scenes from a quiet autumn weekend

Pretty Fall Tree













Tram and South Waterfront construction



















I especially dig the temporary staircase

Cat Jacked!

Update! The car was found unharmed except for a stain from a melty bag of groceries on the carpet.




This was about to be a post about my trip to Silver Falls State Park. I've got some mediocre pictures on flickr, check them out. It pretty much tells the story. I didn't get a pic of the world's largest glockenspeil in Mt. Angel, or the divey bar where we ate lunch in Silverton, on the "creekside deck" which turned out to be a perch high above a beer commercial rocky shallow creek.
Only pics of the falls loop hike. They all kinda look like dollar store jigsaw puzzles. Oh yeah, and the punk rock wooley worm on the way back to the
car...
The big story however is that of my upstairs neighbors, Satchmo & Beatrix. Satch has lived up there forever, B is a recent addition. The two of them run amok, back and forth across the apartment for about 15 minutes as soon as their person leaves each morning.

The two have been in an unfortunate adventure as of late...
So, their person pulls up to her S.O.'s place in the 'Couv. She takes some stuff inside, leaves the car unlocked because she's going back out to get the cats in just a minute. Then the car drives away, cats inside... KGW tells the story better than I can.

Good news! I have just rubbed Satch's ears. He is now home safe and B will be returning shortly. As for the car, neighbor is driving an unfortunate PT Cruiser with CA plates, which tells me that her Mazda has not yet returned home.

At Your Service

I just noticed this truck the other day in one of the weird COP parking lots under the Minnesota Freeway. I'm sure he's been there for a long time, in a forgotten corner of the gravel lot where city vehicles go to die.

This one is even more curious since Powell Valley was a weird little independent water district out in SE Portland, about 39,000 customers between the 205 & Gresham. It held its own until 2005 when it was absorbed (sorry) into the Portland Water Bureau. I imagine this truck as one of the three vehicles they were using out there that the Water Bureau decided to keep around for posterity.

I really liked Mr. Dropsy (not his real name) and had to look for some other images of this loyal public utility mascot and found him still alive and well, and a little updated, still the jovial face of various water utility districts around the country.

No one in the world ever gets what they want, And that is beautiful
Everybody dies frustrated and sad, And that is beautiful

Geeking out with a little TMBG tonight after that line was stuck in my head all day.
I remember it being really profound in the 9th grade, and tonight this is still one of my all time favorite lyrics from any song, ever.
Watch the video!
And watch Anna Ng while you're at it.
Come to think of it, I wonder if Anne Ng still works at the Bangkok Kitchen?

Warrior Point

"In their way hither they had passed two Indian villages on the west side of the river and had been joined by a hundred and fifty of the natives in twenty-five canoes. To avoid any surprise they dined in their boats; this precaution, however, was unnecessary, for on some trivial presents being made a trade immediately commenced, in which the Indians conducted themselves with the utmost decorum. No attempts were made to pass the line drawn on the beach, excepting by two, who appeared to be the principal chiefs, and who were permitted to join the party. These seemed to be very well disposed, and inclined to communicate every information, but unfortunately for our gentlemen, a total ignorance of the Indians' language precluded their profiting by these friendly intentions." -From the Center for Columbia River History.


A couple Saturday mornings ago G and I were up and out into the crisp fall morning, for the hike to the northernmost point of Sauvie Island. Cross the bridge, stop and buy your parking permit from the little store, drive out until the road turns to gravel, go past Collins Beach, keep going for another two miles until the road ends in a parking lot. Climb the gate, walk across the pasture of friendly cows, and you can begin to pick out the former road heading into the Cottonwood forest.
We ended up abandoning this trail about 1/2 mile in as the river was very low and we realized we would be able to walk all the way up the beach, which was a great decision. Lots of frogs, clams, and other river critters. Plenty of beachey things to look at, and views of all the Cascades from Rainier to Hood make this one of the most beautiful stretches of beach I've ever walked.


About halfway to the lighthouse, we came across this cool little shipwreck.






















The town of St. Helens, Oregon, across the entrance of Scappoose Bay.



















This little guy was the only bright point of the hike out through the nettles. On our trip back out we realized that if we hadn't walked to the Point along the beach, we probably wouldn't have made it all the way. Late September means the blackberries and nettles are in full force, in some places we chose to tromp through the nettles instead of the blackberries. I learned to like the sting...
There were at least four of these little frogs in the tree, but the little bastards are hard to take a picture of.

Random thoughts...

I fried some chicken for supper tonight and it made a greasy mess of the floor in front of the stove. I cleaned it with some of that grapefruit kitchen cleaner from Target. Now the spot in front of the stove is really shiny clean, I feel like I need to clean the rest of the kitchen floor to match...

My ipod needs charged (done 9/08)

I need to clean the guinea pig's cage (done 9/08)

What do ya'll call your evening meal? In my family it was always "supper". "Dinner" was around noon time if you were at home, "lunch" was what you took to school or work. "Supper" was the evening meal. (confirmed 9/09 by G's 92 year old grandfather from Idaho, from Missouri parents, Pork Tenderloin Belt.)

