dog leapt out from behind a hedge and the kids smiled and grabbed his collar.

"Thanks!" they said and waved at me. Then a woman in a van came and picked them up and she waved at me, too.

And I thought, "Yes, what a great neighbor I am, helpfully pointed at your beloved and obviously sweet pet, in terror that he was going to run over and bite me. You are welcome."

Nice view looking upriver at the Siuslaw in Mapleton, Oregon.

Walker zipped through town this weekend and hung out with us. We went to see Jerry Rig on Saturday night and saw the whole High Sierra gang which I only know via Bob and Walker. I tried music festival-ing in 2002 and 2004 and my favorite part was when it was over.

Just kidding. It wasn't that bad but it's not my thing. I'm perfectly happy to see one band every 3 months, not 137 bands in 4 days.

But Saturday night was fun and I stayed up until a record breaking 1:30am.

Sunday morning we headed down to Mapleton to deposit Walker with her Dad for a weeklong visit.



We hung out at their fabulous quiet house near the river and wandered through the rhodies in the yard. Later we took off for a stroll around Florence and had dinner, went for a short walk on the beach and then stopped by the Three Rivers Casino.

Bob and I drove home this afternoon and we're trying to get organized for the week.

I just started my garden photo set which hopefully I'll keep updating until I leave in June. I hope I get to harvest at least one thing before I leave.



If it looks windy and cold, that's because it is. Behind us the sky is scary storm-grey.

Holiday Weekend

This is an old photo of the dragon boats in the marina by the old office.

Company in town and we're off to look at the ocean.

I originally labeled this photo 1970-something. I'm thinking very early seventies. I'm too lazy to do research on its location but somewhere in Hawaii where you can look out at that fabulous view while wearing an awesome white and red flower matching shorts-top set and socks with sandals and be twins with your sister while your mother checks out the view in a tangerine mini-dress. Grandma looks pretty normal. My sister is also making her almost-famous goofy face. I have got to go back and tag all my sister goofy face photos or gather them onto one page. She'd love it.



This photo I took today. I hate to fixate on the weather but it's been so consistently horrible (wet, cold except for two days that were blistering hot) for so long that I'm despairing a bit. It's not even the rain as much as the cold. But the scary insects don't move much in the cold so I took the opportunity to get the wire cages out of the shed so that the peas have something to climb up and I swept down the nests in the shed and this one which was right over the back door.

Mid-Week Wrap-Up


Just in case you've been wondering, here's the 08 pumpkin crop. (07 crop here). I planted them late which wasn't a problem since it wasn't warm enough for them. I put out two sets last night just in time for the night time temps to go back into the 40's. The other one will go out front this weekend.

***

Yesterday I totally ditched a completed post because I didn't like it. Normally once I've gone through the trouble of typing I go ahead and post whether I like it or not. I don't know what my problem was. But the gist was that we went to see Was (Not Was) on Saturday night and Bob's review is here.

***

Several weeks ago I spent an embarrassing amount of money on what I call shower gel but is apparently called body wash these days. It probably wasn't an embarrassing amount to your average person who ranks smelling good as a high priority but I generally use whatever big jug of shower gel is on sale at the grocery store and wish that it smelled yummier. Then we got a coupon and I ran in on my lunch hour to look around and I tried this ginger stuff and this Jumpstart stuff that I was going to describe as citrus-y but the product description doesn't seem to support that claim. I am very fond of the non-citrus-y stuff but I LOVED the ginger stuff. Now I'm feeling an urge to explore all sorts of wonderful smelling bath stuff which conflicts with my over-arching but sometimes easy-to-supress frugality.

***

I'm started watching Bones because Angel is in it but I have come to really love the show. I think the investigation aspect tends to go for the gross-out or hard-to-believe but I love the characters and their relationships. The season finale was a major, mouth hanging open disaster. I don't mind if a show surprises me, or does terrible things to characters I love. (See e.g. Lost.) But the finale had a plot twist that felt invented at the last minute, stupid and completely untrue to the character. I stewed about it all day. And I suppose you could argue that the writer's strike contributed to the problem but they created this ultimate bad guy and then we had this huge hiatus and then they resolved it with this plot twist and a 30 second montage of the bad guy discovered and offed — before the audience knew anything about him. Huge fumble. Boo.

