So I'm cleaning out my closets, and this time I swear I'm going to be ruthless. It doesn't matter how cute something looks on the hanger. For once, I'm going to accept the fact that...
...I never got around to buying a top to go with these pants, and what's more, I never will.
...no matter how much I hope it won't, the red fleece sweater will always attract every dog hair within fifty miles.
...the '90s are never, ever coming back.
No rationalization. No denial. And it's working. The donation bags are getting full, my overstuffed drawers are breathing sighs of relief. Then...I get to the T-shirts.
I pull out this tank, squashed near the bottom of the drawer, and instantly I'm back in Italy. Hot blazing blue sky, turquoise water. White pebble beaches and crooked narrow streets. It was my first trip abroad. I was 22. That fall, I started...
...veterinary school, where I met...
...my sweetheart. Yellowstone was our first road trip. Every night, we had to find a hill to park on so that we could roll-start the VW van the next morning. VW vans have crappy electrical systems. On the upside, every other VW driver on the road will wave to you.
After we graduated, my sweetheart moved to Kansas, while I drove down I-5 to my first veterinary job in...
...Mariposa, just outside Yosemite National Park. I made a wonderful friend, Marybeth, and we went to the county fair and I got this tee promoting Mariposa County's Division of Alcohol and Drug Programs. I have no idea why. Anyway, the butterfly is pretty.
From thousands of miles away, my sweetheart sent me an Indigo Girls song:
"To let this love survive would be the greatest gift we could give Tell all the friends who think they're so together That these are ghosts and mirages, these thoughts of fairer weather Though it's storming out, I feel safe within the arms Of love's discovery."
Not surprisingly, soon after that we moved to Tennessee together...
...where, among other things, we went to Indigo Girls concerts. And then...
One by one, I lay the T-shirts out. They're old. Most of them I haven't worn in years. Get rid of them, the ruthless voice demands. They're just taking up space.
I smooth my hand over the worn fabric, the cracked designs. And then I fold them back up, one by one, and I nestle them back in the drawer.
Sometimes, the best memories aren't in photographs.
"...for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain..." Joel 2:23
I don't know what good old Joel was actually prophesying, but if he was talking about the Pacific Northwest spring of 2011, I'd say he hit the nail right on the head. We've been getting the rain. And the former rain. And the latter rain. Day after day, our weather forecasts have called for "steady rain," "increasing rain," "continuing rain," "rain turning to showers," and then, just to shake things up, "showers turning to rain." In between all that downpour, it drizzles. Unless, for kicks and giggles, it decides to hail.
This isn't standard-issue Portland damp. A sample of the records broken last month:
Consecutive days of rain in March: 23. (Old record: 16.) Total days of rain in March: 28. (Old record: 27.) Latest date in the year to hit 60 degrees: March 31st. (Average: February 16th.)
I wish I could report that the first two weeks of April have turned it around. But so far, it's been more of the same. You know it's bad when even the natives--who normally pride themselves on their dewy complexions, from all that moisture in the air--get cranky and start complaining.
Anyway, I think the unremitting, dripping gloom is why I've been in a funk lately. That, and the cold from hell that won't go away. The euphoria of spring, the exhilaration and new energy that come with the daffodils and lengthening days...it just ain't happening, people.
Of course, compared to what's been going on in the world, this is nothing. I shouldn't even be complaining. Time to stop moping out the window and kick the cheery part of my brain back into gear. But how?
Hmm. Perhaps I shall type "cutest kitten in the world" into Google.
Oh, yeah. That helps.
So does this *geeking out, yay!!*
What about you? What do you do when the weather gets you down? Does music pick you up? Favorite movies? A special kind of tea? Doughnuts? Please advise, my friends!
The other night we caught a movie at one of our local pub theaters. We love our pub theaters, because 1) $3 admission, and 2) I've yet to see a movie that is not improved by pizza and beer. (Or if you prefer, a vegan wrap and Pinot Noir. This is Portland, after all.) One of our favorites is at the Kennedy School, which is an actual elementary school that sat empty for decades before being converted to a B&B. Guests bunk down in the former classrooms. There's an Honor Bar (no smoking) and a Detention Bar (light `em up!), and the school auditorium is now the theater. Instead of metal folding chairs, though, it's stuffed with vintage sofas, chairs, and loveseats, with little end tables for your grub and ale.
Another of our favorites is the Bagdad Theater.* The Bagdad is one of those old-timey movie palaces from back in the day, with a fabulous Mediterranean decor that has been lovingly restored.
And the movie? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. Let me confess right here: I have not read any of the Harry Potter books nor seen any of the movies past The Sorcerer's Stone. Not for any snobbish or disdainful reason...I just sort of haven't gotten around to it. The main reason we picked it was because the showtime fit our evening the best. Sometimes, it's all about going with the flow.