New job is cool. Everyone I've encountered so far is okay, but there's like a hundred people, so I've only met a small percentage of them.
Next week I'll be trucking t-shirts around the metro area every afternoon in a big ol' box truck. Watch out! I haven't driven a stick shift regularly in five years, let alone 7 tons of Japanese diesel. I'm sure there'll be some bucking and grinding for the first few days.
Today I spent my afternoon unpacking and sorting shirts for our upcoming outlet sale. Mark it on your calenders! Friday Sep 15 and Saturday Sep 16. Lots and lots of cheap t shirts, and at least half of them are cool shit! We print a lot of shirts, and sometimes they're just not right. Perhaps the color wasn't quite what the customer wanted, maybe the wrong font was used and no one noticed until the whole job was printed. That's what the outlet sale is all about.
In my sorting I haven't found any real gems yet, like the VIRGINA hats that my friend once encontered at her job with "Hat World." My favorite find of the day had to be the pink Womens XXL shirt with a picture of a tiara and text that read "American Princess."
Everything at the sale is $2 and up, most t-shirts around the $3-$4 range. The entrance is near SE 8th & Salmon, (look for the loading dock on the SW corner). Right near that hideous "active space" building and across the street from that vending machine place and right behind my 2nd favorite bento joint.

Blogworthy

Going through a bunch of pictures and posting stuff to my flickr set, and found a couple pics I deemed "blogworthy" but haven't posted until now.

These ain't no Veggie Tales...

Yo yo yo, its the urban 'mater!Found this guy growing out of a crack in the loading dock of an almost abandoned building down by the train station. There's even a few little tomatos trying to ripen.

The last few weeks

I've been kinda busy with the job hunt over the past few weeks, the blog sort of fell by the wayside, and even now that I'm no longer on the searh, I just haven't got back into it. The job hunt was successful by the way, my last day at the Oil Shack is the 1st of September, then I have a nice 3-day weekend in Seattle, puppy-sitting for some friends, (the closest thing we're getting to a vacation this year,) then Tuesday is my first day at the new job.


I've been out enjoying the waning days of summer here and there but I'm just not summer people. Its so hot and sunny for two whole months here and I hate it! Luckily, the whole ordeal is almost over for this season and we can get back to green grass, moss on the trees, and the sound of Tri-Met splashing up the street every 15 minutes.

We did manage to make it out to Kelly Point the other day. That's the park at the confluence of the mighty Willamette and the mightier Columbia. Not exactly a popular swimming beach, but every dog and even a few of us humans were out in it. It was a hot day, and the Willamette was nice to stand waist deep in.



Some really huge boats were floating by pretty close to the beach, reminding us that we were right between Terminal 5 and Terminal 6. That boat in the front is a pretty big craft, but the big'un is just crazy huge!

What's that smell?

"Wow, that guy sure has a lot of mattresses. I wonder what that's all about?"

(Scroll down for the shocking truth)














Sorry, but I just had to share this pic that G took a couple days ago. Ick! It kinda makes me wretch a little. Beware the craigslist mattress...

Hello?

Oregarus reminded me of a few things today, one of which is the fact that I haven't posted anything new here in like 2 weeks or some shit.
The other is this clip (yeah, I know, "YouTube Dumpster" and such...)
I hadn't seen this in at least 15 years, but now it seems brilliant, at least in a Hoosier context. Every IU basketball game started out this way. I still can't figure out who that lady is. What is her name, what's her story?
Also, notice the Hook's Drugs ad. Sweet! I totally forgot about Hook's Drugs. (The only better pharmacy name also resides in Indiana--Corydon's Butt Drugs.) My folks still have one of the tiny Hook's carts in their garage. How tiny is it? Tiny enough that it was stolen in the back of a Ford Festiva. Last time I was home, Mom was using it for laundry.

Portland from the bluff

G's Flicker Set

Some pics from around Portland, courtesy of G.

Holy Shit, Hee Haw

These were the only words out of my mouth as I was flipping through channels the other night. Any of ya'll who grew up in the south (or in the doormat of the south) will have fond or not so fond memories of the Hee Haw. On the Terre Haute station, I remember Solid Gold coming on right after Hee Haw. Maybe that's just my wierd little kid memories, but what a culturefuck.
Anyway, Hee Haw is on CMT now, just last weekend there was a Hee Haw marathon, and this week there seems to be an hour or two on every night.


On a side note, I once touched Roy Clark's hair plugs.
Long story short, I did audio and light tech work for a show starring Roy Clark, Frank Sinatra Jr, (he was a dick) and Tommy Smothers (who was also kind of a dick, but in a different way.)
After the show, I'm loading equipment into Roy Clark's tour bus, trying to clear all the shit out of the venue, and I turn around to Roy himself, hoisting a crate into the bus, bumping his head into my arm. A true brush with fame. Roy is an awesome guy to work with.

Lazy night...

A refreshing night, but pretty lazy as well. We planned on at least going to the 5th Q for $2 pint night. They have the Proletariat Red as the seasonal from May Day for all us worker bees, go easy on 'em and they're awesome!
So hard to pass up ridiculously cheap beer in my nieghborhood, but after yoga and making some dinner and watching some TV, all ambition was lost. Even the will to walk a few blocks for tasty beer is gone.

This is on a mailbox on an alarmingly quiet corner deep in a part of NW Industrial where I hadn't ventured until yesterday. Somewhere around 17th & Upshur.


Really makes me wish there was some sort of pedestrian crossing at the Fremont Bridge. I'd climb whatever crazy ass staircase it takes. By car, this neighborhod is three minutes away in good traffic, but as a walker person you have to walk down to the Broadway, and then back up the other side of the river for 25 blocks or so. What about a water taxi? Where's my flying car?!?