If I'm Not Receiving, Than How Can This be Reception?

First call of the day!  At 2:15 in the afternoon.  Sheesh.

In Some Lab, Somewhere

So I have become, at last, a child of my times.  I am sitting in Starbucks, drinking Starbucks coffee, with a laptop on my lap, using Starbucks WiFi. How more contemporary could I be?  I guess I could be using the voice-to-text app and murmuring into my iPhone, while looking through a Google Glass (tm) but that would make me much younger than I am.  Anyway, I have a deep-seated disbelief in those applications.  They cannot actually exist, can they? Not in regular people's possession.  Possibly in some laboratory somewhere.

Very Grimm

This morning I left the apartment building a little later than usual, since it was Monday, and I was going to make a stop at my credit union.  Only Monday and Thursday mornings, it's available to me.  As I left the lobby, I was thinking about the filming of "Grimm", which was scheduled to be happening today, and wondering if I might catch sight of any of the actors -- none of whom speak to me in any particular way, but all of whom are familiar, and it would have been fun.  I walked up to the bank, deposited the check and exchanged a few pleasantries with the teller, and then began walking back down Thurman to my bus stop.  I was horrified to see a banner across the street, saying "Northwest Christmas Village"  and several large street decoration-type Christmas decorations.  There was even a Christmas tree lot, with hot chocolate stand set up in a parking lot.  I fumed! It isn't even Hallowe'en yet, it's barely October!  What the hell?  And why, in Northwest, has this sort of small-town silliness taken hold?  And so early!

And so forth and so on.  Until I saw the enormous floodlights and the camera truck.  And I had just been thinking about "Grimm", too!  Heavens.

There You Feel Free

When I am driving just to get somewhere, then I almost always prefer freeways and high speeds and on-ramps and off-ramps.  Cuz on the freeways, there you feel free.  Thank you, Tim Powers.

But driving between home and work, on Friday mornings, I always take the overland route.  I do this to avoid the congestion of the Evil Banfield, which has no shoulders of any kind, and is just a terrible, fiery, twisted metal wreck waiting to happen, but I am really enjoying it for its own sake.  Driving along Burnside has all kinds of things to look at and enjoy, and I can usually drive about ten miles over the speed limit, cuz of no traffic at all, and still see the lovely houses and apartments with which it is lined.

Bus routes are not on highways or freeways, either, and the 15 meanders along over Mount Tabor and through the Belmont neighborhood, and then around Mall 205 from behind, and all -- past many beautiful houses and lovely old brickers and gorgeous yards and big, stunning trees.  It is making me love Portland more than ever.

Ravenous

If I am to continue riding the bus to work, at the time and place that I do ride the bus to work, (and I am) then I am going to have to rethink, and possibly rearrange my eating schedule.  I am accustomed to getting up in the morning and drinking a large black and very strong cup of coffee.  And then of needing no further recruitment until lunch.  But lately, as I sit at the bus stop in the crisp quiet mornings, I am assailed by aroma.  Across the street to my left is a superlative French-style bakery.  And a few feet down the block on the other side is an excellent breakfast restaurant.  So between the two of them, my appetite is being awoken earlier than usual.  A little swirl of hot, sugary, yeasty smell tickles my nose for several breaths, than a waft of delicately frying bacon.  A few eddies of  excellent coffee and that hot smooth smell of steamed milk.  Crisp toast, melted butter, fresh oranges -- all can be smelled in their round perfection, all of which cause me to arrive at the office absolutely ravenous.

Bah! It's a beautiful day!

Yesterday was what the average person (if such a thing exists -- average by whose history?) would consider a beautiful day.  It was a golden morning, with a large, vivid, indeed blinding ball of fire sitting on the edge of the world, preventing those of us trying, foolishly, to drive east at that hour, to be able to see.  At all.  And those of us with dirty windshields, to be completely unable to see anything except a vague and blurry outline of the tail of the car ahead.  It did not even have its taillights on, so only a darker blur, in the midst of the obliterating fire of the sun facing me.  I had my hand up to cover it, and my sunglasses on and my visor down, but I was still blinded, eyes filled with tears, incapable of sight.  And still I drove.  Very stressful.

And yet this morning, with a soft grey cloud cover, is a morning that several people have complained of, in my hearing.  As though it was stolen from their pocket by a malicious sprite who doesn't want them to have a real, true summer.  As though summer were a blue and gold entity that you unwrap from its tissue paper and set out each year, complete from the last day of school to the first day of school.  As though (again) the weather was regimented and scheduled according to the school year!  Bah, I say.

Real Portland Weather

It looks as though today is going to be a real Portland-style day as far as weather is concerned.  I am looking out at thick soft grey cloud cover, and feel the breeze in the air.  It's about 64 degrees out there right now.  Ahhhhhhh....  I am relaxing all over.

So today is going to be my first walk-home day.  I'm not walking all the way home, because that is far too much for my fat, slovenly self, but I am going to take the 20 bus down Burnside, and get off at 23rd Ave, and walk home down 23rd.  So about 20 blocks.  That would just about do me in, except that it is a very gentle slope downhill all the way.  So I will be able to handle it all right. And I am going to enjoy that!  Think of all the windows I will get to look in!

And in a few months, when I have spending money in my pocket, I will be picking up a slice on the way home, and eating it as I walk. Looking forward to that!

Well -- this past weekend was the Labor Day holiday, and I enjoyed the hell out of it!  Spent Saturday cleaning intermittently, you know how I do, but it worked, and before noon the house was absolutely ready for company, even if the company had been ready to check my drawers and cupboards and look under the sink.  I also read several books, listened to Rex Stout on CD, and watched Poirot to go to sleep.  It was a very pleasant day.

Sunday, I got up at about five-thirty, and walked through my clean, clean, clean apartment, with nothing to climb over and walk around, nowhere that I had to reach across anything or put anything aside to open anything.   My house is TIDY!   

I had some little vanity cakes that I bought from St. Honore's and the tea kettle full of hot water, and I was ready for company.  Doug and Kathy arrived about 12:30 and brought me a gorgeous orchid in a pot, a Phalaenopsis with three blooms in cream and lavender.  We had a very nice visit, even though Doug had forgotten his lovely cigar, so could not enjoy the yard nearly as much.  We sat outside in the chairs, and shaded ourselves with the big yard umbrella.  It was still very warm, and I was glad to return inside.

Alan and Jody arrived the next day at about noon, after I had made a coconut cream pie, and we ate a meal that they brought with them, except for a plate of sliced, home-grown tomatoes which I had temptingly out on the table.  They stayed for several hours into afternoon, and left about five when Jody began to get sleepy.  It was a very good visit, both of them were.  I really enjoyed having people over into my lovely, familiar, happy and enwrapping apartment!