This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm

Friday, October 21, 2011

This is amazing.....

I don't know if this is real or fake or what (I'll find out tonight I guess), but what I do know is that it's hysterical and imcredible. That is all.

So I left off Monday night back at Ali's house. On Tuesday, I headed into the downtown area of Portland again this time to enjoy Powell's. Wow, this bookstore is absolutely incredible and I loved every minute of being there. It's like a maze- you practically need a map to get yourself through the shelves to find what it is you're looking for. I took it slow- only two floors on Tuesday so I had things to look at as well on Wednesday. I also was really good and didn't buy anything at all. I was pretty hungry by the time I left and because it was a gorgeous day, I got a Chipotle burrito and walked down to the riverfront to sit and read and eat my lunch. There was a gorgeous fountain that distracted me with the rainbow illusion and also this crazy biker that was doing all sorts of break dancing tricks on his cycle. I was pretty impressed.

The riverfront was absolutely beautiful- I walked down the path a little bit, enjoying the sunshine, the blue sky, the warmth and the beautiful river. Eventually, I walked up to the Hotel Modera to meet up with Jen and her brother John for happy hour before they had a show to see. If I had a lot of money, I'd spend a great deal of time going to swanky places and enjoy their drinks and appetizers- the pomegranate margarita I had was absolutely delicious, as was the fried calamari. I had a great time catching up with Jen- I don't think I had seen her since I graduated, even though we had talked over facebook a few times since. Her brother John was also a hoot to spend time with and I'd love to see them again sometime soon.

Jen and John were going to see Blue Man Group and had an extra ticket so even though I saw it a few weeks ago, I decided to go with them and see it again. I'll do a completely separate blog post about that momentarily but for now, know that it was pretty awesome, just as it had been the first time.

Wednesday morning, Ali was kind enough to take me downtown again and because it was a cloud day, I spent the whole morning wandering through the other two floors of Powell's. This time I wasn't as good and bought seven books- however, the cost was no more than $35. Good deals all around and when I'm done with my historiography, those will be the first that I read. I can't wait.

I hopped onto the MAX without any problems and took it all the way out to the airport. I miss public transportation so much and so love being able to take it when I have the opportunity. I checked in within two minutes, went through security just as quickly, passed the time waiting by watching a few TV shows, then boarded and got a seat with a free seat next to it. My bag was the fourth one off at Boise and Becky picked me up in about two minutes- again, all in all the fastest and easiest trip I've taken in a long time.

Thanks Ali and thanks Becky for making my fall break incredible!

Monday, October 17, 2011

SLC

Salt Lake City!

Or Sickeness Laughter and Children!

Well, it was certainly not the weekend that we all expected it to be. Megan and I had plans for teaching at church, hiking, farmer's markets, movies, relaxing and none of that really ended up happening.

When I got down to SLC, I spent some time out at Diva's Cupcake and Coffee getting some more work done on my now turned in historiographic paper as well as watched an ep of the Mentalist and worked a little on my reading for the following week. Eventually I met Mega and the kids at the house, hung out with Zachary and met baby Ethan for the first time. Ugh, they are just the cutest and I love them to like the moon and back. Dinner that night was out in Cafe Rio with only one little melt-down from "the tiredest boy in the whole world" but that tire little boy perked right up when he got his early birthday present of a Transformers car that changed into a robot. Yay me for thinking of a good present. Bumblebee was such a hit.

The next morning, Zachy and I had some quality time when he came down to visit me on the air mattress in the living room. We had nearly an hour and a half to chat, play with Bumblebee and hang out and I love him pretty much even more now. It was kind of a rainy day and after donuts Megan and I took Ethan to run some errands. I walked away with an electric kettle that I am so excited about (until I forgot it in SLC.... sad day....) and we got some good Halloween stuff. Megan and I had some lovely one-on-one time when we went to go get pedis and we now have a Charlotte trip for March 2012 in the makings... more on that in five months when we find out if we actually make this happen or not.

We had pizza for dinner and then Zach and I sat down to watch some Transformers: Dark of the Moon, even though I had never seen Transformers 1 or 2. It wasn't bad. Although Zach was asking questions every two seconds and I really had no answers. All I knew was Bumblebee was yellow, and then two other Transformers are called Megatrom and Optimus Prime. Megan wasn't feeling well that night and we all ended up catching it. I slept so poorly and threw up and Zach was also throwing up. We were a miserable crew the following morning. Only Thad wasn't curled up on the couch, miserable, and Patient Zero (baby Ethan) was smiling from his jump-a-roo all morning. It was wretched. We managed to eat a few saltines and some ginger ale and although the plan was to stay until Monday, I enddd up taking off that afternoon for the most awful drive home. I didn't throw up again, thankfully, but I got to the house, had some tea and soup and immediately curled up in bed with a movie and proceeded to spend the rest of the night sleep the bug off.

