Redbox: for all your rental needs.

I received a marriage proposal today. I was walking to the Redbox, located, very conveniently, about a mile from my house to pick up the movie Rachel Getting Married to use in my Young Life talk on Monday. Yes, I know you’re thinking, Redbox, she’s so economical and wise in her choice to use Redbox for all her movie watching needs. Or, you could be thinking, how does marriage play into this scenerio. Well, as I’m walking up 19th Ave, cutting through the park as usual, past the dog park and the giant cathedral on the corner of Flanders, a man smiled at me. He looked a bit down on his luck…and very well could have been high as a kite, but regardless, he began to walk with me a bit as I passed Glisan, telling me that I was beautiful. He also mentioned that if no one was married to me he would marry me himself. It was flattering really. I don’t even care if he was homeless, on drugs, or crazy, although…that does say something about my future in the dating world if I am excited about a homeless drug dealer proposing marriage…but none-the-less. At least if nothing else I can live in a cardboard mansion and sip colt 45 out of a brown paper bag while sitting in a lawn chair on my astroturf square of a lawn.

Milk…honey?

As the birds chirp and the sunlight flows between the cracks of the blinds at 1219, the girl under the covers opens her eyes in disbelief. One thing she’s sure of. It’s Saturday. As the neurons start to connect and the blood starts to flow once again through the tiny vessels in her brain, she realized another. It’s Spring…it’s Spring…IT’S SPRING. Wonderful, magical, blooming spring. Her nose has been telling her for weeks, mostly due to the affair it’s been having with the newly blooming trees, causing a sort of “let’s run away together” effect. Regardless, it’s still wonderful.

She wonders how she came to be so blessed. Portland. Springtime. 1219. The view of the city from her living room. The streetcar that goes by her bathroom every morning at 7am. The flowers for sale in front of the grocery store, heralding the coming summer and bidding farewell to the cold, wet winter. Her best friend always joked that Portland was like the land of milk and honey. Now she knows why. After the desert of her life, she has finally been ushered into the promised land. The land the Lord promised to the Isrealites if they would just be faithful…and trust. She was faithful. She trusted. Yet, still stunned and amazed that God would have something so wonderful for her, she sits on the couch, listening to the birds, and thanks God for the land of milk and honey.

[insert title here]

1:06am.

I have a secret. It’s a little secret. It might turn into a big secret. Or perhaps no secret at all. I feel silly saying anything at all. I should be writing very important things about the world on blogs, for all to read…and contemplate…and ponder, and wonder, and concentrate on. I’m not sure what to say or do or not do or feel or think or say. My heart is beating and my mind is racing and I can’t help but feel…as if I have a secret to tell. But I can’t. It’s too small. Too important, but ever so small. A wish, a hope, a dream, and it’s all gone. Nothing to do now…just hold it in and hope and dream and wish some more. All this hoping and wishing and dreaming…it’s exhausting really.

Yet, I still have a secret.

It’s so…green.

Paul, a recent transplant from California, and member of the spectacular and ever so hip Belmont Community Group, has been my recent Portland Adventure Cohort. Part I of our adventuring included a brief walk down Main Street in Vancouver…which technically isn’t Portland at all, but we did find the most random record shop that sold DJ spin records and was painted like an aquarium. And I can’t forget to mention the amazing fudge shop that we stumbled upon…bad news bears for fudge lovers everywhere.

Portland Adventure Part II: Catherdral Park. Monday. 2:30pm.

Perfect light really.

Catherdral Park is amazing really. It’s one of the oldest parks in Portland and has a bridge running right through it…literally. Click here for all the info on the park’s history.

When we arrived, the sun was shining perfectly off the seafoam green spires of the bridge, giving the entire park an electric, almost magical feeling. So much grass, I thought. Portland has so much grass…and blue…and orange…all colors really.

I pulled out my camera, whose shutter sticks and film advancer doesn’t quite advance properly about half the time. Too bad I only had black an white film in the camera. Regardless, I can’t wait to develop the pictures and see if any of them turned out.

The park has a gentle downward grade, leading all the way to the edge of the Willamette. The St. John’s Bridge towers over the park, all 1,207 feet of it. It is magnificant. I can’t imagine the people who built it really knew how beautiful is would be over 100 years later. Age has been good to the bridge.

