Indulging My Inner Italian

So Dad gave me birthday money a day early and I think I've already got it spent (and then some). Check out the boots!

These beauties are coming 'on approval' - meaning they're on a credit card and can be returned if they don't fit - from Zappos.  I've entered The Oregonian's contest to win a pair of tickets to the Red Carpet Premiere of Coraline on February 5th.  It's the Portland International Film Festival opener.  Neil Gaiman will be here!   These would be the perfect shoes for the occasion.

If I were to be so lucky as to win.  Fingers and toes crossed!

Then I found these on eBay.  I've wanted a pair of girly harness boots (with a bit of a heel, right?) for a long time.  That's a bitch of a thing to try to find in size 5.  I wasn't so keen on the red flames at first, but ya know?  They're kind of growing on me.  So I'm 'in' for up to $35.00 and they'll cost another $11 or $12 to ship.  

I really am 1/4 Italian.  I've got the shoe lust to show for it.

Snow, Kid-Friendly Restaurants, X & Something For Dale

Whoohoo!  I almost got my wish.  Woke up to snow on the ground this morning, one day before my birthday :)  I always wish for snow on my birthday.  It is most definitely the birthday present of choice.  As a kid, it was the one good thing that you could get for your special day if it happened to fall in the middle of the freakin' winter.  Pool parties, picnics and such being sort of out of the question.  

There was one winter that actually stopped me from wishing for it for a few years afterwards.  My 9th birthday.  It started snowing like crazy on Saturday the 25th.  I had a party that afternoon.  We lived on a big hill then.*  By the time everybody was ready to go home, a couple of dads with four wheel drive vehicles (much rarer then in the late 60's than now) had to take everyone home.  I watched my dad and little brother slide down the hill past our driveway twice before they managed to turn into our drive to park.  Woke up my birthday morning to three feet of white!  It took us all day to tunnel across the street to my friend's house.  We got a full week off of school before it warmed up and melted away.  

Today's snow is already melting away.  They're saying it will get cold tonight and that ice on the roads is going to be a problem.  They're kind of wet now.   Maybe a little snow will stick around and be preserved by the cold tonight.  Not supposed to be getting any more.  Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and cold and I don't have to work! 

Little Brother is coming up from Eugene today to pick up my sister in law at the airport.  We'll all meet up at a kid-friendly restaurant, Red Robin this time, as there is one out by the airport and he'll have my nearly 8 year old nephew with him.   Dad's coming over from Vancouver as well.  Should be fun and I was thinking about heading out to IKEA anyways.  It's right there too.

Already celebrated my birthday earlier in the week with friends.  The Knitters played Dante's last Wednesday.  Great show!  Was the first time I'd heard them live.  The 4th John Doe related gig I'd been to here in the last year and 1/2.  Heard him live at Dante's solo (with all the hipsters talking through his set - grrrrr), then X had a sold out all ages show at The Crystal Ballroom (glad we were high up in the balcony with good sight lines and out of the mosh pit for that one), then John Doe and Kathleen Edwards at The Aladdin in November (OMG!  their final encore was off-mic standing on the very lip of the stage doing "When Will I Be Loved?"  Freakin' awesome!) and last Wednesday's show from the very front, right under DJ's snare and washkettle kickdrum and mere feet away from Exene rockin' the country girl look in black and white gingham, red tights, a beaded black vintage sweater and two gauzy nylon aprons, one signed by Eddie Vedder and someone else who I couldn't quite make out.  I wish now that I had taken a picture.  She'll be 53 in a week (a fellow Aquarian) and you can see the years on her but she still kicks ass!  And I just bought tickets for X at The Crystal again on April 9th!!!  

Note to Dale:

Robin Williams came first.  And he's still the hairiest.  Bono's.  Just.  What?  I have no idea.

   

*our hill was one of the 10 sledding hills.

Inauguration Day at last!

I woke up at 4:30.  Couldn't sleep.  Hung out under the covers listening to the coverage on NPR for a bit but gave in and just got up!  

It must be amazing to be in Washington on this day.   Americans reinvent themselves all the time.  We're known for our resilience, inventiveness and persistence.  Every four years we get to reinvent ourselves on a grand scale with the peaceful transition of government from one presidential administration to the next.  

Every new president brings the promise of new direction,  a better economy, better understanding among ourselves and our allies and with those governments with whom we have a more challenging relationship.   It's just that this time we've outdone ourselves and elected a president who will be one of the handful of truly great presidents - and at the same time we've changed forever the face of the President of the United States of America.  Have we lived up to the words of  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?  Have we learned to judge for the content of character and not the color of skin?  The election and inauguration of Barack Obama says:  Yes we have.

NPR reported that there is a tradition that every outgoing president leaves a note in the desk of the Oval Office to his/her (someday that barrier too will fall) successor.  The contents of the note are known only to the two presidents involved.  I wonder what George W. Bush will say to Barack Obama?  "I'm sorry I left you such a mess?"  One can hope.  I wonder what Barack Obama's will say to his successor in eight years' time?  "I hope I've left things better than I found them.  We're at peace.  Our economy is growing.  We've made inroads into developing sustainable energy to run our utilities and our transportation.  We have found a way to make sure that all of our people have access to health care.  Please pick up where I've left off and take us further."  One can hope!  