***

Finally, I cringed when I saw this article in the Daily Telegraph (UK!):

With the discovery of gold there in 1848, the California Gold Rush brought 300,000 people into the state, transforming what was then a backwater into the embodiment of the American Dream.

Fewer in number, "new 49ers" may have swapped picks and covered wagons for suction dredges and mobile homes but many are just as confident they will strike it rich.

Bob went to the Obama rally. Coverage here. I stayed home.

Update: Wow, 75,000 record breaking crowd.

Here's the second half of the filing, plus that box in the left has filing in it. I somehow need to get all of this done before June 20. Wouldn't it be great it filing was like moving and you could buy a bunch of pizza and beer and get all your friends to help you?

Wardrobe

This week's episode of Battlestar Galactica was fabulous but I'm having a hard time with Number 8's wardrobe. Seriously, capri pants?

Welcome to the Broiler
This is the scene outside right now. Every time I go into the kitchen I can see it's gone up another notch so now I'm avoiding going in there. Yesterday was supposed to be the horrible day and today hot but not horrible. It's hotter today than yesterday. I guess the weatherman lied so as not to totally demoralize us. All the poor little plants that have been shivering out in the yard are now burned to a crisp. But then by Tuesday, 55 degrees and raining again. Oh Mother Nature: how may we appease you?

Lucy For A Day
If I could ever live the life of a fictional character, without hesitation, my answer would be Lucy Pevensie. I'm an ancient old lady and I love her stories as much now as I did the first time I read them.

Yesterday, I went to see Prince Caspian. I expected the world to be filled with nerds rushing to see it so I made sure to get there early. Then I did a gymnastics routine in the lobby of the empty theater so the popcorn clerk would have something to look at. More people came in closer to show time including the lady with nice talking child who sat right behind me. Interesting all-ages crowd, starting with some very young kids and up to older people of retirement age.

The movie was fabulous. I loved it. Ten minutes in I was hugging my knees, thinking, "Omigod, I can't wait to see it again." At one point the High King was fighting in chain mail while Prince Hottie was running around in leather pants. I was just wishing every day for the rest of my life could be exactly like that moment.

**Warning: small spoilers ahead ... but it's only the 2nd book in the series so you can probably guess that everyone isn't going to die.**

Having said all that, it was a teeny bit like diet Lord of the Rings. And I love Lord of the Rings like nobody's business but the Battle of Helm's Deep is my favorite nerd battle of all time (even beating out many prime Star Wars battles like Yavin IV and that really sad one that makes me cry every time in Revenge of the Sith where they kill all the Jedi) and the big battle in this story felt very Helm's Deep-y. I loved it once. I love it again. But I at one point (LOTR II spoiler ahead) I fully expected to see Gandalf galloping in to save the day. And it sorta happened except that instead of Gandalf we had Aslan and instead of the Riders of the Rohirrim people it was Ents. Oops. I mean, the trees.

Have I ever mentioned that the Ents are my favorite characters in all literature?

I recommend the movie. Another one of my favorite characters of all time is Reepicheep who I'd totally forgotten appears in this story and makes an incredible entrance. One Million Stars for Narnia lovers. Probably less than that for non-Narnians.

I Can't Wait to Stay Home
I'm having a hard time playing with others lately. I got into a thing with my eye doctor's office and the charmless, witless staff that run the place. This morning I got into a thing with a surly young person at the farmer's market over some tomatoes. If I tell you the story it will only be to make me look good and right and them wrong and stupid and I don't know what's stopping me but I'll let it go and we can all try to be better human beings from this day forward.

Meanwhile, Bob told me that there's an Obama rally tomorrow at Waterfront park and he might go check it out. Then later he told me the Decemberists will be playing.

"Sounds like it will be nuts," I said. "I can't wait to stay home."

This is part one of my filing at the office. There are four more piles almost equal to this on a table behind the photographer.

I have confidence that some day, maybe this weekend, I will come up with a decent post.

