Flannel Shirt

Mother's Day breakfast

Took Joan out for Mother's Day breakfast, not that I need an excuse to take her out to the Country Cat for breakfast. I actually forgot what she had, I'm sure it was good, but I had the above. This wonderful, spicy, smoky pulled pork and grits, topped with a couple of eggs. It was magnificent.

Simpsons' home turf

A drive through Portland will reveal the cast of The Simpsons. My fave: Northeast (NE) Flanders became Ned Flanders.

Saturday in the rhododendron gardens

One day Spring arrived in Portland and everything bloomed. Drive down any street and you're treated to magnificent views of lovely flowers. There is a tree with pink flowers next to where I park my car in my apartment complex, and for the last few days my car has looked like a float in the Rose Parade. The town is awash in flower petals, either on their respective plants and trees, cluttering the gutters, or stuck to my car.

Saturday Joan took me to a rhododendron garden in southeast Portland. The air was perfumed with the blooms.

A goose hissed at me, but mostly they found ways to ignore us.

Over the weekend

Joanie and I had a nice Saturday. We took the dogs over to Mount Tabor where they got to run around. Gilly stopped and christened every tree but not Sully. Sully is a little intimidated by the bigger dogs running around there.

We had dinner at this nice little pizza place on Mississippi Street a few blocks up from the Amnesia Brewery. Then we went over to the Mississippi Studios where The Oregonian was holding a thing where three local songwriters showed up with their acoustics and talked and played.  There was Eric D. Johnson, once of The Shins and now of the Fruit Bats, and who also does a lot of movie soundtrack work now; Red Ray Frazier; and Eric Earley of Blitzen Trapper.

For free. For Eric Earley of Blitzen Trapper played a couple songs and talked a little about music.

It was only an hour. After that we drove across town to a healthcare fundraiser at the Melody Ballroom. The music was good but the place was packed, and when you're two senior citizens you appreciate music more if you don't have to stand for three hours. We surrendered early and went home.

Still, a pretty good day. And evening.

The kind of snow that starts fires

Who would have guessed that a snow globe acting as a lens for sunlight started a fire? And in Oregon, no less. Three snow globes.

Firefighters are blaming snow globes for focusing intense beams of sunlight on a couch Saturday evening, almost starting a fire. 

Steve McAdoo, Clackamas Fire District 1 spokesman, said three large snow globes on a windowsill acted like a triple-lens, concentrating the light on the back of couch until it began to smolder. 

"Thankfully the couch never actually caught on fire," McAdoo said. "But it did smolder, releasing a moderate amount of smoke." 

 

Amnesia

Joanie and I were out shopping and gallivanting around town. We were over in the Mississippi Street neighborhood and stopped in Amnesia Brewery for lunch.

As my daughter and her boyfriend discovered, Portland is awash with microbreweries. In fact, Amnesia was the second stop on our microbrewery tour when they were up here. Showing up during the day in the middle of the week, there wasn't much of a crowd, which was fine. They had some blues playing over their system (later there was some Bollywood) and one guy operated both the bar and the kitchen, which was actually a grill outside. Joanie had a cheeseburger and a porter, I had a sausage sandwich with sauerkraut. Excellent lunch. Wonderful day.

It took sixty years to be so lucky.

Adventure

Joanie and I went exploring. Well, we were going to try out a breakfast place. Unfortunately, everyone in Portland goes out for breakfast on Sunday mornings. First we went to Screen Door, which has waffles and chicken, southern-style, grits and Cajun stuff. And biscuits. But there was a line out the door. So then we went to Gravy on Mississippi, but there was a line out that door. The wait was forty-five minutes. So then we went to Pine State Biscuits (as in North Carolina), but, alas, another long line.

We ended up heading out to the reliable Cameo Cafe, only they were missing one of their two cooks and had a new waitress. There was a line for a table so we sat at the counter. Even then it took a loooong time to get our meals. I got my standby, the biscuits and gravy and eggs and bacon with a huge pile of hash browns that were so hot that they glowed like the sun in the center. 

Too much. We went down to the Saturday Market (open weekends March through December) where we went shopping for toe rings for Joan. Toe rings aren't quite as painful as piercing something or as permanent as a tattoo. I chose the one that she's got on her right foot, she chose the one that's on her left foot. 

After an afternoon nap and some afternoon delight we went out at dusk trying to find a blues benefit. Unfortunately, there were terrible directions on the internet and we drove for a long time before we pulled over. Joan used my iPhone to get new directions. It was downtown, by the river, where all the homeless shelters were. No parking, and by the time we got there the act we wanted to see had probably already performed. 

So we came home. 

It's not me, it's you

Joanie and I went to the Bagdad Theater to see "It's Not Me, It's You" last night.

Great night out. The stories and storytellers were great, from the woman who was arrested with her TV crew sneaking into the Bohemian Grove and ended up dating the security guard to a very sad and funny story about a sixteen year-old losing his virginity to a prostitute in East Pasco, Washington, which the moderately good-looking prostitutes leave to go to Tacoma to make a living. There was a great poet who is on a local public radio show. There were two columnists from a local paper who did a kind of "Can you top this?" when going through their hellish date nights, like the guy who took her to dinner at a soup kitchen and slept in a closet on top of his friend's clothes ("We didn't do it in the closet. We did it on the couch."), or the one who got a spontaneous bloody nose while performing oral sex, or the one whose date insisted on reading his favorite parts of The Fountainhead before they went out ("That wasn't the dealbreaker.") There was the vegetarian who spent a weekend with her boyfriend in Hershey, Pennsylvania where she was reduced to eating chocolate.

It really was a great show. The spoken word can be a wonderful thing. And it's great to have someone to share it with.

Snowing in Portland

Well, it's actually accumulating a little, maybe an inch or so at the higher elevations. It's been flurrying with occasional snow showers over the last couple of days, I had a fun ride home through one, but nothing much was sticking on the roads. Maybe some snow on the roofs for an hour after dawn.

I'll probably shelter in place today. Maybe if it looks pretty out I'll take a walk around Nikeland, but I'm not guaranteeing it. Joan's got a baby due this week. (She's a doula!) Hope the streets are safe when the contractions start.

More coffee.

Joan's sunrise

Let's face it. Portland, especially this time of year, does not have sunrises. If it's not overcast or raining it's foggy. If you don't have a reason to get out of bed early you generally don't miss anything.

But Joan got up yesterday morning to let the dogs out to the backyard and stumbled upon a sunrise.

But there's no reason to get in the habit of getting out of bed early.