A cozy hitch.
I thought stuff with dip was already a Canonical Man Food?
Author: Holly
Commute Not-Graffiti
Funny how many things almost count, or sort of count, for my commute graffiti collection.
A Happy Series of Events
- Shellynoir leaves Sang and me six tall IKEA bookcases when she moves to Brooklyn. They take up a whole wall of the living room. But
- for several years they are mostly empty, because it is vexing to figure out how to attach them to the wall so they won’t kill us in an earthquake.
- old-school lathe and plaster wall in which it is difficult to find studs
- baseboard that keeps the shelves from standing quite flush with the wall. It doesn’t seem right to remove and saw up the baseboard for shelving if it’s not built-ins. But!
- for my birthday, Sang Does The Thing!
- buys boards to affix to the wall, solving the baseboard gap problem, and even paints them to match the wall, with paint the previous owner left behind for us in the basement in 1996
- gets toggle bolts to fasten the boards to the wall, even though making 5/8″ holes in the plaster is unnerving
- fastens the bookcases to the boards with L brackets.
- We go to IKEA for a few extra shelves. And breakfast.
Two dollars! excluding coffee and elderflower drink.
Things that now have a designated place on the living room shelves:
- current household files
- shoe box of correspondence to be saved
- my university library books
- my TBR that are not library books
- my borrowed-from-individuals books
- footstool that Bookherd made
- art supplies TBD – colored pencils and sketchpads?
- picture books
- OED, Oregon road atlas, Sunset Garden Book, Chinuk Wawa dictionary, and a few other reference books
- the globe
- comics
- poetry
- coffee table books
- empty shelf for the kitty
- Legos, Zoob, K’Nex
- games
- art and photos from friends
- pop-up books
- Sang’s research project books, mostly from university library
- Sang’s Holmesiana
- yoga mat, foam roller, rollout-stick
Now, in addition, the mostly-fiction in the other room won’t be so overstuffed, and shelving will be easier there too. I am very, very pleased.
signal
My morning walk commute sometimes takes me down Clinton Street, where at 19th Avenue there is a preschool and community garden before you get to the car-traffic diverters at 17th.
Twice a guerrilla crosswalk has been installed, pleasing the preschool families, and twice the City has removed it. So this was here on Monday:
Seeing such a graceful solution– no liability for an unsanctioned crosswalk, yes painted reminder for drivers– made me feel hopeful all day.
piece of cake
My morning walk took me past this little wooden shed on campus. It wasn’t open for business, but the sign says it’s called “art is a piece of cake” and is an art thesis project by Daphne Lyda. Fill me in if you know what’s inside!
A.S. King at Taborspace
Yesterday morning I just happened to see on Facebook that the public library was sponsoring An Evening with A.S. King that same night! And at Taborspace, a really nice comfy space attached to a church, in my part of town. Eeeeeee! Her breakout book was Please Ignore Vera Dietz, which hit my Lifetime Best list as soon as I read it a few years ago. I don’t love all her books equally, but each one is different from the others and I admire that. And her kind of weird often does it for me. So. I caught the late bus home from work by the skin of my teeth, had a few minutes to dine on crackers and chocolate milk, and drove over there.
There were May baskets hung on all the doors, and still plenty of seating. In fact, when someone who wasn’t there for the reading cleared out, I slid into a comfy armchair about ten feet from the lectern! Sara Ryan, the YA author who also runs YA for the library, did introductions. Laini Taylor was there too. And a mix of teenagers– mostly girls but some boys too– and gray-haired ladies with glasses like me.
A.S. King goes by Amy in person– she published under A.S. King from the start because there was already at least one Amy King publishing, and she chose that form because it spells Asking. In her opening patter she said she likes Portland because everything is made of wood. “I mean, of course other places have lots of wooden things too. But in Portland the signs are wooden, the steps are wooden!”
It turns out the first draft of Please Ignore Vera Dietz was written in 36 days. She is a total pantser, and is a little worried right now because her current novel is over 400 pages and not resolved. Someone asked how many drafts she goes through in revision, and she estimated a hundred to a hundred and fifty. She compared it to combing long hair–there’s no way you can yank through it all at once. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up little by little.