Which goes for the movie, too. Because the last time I looked, Daniel Radcliffe was still like, twelve and had baby fat in his cheeks and he and Emma Watson had the same build. Apparently, much has changed. When you haven't seen a HP movie since little Harry was trying on the Sorting Hat, The Deathly Hallows Part 1 comes at you like a fever dream: gorgeous and incomprehensible. Sudden shifts in scene with no apparent reason...characters I couldn't place saying things I didn't understand...Ralph Fiennes without a nose. But I still had a good time. Although why Harry, Hermione and Ron spend the entire middle of the movie in a tent, moaning about how they have to find Horcruxes and a magical sword, or else all is doomed, but instead of actually searching for the damn things, they listen to the radio and get into snits with each other and then the sword coincidentally shows up like, ten feet from where they're camping...well, maybe it's explained in the book. (But hey, did I mention the scenery was gorgeous?)
So, OK. Apparently it's time I catch up with the biggest cultural phenomenon in living memory. All you Harry Potterities, what do you advise? Read all the books first, then watch the movies? Or watch, then read? Or...?
*Not all the pub theaters in Portland are owned by the McMenamin brothers--there's also the Laurelhurst, which is fabulous--but the McMenamins have four, including Kennedy and the Bagdad. The McMenamins specialize in buying old, abandoned buildings and either restoring them to their original use (like the Crystal Ballroom, which was and is again a dance palace), or converting them (the Chapel Pub used to be a funeral home, and has an eternal flame burning outside; Edgefield used to be the county poor house, later an insane asylum, and now it's a B&B and youth hostel with taverns, a restaurant, a golf course, pub theater, glass-blowing shop, a...oh hell, you just have to go there and see.) All of them are beautifully renovated and loaded with original, custom artwork that just makes me smile. Like this.
This year, for my birthday, I got an unexpected surprise: my friend Walter sent me an Amazon gift certificate. In the amount of a Kindle. Get yourself one, he said. Or, if you'd rather, spend it on books instead.
Cue dilemma.
I love physical books. Can't imagine life without them. Can't imagine me without them. And yet I find e-readers fascinating. Hundreds of books at one's fingertips? The ability to travel without half my luggage weighted down with paper? (Because of course I can't take just one novel. There are the two or three I'm currently reading. Plus an old favorite, in case I need a comfort read. Plus the one I always buy in the airport bookstore, because no matter how resolved I am not to buy a new book, invariably one will beckon from the shelves, cooing, "See how shiny I am. How intriguing. Come to me, and discover in my pages a new world of depths and delights," and it's not my fault that Powell's Books has an outpost in the Portland Airport, and yes I suppose I could just not go in, but then this blog would be written by a completely different person in an alternate universe and that seems, I dunno. Unlikely.)
So back to what I was saying. Fascinated. And yet torn. Because of course when you get a Kindle, you need to download books onto it. E-books. From Amazon.com. Now, I don't dislike Amazon. In fact, I harbor a kind of distant fond admiration for it, the way you do something that's all gee-whizzy and technical and really, really good at what it does, and yet is essentially soulless. (Like Avatar. But that's a whole different post.)
And yet...
...every e-book I might buy would be one less actual book bought from a real, live, independent bookstore. And I love indie bookstores. I adore the hand-written shelf cards telling me which books are staff favorites. I look forward to seeing the same people every time I go in, and getting to know them, and picking their brains for book recommendations. I love the sense of timelessness that envelops me as soon as I walk in the door. The feeling that all cares and worries belong to another world, and here, in this small place, the only important things are the stories. Best of all, though, is noticing a cover, or a title, and I've never heard of the book before or the author, but something about it catches my eye so I lift it down. Turn it over. Scan the blurbs and the back copy. Open it and read the first sentence. Sometimes I think "meh" and I move on. But sometimes that first sentence flicks over me like a noose and cinches tight and I'm thinking yes yes yes I must find out everything now please and I buy the book and take it home and immerse myself in its world and then go out and rave about it to everyone I know.
You can't. Which is why you go to your local bookstore and wander the stacks to discover the next unknown book you're going to love. Which means that the bookstore has to be there, and the only way it can be there is if people keep going and buying books.
And yet...
And yet...
Back and forth. Up and down. And finally Walter was like, what are you doing, and I'm like, I dunno, dude, and I realized I just had to decide. So I did.
When the Kindle arrived, it happened that I was re-reading one of my favorites, a 1946 edition of Pavilion of Women by Pearl Buck. I'd bought it used from an indie bookstore a few years ago. The dust jacket is long gone. Some previous owner had amused herself by penciling over parts of the cover illustration. Its edges are worn and dented in places. It feels handled and much, much read, and its pages have that sweet, dusty, woody scent of old book paper. (Old book is like puppy breath--one of the great, immortal aromas of life. Whatever happened to it? I miss it.)
The Kindle isn't flashy; like the book, it doesn't draw attention to itself. I charge it, turn it on, and navigate to the Kindle store. There on the home page, practically the first thing I see:Margaret Atwood's latest, The Year of the Flood.