St. Johns Bridge at sunset

The light posts in the park look exactly like they came straight out of the pages of Narnia. At one point I think Paul said, “Oh, it’s Narnia” and I think he had an incling to jump about like Mr. Tumness. Don’t quote me on that, but I could see it in his eyes.

Portland has this way of being deceivingly beautiful outside, yet still cold as crap. When you look outside, you say to yourself, hey, it looks so nice outside, but when you step out of the house, your nose goes pink and starts to run due to the chilling wind and modest cloud cover. As you will note in the pictures, I’m wearing about 1 million layers, a hat, and gloves, yet the sun looks like it’s shining…that’s Portland for you.

Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

We followed up the park with a trip to Anna Banana’s, a neighborhood hangout in the St. John’s Area. Like most places in Portland, they serve delicious coffee…and more. Smoothies, scones, and yes, even beer. We were the quintasencial Portlanders, ordering Magnum sized coffees and looking for jobs with the glow of our macbook screens illuminating out over-caffeinated faces. We even jammed to indie pop, alternative, and “no one has even heard of these guys” bands. So Portland.

Here are a few more pictures of Portland Adventure Part II.

Are you really in Narnia?

Hole in the dock

projects, protests, and perceptions

Happy New Year to all. Some pictorial evidence that I am not, as previously thought or perceived, a pathetic loser who has no friends and sits at home watching television series after television series on DVD until late at night…that’s reserved for Sundays.

Photo credit: Kim Nguyen-Van Zoen

Non-resolution resolutions. Thanks to Aubs for giving me the idea…and for letting me steal it.

Twenty-eight non-resolution resolutions:

1. Get a Multnomah County public library card.

2. Read at least two biographies this year, including but not limited to memoirs.

3. Write and send at least one physical letter a month. It can’t be that hard. People have been doing it for centuries, why should I break the habit just because email is easier.

4. Go camping in Oregon somewhere.

5. Write a short story. I have no idea if this will ever actually come to being, but putting it on the list at least takes me one step closer to completing the task.

6. This one is a doosey, but I’m dying to try it. I want to visit every coffee shop in Portland proper at least once and order either an Americano, or whatever the place is “known for”. I shall, however, not include any chains…starbucks, peets, seattles best, etc, or places that simply serve coffee, but are not an actual coffee shop.

7. See the Decemberists at a home town show.

8. Have waffles for breakfast at least once a month

9. Go to the Portland Zoo, the Rose Garden, and…insert other v touristy things.

10. Attend a Trailblazers game, taking special care to “accidentally” run into Rudy Fernandez while wearing my recently aquired “I <3 Rudy” t-shirt.

11. Learn how to make scones, and then make them…and perhaps eat them too.

12. Create a new slang term. Hopefully it will get picked up once I post it on Urban Dictionary and all the kids start using it.

13. Make someone laugh…often if possible.

14. Call someone out of the blue to encourage them at least once a month.

15. Buy vegetables from the farmers market…once it opens again of course.

16. Learn how to play the spoons and join the Zollners’ jug band. I’m serious. I’m doing it.

17. Take at least one roll of pictures for each month of the year in 2009.

18. Find the White Christmas soundtrack on vinyl. We always listened to it when I was little and I think I lost our family copy in my move and it just wasn’t Christmas without it this year.

19. Live on less.

20. After my first successful attempt to make a dress via my sewing machine, I vow to make more dresses, tops, even hoodies via Susie my singer sewing machine.

21. Drink more water.

22. Learn how to love my friends better. This one’s a biggie for me. If I can’t get this one right I should just stop trying and sit home alone on Saturday nights sobbing into my pillow about how I failed miserably…at life.

23. Apply to grad school.

24. Go on a date that I actually want to go on.

25. Take myself to lunch at least once a month. Alone time equals awesomeness.

26. Learn better conversation skills, including how to really listen and ask questions.

27. Fold laundry and PUT IT AWAY as soon as it comes out of the dryer.

28. Buy more socks.

There is a sign above my head…

It reads, “Please direct your love inquiries here.”

I do love to help. I truly do. I feel useful. At the same time, I feel old. Very old. Like an ancient, wrinkled Asian woman selling tea out of a corner hole on a side street in China Town.

I question when it will be my turn.

No whining. Just thinking out loud.

In case of emergency, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle.

