4 days ago
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
OBurma for OBAMA!
Man, am I tired. Today was the first day of school. I guess I should clarify that YESTERDAY was the first day of school. I managed to make it home before 2am, but I had an action packed day. It started out with reading the blogs that I read every day. I found out that my brothers live in Kansas now. Holy shit! fucking Kansas? WTF? I know that's a lot of base language, but really? FUcking KanSAS? ARGGGHHHH. I also found out that my dad and family moved from tiny boring Lyman, Wy. to tiny boring St. George, UT. The great thing about that move is that the weather is so much better in St. George, not to mention that we've got very important family there. That information arrived early. I left for school and managed to make it 7.49 miles in about 27 minutes. The weather in Portland today was muggy and hot. . . thank god!
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Japanese class scared the shit out of me. 4 days out of 5 per week will be taught in Japanese. The instructor was calling on people randomly to repeat phrases that make no sense in any romantic language. It's a beautiful sound, but so foreign. I understand that their chosen method is to implement a culture of listening rather than reading. I wish I could have taken notes, though.
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After a 4 hour break, I had 3d design class. Talk about a pain in the ass. . . The instructor seems nice enough, but his demeanor is neither engaging or inspiring this early in the term. Furthermore, we were fortunate to receive a powerpoint presentation that not only took 4o minutes to begin due to a lack of technological proficiency, but failed to inspire me to appreciate my instructors aesthetic taste. Sure, his craftsmanship is inspiring, but this isn't art-school make no mistake. Having had 6 terms at PCC, which costs next to nothing, yet manages to provide an engaging education along with a very well stocked studio, regardless of media, I'm feeling less than lukewarm about PSU. I know I'm judging prematurely, but I have a hard time being reasonable, knowing that there isn't a pottery wheel on campus.
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Fast forward to a text message from Aljon notifying me that he had bought me a ticket to Mission of Burma. WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOWOWWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOW
I thought I would never have the opportunity to see Mission Of Burma. I'm still ringing in the ears. I don't know why I stood so close to the amps, but I did. It sounded great and despite the fact that those guys are really old, they killed it! Seriously, I love that band and seeing them live is a gift that I did not expect. Pictures are on the way.
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now I have to eat some tamales and hit the sack. I'm tired!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The waning season
We had a really fun show last night. Pony Village was great. The Squids was awesome, with a five man assault. We had a fun set and aside from some trouble keeping my floor tom mic attached, and breaking through my kick drum head, it was pretty smooth. I received a copy of Ed Cole's new band's disc. The Underlings are a rock band from Eugene. Some of the songs are really old Cole' classics and many are new aggressive rock and roll songs. I'm looking forward to giving it a lot more spin time.
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Today we got up and made a salad with orzo pasta, green beans, cherry tomatoes and fresh corn off the cob. The dressing was olive oil, mustard, shallots, vinegar, tarragon, salt and pepper. We took our salad over to the Jones' house and hung out with a lot of very nice people. The sun shined, the people smiled and hopefully, we all soaked in a last little bit of summer. I think it's so important to get together and share food and conversation in the weather. It happens too seldom in my life. I'll have to make a point of doing it more often.
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Tiff and I were talking today about how to instill a sense of social leadership in our children. How awesome would it be if our kids asked to have a potluck, where each child prepared and brought their favorite dish to a party? Can you imagine? Peanut butter and banana sandwiches, corndogs, hotdogs, mac n' cheese with potato chips on top etc. . . The idea of that is pretty great to me.
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I'm getting ready to start school tomorrow. I've been waiting so impatiently for a couple of months and now I'm starting to panic. I don't know why I'm worried, I've done this all before, but I'm a little nervous. I think the main thing I'm worried about is starting a language class. I'm taking Japanese. With no real connection to any language I'm even remotely familiar with, it's a daunting thing to imagine. Is language all decoding, or does logic or comprehension come into play this late in the game? Language acquisition as an infant is so much easier. Our brains operate on a principal of "use it or lose it". At almost 30 years old, I've lost a lot.
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Here goes. . .