IwantIwantIwant. I click. Less than a minute later, the book is here in my hand. I won't lie to you: that is beyond cool. I start the first chapter, but it's hard to lose myself in the flow; I'm too aware of what I'm reading it on. But after a while, the words catch me and I go under, immersed in Margaret's world, and it's not until I finish the second chapter that I realize: the Kindle has disappeared. The same way a physical book disappears, when the story takes hold and we slip into the dream the author has created.
So here I am: a lifelong book lover, with overflowing bookcases and teetering stacks all over my house, eleven novels on my nightstand right now, a passionate believer in bookstores...and a Kindle owner. The Atwood novel is the only one I've bought. All the others I've downloaded are free. They're works in the public domain--classics--that I've already owned or already read.
If we vote with our dollars, I've decided that mine will continue to vote for bookstores.
I'm still reading two to three books at a time, but now, one of them is on the Kindle. (Current pick: Tess of the D'Ubervilles.) Every time I turn it on, the idea of reading 19th century literature on a 21st century device makes me smile. But then the words appear, everything in the real world vanishes--including the device that brings me those words--and I'm in England, on a summer evening, slipping into the dairy with Tess.
P.S...Many thanks, Walter, for the shove into the future!
I admit it--I am one of those people. Whenever a new film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel comes out (and they've been thick as fleas these past few years, haven't they?) I'm in the front row with the cheese popcorn, mesmerized. Now, why a person ever needs to watch more than one version of Mansfield Park in her life, I don't know. I offer no rational explanation. Why does my cat punch holes in every paperback cover she can sink her sharp little teeth into? No idea. It's a force of nature. We cannot explain; we can only obey.
So: last night, Emma. The only wealthy Jane Austen heroine, and the most deliciously flawed. BBC. Romola Garai. I'm so there. Sweep me away, Masterpiece Theatre!
Opening credits. Toes tingling with anticipation. And then...a voiceover.
Fight off immediate sense of dread. Because too many times, voiceover = bad movie. (Is it just me, or have other people noticed that, too?) Voiceovers explain things, and this voiceover insisted on explaining stuff that would be perfectly obvious from watching the characters. Yes, Emma's father is a hypochondriac who fears the worst at all times. For Pete's sake, you've got Michael Gambon playing him--Michael Gambon, whose portrayal of Squire Hamley in Wives and Daughters* made me cry (and I do not cry easily--witness a theater production of Les Miserables, sobs and stifled weeping all through the audience, and me? A stone. That's how hard my heart is, people.) Michael Gambon, as I say, who can express a subtlety with an eyelid, and you have to sum his character up for us before the story even starts?
I wish I could say that this new Emma destroyed my voiceover prejudice forever. Alas...no. It's not terrible, but swept away? I felt a few breezes, but otherwise, not so much. The overtelling continued throughout the episode, with dialogue (not Austen's--she knew better) telegraphing what was to come, rather than letting the action play out for the viewer. Austen was the master of delicious scene-building--why not let us enjoy it, and the surprises that come with it?
I'm no Austen purist (here's proof), but alas, I was underwhelmed. However: two more episodes are to come, and I'll be there, front and center. A tepid version of Jane still beats most else, after all. Besides--who am I to deny a force of nature?
*If you're a fellow Austen and/or costume drama fan, and you haven't seen Wives and Daughters yet, GO. Order the DVD from Amazon.com, put it in your Netflix queue. Now. I'll wait. While you're at it, get the book by Elizabeth Gaskell. Big, fat, luscious read. You won't regret it, I promise.
A friend of mine sent this to me and I loved it. Maybe because, amid all this politicized, polarized health care debate, it's good to be reminded that health care is people. People dedicated to helping other people beat disease.
Not to mention...dancing with pink gloves.
The guy with the mop is my favorite.
One of the many things I'm thankful for is that I live in the same town as these dedicated, professional, pink-gloved goofballs. Love ya, P-town!
This week, Internet people have been making me laugh. I must share the bounty!
From Go Fug Yourself: a mock trial in which you, the jury, must decide whether Carrie Underwood committed fashion fug in the first degree at the CMA Awards. From Exhibit A: "The prosecution frowns that this mirrored dress mostly eliminates her waist, and reflects the red carpet in such a way that it becomes an artistic interpretation of internal bleeding." Go! Vote! Carrie's fate is in your hands!
Prefer your scathing wit in a literary setting? Here, then, are the winners of The Rejectionist's challenge to write the "THE MOST AMAZING Form Rejection in the History of the Universe." That's right, people--the universe. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Ha! Apparently Hell hath never seen rejected writers unleashed...on themselves.
What's that? You're too lazy to read or vote, you want to loll on the couch and let the funny pour into your eyes? Behold, just for you: Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" music video...the literal version.*
Which brings us, as always, to the eternal, unanswerable question...who are these people, and where do they find the time to do this kind of stuff?
*Discovered via my friend Jenny's blog...thanks for the mirth, Jenny!
There’s the kind of dream vacation you think about for years, cutting out pictures of pink beaches and pinning them on your bulletin board, sighing, One of these days…
And then there’s the other kind of dream vacation. As in, Never in a million years would I have dreamed anyone could talk me into this.
