Road trip part 2

lj-mood: idle

Portland was fun. I got there late, around 8:00pm after around 11 hours of driving (14 hours after I started). I called my friend and we went and had dinner at McMenamins. Their Cobb Salad with Cajun Spiced Chicken was barely spicy enough to keep my taste buds happy. Their Terminator Ale got me nice and mellow for a walk to Powell’s city of books. Which was amazing. I was tired enough that I buy anything right then: one of the rare occasions where I walked out of a bookstore without buying anything. We then walked down to Voodoo Donuts. It was close to midnight by then, and luckily for us the place was empty and I got to take my time on my selection.

I had the bacon maple donut. It put just enough sugar into my system that I could speedwalk back to where I was staying (on NW 22nd & NW Flanders).

I woke up late on Tuesday and walked down NW 23rd to have brunch at St Honore a cute and very busy bakery. It was a nice day and I got to sit outside in the sun with a book, a quiche and a pot of tea until it was time to join my friends writing group at Fat Straw on the South East side.

I explored a few cafés and more patisseries and not to mention pubs and more pubs.

Ok, I ate a lot and drank a lot. I also walked a lot.

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Road trip

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Adventures in the back yard

Almost won the battle with the blackberry brambles. Silly things propagate via underground roots so I had to follow them around digging them out. Not fun, but very satisfying.

And the squee was for my cherry tree. I’ll have cherries this year if the birds don’t get to them first.

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Spring is sprung. (or something…)

I’ve been spending time weeding and cleaning up the backyard. And I thought I’d share some of the wonderful in pictures.

There’s youth, beauty, innocence, betrayal and inter-species sex.

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Blueberry wine…

The blueberry wine/port is coming along nicely.

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Way to go att!

Got this in the mail:

You are Included in a Class Action Settlement Involving Your DSL Service

A proposed Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit alleging that AT&T failed to deliver DSL Service to its customers at the speeds promised…

<verbiage cut to get to the important part>

you may submit a Claim Form, and you may be entitled to a one-time payment of $2.00. Claim Forms must be submitted online or sent by U.S. Mail postmarked on or before July 1, 2010.

Whew. That will pay for a whole cup of tea at Muddys and let me use their wifi for as long as they let me sit there! Thanks ATT!

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something…

I was laid off on Monday. Over the phone. While I was visiting a friend of mine who had recruited me into this job back in 1997.

I went in today to pick up my stuff and get the details on the severance package from HR. While driving home after that, my ipod, which is on random and annoys people when it plays individual tracks by Kishore Kumar; Liz Phair; Scorpions; Abba; Mozart; Iron Horse and Julie London, started playing Happy days are here again.

Moar! Moar!

OMG. More of this please?

kthxbye!

Star

One of my favourite activities at Christmas in Goa was building the barn for the nativity scene or crib as we called it. We use to whittle bamboo into narrow strips for the frame of the house, and then go out and fetch dried wild grass and use that to build the roof by using the bamboo to hold the grass in place.

And once that was done, we built a star that we would hang in front of the house. Most families built very elaborate stars. We would build a simple one – two five pointed frame tied together with spacers in the middle. It was then covered with tissue paper, decorated and hung.

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I didn’t get to do a crib this year, but I did get to help out with the star.

2009 Book log

Obviously, I had a lot of time on my hands in 2009.
Most of those books were also under 200 pages.
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