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I am used to watching new laws be passed that I object to passionately on principle, and that I find to be a pain in the ass personally. So I guess it’s only fair that once in a great while a law will be passed that I find objectionable based on ideology, but that just happens to work in my favor in a very selfish way.

And so, let me confess a very selfish glee about the smoking ban! Woohoo! I’ve been to several bars, clubs and shows lately. Last year, a visit to any of those venues would have left me dripping with the stale, sour reek of cigarette smoke. This year, the worst I’ve encountered is the sad smell of rancid fryer grease that is only noticeable now that it is no longer masked by the cigarette smoke. I hate the law, but I am pleased to be benefiting from it so blatantly.

And on a related note, I asked the bartender at the Goodfoot if he had noticed a drop-off in business since the law passed. He said, “Maybe a little, at the very beginning, but we’ve more than bounced back.” Yay! I’d be sad if the law hurt some of the few bars that I really enjoy.

Building, building, burning bright

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On a bike ride Saturday, I stumbled upon a house that had suffered a major fire recently. My riding partner has a real thing for abandoned buildings, so of course we had to take a closer look.

I didn’t think much of it at first. Ragged, charred holes in the roof, smashed windows, door hanging open on one hinge.

But then I reached the front porch and the smell hit me. Even after all this time, I know that smell, down to my very bones. Smoked sheet rock and lumber laced with the flat dull smell of barren dirt. My family home burned to the ground when I was nine years old, and that smell still jumped out at me as vivid as yesterday.

The insides of the house look just as sad as you’d imagine. Everything ruined, from the combined effects of the fire, the mind-bending amount of water used to extinguish the fire, and the subsequent exposure to the elements.

Dream fragments 2

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Another night of unusual dreams. Or perhaps unusual in that I remembered several of them. And all of a theme.

I was in my teens, hanging out with a friend of mine (Nice seeing you again, Mark. RIP) at his house, trying to dodge his mother when she came home from work all irritable.

At a large impromptu sleep over at Jack’s house following some kind of poly gathering, trying to clean up a little and make room for bed rolls to laid out, without waking up the entire household.

A long lazy morning at someone’s house, lounging about with two girls (Michelle and… who knows) flirting shamelessly, and getting shot down.

Several guys drinking excessively at the beach after a long day of being hammered by the waves, bullshitting about previous weekends, discussing who should call our pal’s parents to tell them he died, and making plans for when we would get there next weekend.

Some really dreadful topics in there, but I don’t remember any of it being anxiety dreams or particularly anxious. Most peculiar. Should I blame it on the NyQuil?

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I don’t usually remember my dreams these days, but last night was a notable exception.

How about the dream where I bumped into friends while standing in line at a local house of prostitution? (Heya, Oznoid!)

Or the hard core drag race through the back roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains? (Sorry about your car, Jess.)

Or the girl who was making a little extra tuition money by gambling on her ability to identify different types of clouds? (Successfully. Well done, mags.)

Or when I buried four bodies in the plot of dirt under a queen bed? I had to do a lot of work rearranging them to get all four to fit.

I wish I knew what to credit such recall to. Perhaps the extraordinary east winds last night. At times, I thought the house was going to blow over!

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Last night, the conversation turned to the eventual graduation of magn0lia from chiro school.
“You’ll be laying on hands! Like an atheist faith healer.”
“A faithless healer? A lack-of-faith healer?”
Pantomiming a palm-push delivered to someone’s forehead, “Superstition, I cast thee out!”
“Believe in the scientific method and walk again!”
“When you die, there’s just nothingness!”

Okay, so maybe it got a little silly.

Frothy the Thnowman!

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Lest anyone think I’m whining, I like snow!
Granted, Portland has had an uncharacteristic amount lately. Getting snow in December at all is unusual, but to get over a foot of it has been a little overwhelming. But whatever; I work at home, I can walk to get groceries, so it’s not a panic. The biggest inconvenience is when I want to get across town to see one of The Girls, or when there’s an event happening that is a pain to get to.

And I think I’ve had a white Christmas only a couple of times in my life, so to have a solid blanket of white on the 24th and 25th was a real delight in that respect.

But c’mon, when I’ve got a reservation at the coast that I can’t get to because the roads are so bad, it stops being quaint and lovely! Ocean views and lazy decadence are calling me!

Finally, during a break of warmer temps and drizzle that was melting off the top layer of snow, we decided to make a break for it. Supplies were hastily packed and thrown in the vehicle. We braved the slippery ice and slush on the city streets and got to the freeway. We dodged countless tangles of discarded tire chains and cables in the middle of the freeway. And then, sigh. *thump, thump, thump, thump* “What’s that noise?” “Aww, crap, that can’t be a flat, can it?!” We pulled over and checked, and sure enough the right rear tire was totally flaccid.