Well, gentlemen (and ladies): Start your engines. This last weekend my sweetie and I flew more than halfway across the country to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a place I’ve never in my life thought about for more than four consecutive seconds. Why?
MotoGP is motorcycle racing. The GP stands for Grand Prix. The riders compete against each other at races all over the world for the annual MotoGP championship. (Three days at Indianapolis, and those are pretty much all the hard facts I know.)
My sweetie was concerned that before the weekend was half over, I’d liquefy into a festering puddle of boredom. (Like the two women we saw sleeping in chairs underneath the stands, behind the Indy Dog vendor.) But this is the thing about that other kind of dream vacation: discovering stuff you never knew existed. The T-shirts alone are another whole subculture. Lots of black, lots of old English font, lots and lots of skulls. The T-shirts supplied information…
Hell yes it’s fast (Dumbass)
…philosophy…
Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music
…advice…
Ride it like you stole it
…and often, a powerful simplicity: Your bike sucks
And then there are the brolly girls. Brolly girls hold umbrellas over the riders so that they don’t get hot/rained on/otherwise inconvenienced. Here’s a brolly girl practicing:
If you’re imagining four men to every woman at MotoGP (including the brolly girls), you’re about spot-on.
But if you’re also picturing bad mullets, chrome studs, and leather fringe, a la a Harley Davidson rally...nope. If Harley Davidson is the pit bull, MotoGP is the greyhound. Sleek. Stripped down. MotoGP isn’t about chrome. It’s about speed, baby.
Sunday—Race Day—dawns. After nodding off during the qualifying runs and practice laps the day before, I’m taking no chances. My satchel is crammed with a netbook computer, two novels, a magazine, and a newspaper crossword.
The thing is, I’ve never understood motor races. Horse races, yes. Horse racing is spirit and muscle and power and skill and immeasurable, limitless heart. In comparison, motor races always seemed so…well, mechanical. And loud. And endlessly repetitive, with all that going around and around and around. Yawn.
But it turns out that a motorcycle flashing past at nearly two hundred mph is…well, it’s like this:
Wow. Okay.
I got the crossword partly done. And then I couldn't help it. The motorcycles hooked me in.
Three laps into the race. The cyclist in the lead, a Spaniard named Dani Pedrosa, crashes his bike. Long skid over the grass, but he gets up. Whew. Then he gets back on the bike and rejoins the race. From the lead he's now dead last, by an enormous margin.
A few laps later, the next guy in the lead, Valentino Rossi, also crashes. Also rejoins the race, but his bike is too damaged, and he drops out for good.
That leaves one rider, Jorge Lorenzo, waaaay in front. Unless he crashes, too, it’s now a race for second place.
Bikes flash past. Zoom. Zoom. Last of all, Dani Pedrosa on his orange Honda Repsol. He’s by himself on the track, the rest of the field literally a mile ahead, but he’s flying. He has no hope of finishing anything but last, he’s already crashed once, and yet he’s not letting up one iota. Even a rank amateur like me can tell.
The field comes around again. A mile back, Dani Pedrosa. I squint. Look at the field. Then back at Dani. “You know," I say, "I think Pedrosa is catching up.”
“No way,” says my sweetheart. Another lap. “Damn, you’re right," he says. "He is catching up.”
Now we’re not watching the battle for second. Everyone's watching the battle for last. Every time Pedrosa flies past—gaining, always gaining—the crowd cheers. When he catches the rider in front of him and passes, the stands erupt in roars. I’m whooping right along with them.
Twenty-eight laps. The checkered flag comes down. Jorge Lorenzo wins. Good on ya, Jorge.
And Dani Pedrosa? Tenth, in a field of fifteen. Crashed his bike, ended up more than a mile back from the field, and still passed five other riders.
Yeah. That’s heart. From this out-of-left-field vacation, I found a new hero. And something to remember the next time things get tough.
No matter what, keep on flying.
I ought to put that on a T-shirt.
For some of the action, click here...I tried to embed it, but MotoGP won't let me. But it's a great video. And if you're dying to find out about engines and highsides and lowsides and what all the flags mean...then this is for you.
Many, many thanks to my brother, who invited us out for the MotoGP, and to all their family for putting us up... especially my nephew Michael, who bunked with his brother Ryan so we could have his room. You guys are the best!
Channel surfing today. Saw an ad for vitamins. For teens. More specifically, one version of the vitamin for teen boys: “For healthy muscles!” and another version for teen girls: “For healthy skin!”
Maybe the heat is clogging my brain. But…
…do not girls also need muscles?
…do not boys also need skin?
…does anyone in the year 2009 really think this crap will fly?
Where, oh where, is Don Draper* when you need him?
*Mad Men. MadMenMadMenMadMen. Loooooove Mad Men. This vitamin ad campaign, it needs some Mad Men. There would still be outdated, blatant sex stereotypes—but they would be subtle. They would whisper. Because Don Draper, he understands how to wake the fears and wants of our subconscious in a way that higher brain functions can’t decipher. That is advertising genius. Vitamin people, pay attention. Or, better yet, join us in the 21st century. It’s true—girls have muscles here. But we’re not scary. Much.
