PDX III / SEA-TAC

I'm wrapping up my last days and hours here in the Pacific Northwest. Time has gone by quickly, but I feel like I have really been able to relax and enjoy my time as fully as was possible. Vacation. Swell.

I had an ecstatic doughnut experience Saturday morning when Liza took me on a pilgrimage to Portland's famous Voodoo Doughnuts. I chose the $5 bucket of day-olds, which contained no less than 25 doughnuts and 6 enormous fritters. Seriously, these fritters are the size of your face, and they will rock said face right off your head. Pictures can't do this bucket of awesomeness justice, but I took some and will share in the next few days. Just a heads-up: prepare your amazedness and doughnut jealousy now.

Liza and I drove a few hours up the road to Seattle mid-day Saturday to meet up with Scott and Tami and their children Asher and Bella. We stayed in a hotel that was recently converted from a corportate retreat/conference center, so it was kind of perfect for us. The kiddos went to bed early, and the adults got to hang out in comfortable chairs by the fireplace in the lounge and catch up on years of shared history and gaps of togetherness. We told stories and asked questions and talked about all of you people that we know in common. Liza and the Camerons had previously enjoyed an online-only style of friendship, so it was cool that they got to know each other a bit. Catching up with old friends is a special kind of communion.

Sunday we hung out at the hotel a bit in the morning and then explored the University District and some nearby areas in the afternoon. Playing with Asher was great fun, and Bella was a perfect, beautiful little angel. It was a simple, wonderful day that really made me appreciate the power of friendship, and of course these special, priceless friends in particular.

Today Liza and I have been batting clean-up, hitting some shopping and dining spots that we didn't make it to previously or needed to return to. Tomorrow I'm heading back to Chicago and a bit of extra stress at work. My no-good coworkers have been pestering me this week - during my vacation, hello! - about their scheduling issues and things that frankly couldn't concern me less when I'm 2 time zones and a million mental miles away. I snapped pretty hard on the telephone on Saturday, so I'm expecting a little blowback from that. But, whatever. Bitches will be bitches, and I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether I'm talking about myself or them.

Currently disagreeing with Liza on a summary judgement of the movie
500 Days of Summer
and waiting for another Facebook message that may never come.

PDX II

I have all of these really great photos of beautiful Portland girls and wonderful food and I have no way to get them from my phone to my computer for posting here. This is lame. So another boring, imageless blog. Please use your imagination, just like Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street taught us.

*Someday I'd like to own a shop, a business of some sort, where I can choose the music that will be playing. A tea shop, perhaps! Today I wandered into a vintage store of some vintage or another that was playing Bjork on the stereo. And it was perfect, and I marveled.

*The station and safety messages on the Portland light rail are completely bilingual. Every single announcement in both English and Spanish. The female voice tells you that doors will open on her right, and then the male one says that they will open on his derecha. Frankly, it is completely annoying, and I say that from the position of someone who lived in another country where the lingua franca wasn't my own. I am all for helping out people who don't speak English, but making everything completely bilingual is accomodation, not acclimation. And that's not the American way. That's the Quebecan way, and we should all know how well that's worked out.

*I had a fantastic day of socialization yesterday. Meaghan and I got together for a super-sized (conversation-wise, not dietary portion-wise) lunch and marathon catch-up session. She looks fantastic like you wouldn't believe, radiant and alive. We can banter our faces off, and I hope we get to do it again before another seven years passes. Then I had drinks and frommage with Bethanne downtown. Beth and I were destined to be better friends than we've ever been able to actually be. Geographical constraints, sadly. We have such a common perspective, see eye-to-eye on so many things from romance to reconciling ourselves with our past. Time with her was fairly short but intensely gratifying. I love these girls. Then Liza took me to the home of some of her friends where they have a regular group that watches the show "Project Runway" together. That show is way too gay for me, but her friends were fun, dynamic people. I'm glad she's got cool peeps to wear athletic clothing with and keep her company here.

*Tomorrow it is off to Seattle for 24-hours of hang time with Scott, Tami, Asher & Bella! You could say that I'm pretty excited about this, but you'd be selling it a thousand miles short. Is that a mixed metaphor? Hrm.

*And etc.: Pretty disappointed by Maine's big marriage equality rejection earlier this week. Pretty excited about maybe having a date next week. Pretty pissed off by my coworkers bothering me during my vacation time to ask me questions about next week's work schedule. Pretty much always hot and sweating recently. Pretty sure it is menopause-related.

Currently:
Drinking a passion fruit green iced tea that is pretty darn Taiwanese but just a tad bit too fragrant-tasting and has been sealed with a Hello Kitty zodiac lid, so it is all good.

PDX

I'm in Portland! This is a fairly recent development.

First impressions:

*Girl at the decadent desert cafe plopping down a table away from us, typing on a tiny little typewriter with a clack-clack-clack. So counterculture retro chic. So funny. Kudos to her. It was poetry: her typing, and what she was typing.

*The houses in Liza's neighborhood are completely endearing. They are a bit frumpy, a bit unkempt and rough around the edges, not at all the preening, overly manicured homes of the pretentious eastern half of America. They are rich in experience. They have seen better, newer days, and are more loved for these memories that they hold.

*Approximatley 66.7% of the men here have beards. I've already seen 3 or 4 ramshackle Volkswagon vans. Stereotypes exist for a reason.