Portland in under siege. It’s been snowing since Sunday morning, leaving the roads iced and dangerous and the cities residents desperately scurrying for snow chains and firewood. Most people have even stayed home from work, as ice plus hills equals a very bad idea. I’ve been meaning to get to the post office to send off Christmas presents for the past 5 days, but the weather has been so bad I’m not sure my civic can bare the trip. I’m in what some like to call a “house arrest” situation right now. I’ve split my time between sewing, knitting, and baking cookies…not to mention the endless string of movies and showtime shows I’ve knocked off the list. I even finished three books in a week, which is a lot considering my trace record for reading at a snails pace.

My trusted friend Gertrude the Guinea Pig has been helping me with my daily tasks, finding time to get into the holiday spirit…

Gerdie getting into the holiday cheer.

Decorating cookies with Jessica!

Gerdie, always with the shinanigans. She made Chris a special cookie.

Gerdie pulling santa's sleigh...two of the reindeer had the night off apparently.

Fast friends. Gerdie and Niles conversing over the existance of Santa.

Gertrude trying to mail herself home to Phoenix.

As you can see, we’ve been hard at work here in the great NW, spreading Christmas cheer to all we meet. Thank you for not smoking. Have a wonderful night.

Things.

Things you say. Things you don’t say. Things you ask. Things you don’t ask. On and on it goes. The perpetual after glow. The knowing. The not knowing. The uncertainty of it all is the rush; the joy; the excitement. The beautifully broken verse. The skipping beat. The falling wall. The narrative that neither ends nor begins; just continues. Up. down. right. left. Where does it go? Do I want to know? Things you say. Things you don’t say.

Let’s take it back a step…

Livin’ the Dream update.

Well…I’ve applied for a about 300 hundred jobs…ok maybe more like 50, but you get the picture. So far no luck, but I’m anxiously awaiting a phone call from very excited future employers. Until then, I enjoy the view from just about every street in the great Portland/Vancouver area.

Trees...real live ones with leaves.

The life of my unemployed self has lent itself to lots of creative aspirations. There are a plethora or amazing coffee shops around here, Stumptown being the most prominent. My favorite on is on Belmont. My first cup of Portland coffee was a soy latte, and the barista make the foam into a heart. He then proceeded to ask everyone in the store what they wanted to listen to. The options were The Smiths or Neutral Milk Motel…on vinyl. Only in Portland.

First official cup of Portland coffee

I finally learned how to knit, and finished my first project yesterday; a cozy for my french press. Around here coffee gets cold so fast you almost HAVE to have a cozy to keep it warm long enough to drink all the coffee. I’m pretty proud of it. The next project is a scarf.

Coffee cozy...yeah yeah

I’ve also been taking pictures with my old film camera. It’s endearing really, mostly because the shutter sticks sometimes, the light meter is broken, and the shot counter is broken. Those are the things I love about the camera-the quirks. It makes me feel like I’m really creating something, interacting with it, wrestling with it, not just collecting pictures. Film photography really is a lost art. Once I get the pictures developed I’ll try to post some:)

Old faithful

Other than that, I’ve found myself baking a lot. Last week I made oatmeal cookies with all kinds of goodies in them as well as a new creation of mine, the black and white cookie. They turned out deliciously! It’s really nice to make things with my hands, and I’ve been listening to my ever-expanding record collection while creating baked goods. The records lend themselves to a more creative spirit in the apartment.

1950-present

Today’s project was to learn how to poach an egg. I’ve always wanted to try it, and haven’t had time until now. I guess unemployment has its benefits after all.

Attempt number one.

Well friends, that is my life so far. I miss yous.

Livin’ the Dream Tour ‘08

It is Tuesday, October 28th, and I’m staring at my car, a modest white Honda Civic; my first post-college grown-up purchase. It takes a minute to sink in. This is happening. I’m staring at my car, stuffed in every inch and every crevis, and loaded on top with my life. Literally. No more no-pants dance parties, or pillow talk with Walker, or walking into the house only to find Mandy and Shey pretend sleeping with all the lights on. No more roommate dinners, trips to Four Peeks after church, Taco Saturdays and football, Sunday afternoon bagels at Lox, or nights at Delux.

Hi-ho away we go!

This giant step into the future has been dubbed the ‘Living the Dream Tour ‘08′.

1355 miles. Combos. Lattes. Late night McD’s. Dirty rest areas. Bottoming out the Civic. H&M. Rain. Fog. Traffic. Mixed CD’s. Books on tape. Conversation. Silence.

Living the Dream.

Bridge of the gods, Portland, OR