Friday, August 29, 2014

Geisler's House

So I went to Doug and Kathy's house for dinner the other night.  It's a large modern home, looking from the outside like any other housing development home built in the 2000s.  I was sort of appalled as I drove up to the three-car garage.  It's the kind of home that wouldn't even register on my brain as I passed it, so completely do I have no desire whatsoever to live in one.

However.

The really excellent thing about this house, which has a lot of good, comfortable things about it, actually -- the really excellent thing, as I said, is the VIEW.

From the upper deck in the backyard, right up under a very tall conifer of some variety, you can see across hilltop after hilltop, and hints of valleys below. As the sun began to set, the sunset filled the entire sky, since they are high enough on Mount Scott (I know, it's called Happy VALLEY, but that's just false advertising) to have nothing in the way to the west and south.  And when it grew dark, the moon was large, vivid and right...over...there.  Moonlight drenched the backyard, already beautiful with water and bridges and flowering shrubs.  It was LOVELY.

Was it enough to make me want to live in a Wealthy House TM?    Nope.  But certainly enough to make me want to go back and visit them again.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

A Universal Shape

So I'm in my office reading an article about totem poles from Sitka, Alaska, that were displayed at the Lewis and Clark Exposition here in Portland in the early 1900s.  I'm always interested in the Exposition, because my apartment building was built to house the workers.

Anyway, I was talking to Nameless Agent about this, and they were looking at pictures of the poles.  "You gotta wonder what it is about that shape," Nameless mused.  "Is it like pyramids?"

"What do you mean, pyramids?" I asked, confused.

"Well, you know pyramids are some universal shape.  They've discovered that.  And all the totem poles you see are the same shape, so I wonder if they are some universal shape, too?"

"Well --" I wasn't sure where to go with this.  "Totem poles are all the same shape because they are all carved out of a tree trunk.  So maybe that makes them a universal shape.  I guess I don't know what that means, really."

 "Nobody does," said Nameless solemnly.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

It's Moderatin'

I slept under all the covers last night!  With my pajamas ON!    'Course, I woke up at two, and didn't fall completely back to sleep -- just dozed off and on until  the alarm went off -- but still, the weather is improving!  Or, to quote Huckleberry Finn, it's moderatin'.

I dreamed this morning that I was here in the office, and Mickey was coming in to teach class.  She looked at the signs I had posted about the class, and said, "Bethie, these are wrong, these are not my class!"

I said, "But those are the ones you sent me!"

Mickey said, "No, they aren't --- oh, DAD!!"

And I realized: A) Uncle Ken had made the mistake, sending Mickey's e-mail out for her, and B) Uncle Ken is sending Mickey's e-mail out for her??!!  Uncle Ken now WORKS FOR MICKEY??!!

You see how my subconscious mind works?

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Peaches and Nebbiolo

Another empty day.  I shouldn't mind, and in fact, I don't -- I can easily enjoy myself in front of a computer screen for eight hours at a time -- but I feel as though I should.  I feel as though I am not "living life to the fullest" if I just meander along and do nothing for eight hours.  So I am feeling guilty for not feeling guilty for not accomplishing anything.  I should be writing my novel!  Or -- letters to people!  Or running my own computer business or SOMETHING.  Instead of merely allowing time to pass me by.

In any case.

I went to see Heather last night -- my friend from Prairie with the houseful of foster and adopted children (and several of her own body as well.)  I went specifically to listen to her talk, because her 22 year old son had recently killed himself.

Joe is 22.

And I am going to see Julieann, my second cousin once removed this evening!  Am just killing time (the death of more time!) before heading over there.  Have peaches for grilling (she is a non-gluten eater) and some Nebbiolo.

And!  I got a beautiful blue single hide-a-bed sofa!  This past Saturday as ever was.  I found it, negotiated with the people to deliver it to my living room, moved the furniture around in there to accommodate it, and I love it!  It is beautiful and perfect and will make my next batch of company so much easier!


Monday, August 18, 2014

Fillory, O Fillory!

Remember in "Among Others" when Morwenna is categorizing people who like sci-fi, into groups, and she is one of the group that likes to enter other worlds?   I, also, am of that group.  I love being in some other place, and if I have to close the book, I feel bereft until I can hurry back between the pages into the kingdom I have had to leave.  I was noticing this yesterday as I read "The Magician's World."  Not just Fillory, but even when they were (supposedly) on Earth, in Brakebills, it was such a different place that I felt as though I were somewhere else, and didn't want to leave it.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Blue and Gold

The weather today is pretending to be as hot and miserable as the past few weeks have been -- 82 degrees, the thermometer says.  But what it doesn't say, is that there is also a bright, fresh, crisp breeze that smells of the ocean and has been blowing all day.  Feels lovely outside, gorgeous, exhilarating, like you could go anywhere and do anything and really like it when you got there and did it.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

In My Lunch

I have made a great many pies in the last month.  Five for Alan's birthday a few weeks ago, and then one for the apartment building, and one for Joe, and one for Brad, and one for Mom and Dad, and now another one for Brad.  That's how many, ten?  The second one for Brad I made last night, and got to bed around midnight as a result.  It's a good thing that my ease and speed at making them has improved in this last little flurry of baking, cuz my back was already hurting like a big dog, from the book sorting we had done earlier that evening.  

Brad had brought over five or six boxes of books that he had rescued from a neighbor woman moving out of the house she had lived in for forty years or so.  My job was to go through them and identify for him any that I thought would be of value. And there was one.  Lots of good looking hardbacked books, and lots of good stories in paperback, but the hardbacks were all textbooks, and the paperbacks were all cheap editions of no-name thrillers.  One or two exceptions, but as I say, only one that might sell.  It is a history of the Heywood Wakefield company. Written by them, and illustrated with photos and all -- it was in pretty good shape, too.  I've just been looking on eBay, and if he can find the right buyer, he has a chance of making some money.  If an ad on a  page from a magazine can command $24 than a whole book ought to be worth something.

Anyway, he also brought a bowl of wild blackberries from his backyard, and they are in the pie I made.  The leftovers of them are in my lunch.

Monday, August 4, 2014

No light, no light

On my drive up to Ocean Park this weekend,  I was stopped on HWY 30, just after the Kittredge Road turnoff, by the clean-up of an accident scene.  Someone (or someTHING, dun, dun, DUH!) had driven into a power pole with more than a little force.  It was snapped in half, but also munched pretty severely several feet up from the break.  The light was down on the street, and all the traffic lights were out for several intersections.

And nobody stopped, or even slowed at any of these intersections!  Just barreled on through, like there was no traffic waiting to cross from the other direction.  And, in fact, there wasn't, but nobody checked to see, or ANYTHING!  'Course, this was at about six a.m. so cars were pretty thin on the ground, but still!