P.S. Speaking of stereotypes…the best stereotype-busting, genre-crossing, hilarious irreverence of a book I’ve come across in lo these many months is…
Note that Molly is also maximizing surface area for optimal cooling. (One could argue that lying on a rug wouldn't help with this..but then again, one doesn't argue with cats.) Why is Molly (that's Miss Brown to you) doing this?
Because it IS hot. 103 on its way to 106 hot. Record-setting hot.
Last night, with all the scorchiness, my sweetheart and I couldn't face any form of cookery. So we--very cleverly, we thought--headed to a local pub for dinner. Where the waitress informed us that the wait for our food would be at least an hour, maybe more. Because it turned out everybody ELSE in the neighborhood had already decided the same thing and gotten there before us.
Originalityfail.
Before all of you who live in searing locales start snickering in your iced tea, consider this: you most likely have air conditioning. Most of us in Portland don't, because fifty-one weeks out of the year, we don't need it. Besides, most of us in the city live in old houses, and when you live in an old house (and I'm talking old like 1906, not 1972) installing air conditioning ranks pretty much dead last on the priority list. (At the top is "find out why the hot water in the upstairs bathtub comes out of the wall instead of the faucet," followed by two dozen items ranked in order of how loud we screeched "Oh, my GOD" when we discovered them. We old-house owners prefer to think of these things as "character." Until we scrape together enough money to fix them, after which we refer to them as "that disaster the previous owners thought was such a brilliant idea which could've electrocuted us in our sleep.")
Heat waves in Portland are kind of like snow in Portland. We get a week of each every year, more or less, and it rocks Portland's world.
Be the cat, Portland. Maximize cooling. And buck up--after all, it's bound to rain again soon.*
All over everywhere, folks are squeeing about Freedom. Apparently, this is a computer program you download from the internet that gives you freedom from...
(wait for it)
...the internet.
Freedom from checking your email every few minutes. Freedom from checking the comment trails on your favorite blogs. Freedom from Twitter, Facebook, your book's Amazon.com ranking...
not that I ever look at my books...umm...hardly ever, I mean...*cough*
...in short: Freedom to do some actual work. The way Freedom works is, you set it for a specified time and during that time, the program prevents you from accessing the internet for any reason--even to check March Madness results (Cher bracket) on Go Fug Yourself. You can't argue with it...you can't reason with it. It knows no mercy.
If that's not a writer's godsend, I don't know what is. It's just too easy, when hitting a bump in the fifth circle of hell known as the First Draft, to say I must know, at this very instant, how to say "hurry up" in French! Before I even know it, Google is activated and I'm knee-deep in French-to-English translation sites. And then I remember that I wanted to know what sort of fabric is crepe, exactly, and by the way, wasn't The Road with Viggo Mortensen supposed to come out last November? Where hast ye been, Viggo? And then...
No! No more! Where do I get this Freedom? I cried, cursor poised, ready to click through to my deliverance. And then I saw the fine print. (Why, why is there always fine print?)
Freedom is for Macs only.
*foam quietly at mouth for a moment* Fine. Maybe it's just that Mac users don't have the self-discipline that we PC-ers do. So yesterday, I devised a little Freedom of my own: I disconnected my laptop from the internet. (I was surprised at how long I hesitated before clicking "disconnect." As if the mouse was a cleaver held over my sole supply of oxygen.) Every hour and a half, I allowed myself ten minutes surf time. (Okay, fifteen. And once was thirty minutes, but that was lunch.) Overall, I was pretty pleased with myself. And today?
And...and...Aarghh! I can't make it stop!Fred Stutzman, savior of Mac users, hear us! Are we not also helpless in the face of a strong wireless signal? Do we not also have work to be done? Where's our PC Freedom?!
Who hasn't watched birds, and wondered what it would be like to fly? Me, I always figured skydiving would be as close as a human could get.
I was so wrong.
I love how the first guy comments that jumping out away from the cliff got boring. Which I can totally see, because yeah, having all that space around you as you streak through the air at 100 mph would be so dull. As opposed to streaking through the air at 100 mph an arm's length from solidrock.
Anthropologists argue about what separates us from the animals. Language? Music? (It isn't tool-making or self-awareness; those got shot down a while back.)
You know what I think it is? Whatever thought process it is that leads somone to say, I want to fly. I can't fly. How do I fly? I know: I'll invent a wingsuit and then I'll put it on and jump off a cliff. Maybe I'll fly, maybe I'll crash. Let's find out.
It's just so like a human being. Reckless and creative and visionary and stupid, and from the safety of my couch, it warms my geeky heart. Crazy people, fly on!
What about you? Do you see this and say, Man, I wish I could do that! Do you think it's cool but you'll just sit back and watch, thank you very much? Do you think people who do stuff like this are certifiable?