Dotonlog from Kelly's Olympian
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Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Wings, Anal and a Flat Tire
I had dinner with Aljon last night at Fire On The Mountain. It's not very good, but it's not very bad there. The mural on the wall makes me want to murder. It's really terrible. I'll be posting some pictures of it, so that everybody can check their rage before they head down for some wings. I don't know why a person would include Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and Einstein in a mural with a giant guitar at a wings restaurant, or anywhere - ever.
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On the way home I remembered that Brian and I had considered grabbing a weekday drink, so I texted him while riding, which is a bad idea. Sure enough, he was doing the dishes so I stopped in and dried a few dishes. We headed over to the A&L which, as one might suspect, we refer to as the Anal. It's not a shitty bar or anything, but it's divey. Not Top Of The Hill divey, but it's not a nice bar. I somehow managed to ring up a tab that was not commensurate with my purchase. After parting ways with Brian and Kelley, I jumped on my bike to ride home only to find that I had gotten a flat tire. Feeling a little bummed and a little buzzed, I opted to pump it up and try to ride it home before it deflated. I made it about 5 blocks. I had to stop 4 times on the way home and pump it up. It seemed like a better idea than trying to patch it in the dark. I made it home and walked to the 7-11 for an unhealthy snack.
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Winterizing already
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I keep forgetting the titles
More Pedro The Lion this morning upon waking up. I got a job at Portland Public Schools as a ESL tutor. Many people think that you have to know other languages to teach English as a second language. This would be helpful at times, but it's not really a requirement. Mainly one has to be comfortable communicating in English and proficient with Body Language. I hope.
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I just bought a plane ticket to NYC for CMJ. A couple of years ago I bought a ticket to NY for $99 each way. Today, it was over double that price. I've heard that there is actually a tunnel that runs from Portland to Brooklyn, but I don't know where it is, which sucks, cause I could really use the savings.
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I'm looking forward to playing a show this weekend. Dan Jones and the Squids are coming up from Bl(eu)jean. Pony Village is also on the bill. It's a Valiant Arms show and the posters are fucking amazing as per Rob Jones' standard offering.
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I'm posting some pictures of the ride back from Race For The Cure. They were taken on my phone, which is not an iPhone(damn) and they're not very clear.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Football season
Leaving the house today, I took note of the cool crisp air and the cold sunshine of early autumn. Now, sitting on my couch shivering, I'm cursing the change of season. Curse you cold weather, curse you!
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In Boise, growing up, we played a lot of football. We played in on the lawn of the apartment complex I lived in. As the sunshine grew colder and colder in the fall, the ground became harder and harder. Tackling one another became more and more painful until finally, we stopped playing football outside. The nice thing about the change of the season was that it signified a change in sport. I stopped playing football, and wrestling season began. That was always a significant change in temperature. The hot sweaty locker rooms, and dudes in sweats running for a couple of hours straight, meant a musty overheated den of testosterone and awkward youth. Nevertheless, after practice, it was back into the biting dry cold of Boise. I walked a couple of miles home. I wasn't a bad wrestler, but I never won a match. Walking home after matches, Boise seemed even colder.
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After high school I worked at a movie theater in Boise. Motorcycle was my primary form of transportation. One nice thing about Boise is that it is very dry, so sometimes you might make it a whole winter without the snow touching down in town. That meant that I could ride to work almost all winter. In the fall, I started bundling up, the helmet came out of the closet(right, I didn't wear a helmet in the summer) to keep the freezing wind off of my face. I would get off of work at 11pm or midnight, and ride home. I was too young to drink, and too poor for booze, anyway. In hindsight, it was pretty great.
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When I moved to Oregon, fall was something completely different. While the trees were bare in Boise; Oregon offered a kaleidoscope of golden red and brown autumnal bliss. Did I mention that psychedelics are so much easier to get in Oregon than in Idaho? The rain started falling and everything turned the most beautiful deep green I had seen in my life. I spent that first Fall in Eugene, driving around in my Saab with one tape, Built to Spill's teaser for Keep it Like A Secret. I think it has 4 songs, and Tiffani and I would drive around listening to the tape over and over again. Sometimes we would get coffee at Cafe Paradiso and listen to open mic. Other times, we'd grab pizza and eat it in her dorm. I don't remember specific events, but rather feelings and sensations that I attribute to the season as much as anything else.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Run a 5k, get a foot rub. . .