She reminded me a little of Lynda Barry. Maybe a little more extroverted– it felt like she could sit and shoot the breeze for hours (and I would be totally up for it). And she read a bunch from Still Life wIth Tornado, which is on my TBR stack and I’m pretty excited now to read it. So glad I made it to this event!
silly things
1. Because sanguinity and I watched Yuri on Ice a couple of weeks ago,
yesterday we met after work for a pork cutlet bowl. I got tonkatsu and she got spicy pork bowl, both tasty but neither quite like the show’s:
I may or may not feel compelled to keep trying.
2. I went to my first Zumba class, at the community center this morning! My plan to hide in the back didn’t work out, as there were only two students including me. But my 1980s high-school aerobics chops got me through.
3. Two audiobooks on my phone and neither one really doing it for me. So I’m downloading I Woke Up Dead at the Mall.
It’s set at the Mall of America. For those keeping track, I was not a finalist in their Writer in Residence contest. Well, onward and upward.
Friday Five
Remember the Friday Five questions at LiveJournal? I haven’t done those in ages. (ETA: they’re also posted at Dreamwidth.)
1. What was your favorite pastime in high school?
Reading books, same as now. I wish I had booklists for those years; lots of Madeleine L’Engle, lots of rereading.
I was also playing the piano and clarinet a lot, though clarinet especially was more a well-rewarded chore than a pastime.
I listened to more music and watched more music videos than I do now. MTV at shellynoir’s house and Channel 12’s Teletunes at Jenny’s.
2. What is your all time favorite board game/card game?
My most ardent love for board games was probably around age 5, so Candyland and Wildlife Lotto. But that aside, my longest-lasting favorite is Pictionary. It’s so fun! Come play Pictionary with me without keeping score.
3. What is the last movie you saw at the theatre and what did you think of it?
The Arrival. I liked the visuals a lot, and I liked the concept and storyline except that in the end it all came down to being about love interest and kid, like it couldn’t possibly suffice for it to be about a female scientist’s unprecedented discoveries and, you know, alien contact.
A few months later I read the novella it was based on, Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life.” I got a lot of pleasure out of noting the differences, where the novella had more nuance and where the film had pumped up the drama. (And I’m not knocking that– the pumped-up drama is where a lot of those visuals I liked came from.) Like, in the novella, there is no drive out to the huge alien monolith and suiting up and all that– they just step in front of an alien video screen in a canvas tent. I’ll say it: the book is better. But the movie is good and has charms that the book doesn’t.
4. What is something (no matter what kind of mood you’re in) that makes you happy the moment you do it, see it, or hear it?
Seeing a happy dog go by. Especially if I get to meet the happy dog!
5.Do you believe that crop circles are made by human or alien?
I don’t have specific beliefs about crop circles because I know almost nothing about them. In general, I believe our understanding of natural phenomena and of ancient history is incomplete, and I look to that before ascribing alien agency.
three things make a post
- Primroses in pots are for sale at the grocery store, and skunk cabbage is up in the canyon. Daphne is on the verge of blooming.
2. I’m reading Esther Hautzig’s The Endless Steppe. I don’t think I read it as a child after all; it was one of those books that was always in the background, at the school library and classroom collections and garage sales. Strawberry Girl was another one, maybe I should try that next. Anyway, The Endless Steppe has the fascination of autobiography combined with the comfort of knowing it’s also a middle-grade book and there’s a limit to how terrible things will get in it. A limit lower than the one in Between Shades of Gray, which surprised me a couple of times with character deaths.
A browse at Wikipedia told me that Esther Hautzig’s daughter Deborah Hautzig wrote a novel I liked in junior high, Second Star to the Right— a fictionalized account of her anorexia. She’s written an afterword–1998 but new to me– that I’m going to read as soon as I post this. I do appreciate it when authors make new forewords and afterwords available online.
3. I was in a “must under no circumstances run out of tea” mood and placed an order at Stash, my hometown tea outfit. I tried Black Forest Black Tea and have come to the conclusion that cocoa shells do not provide what I consider to be a chocolatey flavor. It’s earthy and not terrible or anything, but not what I had in mind. I still have high hopes for Breakfast In Paris– black tea, lavender, bergamot, and vanilla.
read write run resist, Groundhog Day edition
Read:
Finished: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, by Russell and Lillian Hoban. By the time this arrived for me at the library I was a little hazy on why I had put it on hold. I think I wanted to see the TV special, because I’ve only ever seen the video of how they did the one scene over and over and over until the drum rolled out the door just right. But I figured the book came first, so I should read it first. It was perfect, perfect comfort reading! With comfort pictures! I have a friend for whom Jam for Frances is the ultimate comfort book, but Hoban books were background in my childhood. Now I love this one.