After another long busy week, today is a major goof-off day. I'm going to have a massage and then I'm going to see the new Narnia movie.

Someone Else's Bad News
I'm apparently trapped in some sort of time warp since I've been on the wrong date since Saturday. On Monday there was a moment where I had to whack my head against the desk trying to clarify which day we were on. Usually on Mondays I have it together.

I just got back from the restroom and noticed I have terrible VPL today. (There's a giant mirror in there.) I'm celebrating by finishing off this box of Wheat Thins (Big).

A couple of weeks ago (at home) we received some mail addressed to 2 names we've never heard of but with our address hand written on the envelope. It was from a property management company and the best I could tell without opening it, it was an eviction notice. I assumed they'd written the address wrong and marked return to sender.

I didn't think too much about it except last week we got a piece of mail addressed to someone else (I don't know if it's the same person because I didn't pay attention the first time) and from what I could tell by shaking it around and trying to see in that window on the front, it was about a returned check. There was a return address but no business name. Maybe the bank? I made a note of the name this time before returning to sender.

It's hard to imagine the two items aren't related and I'm wondering if this is the beginning of some sort of pain in the ass for us or just a random data misfire.

This is a plant that's in the backyard. It's ugly all year round except for a few weeks in the spring.

The spring around here has been pretty bad. 50 degrees and rain. I've been whining that we weren't going to get any of those gorgeous 75 degree days where you walk around hugging yourself and wiping tears from your eyes because you feel so fortunate to live in such a gorgeous place. I cried that we'd go from 50 to 90.

You know what? It was 50 today and raining and the weather people say it's going to be 90 on Friday. I bet about 5000% humidity, too.



A couple years ago for Administrative Professional's Day (Whatever. If you type "Administrative Assistant" into Wikipedia's search engine you get shuffled right in to Secretary. Thanks, Wikipedia. Why not shuffle woman into "domestic slave," too.) colleague gave me a plant which I later planted in my yard. I'm not a plant expert but whatever this is, a bulb or rhizome or something, it keeps spreading. It used to be 3 little stalks and now there's almost a dozen and they're about two feet tall.

How Long Have I Lived in the PAC NW?
This morning, as I was getting ready to head out the door, I asked Bob if it was supposed to rain today. "Partly cloudy," he announced after he checked the paper. So I jumped in the car without my raincoat thinking how tricky I was. In the 4 seconds it took to pull the car out of the garage, it started drizzling. D'oh! I have lived here long enough that I realized immediately what a moron I was and ran back in for the coat. A good hard rain the entire drive in.

Another Time Warp Sunday

There is a fabulous article about my absolute heroine Lynda Barry in the NYT today. She's a writer/artist/cartoonist, in case you're wondering. Here's her bio if you're interested. (I did not know she dated Ira Glass.)

I can't wait to get my hands on her book which I need like I need a hole in my head. For every book I read, I put three more in the pile. Even worse, I BUY three more for the pile. Today I was looking for something on Bob's shelf. I didn't find it but I did find a Flannery O'Connor paperback which includes Wise Blood which I've never read so I optimistically put in my to-read pile as if I would get to it anytime soon.

As usual, the day flew by and I feel like I barely made a scratch in all the things I wanted to do.

Here's the birdfeeder that remains birdless. I saw a hummingbird yesterday on the complete other side of the yard. I might move the feeder but then I can't see it from the window. I could also put up a sign. "Food over there birds."



My Mom gave me this cute apron made by Marble Mountain Bedding. I never wear it because it's too pretty to get gunked up with kitchen grease. The crafter herself told me to get over it because it was washable and last night I put it on and had Bob take a photo.

Tomorrow I think I'll have time to answer email and catch up on blog reading and all my neglected chores.

Filled With Delicious Sugar Water
A couple of weekends ago during one of the 15 minute warm spells we've had I saw hummingbird try to feed at our red barbecue. I decided to we needed a hummingbird feeder and the next time I was at Fred Meyer I went to grab one and turns out there are about 25 different kinds in all shapes and sizes.

I decided to skip the traditional clear plastic thing with a red top and red feeding flowers at the bottom and buy this pretty lavender shaped glass dome with glass feeding flowers. I'll take a picture this weekend.