It was still night when we got up to go run Race For The Cure. We rode our bikes downtown in the dark. The streets were wet and the city was so still and peaceful. It was nice to ride past homes where people were waking up and starting their day. Some were making tea or sitting at their kitchen tables reading the paper. It was easy to see what they were up to at a glance. By the time we made it to waterfront park, the sky was turning a dull gray. I had to pick up my bib and timing chip for the race so I went to get it and after they told me they didn't have anything in my name, I remembered that I signed up as Tractor Operator and not Eric. Apparently, they thought it was a joke. We connected with Tiff's school folks. A couple of her co-workers are battling Cancer right now, so they all got together and walked the One-Mile option. My race started at 7:30 and they started at 8:00 so I was able to run my 5k and then walk their mile with them. Tiff says it's a good idea to find somebody and stay with them for their pace, I tried to find somebody with a cute butt and a good pace to follow, but all the cute butts were moving slower than I wanted. The benefit of that situation is that I saw a lot of cute butts rather than just one.
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After the race, we ate breakfast at Zells. Zells is on 13th and Morrison. They do a good job with straight up American breakfast. I had a corned beef hash and Tiff had the 2&2&2, which is 2 eggs, 2 pancakes and 2 pieces of protein(bacon, sausage, chx sausage etc. . .) My CBH was tasty and well done. The eggs were cooked to perfection on top of their house made corned beef and hashbrowns. Neither of us had potatoes, which is a shame, because their potatoes are always delicious. I know that hashbrowns are potatoes, I mean home-fries type potatoes.
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Now that we're home and have cleaned the house, it's an episode of Dexter and then some grocery shopping. Maybe a nap, I'm beat.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
At the end of the night we fuss and we fight. . .
Approaching 2am, I realize that cooking is an art. I'm not necessarily an artist when it comes to cooking.
I've had a really nice time hanging out with friends tonight. The movie thing was as bad as I had thought it would be, but as you might imagine, the free drinks and fine company made for a great night. We ended up at the Basement Pub, where Al decided to make it a "red beer" night. Good conversation and catching up with old friends made for a lovely time.
The ride home was fairly boring, aside from a stop at the market where every other aisle was blocked off so I dashed from place to place looking for beef, cheese and buns. I should point out that my bike was on my shoulder. Eventually I found all of the ingredients and made my way past Brian and Kelley's place. I was the asshole whistling at 12:45am on that block in case anybody was confused.
Now that I've been home long enough to make some food, I'm finding that it's just not the same when you cook for yourself. I can't help but wish that someone was here to share the meal I just prepared. Really, It was worthy of more than one. . .
Friday, September 19, 2008
A movie about skinny white kids on Belmont, Hopworks and I hate Cancer, but not enough to train.
After another week of having my Mom in town, Tiff and I are picking up the house and getting things in order for yet more company. The thing about company is that it's nice to see people and to spend time, but when you don't get to leave and go home and unwind or deflate, it can be fatiguing. That's me, fatigued. But really, what the hell am I complaining about?
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Tiff, Al and I went to Hopworks last night. Hopworks is a brewpub on Powell and 33rd(ish). The food was bland, but not offensive and the service was good. The beer was delicious and probably a little too strong for Tiff on a school night. I had a calzone which wasn't really seasoned but seemed to contain fairly pleasant ingredients. Their happy hour offerings aren't very aggressive, but I could see it being a nice place to grab a beer and a $2.50 slice of pizza after work. It was hard to get a table.