*I am eating really fantastic food at a fairly rapid rate. Liza and Fred Pierce's famous chili last night, aforementioned mind-blowingly decadend desert at Pix, one of the finest breakfasts of my life this morning at New Deal, and something fabulous and a bit difficult to describe from a food cart for lunch this afternoon. I may gain a pound or two of ass here, which could potentially make the plane ride home more comfortable.

Much more excitement - and food photos! - still to come.

Currently Reading:
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lame Times Three

This is a perfectly lovely little video. If you have six minutes - I know, an eternity in internet video time! - give it a whirl.

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

Where would you wish to wake up tomorrow? That question really suceeded in capturing my imagination the other day. I guess it says a bit about my personality and state of mind that I searched my memory for the most wonderful place that I could remember waking up over the last few years. I rewound to beds and hostels and apartments and morning views from windows in several Central American, Asian, and North American cities. I considered emotions more than company, simple location more than emotion, the past much more than future possibility. But I thought about all of these things. I haven't yet come up with a definitive answer, though I have conjured some great contenders. What a fun thought exercise.

There is a boy that I like. The circumstances of our meeting could not have been more perfectly off-the-wall, more expectedly unexpected. Imagine someone slipping on a banana peel or standing in front of a huge audience with his zipper down and you aren't far off.

Of course, there are a million miles between "There is a boy that I like" and "There is a boy, and he and I are in like with each other." I tend to view this as a similar situation to a job search, though. (That sounds rather dispassionate, doesn't it? My, what a romantic I've unbecome.) The biggest hurdle to getting oneself a new job is scoring an interview; getting past that resume stage, having the opportunity for the sit-down, face-to-face. After that, it is cake and "Where's my cubicle, who signs the overtime slips, please?" (I say this not because it is true for me, but because it is true for every person that reads my blog. Give us a chance, and we succeed.)

So it is pretty much the same thing with friendships and relationships. It is difficult to charm some handsome boy with a Facebook message or make a new friend just by sharing your table with them at the coffee shop. You need a chance to talk, to ask, to wear a new shirt that you love, to show them your favorite restaurant and pay the bill and put your best face forward. So I guess that I'm hoping for that chance.

My coworker is pregnant. Her pregnancy is making me hungry. She just found out that she is expecting on Friday, and she's already eating for two, bringing these elaborate, delicious-smelling meals to work or ordering the most fantastic greasy takeout in a forty block radius. I just realized that the second sentence of this paragraph might make it sound like I want to eat her or her baby. That's funny. I don't.

Currently Listening to:
Sun Kil Moon Ghosts of the Great Highway and
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals Cardinology

Ari and Happy

So I'm walking north on Clark Street this evening, headed out to the coffee palace to drink something wonderful and fall-like and enjoy my book, when this middle-aged gentleman stops me and struggles to get his question out.

"Excuse me...um...do you know if...are there any...how do you call them...um...I'm looking for a bar. Do you know if there are...um...any bars around here?"

He has a Caribbean accent, if that helps. Go back and read that scintillating dialogue with a Caribbean accent, if you please.

"Well, of course," I reply, in what I hope was a kind tone with a slightly condescending, yer-an-idiot, Midwestern sort-of edge. It is a fine art, this Chicago tone. I'm working on it. "There's bars all over here. What are you looking for?"

"I want a...strip bar. Yes, a strip bar."

"Guys or girls?" was my next query.

"Girls, girls," was his rapid reply.

"Wrong neighborhood, pal."

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I'm going to Portland the first week in November to see my old gal pal Liza. I'm so excited about this. Hopefully I'll get to see the Cam'rons for a spell as well. The Pacific Northwest holds so many wonderful people that I love!

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This is an exciting concert week for me. Sunday night Sofia and I are going to support one of our favorite bank customers at his movie premiere/band show. We actually have really good luck with these things; when our customers invite us to their concerts and restaurants and theatre productions, we generally have a really good time and get to appreciate people that we only associate with balances and casual conversation in a cool new way.

Even more exciting, though, is the three night Lucinda Williams concert extravaganza that I'm going to be partaking in on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is her 30th anniversary tour, and she's highlighting music from three different albums on each of the three nights. I'm excited to hear some older and lesser-known, but personal favorite selections.

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I got to go to the opening night of the Chicago International Film Festival this past Thursday night. (Side note: this is because the secret of life - sorry, James Taylor and Oprah - is knowing some well-connected Jews.) It was a fun night, with several celebrities, both actual and local, in attendance. Uma Thurman was there, as was Jacqueline Bisset, Roger Ebert, and Mayor Daley. Uma's new movie Motherhood was the opening film of the festival, and yeah, it was not great. But it doesn't matter that much because I could look at her all day. And since she was there and all, they gave her a Career Achievement award in what had to have been one of the most awesomely awkward ceremonies ever. Seriously, it might have been David Brent giving the award, it was that bad. Michael Kutza, the director or creator or whatever of the festival, needs to be put out to pasture, like, stat. He kept correcting people that he was standing beside at the podium, even Uma! And when he went to give her the award, he couldn't find it, even though it was in the podium. Anyway, the whole thing made Chicago's film community look really third-rate, which it probably is, so no big deal.

Currently Listening to:
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals Follow the Lights and
The Format Interventions and Lullabies and
Lucinda Williams World Without Tears