There we were, pulled onto the shoulder of the freeway, being battered with icy winds and the occasional spray of muddy slush from passing vehicles. I’ve been nursing a sore shoulder for several days, so wrestling with a flat tire wasn’t exactly the easiest enterprise. I found a tire iron and got the lug nuts removed. Then I found my spare. It was a donut (darn it!), but at least it had air. I pulled it out, and found the jack. Except… I couldn’t seem to wrestle the jack out. It’s like it was glued down or welded to this metal holding bracket. I tugged and wrestled, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge!
*grumble, gripe, moan*

Well, AAA had already been called, surely they would have a jack. We climbed back into the car and tried not to fret while we waited. Thank goodness for games on the iPhone!

Very soon, a well-used pick-up pulled onto the shoulder in front of us and backed up towards our car. It was clear this was just “some guy”, not anyone from a tow company or AAA. Most of the gear in the back of his pickup was still draped in a thick blanket of snow, and his outfit was waterproof pants and a camouflage hoodie. “Whatcha got goin’ on?” he asked.

I explained about the flat, and the jack, and he came back to look at it. We puzzled for a second before he saw the obvious problem. The scissor jack was extended up, wedging it snugly into the bracket. By design, duh. You’re supposed to drop the jack a bit to remove it from the holding bracket. Once I got the clue, I was ready to thank the guy profusely and let him be on his way. Instead, he finished getting out the jack and proceeded to start lifting the car. I removed the flat and wrestled the donut into place and started tightening the lug nuts. We got everything done and the gear returned to the back of the car. I turned to our Good Samaritan and said, “You’ve been a real life-saver! Can I offer you anything for you time and help?” He brushed me off immediately, “Nahh! Merry Christmas! Y’all be safe!” And before I could argue or protest, he was in his pickup and pulling back into traffic. I think I stood there a minute stunned. It’s always jarring when a confirmed cynic is faced with such unambiguous altruism. It’s a more complex world than is dreamt of in my philosophy.

With the tire repaired, I had a tough decision to make. There was no hope of getting the tire fixed on Xmas Day. I could go home and admit defeat (again), which would pretty much kill any chance of making it to the coast during this holiday break at all. Or I could try to drive the remaining ~200 miles to the coast on the temporary “donut” tire. I decided to take a gamble on the tire.

Thankfully, the road conditions were bad enough and the traffic slow enough, I didn’t have much opportunity to be tempted to speed on the spare tire. Slow and steady, we finally made it out to the coast! To a fabulous ocean view! To an inviting hot tub! And several days of slackerly bliss.

Iced Cabbage

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I started to write this as a response to a response to a post, but decided to make it a post of its own instead.

Long before I eventually moved to Portland, I visited frequently to see friends and my girlfriend’s family. I was in town in February of 1997 when a really big ice storm. We were staying with my girlfriend’s dad and step-mother when we lost power and were iced in for three days. We huddled next to the fireplace and listened to the quiet stillness punctuated occasionally by the rifle-shot crack of limbs snapping off trees from all the excess ice weight.

Somewhere during that storm I took a picture of an ornamental cabbage MJ had that was coated in a perfect layer of ice.

MJ is long departed, dead from cancer just over two years now. Which still seems impossible, somehow.

When I saw ornamental cabbages for sale at a local market this fall, I instantly thought of MJ and bought several. And this morning, I snapped the modern, much-less-dramatic version of that original photo, of my own purple cabbage dusted with snow.

I love you, MJ, and miss you bunches.

First snow of Winter 2008!

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This came sooner than I would have guessed. I didn’t think we’d see any snow of note until the new year. And the accumulation still hasn’t amounted to much, but it’s blowing sideways so much it seems like a blizzard outside.









In other news, the Honda Element handled the snowy and icy streets with ease. Very sure-footed, not even a hint of a slip or slide. Let’s hear it for all-wheel drive!

Tales from the Front Line

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A friend had some tech support woes this morning, and I tried to help. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t solve the problem either, and so we had to haul the computer off to the local Apple Store for a visit to the Genius Bar.

The tech wrestled with the problem briefly before he also admitted defeat. The computer had to be left overnight to be taken apart and the optical drive replaced. As the tech was checking in the computer, he asked, “What’s the password on this user account?”

She muttered discretely, “mumble, mumble”.

“What’s that?”

This time she said it with studied nonchalance, “cockring”.

To his credit, the tech accepted it without blinking. 🙂

Sisyphus

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My side yard has a large pile of tree limbs and twigs, detritus from a recent pruning of the two big trees in the front yard. Knowing that the garbage trucks come tomorrow, I went out this morning and stuffed my yard waste bin to the brim with carefully mangled sprigs, stems and shoots, bent and broken to fit the dumpster. When the bin could hold no more, I wheeled it to the curb and looked back at my pile of pruning debris. Which looked not even a little smaller.

The parallel to my efforts at work has not escaped me.