Now, I’m an airport fretter. I’m not scared of flying--I love to fly. But I’m the one who always wants to leave for the airport four hours ahead of time. In case of, you know, traffic jams. Or long lines. Or no spots in the economy lot. Or who knows. (You know you’re a champion fretter when you don’t feel you have to come up with specific scenarios. You just know something will happen, and if it’s an invasion of killer bees that shuts down the interstate, you can still turn to your partner and say, “I told you!!”)
But that Sunday, for some reason, I was zen. Dogs at kennel at 8 AM. Plane leaving at 9:57 AM. Plenty of time. Besides, we were already checked in for our flight, thanks to the wonders of teh internetz, as they say on LOLcats. What could possibly go wrong?
And at first, it all went so very, very well. We dropped the dogs off at Stay (is that not the best name ever for a boarding kennel? The folks who run it, Kim and James, are fabulous. Our dogs didn’t give a rip that we were leaving. They know the way to the play yard, and they were all, “Come on, Kim, let’s go play! Let’s play, Kim! Now, Kim! Kim! Kim!” Not one little whine, not a single mournful look. “Yeah, whatever, see ya. Whoo-hoo, Kim! Play!” Ingrates.)
Off to the airport. Lovely spot in the econo lot. Less than two minutes to wait for the shuttle. Disembarked at United and found, in the middle of an otherwise empty airport, the Line From Hell. But no problem, right? We’re already checked in. All we have to do is check our bags. YOU MUST CHECK IN 45 MINUTES PRIOR TO DEPARTURE, the sign warned. Yawn. Magic of teh internetz. We’re golden.
Got up to the counter. Self-help computer terminal won’t check me in. See a United representative for assistance, it says. It is, I kid you not, forty-four minutes to departure time.
Uh-oh.
Am directed to a second line. Get up to the counter for the second time. Am informed by a very nice, extremely harried United ticket agent that I have missed my flight.
Missed my flight? The flight doesn’t leave for thirty-six more minutes! But, no—wait for it—
“Your bag wasn’t checked forty-five minutes prior to departure time,” the agent tells me.
That was the unforeseen circumstance, the fret I should have been fretting. It’s not good enough that the actual live PERSON checks in 45 minutes prior. The BAGGAGE has to check in, too, and unlike the actual, live person, the magic of teh internetz DOES NOT COUNT.
The sign neglected to mention that part. Also the part about how you can no longer fly separately from your bags, as in, Can’t you just let us trot onto this flight and the bags can follow us later?
NO.
Crap.
I fly a lot, and I’ve never run into this before. Maybe because I rarely check bags—I’m a carryon girl. But we weren’t the only ones, that morning. It seemed like half the line missed the same flight for the same reason. So if you were on the Portland to San Francisco at 9:57 AM on November 9, and your supposedly full flight had a bunch of empty seats and you were able to stretch out in luxury…you’re welcome.
The ticket agent (and she was really a lovely person, sweet as could be to us, although you know that part in The Fellowship of the Ring where Bilbo Baggins lunges to take the ring from Frodo, and his face turns, for one instant, wicked goblin-like with fangs? Whatever supernatural talent that is, this ticket agent has it. Some other passenger tried to skip the second line and sneak in directly behind us, and I swear the agent got ten feet tall and bared a mouthful of shiny danger. It was scary. I almost got back in line again) got us booked on another flight, WITH bags, to Colorado Springs, and all was rainbows and puppy breath, and we were happy, especially since we then had time to get coffee and lemon poppyseed scones.
Can I just say? Colorado Springs is DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS. Pike’s Peak, the Garden of the Gods. Sunshine. Three hundred days of sunshine a year, those people get. They get as many days of sunshine as we Portlanders get of overcast and rain. I can’t think about that too much, or I’ll get depressed.
And the wildlife... We saw at least a dozen mule deer grazing in people’s front yards. A most beautiful fox scampering across a pasture.
And coolest of all, this fellow:
The person we were with said that in 35 years in Colorado Springs, he’d never seen a bighorn sheep on the side of the road like this. We watched him for several minutes, until he jumped the guardrail on the far side of the highway and meandered, safe, to the creek below.
We visited for 4 days, then headed back home…only to find our own wildlife up to shenanigans while we were gone.
OK, everyone, quiz time: What's wrong with this cover?
If you figure it out, and you want a shot at winning the actual book (or a gift certificate to the online bookstore of your choice) then skip on over to Smart Bitches Trashy Books and enter their caption contest. (Think fast...entries close tomorrow). Best caption gets the book. Second and third best get the gift certificates. (Which begs the question: If you're not a romance novel fan, how do you engineer a caption to be the almost funniest?)
If any of you win, let me know and I'll post it on the blog!
Yesterday’s weather forecast from Oregon Public Broadcasting:
“Very pleasant at the coast today: Overcast, with highs 65 to 75 degrees.”
Leave it to the state that invented the term “sun break” (as in, “showers most of the day, occasional sun breaks in the afternoon”) to consider "very pleasant" a cloudy, cool day at the beach...in AUGUST.
OK, it’s been a little more than a week. And this post is not about public speaking, as I’d previously promised. Mice and men and gang agley and all that. It’s summer. Go with it.