So not the weekend that any of us expected but Saturday was still a blast. Love you, Judkins! Thanks for the hospitality! And for the stomach flu!

PDX Part Un

So I finally made it out to Portland! It's been a long time coming and I'm so glad that I finally made it out. Early Saturday morning, Jake and Katie picked me up and we drove the six hour drive out to Portland. I had spent all day before grading and so it was nice to have a little nap time and not have to be the person driving.

We met up with Ali without any problems and Ali and I headed back to her place and then out to Winco to do some grocery shopping. Because I can't go to a city without visiting a Winco. We got all the ingredients for falafel, macaroni and cheese and carrot cake bars, which we cannot wait to make. It wasn't too cold and we wanted to go out and explore so we headed out to the Hawthorne area on the East Side of Portland. There were supposed to be a ton of thrift stores and funky places and bookstores and so we were pretty excited. There were a ton of Halloween stores and we were on a mission to find Ali a Halloween costume. One thing about Hawthorn was that there were some very strange people. It was like London- you could wear anything and say pretty much anything and do pretty much anything and no one would say a thing. One thrift store that we went to was absolutely incredible- it was massive with clothes and knick-knacks and shoes and suitcases and junk and absolutely everything to the point of a little too overwhelming. Everybody knows that I love old antique and thrift stores but this was a little crazy. There was a woman there who was dressed like a gypsy that I am using for inspiration for my Halloween costume. And we did, in the end, find a Cleopatra/goddess dress for Ali at this great Halloween store that had these hot shoes that I totally wanted to buy but they were a tad big big. Dang!

We ended up going to dinner at a group of food trucks- crepes, Mexican, southern, potatoes and pizza. We decided to share a wood--fired spinach and mushroom pizza which was absolutely delicious. There was a family there taking professional pictures for some reason, which was a little bizarre. Of course, we ended the night with frozen yogurt and Redbox. It was strange not watching Redbox with Michael but we certainly picked a doozie. It was called "Vanishing on 7th Avenue" with Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, Thandie Newton and a little kid. Basically whenever the place went dark, people vanished. There was discussions about Roanoke and Croatoan which made me say "Supernatural!" It was wretched and Ali wasn't loving it, especially when the light in her room flickered later that night. Such a disaster but bad is such a good way.

The next morning we went to church which reminded me so much of Rock Harbor- it was in an old industrial building, there was a viewing room, ushers brought about the Bibles, even the layout of the room was exactly like Rock Harbor. The band was great and we sang some Phil Wickham and other songs from JAM and the sermon was really good. I liked how they only sang two songs and then jumped right in the sermon and then wrapped up with a few more songs. It was great to go straight into the sermon which was about the Good Samaritan and using compassion and mercy to act in bringing the church to others.

From church we took the MAX (yay public transportation!) down to the Portland Saturday Market (although it was a Sunday.... don't worry about it...). If you take all the weird people from Alive After Five and put them on weird steroids and put them down into a less busy and packed Camden Market, then you get the Portland Saturday Market. My favorite booth was the tie-dye, the jam and the booth owned by a guy named Moon who has a patent on a device that helps you sit up straight. Moon. What a great name. There was also a guy who rapped for us and then messed up when we smiled at him. I bought some red wine jam which is my favorite and can't wait to have some on thin baguette slices with some tea. Maybe while watching Anne of Green Gables which will be waiting for me when I get back to Caldwell. Yay. Anyway, back to Portland....

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around downtown Portland, stopping in at Buffalo Exchange, walking past an erotica book shop, several sweet little furniture shops and Anthropologie. We have decided that we do not fit in at Anthro. We had no idea how to wear some of the hats they had there. We did fit in at Buffalo Exchange, even though they took our incredible hot chocolate while we shopped. The weather was absolutely gorgeous to the point of pretty hot- I even took off the tights I was wearing because I was burning up.

