It’s windy, and I can’t sleep. Looking out the back door, the flag at the church a block away is blowing west hard enough that it looks like a school child’s drawing of a flag. My maternal grandmother hated the East wind. She told me as a child that a strong East wind blew a brick off of the chimney and it hit her. I thought at the time that was a funny reason to not like a particular subset of air movement, but whenever I notice that a strong East wind is blowing I think of that story now. There has always been something unsettling to me about wind out of the East, even before I was told that story. I don’t know what it is, maybe there’s a part of my subconscious that expects the general weather to move from the West and gets riled up if it encounters something contrary to its expectations.
It sounds like the random junk in the driveway is clattering around, which is funny because I’ve moved it all inside the garage. On Friday I even gathered up all the spare lumber from the build and moved it into a semi-organized pile near the back of the garage in expectation for this weeks storms, and I even managed to get a couple lengths of rain gutter hung up. It’s almost strange to look out the back and not see the big silver tarp looming over the back corner where the sheeting lay for almost a year. I really wanted to get more done before a lasting snowfall, but it looks like this may be it.
To be honest, though, this has never been a good time of the year for me. Not anything to do with the holidays in and of themselves, but from when the days start getting noticeably shorter the dark depression hangs over me. I often wonder if it’s as silly as being afraid of the East wind. Does it hit because I expect it to come with a sun that doesn’t rise very far above the horizon?
This year has even had an added bonus. The first cold and stormy day I found a pair of gloves in a hat and bundled up to go to work. Something in the combination of the extra outerwear and the snow took me back to the January before last when I was going for my chemotherapy every weekday, and for a few minutes I had a reaction just like I was back on the Interferon. They had told me that I needed to dress extra warm and take precautions so I didn’t get sick, because the chemo would have me weakened anyway, and if I got sick then my immune system would have to fight two battles, or something like that. Normally I don’t wear anything other than a coat, and in High School I even toughed it out a couple years in an unlined Levi jacket. Maybe it’s my way of saying that if it’s not winter, then I won’t get depressed.
Anyway, when I would go for the infusion I wore a nice coat that Jack gave me when he ungrew out of it. I’d also put on gloves, a hat and scarf. Something about the ritual of it every morning was comforting and unusual. Combined with the pain of the treatment and the cheerfulness and compassion of the Huntsmen Cancer Center staff it made a complex impression on me that I think is embedded in my already turbulent winter gestalt. There’s something really confusing about a feeling that makes your joints ache, your stomach fall and puts a happy smile on your face at the same time. But I hadn’t expected the feeling to hang on this long, and for some reason I don’t remember it happening last year.
And maybe that’s why sleep just won’t come right now. The East wind is blowing and I fear that somewhere out there lurks a brick with my name on it…
More walking
Lots more walking around today and some impressive scenery, but my camera ran out of batteries just as I came across this first one. Lots of artists choke on large installations, I think. But this one was really nice, especially once I looked at the close-ups and could make out the interconnected pieces. I got the feeling in art school I was a little too simple and literal to be considered much good, but I’m all about simple beauty. And size is hard.
Walking in Portland
Today was the first day of the Supercomputing 09 conference. It’s been one of the highlights of my year for the six times I’ve been able to attend before this one. It’s fun to go see what is up with the industry and see whats new and interesting, but I’ve really had a ball just walking around most of the cities that I’ve got the chance to visit.
Portland has kind of a funny vibe so far. I’ve been here a couple times before, but always alone and always just for the afternoon as I was on my way to the coast. This is the first chance that I’ve had to just spend time aimlessly poking around. I’m really digging the variety of architecture, especially the late 1800’s masonry and the way the regooding hasn’t seemed to caught it all yet. One of the best examples I saw of this today was a preserved corner facade of a building that separated another building from the street, complete with trees growing inside the old building space. If my legs work tomorrow I’m going to see if I can’t get some better pictures when there’s some light, and when I have something other than my phone to capture it.
I’ve also not seen so many people begging for cash since Baltimore in ’02, and the Baltimore panhandlers were at least soft-spoken lot and only gave each person one shot. Most of the ones I’ve been approached by here are persistent and fairly obnoxious. The homeless situation here is heartbreaking, as you can’t walk from here to the convention center without seeing several people wrapped in blue tarps in doorways and under the bridges. The hotel in which I’m staying has two buildings next door that have little cardboard gates in front of their stoops with people huddled against the chill and the rain. I’m not sure as to what good a 1′ high cardboard barrier provides, but maybe it’s a talisman for personal space.