The ins and outs of public speaking will be coming soon. But first, Melissa Marsh of Grosvenor Square has nominated me for a Blogging Excellence Award. I’m flattered, and really don’t think I deserve it. But—never one to turn down a pat on the back—I’ll take it!
Here are blogs that I nominate in turn:
Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I’m not currently a romance reader, although I’ve devoured a few in my day. But this blog is on my daily rounds, because these gals dish it up straight and are hilariously funny to boot. In addition to reviewing romance novels, they provide insights on pop culture, snarky analysis of romance covers(Warnings: Has Profanity. Not Work Safe. Do Not Read While Drinking a Beverage or You’ll Be Replacing Your Keyboard), and even, when warranted, investigative journalism into plagiarism and the mating habits of the black-footed ferret.
Pub Rants. Written by Kristen Nelson, a very nice woman who happens to be an up-and-coming literary agent. Her daily (or rather, nightly) take on the business of publishing is a must-read. Other literary agents’ blogs that are top of the heap: Nathan Bransford and BookEnds Literary Agency.
A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. J.A. Konrath is a mystery writer, and no, I don’t read mysteries, either. But if you want to read about book promotion from an author who’s dived in feet-first and not yet come up for air, this blog is it. Konrath is the inexhaustible king of self-promotion, and he doesn’t just talk about it. He does it, and invites his readers along for the ride, whether he’s figuring out how to get on the conference circuit or engaging in a three-month, cross-country quest to personally visit 500 bookstores. He dispenses tons of information, his opinions are strong, the comment threads can go from fawning to contentious in the blink of an eye—all ingredients for great blogging.
barista brat. I don’t even remember how I discovered barista brat, but I’m a devotee. As a longtime Starbucks employee, her take on the world of the green apron is often amused, sometimes annoyed, occasionally bitter—but always fresh. On hiatus for three months, she’s back at last. If you’ve ever worked (or you currently do) in a service profession, and you’ve ever longed for karmic justice to be dispensed on an unpardonably rude customer, you must read this post.
The Heart of the Matter. Barry Eisler has been a lot of things: a corporate executive, an attorney, a covert something in the CIA (what exactly isn’t clear from his bio—I imagine that’s the covert part) and a writer. He’s the author of the John Rain series of thrillers (um, no…I don’t read thrillers, either. Stop asking me) but his blog is not book- or publishing-related. It’s about politics, and far from the ever-popular pasttime of slinging insults and reducing complex issues to soundbites, his blog posts are well-reasoned and insightful. I don’t always agree with him, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
This past Sunday, my sweetie and I were standing in line for coffees when I smacked my forehead (this isn’t just a literary conceit—I really do smack my forehead when I’ve forgotten something) and said, “The Obama rally!” A co-worker had told me about it the day before, and it had clean slipped my mind. We looked at our watches. I thought it started at noon; it was already ten A.M. “No way we’ll get in,” we said.
When we got home, I checked online. Turned out the gates opened at 12:30; the rally didn’t start until 2:30. Sweet! We hopped on our bikes and pedaled downtown.
Portland on a sunny spring day is like Cinderella at the ball: once the overcast gray gloom is banished, the city sparkles. We rode along the Willamette River, then joined the crowd pouring over one of the ten bridges linking east Portland with the westside. Once across, we started looking for a place to lock our bikes…and looked…and looked. The railing along the entire riverfront spanning downtown was packed with thousands of bicycles. In fifteen years in this town, we'd never seen anything like it.
(I should note at this point the regrettable lack of our own photographs. I forgot my camera. My sweetie—ever prepared—brought his, but the fresh battery he took out of the charger was inexplicably dead. I will skip over the bitter gnashing of teeth.)
Bikes finally secured, we walked to Waterfront Park, the site of the rally. You know how you read in novels: the mood was electric—well, this actually was. The air practically crackled with an optimistic, buzzing energy. We came across an event organizer; she waved at a queue of folks and said, “Go to the end of the line.” So we walked, past hundreds and hundreds of people, past folks selling bottled water, ice cream, Obama T-shirts, looking for the end. And looking…and looking…
Six blocks later, we looked at each other. “No way we’re getting in,” one of us said.
“Lunch,” we both said.
When it comes to crowds, I admit it—we’re weenies.
After lunch, we headed back to the Hawthorne Bridge, thinking we’d watch the rally from there. No such luck—the west end of the bridge rose just above the rally point, and not surprisingly, the police weren’t allowing anyone on the near side, within sight of the grandstand. But we were allowed to queue up on the far side. No visuals, but we could hear. A heavy, steady tide of people was still pouring over the bridge into downtown. In the river, dozens and dozens of boats arrayed themselves in a rough half-moon close to shore. The electric mood heightened.
And then, from the park: “Please welcome…the next First Family of the United States!” A roar boomed from the crowd inside; on the bridge, cheers and applause. Then everyone quieted.