In Progress: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Set in Mexico City, 1988 and 2009. A “protagonist comes back for a parent’s funeral” book. But a lot of it is in 1988 high school; it’s easily a YA crossover. It’s good in a slow way. I’m two thirds in and just now it’s dawning on me, “heeyyyy, are these two characters going to get back together in some way?”
Up Next: I’d like to reread Emma after seeing the mini-series version with Johnny Lee Miller. And I have a paperback copy for which Mary Stolz wrote the intro!
Other TBRs in my possession that I’m excited about:
- Pointe, a ballet YA;
- Juana & Lucas, a girl and her dog, plus it just won the Pura Belpre Author Award;
- The Endless Steppe, which I read way back when but want to revisit after Between Shades of Gray
Write:
Writing 500 words a day of something all this month, with FaceBook and NaNo friends. Yay! Yesterday I tried one of the ideas from this article, 5 New Ideas for Outlining Stories. Thinking in TV episodes let me feel okay about bringing in short-term subplots and funny diversions. A good way to fill in some middle, at least for now.
Run:
New shoes for my 10-mile long run yesterday, yay! It was too windy to listen to an audiobook, boo! I have decided to grow my mileage from 40 miles a week, but very slowly, one mile at a time. This week, 42 miles. And a long run every other week is feeling right– but going full couch potato on the off weeks is not.
I want to make a little abacus bracelet to count laps at the track. Or perhaps not an abacus but a binary display, six flat beads that are white on one side and black on the other and will stay put when I flip them back and forth on my wrist. I doubt I’ll ever need more than 63 laps on a half-mile track.
Resist:
It’s been an outgoing week.
- Last Saturday, Sanguinity and I went to our county’s Town Hall for Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley.
- It was beyond standing-room-only at the high school cafeteria, with lots of people in the courtyard outside watching the Senator’s back through the windows. (He asked staff to get one of the speakers aimed out the window for them.) It was a friendly crowd, no bag check, everyone let people through as needed and left slowly at the end as requested.
- Question-asking was by lottery, with little paper tickets. More fair than hand-raising.
- Some of the people in seats had made half-sheet “I Agree” and “I Disagree” signs to hold up as appropriate. Seems like a good idea.
- Senator Merkley asked several times that people use their social networks and professional associations to talk to people in other states. As an example of what we can do on the state level, he mentioned the National Popular Vote Compact. States and local governments can also take a look at good bills introduced federally that aren’t going to pass, and work on state/local versions that will serve as models.
- One question was about the Washington Post column that advised Democratic senators to withhold consent. I guess a lot of people had read it, because there was a HUGE LONG CHEER. Merkley was like, “I think that was a home run question.” He wouldn’t comment directly on withholding consent, but mentioned filibuster and forcing debate on nominees to the full 30 hours. When, a few days later, he was leading the move to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee who wasn’t Merrick Garland, I felt a tiny thrill of pride, like my county had given him the support to play hardball.
- Then the immigration executive order happened. Elizabeth and I went to a lunchtime rally on Monday. You can see us from the back at the bottom of this photo, me in orange jacket with ponytail and her in gray jacket and black pants:
- …and here’s my sign:
- We were on the edge of the crowd, which isn’t as satisfying as being surrounded but is still useful. The PA should have been louder, but at least when everyone shouts in that particular plaza, the surrounding buildings really ring.
- Then that evening I went to another Town Hall, this one for my state senator, my state rep, and another state rep. My, what a difference. It was still standing room only (in a smaller room), but didn’t feel like a rally. It felt like a budget meeting, because the state is looking at a shortfall and the legislature is scrabbling for new revenue sources and agonizing over cuts. The spectre of canceled federal funding looms large. I didn’t have a chance to ask about the National Popular Vote (which the House has passed three years in a row, and which seems to have decent support in the Senate but hasn’t gotten to the floor for a vote), so I’ll be writing to my state senator.