The light rail system is really nice for getting around as we’re in the free-fare zone, although it does tend to shake my room every 15 minutes or so enough that I’m often tempted to toss the conductor a quarter for the vibrating bed. But today the preferred mode was walking in the light drizzle that the locals have referred to as ‘the rainy season’. It’s been a fairly mild and pleasant, but gray storm all day, and going over google maps from one destination to another it looks like I may have walked between seven and ten miles. My legs are feeling it, too. I’m starting to get the landmarks down. There’s a building with a greenish neon strip at the top that puts me close to my hotel. The North Steel Bridge shows up near the river, but there’s not a lot of real skyline that is visible for a long distance to get my bearings, and without mountains or big, distant buildings I’m left to navigate from the light rail maps (when I don’t get them turned around).
One if the huge differences is it’s just really hard not to j-walk across these tiny roads. There hasn’t been much traffic most times and it just feels stupid to stop at a streetlight with no traffic when you can practically spit across the street. And with the majority of the streets seeming to be one-way it’s not like some traffic is going to surprise you. We got so caviler about it that it’s almost funny the way I nearly fell into the streets several times when I’ve actually seen that I needed to stop. At least there’s been the added humor of looking for the purported sources of the names of The Simpson’s characters on the street signs. We’ve seen Flanders and Lovejoy, but those are the only ones I’ve recognized so far.
But for now it’s off to bed with the rattle and squeal of the Morrison train to rock me to sleep. I think I hear one coming now.
Did I mention I tend to ramble when I’m tired?
Petrified Wood
Saw this today and thought it might be handy for something sometime in the future, so I’m making a note. It came from a farm know-how page
Mix equal parts of gem salt, rock alum, white vinegar, chalk and Peebles’ powder. After the mixture becomes quiet, put into it any wood or porous substance, and the latter becomes like stone.
Google tells me Peebles’ Powder is powdered skim milk.
Can You Bake an Apple Pie?
Neither can I…
Actually I found out I can, those were just the leftover crust clumped up with cinnamon and sugar because I find it hard to throw food away, which is the reason for the pie.
We got apples at costco a few weeks ago, and only four or five got eaten, despite the fact they were fairly tasty apples. I figured they were a getting a little on, and the skins were starting to wrinkle just a bit when you pushed on them, so I figured that I ought to give a swing at seeing if I could do pie.
I found a recimape on the internets and it turned out we had everything but the crisco, so I substituted butter for shortening. Mmmmmm, butter.
All that experience working with clay slabs gave me that edge for rolling out the dough, but I think clay is more forgiving.
Look Ma, no hairnet!
And when Debbie said I had to make some vent holes I couldn’t resist making it cute, ’cause I’m such the homemaker.
Happy Halloween
Groundhog Minute
So I’m coming back from taking Debbie her lunch and I’m passing some angled parking and someone backs out, so I let them de-park and start to move forward when someone else starts to back out ahead of us. The car I just let out speeds up so the new backer cant get out, and swerves way around them exaggerating the danger and whips off down the lane. I let the second person back out and we proceed down the line when the exact same situation happens a second time and the new person ahead of me swerves around and pulls off into the sunset leaving me to wait a third time for someone to back out.
Just another example of why I dislike going out in public. And it’s not even Christmas yet.
Woke up laughing
So I’m dreaming I lived in my apartment up the street, except it’s much bigger and totally populated with people from WarhammerOnline. Nobody from the guild I was in, but it’s like I was joining this new guild and they were happy because they needed a healer, and I was willing to play one. I’m looking for some solitude and it’s kind of crowded, so I end up awkwardly going outside knocking over a couple boxes on the way and getting some clothes hanging on a nail in the doorjamb almost caught in the door, much to the consternation of two girls moving in. And I sit down on the porch kind of dejected when I see a couple little 4-year-old-ish kids run around the corner in little green tights with black polka-dots on them and little plastic swords. Suddenly they’re joined by several more until the whole lot is peppered with little swordfighting kids. One teen-aged kid comes around the corner in a kind of Robin Hood costume directing these tykes a bit and resolving disputes. All of a sudden a just get really happy and I jump up and run Paul Revere-like through the house yelling, “The Munchkins are LARP-ing*! The Munchkins are LARP-ing!”
I woke up very amused.
*Live Action Role Playing
Happy Birthday Kelli
It was Kelli’s birthday this week, and Dave had a party for her, making it three times I’ve seen her now since the 24th of July. She said she was thinking I was going to get sick of her, but I remember seeing her three times in a day several times each week. I miss hanging out with her and Dave. In some ways it kind of sucks getting old and having your own family, but I suppose if everything froze that way it would get pretty boring.
We were supposed to bring a picture or something to scrapbook, so I took her this picture that I took the day she got her haircut when we met at her Grandparents’ place where she lived to watch Voyager.
Yeah, for a season we watched Voyager, but you do a lot of stupid things when you’re young.
School Starts Today
So Howie posted on facebook that he got invited to Rush week for our old fraternity and it reminded me of this picture I took of him with the chickens we borrowed for a rush party game…