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Al and I are attending a local movie "teaser" tonight. The story is about 5 college friends who graduate and struggle to find their place in the world. It gets complicated when one of the friends goes to Iraq and dies in combat. I must say that I am very skeptical. Not only does this sound boring, but also sort of falls victim to the illusion that a person's job/life is interesting to other people. . . Do people genuinely care about other people's lives? I care about my friends, sure, but caricatures of hipsters, who in ten years will seem completely ridiculous aren't much besides passing thoughts. The majority of people in town already think the hipsters are ridiculous; I should know because that ridicule stings. Maybe the point isn't always to make something timeless and classic, after all, what would the world be like if everybody only created instant-classic-masterpieces? I'm just being rude. I think the event will be fun, and it gives me something to do on a Friday night besides drinking tallboys of coors light and playing GTA.
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Race For The Cure is on Sunday and I haven't run at all in the last few months except for during MusicFest which you can read about at Dave's blog. Good thing the RFTC isn't called Train For The Cure, otherwise I'd die from guilt of not doing my part.
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I've been listening to Pedro The Lion lately. This stuff is fucking great!
Monday, September 15, 2008
I feel like hell.
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Al and I went to North last night. North is a nice bar over on Division and 50th. Last time we went to that bar, I ended up breaking into a vehicle in order to shut off a person's headlights(I didn't damage anything), losing a $65 bike lock, getting a flat tire while searching for the bike lock and walking my ass home with my bike on my shoulder. The walk home involved walking over Mt. Tabor and a flying yard art flamingo. So, I'm beginning to recognize a pattern in that a night at North with Al means danger. Last night wasn't so different. I didn't try to save anybody the trouble of jump starting their car, and I didn't get a flat tire, but I did wake up confused and very hungover. Now I have to go take my sister out for her 21st birthday.
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I met up with Johnny Leach for a taco at the truck on 34th and Division. It was delicious. He got a job at a place called KO in Manhattan. There are no menus, no servers and they only serve 24 people per night. Three cooks serve two seatings of 12 people in an open kitchen. 18 courses will run $160 per person. It sounds amazing.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Saturday sunshine and sewing machines with hypnotic qualities
The sun is shining today and I'm sort of hiding from it.
Tiffani caught a happy hour with her fellow teachers last night before we met up with Kelly and Sara for a little top of the hill action. Top of the Hill is our favorite super dive bar. As we were playing some pool and drinking Coors light, I happened to look around at the clientele and was happy to note that white people were not the majority, actually if there was a majority ethnicity in the house, the margin was so slim. After a couple beers; the bartender, Bernie, was kind enough to drop off the Karaoke binders. I don't sing Karaoke, but apparently Tiff does! If you've heard Tiff sing, you know that this is hilarious. She was singing some terrible song by Shania Twain, or maybe it was Dixie Chicks or probably it was both. The bar was jumping, we were singing along with every song and getting a bit drunk. Kelly and I had Jaeger-bombs, GROSS! and DELICIOUS! and ewww. Ended the night with some chili cheese fritos and a late night walk around the neighborhood. I realized I was hungover today when I was at a yardsale and discovered that I had been staring at a sewing machine for probably 3 minutes without a thought in my head.
Tiff, Kelly and Sara had a birthday obligation today so they went and toured around the wine country in a bus with a bunch of folks. I managed not to clean a damn thing. It's a wonder they were able to drink wine at all today.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Spiders, Wombs and the Corporate Shitbag
I love that my friend Diane states that, "Sarah Palin is George Bush with a womb." I don't know much about that woman, but I don't like her - and what a mean thing to say about a womb. Maybe it's just the shape of her head, or it could be that I'm not ready for the irony of a conservative republican acting in a manner that could be considered hypocritical (her daughter is a teenage preggo), perhaps it's simply that I haven't prepared for another Republican term. I've heard nice things about alaska, however, and somebody I like lives there. . . Oh, Politics! At least if she becomes VP we'll be able to pillage the village that is Alaskan Oil.
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So, last night after dinner, I took some multivitamins. I don't know why I take them at night lately, but I do. Wait I remember, it's because last time I took them in the morning, I held my head between my knees for about 90 miles of the trip back to Portland from Eugene, trying desparately not to wash the inside of Gardiner's Ford with the contents of my stomach. I know better than to take them on an empty stomach, but I did and I paid for it. It was probably the drinks from the night before had something to do with compounding my weak stomach lining's inability to cope with a multivitamin, but now I'm rambling. Point is, last night it kept me up. Lying in bed reading, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a fucking huge spider crawling around T's head. Not on it, just around it. It was big, not Indiana or Chicago big, but for Portland, it was a mammoth of a spider. I spent the next half hour re-directing it with my book so that it wouldn't crawl on her. Eventually it crawled out the window and I continued reading. I don't know why I don't smash spiders anymore, but I don't like to do it. I guess I'm getting sentimental.