At 5:00, we headed over to Portland City Grill, which is on the 30th floor of the US Bank Building. The best part of this place was this was the absolutely gorgeous views of Portland which was even more beautiful because of the warm, sunny day. It was pretty busy and we got a seat at the bar but about twenty minutes later a window seat opened up and I pounced. We spent the next two hours sipping delicious drinks- yummy Cosmos!- and eating appetizers while staring at the incredible view of the river and the city. We also had a great view of Voo Doo Donuts and could wait to see if the line was going to go down. Eventually it started to get dark and we headed down to Voo Doo Donuts. We got picked up on the way over, which apparently isn't a usual occurrence for Ali (and certainly not for me) and we were bummed that we ignored the pickup instead of trying to get them to buy us donuts. Speaking of the donuts, I got a regular donut with vanilla frosting and OREO cookies on top. Oh em gee. Frickin' delicious!

That night, when we were back at the house, we got onto Skype and had a two hour conversation with Miss Allie Dufault. It was two hours of nonstop laughter and stories and crack-ups. That is really the only way that you can describe the conversation. We may have had a little bit of sugar in us while the conversation was going on. And as if we couldn't end the night like that, we had to chop up onions and NINE cloves of garlic for the special kick sauce for the macaroni and cheese for Tuesday. The house smelled like onion and garlic all night. I'm surprised we didn't have some crazy dreams....

Monday was just as gorgeous as Sunday was but it took a little while to get that way. Ali had work and so I took the MAX one stop down to Washington Park and took the place by storm. It wasn't very busy at all, which makes sense for a random Monday in the middle of fall. The morning was a little chilly and cloudy but I love the look of fog and mists through tall trees. I went to see the Vietnam Memorial which was laid out in a spiral formation which I thought was very unique. I then hiked (in my Casablanca flats!) all over the park, up and down the forest trails, not really knowing where I was going but just enjoying the trees, the mist, the sweet tuns (Lady A, Switchfoot, NeedtoBreathe and Owl City) while getting some exercise. Eventually the sun started to go out as a made it to the Rose Garden.

I sat down to have some lunch and read my book for class when this couple came down to sit on the bench next to me. They were clearly on a lunch date but through the conversation that I overhead, I surmised that he was married (going to Hawaii on his ten-year anniversary next year) and she was also married (he asked if her husband asked why she had packed such a big lunch and she replied that she had made it at work....) Well, that was the end of of my book reading. I eavesdropped the entire conversation and really wanted to just lay it down and ask them what their relationships was. In the end I didn't because I'm chicken but it was fascinating. Shout-out to Andrea for text conversing with me for a good portion of that....

Eventually I did get up and enjoy the rest of the Rose Garden. There were some beautiful colors and I'm sure it even more beautiful in the spring and summer. I kept wandering past the Holocaust Memorial which had the most concise yet accurate description of the events leading up to and during WWII. I was quite impressed. The memorial was very simple yet effective. There was also a sculpture of Sacagawea and a Lewis and Clark Memorial that overlooked the city, which also afforded me a beautiful view of what I assume is Mount Hood (but don't quote me on that). It was very clear and you could see quite a lot.

It was so warm and I had to roll my jeans up to continue hiking back to find the arboretum which I had kinda missed. I wandered through a few more of the trails, enjoying the sun shining through the trees as well as the warm breezes. At one point, I lay down on the grass and read the next chapter of my book because it was so nice to just bask in the sun. Eventually I headed back to Ali's for the night, picking up some Hornsby's on the way. I made falafel for dinner while Ali made carrot bars and we chatted with Meaux who had come over to watch the Sing-Off. Tomorrow I have some ideas in mind for things to do downtown and I'm hoping the weather is just as nice as these last two days.

Part Deux will come on Wednesday when I'm back in Boise. Til then!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

I forgot something!

I am loving this TV show!!! Go watch it- it's on Netflix!

10 Things I Am Loving Right Now

1. Honey crisp apples.

um, delicious

2. These guys

Started re-watching Third Watch and am in love all over again. With pretty much everybody.

3. Silk Milk

More calcium than regular milk. And in vanilla flavour!

4. Tea weather!

My very first cup of Nutcracker tea

5. Fun toes in bright colors

Megan and I got our toes done in SLC.

6. The last few episodes of Supernatural

As Roni said: Baby Sam, Amy Pond, Lars Ulrich and pie :)

7. The Harold-Hill-Off

I didn't want to go swimming last week but I did and what made it even better was the Harold-Hill-Off that Austin Tichenor did with JK Simmons singing "Trouble"

8. These guys.