I suspect everything on the box is a lie. It said it was hand-blown eco-glass (?) and it came wrapped up in a giant piece of Styrofoam bigger than my head. It said it was easy to fill. It was not. It said it was guaranteed to attract hummingbirds and I've yet to see one.

The directions also said I'm supposed to clean the thing twice a week. We'll see how that goes.

Two Tidbits

There is a fabulous article in the NYT today about urban farmers.

Over the past several days I've been getting phone calls from a family of Spanish speaking individuals who seem very disappointed that the person they're looking for isn't answering the phone. The reason I say family is because they've passed the phone around and I hear different voices speaking to me, which doesn't change the fact that I don't speak Spanish and cannot help them. I'm sorry they have the wrong number but I'm perplexed at why they keep talking to me when clearly I don't understand. I eventually have to hang-up, after very politely saying again that I'm sorry and they have the wrong number and that I'm hanging up now.

Best Week Ever
It's May 5 and I'm wearing open-toed shoes for the first time since October. Big day.

I knew I had a busy week coming up this month but didn't clue in that it was here until I checked the calendar when I got to work this morning.

Besides slightly busier than normal work stuff, I have some sort of appointment or event every day up to and including Saturday. Friday is my usual catch-up day and that day I have two appointments and an event.

I better get busy.

Runday Sunday

There's a new building going up next door to the office and I've been trying to get some good crane photos. There's a guy who has to sit in there all day long. I can't imagine climbing all those stairs just to get to work. My office is on the other side of the building but I check over there once or twice a day.

This morning, Bob took off for a few days in Toronto for a work-related conference. The flight was at the buttcrack of dawn and he said I didn't have to take him if I didn't want to get up that early but I don't mind getting up early and it wasn't that bad. Except I can't believe how many people are driving around at 4:30am on a Sunday morning.

When I got home I made a cup of tea and worked on writing and by 9am I had already finished another draft and did a yoga practice. I did a quick trip to the garden store. And then at Noon I needed an epic nap so I could function the rest of the day.

I worked on my story for a couple more hours and then ran out for some quick yard work and now I need to bathe and figure out what I'm going to eat.

They Come From Below

This is the park-n-ride. I counted 14 manhole covers. Why so many?

First of all, last night I tried a Sunset recipe for Coconut-milk pudding rolls which turned out fantastic. They're big fluffy yeast rolls baked with a giant bowl of sugar and coconut-milk poured over them. I think the healthiest part of these rolls is when you stop eating them. I was sad that I got full after three.

Second of all, fresh Doctor Who my ass. I've seen all but three shows from season 3 and I seem to be terminally cursed for catching those on TV. Is it possible that shows expire on the DVR? Can they do that without telling you? I swear I've had all three taped and waiting for me at one time or another and then they mysteriously disappeared. It's possible I deleted them by accident but all three of them and at completely different times? The commercial said season three was coming out on DVD so I thought I'd just put the first two discs in the queue and that would cover it.

You know what disc 1 is? It's the Xmas special and this dorky documentary of a dorky special they did where an orchestra played the music of Doctor Who while they showed clips and synchronized Daleks came out and spun around. Disc 1 also has outakes from the entire season and the Doctor and Martha's set videos. Wouldn't it make more sense for this to be disc 6? Or how about disc 4? The whole season had 13 episodes. 14 including the Xmas special. What do they need 6 discs for in the first place?

Argh. What a long stupid day. I'm not even going to get started otherwise this will be just one long whiny post.

It's over now and I'm home and out of my work clothes, a delicious low-cost Trader Joe's adult beverage option is at my side, fresh Doctor Who DVD arrived in netflix today. Time to relax.

Instead I bring you this photo from a house being built on my route between home and the park-n-ride.

Why-oh-why would you put your front door way up like that? Will they carry the groceries in through that door? What about the living room furniture?

There was a van by the house when I took the photo and it pulled right in behind me and rolled through two red lights so I thought maybe I was going to have to explain that I intended to mock the front door placement on my website. The van didn't follow me home so I think I'm safe.