“Wow,” we heard Obama say. “Wow. Wow.” And then, “This is the most spectacular crowd, in the most spectacular setting, that we’ve seen in all the months of this campaign.” Another roar. Yay, Portland! Then he began his stump speech. No one talked on their cell phones; nobody chatted with each other. We all stood listening, quiet, for the forty minutes Obama spoke. We couldn’t catch everything—wind snatched away some of the words, buses drowned out others. Then another roar from the crowd inside the park, and Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” jazzed through the air.
Later, we found out that the official crowd estimate was seventy-two to seventy-five thousand. The queue of people waiting to get into the rally was estimated to be over two miles long. Sixty thousand made it into Waterfront Park; the rest, like us, gathered outside. It was Obama’s largest rally by far, and, we heard, one of the largest for any primary election event in American history. (Blogger, that silly creature, isn't letting me post any pictures at all--go here for some eye-popping ones, and here and here for great videos.)
It was amazing to be part of, and something I will never forget. Not just the crowds, but that optimism, that incredible energy crackling through the air.
Today, Oregon votes. Usually, by this time in the primary season, everything is wrapped up and tied with a bow, and our poor state is like the smallest kid in the class jumping up and down with her hand in the air, squeaking, “Me, too! Me, too!” But this year, for the first time in decades, Oregon’s vote actually matters.
So if you’re an Oregonian—no matter what party, no matter whom you support—get that ballot delivered! *
*Oregon is the only state which votes exclusively by mail. At first, I was unsure about it. Now, I think it’s the most civilized way to cast a ballot. There’s simply no lovelier way to vote than at one’s own kitchen table, with a cup of coffee, music of one’s choice, our state’s wonderful Voter’s Pamphlet (which furnishes information on all the candidates and ballot measures—in plain English) a black pen, and a ballot. No standing in line, no trying to cram it in before or after work, no having to remember which candidate is who and which ballot measures I’m for or against. I’m telling you—vote-by-mail is voter heaven, complete with a paper trail. Y’all should try it sometime. And maybe some year we'll take a cue from you other states, and do away with not allowing ourselves to pump our own gas.
My cousin Jenne Hiigel e-mailed me recently to let me know about her new book project, A Knitter’s Guide to Beer. Now that, I thought, is one intriguing title. Equally captivating are Jenne’s thoughtful and funny posts about knitting, homebrewing, and the process of craft. I especially loved “The Value of Ripping and Dumping.” When her knitting students are daunted at the prospect of having to rip out stitches and redo them, Jenne tells them that’s “more knitting pleasure at no additional cost!” Mistakes, she points out, are an essential part of learning the craft…and that the process itself should be valued and enjoyed, not just the finished product. After all, if you’re not having fun, why do it?
My first writing teacher, Verlena Orr, told us that most beginners have to produce about 10,000 pages before their work is good enough to publish. My heart instantly sank. At that time, I was lucky if I could produce one page a week. Compulsive geek that I am, I quickly figured that, at that rate, it’d take me one hundred and ninety-two years to get published!
Whether the 10,000-page-rule is really true or not, I don’t know. What Verlena was trying to get across to us beginners is that writing is a craft. Like any other craft, it takes learning and practice. It also takes a willingness to recognize when something isn’t good enough. When the work needs to be rethought, re-imagined, redone. Or even scrapped entirely. At that point, it’s tempting to get discouraged and give up. Or to hold on even more fiercely to the work, blaming everyone else when it doesn’t get the recognition we think it deserves.
Part of craftsmanship is never resting on your laurels. It's striving to always improve, to tweak a little something, get a little better, a little more original. That’s what keeps it from getting boring. That’s what makes it fun. It's how all of us—eventually—get to where we’re headed, slipping and tripping though we might.
I'm a veterinarian who started writing and never stopped. I've published two young adult novels: Ten Cents a Dance, which was named a Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and Tallulah Falls, which was named a 2007 Book for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library. I practice veterinary medicine part-time; the rest of the time, I'm up in my office, clacking away at the keyboard.
Life is discovery. Sometimes, I think the stuff I’ve discovered is so cool, I have to share it. Feel free to roll your eyes, it won’t bother me. I’m a geek…I know it.
I pull out this tank, squashed near the bottom of the drawer, and instantly I'm back in Italy. Hot blazing blue sky, turquoise water. White pebble beaches and crooked narrow streets. It was my first trip abroad. I was 22. That fall, I started...
...veterinary school, where I met...
...my sweetheart. Yellowstone was our first road trip. Every night, we had to find a hill to park on so that we could roll-start the VW van the next morning. VW vans have crappy electrical systems. On the upside, every other VW driver on the road will wave to you.
...Mariposa, just outside Yosemite National Park. I made a wonderful friend, Marybeth, and we went to the county fair and I got this tee promoting Mariposa County's Division of Alcohol and Drug Programs. I have no idea why. Anyway, the butterfly is pretty.
...where, among other things, we went to Indigo Girls concerts. And then...
The person we were with said that in 35 years in Colorado Springs, he’d never seen a bighorn sheep on the side of the road like this. We watched him for several minutes, until he jumped the guardrail on the far side of the highway and meandered, safe, to the creek below.