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Normally I would be off to work at this point, but after some interest slightly-unethical corporate behavior, I'm finding it nearly impossible to drag my ass back in there. I'm not surprised that GC would act the way they have, but I'm surprised at my not seeing it coming. I'm getting soft. I have always sort of hated GC. They undercut local businesses by selling on the slimmest of margins, and they offer their full time employees a shitty healthcare package. They don't pay well, even for those that have worked there for years, and they create a hostile environment for staff. It's a really strange thing that I work there. It's definitely time for a change.
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I'm looking forward to my little sister's 21st on Monday.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Early afternoon flip a coin and get out of bed.
Talk about a sobering morning. Alright, it's noon, and I just rolled out of bed. Made a press of coffee and sat down to read my favorite blog, which I read every day. I wasn't sure what to listen to as I lie in bed waiting for the right time to get up, and when I did find that time, it was Bonnie Prince Billy. The songs are so melancholy and beautiful. Normally that would be great, except BikeSnobNYC's blog is about the fine line between life and death and how yesterday in Brooklyn he happened upon a puddle of blood which had been disconnected from it's cyclist.
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I learned how to ride a bike when I was 5, and I rode a lot as a kid. I tried to learn tricks and ride wheelies. I started riding less when I was given rollerblades as a kid and after those I skateboarded. Somewhere along the way I began to hate riding bikes. Then last year I started loving it. I try to use it as my only form of transportation, except in Grand Theft Auto of course where I prefer to steal and ride police motorcycles. The point is, riding is dangerous when you're a kid because of the pressure to do tricks and go fast. As an adult, the danger is deadlier because of the confusion between drives and riders. Commuters die a lot and for those operating the vehicles that share the responsibility, life can never be the same. As a rider, I follow most of the rules of the road, just like when I'm a driver. In both capacities, I keep my eyes open. Maybe that's all we can do.
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I've been avoiding mowing the lawn for a month. Don't worry, the lawn doesn't grow in the summer. The weeds, however, are another story. Maybe I'll do that today. I wish school would start.
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Anybody want to ride bikes?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
I just spent 2 hours catching up with friends via the blog-o-sphere and decided, that if I care enough to check them out, they might like to look at mine occasionally. I started this account just so that I could post comments on BikeSnobNYC's blog with a sense of ownership. . .
so last night I had this crazy dream. I know, you're probably thinking "you can stop right there", but whatever. I should preface this with saying that I've been playing video games a bit lately and the game I've been playing is Grand Theft Auto. I know that I'm 29 years old and that video games are "for losers" and kids, but it's an experiment, so leave me alone. My dream started out as just a repeat of the pre-bedtime stomping I was giving drug dealers, corrupt cops and old ladies on the street, in the game. Eventually, however, it changed and I was trying to get a job teaching ceramics to kids. . . how does that transition work? I have no clue. I had transported two room pots, in the style of Paul Soldner to this school that purportedly had a great ceramics program. They were works in progress and I was positioning myself so that the instructor I wanted to work for/with would notice that I could build big pots. The main problem was that the pots were greenware and I had allowed parts to reach bone dry, while other parts were still wet. As you know this leads to serious structural instability during the drying process. I knew this was the case and decided to toss them after my interaction with the instructor. The problem I ran into was that I didn't want him to see me toss them, because then he might think that I didn't value my "process" but unfortunately the clay recycling was located in the studio. I couldn't dispose of the pots responsibly without "outing" myself and so I had to throw them in the trash. It wasn't until after I woke up that I realized that it was highly likely that in a school clay program, they were probably using low or medium fire clay and since I like stoneware, I probably could have sited that as a reason for not recycling my clay. I'm such a sucker.
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