Rockin' Out and Making Soup to Swap

My house is perfumed with the smell of Casablanca Stew (lamb, mushrooms, walnuts, raisins and veggies and chickpeas in a curry/tomato/white wine stew broth) being simmered for a soup swap next Friday.  Not the one in Gresham - this one's out on the West Side.   I've never doubled this recipe before and usually do it slowly in the croc pot.   It seems to taste all right though.  Now I've got to cool it and put it into quart plastic containers and freeze it.  

I don't have a printer so I'll have to figure out fancy labels tomorrow at work.  Or here now and pdf them to myself at work so I can print them out.  I should attach baggies of cous cous with this 'soup'.  It's meant to be served over cous cous.  

Even though I was listening to U-2, Bruce! and was that really Garth Brooks doing American Pie?  Hmmm...

I had Jamie Oliver's Lamb Curry song going through my head along side what was going in my ears

Damn.  I wish I could julienne ginger like that!

The Presidents of the United States of America salute the soon to be President of the United States of America

Wild Beauty

Has it really been 13 days since I've posted anything up here?  (Checking calendar...yup!)  

I've been busy!  Working, of course, but I found time to get to the very last weekend of the Wild Beauty exhibition of historic photographs of the Columbia River Gorge at the Portland Art Museum.  The show spanned the distance from large format 20x22" prints made from glass plates with a very large camera by Carleton Watkins in 1867 and again in 1882-5 to Kodachrome prints by Ray Atkeson in the 1950's - from the earliest railroad and commerce in the Gorge up to the completion of The Dalles Dam that flooded the ancestral fishing grounds of all of the Native Peoples of the Gorge (and beyond) at Celilo Falls.  I went by myself and took two hours to take it in on Saturday and ended up going again on Sunday with my Dad.  He actually saw Celilo before it was gone when he was a kid in 1950.   

I liked the hand colored silver prints made by the Kiser brothers.  They lived on the Oregon side opposite Beacon Rock in the early 1900's and had the advantage of being able to photograph the light in the Gorge in all kinds of weather and moods.   I love the look of hand colored photographs.    

The work of Lily White and Sarah Hall Ladd, both wives of the descendants of some of the first pioneers in the area who had become society wives when the pioneers became successful and the city of Portland's founding fathers, were also made over time spent living in the Gorge - they had a very well outfitted houseboat, the Raysark, that they anchored at various places on the river and took a smaller boat out to get to the viewpoints, waterfalls and other landscape features that they wanted to photograph.  They had complete darkroom facilities on the Raysark.  Their work also captures a sense of time and the changing moods of the river - as well as being beautifully composed and executed as capital "A" Art.

The Gorge is rather a Portlander's backyard.  A mere half hour away from your desk at work are hiking trails, waterfalls and amazing scenery.   You can see Multnomah Falls quickly from the lodge and the viewpoint at the bottom or you can hike the trail up to the top and from there take off on the Larch Mountain Trail for days if you wanted to.  I used to go do the trail up the falls as a stress buster and see if I could pass everyone on the way up.  It's all switchbacks and very steep.  Just about every hike in the Gorge has a 2,000 foot or better elevation gain.    But there are places you can drive to and simply park the car, get out and enjoy the view.  The Vista House at Crown Point is like that.  Or you can hike Angel's Rest and look down on Crown Point.

All I can say is this exhibition made me want to get out and go hiking!  It would be a bit snowy and cold right now.  Or muddy at lower elevation.  It has gotten warmer since our holiday snowstorm adventure.  We've had weather in the 50's and sunny this week.  After it warmed up too quickly and flooded all around - not in Portland itself really - the area last week.  Closed I-5 at Chehalis for a couple days.  You couldn't get to Seattle unless you flew.

If they didn't want $75.00 for the catalogue - well worth it, but a bit steep for me right now, even with a 10% member discount - I'd be perusing it right now. 

2009 already?

Boy 2008 went fast!  Probably not a bad thing, considering.

We - my friend Barbara and her husband Brian - rang it out in good company at the Laurelthirst pub with Laura "Two Beers" Veirs supported by assorted Decemberists, Casey Neil minus most of the Norway Rats, Little Sue, Scott McCaughey, a veritable who's who of Portland musicians doing their own songs or assorted covers - just out having fun on New Year's Eve.    The place was packed to beyond "standing room only" & it's not a big place to begin with.  Bar down the right-hand side, booths and tables down the left.  They took out the middle tables.  Every spare inch had someone standing in it.  

Laura literally flew in from Nashville just in time to take the stage at about 11:30 p.m.  Here's a little clip someone posted - think this was pretty late - we left soon after midnight so as not to turn into pumpkins.  Or just coz we're not as young as we once were.

We were still there for Wildwood Flower.  

Earlier in the evening - after securing our wristbands for the music - we enjoyed a wonderful Cuban meal down the street at Pambiche

Click on that link and you'll be treated to some nice Cuban music - sorry for the abrupt style change!   But check it out (Pambiche) if you're in Portland.  It was packed (seemed to be the theme of the evening) but so worth the wait and everyone was patient and nice in line.  It's covered and the propane heaters over the tables help heat up the folks waiting for a seat.  Check out the menus!  Barbara and I both went traditional and had the Plato Cubano (Roast Pork, Beans and Rice - and Yuca)  I skipped the rice and only nibbled the yummy fried yuca.  Brian had the Plato Comunista as he's eating vegan these days - and finished my yuca.  Cocktails all looked enticing but we "just" had coffee.  Brian had a beer.  Negro Modelo, if I remember correctly.  Got a two-fer breakfast coupon to use before mid-February!

Feliz Ano Nuevo!!  (someone please tell me where teh accents live in Blogger)  Happy New Year!