Tales from NW

Earlier this week (like so many times) I circled my car around the neighborhood for twenty minutes, only to find a parking space in a two hour zone. Gave up, parked the car there anyway. Got up before the crack of dawn to move the car to a legal space, but it took ten minutes to find one. Cussed. A lot.

Just now I circled the block around my building three times. No parking. Found a spot four blocks away. Walked to my building only to find an empty parking place right in front. Now, if I go back to my car by the time I get to this new open space in front of my building it will surely be taken. Then I will drive back to the old spot cussing that I wasted my time, and then that one will have been taken too. So, I leave my car where it is (and p.s. it's a spot only open on the weekends, so I'll have to move it later anyway) and think about how nice it will be to have a driveway again someday.

The Deep Freeze of '08

In the beginning it was just light flutters of cute little snowflakes.  It was fun to curl up with a blanket and eat cozy food.

And then those little snowflakes got serious and were pouring down like crazy!

This is the ice that sealed my car shut.

And more ice frozen on top of the snow...

But it sure is fun to play in!

And I have the best neighbor, Tyler, who is diligent in keeping our sidewalks cleared and helped me get my car open.  Have I mentioned I love this city? 

Good night

I'm sitting in my favorite chair in the apartment reflecting on a wonderful evening and a wonderful life.  There are dishes piled high in the kitchen and it still smells like cornbread and chili in here.  Last night I invited a couple of friends over for dinner this evening and they in turn invited a couple of friends and we all ate a warm, comforting meal together and shared stories.  Part of me kept thinking of all the other people in the neighborhood that I wanted to invite over, too, but my apartment couldn't hold them all at once - and what a beautiful thing it is to know so many lovely people to invite into my home.  Mostly I'm just amazed by how none of us knew each other just a few short months ago, and here we sat squeezed together around my coffee table tonight sharing each other's company like we were old friends.

I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with my beautiful friend, Tonya, and we were talking about prayer and God and these sorts of things, and she said something to me about moving to Portland... like didn't I feel called to be here?  And I answered something like, "No... I mean, I guess not.  I certainly prayed about moving, but I don't feel like God said YES or NO about moving.  It's not really a yes or no kind of question - I mean it's just going to make life different, but there is nothing inherently  good or bad about it."  But I've been thinking about that question a lot lately.  And I think I just might want to change that answer.  I feel like I'm at home in Portland.  I felt it every time I came to visit last year, and I still feel it every day now.  This is just where I am supposed to be.  I love it so much.  And I love the people.  People I would never know if I hadn't moved.  It is like I was called.  And I'm so glad I took the risk and answered.

Don't act like you didn't know this was coming

It's frickin' freezing in Portland!  I heart the fall, I really do.  But it's so damn cold in my apartment that my toes are about to snap off.  I just want to snuggle into my new fleece sheets and come back out next June.

Laundry.  I never questioned it.  You separate whites, darks, lights, towels, etc.  It never occurred to me to do it any other way than the way my parents taught me.  Recently I've learned that people do their laundry all willie-nilly just throwing in towels with their shirts and other crazy what have you.  Blasphemy, I say!  In fact just a couple of days ago Katie and I were discussing towel storage options for the shoebox I live in and she said something about "well you probably just use the same couple of towels over and over anyway..." and honest to goodness I tell you it never occurred to me to not wait until all of the towels I had were dirty and to wash them in their own separate, special little load.  It's a brand new world, Internet.  Today I went down to the laundry room to wash my sheets, and sadly the cheap-o washers they have here don't give you an option for small, medium, large loads so I felt like it was such a waste of water (and my quarters) to just wash a couple of sheets when it donned on me: I should run upstairs and grab some more dirty laundry and throw it all in at once!  And what do you know?  The world didn't stop spinning.  It's like it's perfectly okay for me to wash sheets, napkins and towels all at the same flippin' time.  Genius!

[Just realized you can post without a title.  And I realized how stupid and insensitive I can be without trying, so I took the title to this post down.  I am sorry.]

So much to blog about

I should make a list of things I want to write about, because I walk around thinking about little blog posts all day, but then never feel it when I sit down at the computer.  Then I forget all about them.  Sad day.  Anyway, here is a quickie to show what I've done today (which isn't much, as usual!).  Oh, and to document the super fun progressive dinner Katie and I had this weekend.

Here is my wall.  It isn't perfect, and there are a few I want to adjust a couple of inches, but I gave up on it being perfect because there are more important things in the world to do than make sure the picture frames in your living room look perfectly scattered and not at all like you spent hours arranging them to look un-arranged.  I'll just add more some day.  Here you have it:

I suppose you want to see photos of the rest of the apartment.  I never did post those, did I?  What can I say?  It's rough being unemployed without Internet access.  DID I MENTION I HAD INTERNET INSTALLED TODAY?  Because I did, and do I ever love it!

The mess the morning after unloading the truck.

The after shot of the living room.

[I'm trying to ignore the fact that I must have been smoking crack when I took these images because why the heck is the towel all crooked, and the bathroom isn't looking so hot, either.  Please don't look too closely!]  The kitchen is too small to really stand in it and take a photo, so you'll just have to trust me that to the left of the doorway there is a tiny little counter & sink, and to the right there is a tiny fridge with my microwave sitting on top.  There is only one electrical outlet in the whole kitchen!

Yeah, so pretty much same deal with the bathroom.  Too small to really show it to you, so why don't you just come visit and see it for yourself!  Hope you won't mind scooting under the sink to sit on the toilet.  There is a claw foot tub to the right.  It's cute, but not that fun to shower in.

The bedroom isn't anything exciting and it's too hard to get a picture of the closet you could appreciate.  It's surprisingly big, which is a good thing since everything else is super small and I need a place to put my spoons and toilet paper.

Are y'all on twitter yet?  What are you waiting for?  Just do it.  It only takes a minute, go ahead, you can come back.  If you're cool, then you already saw my tweets and know that Katie June was in town visiting me this weekend!  Sunday we spent the day eating.  Well, actually, we did take a couple hours out to go to church, but other than that I'd say it's a fair assessment to say we did nothing else but eat good food.

Started out at the Waffle Window for breakfast.  Before we go any further it just needs to be said that if you ever come to Portland and don't get a waffle here you have completely wasted your trip.  Katie had the huckleberry and Meyer lemon curd waffle and I had the Oregon strawberry waffle.  We split a biscuits and gravy (which were okay, but I've had better, and seriously? who needs anything besides a waffle here?).

Sorry the photo quality isn't that great, but it was a fantastic waffle!  Did I mention they charge a crazy $3.50 - 4.00 for these bad boys?  So. Good.

I mean how cute is the Waffle Window?  You know you're dying to check it out!  And I know what you're thinking... was this really last weekend or last winter?  Yes, my friends, its that cold here right now, you need to wear a sweater.  When I said I wanted seasons it was still supposed to include summer.  I have no idea what this is all about in June.

After church we wandered around a bit and I've been dying to show her City Market since I discovered it, so we tried their brie sandwiches (perfect, by the way) and sat at a sidewalk table and enjoyed the afternoon.

They had Mexican coke, too!  That was a treat.  

Afterwards we walked back to the apartment and chilled for a bit.  Thought about doing something with the day, but then decided against that.  We made a plan to do a "progressive dinner" and worked hard searching through magazines and sifting through menus to find where our palettes would take us.

The first stop was Serrato's, or the Snail Restaurant, as I like to call it.  We made it just in time for happy hour, so we each had a cocktail, and split a caesar salad and calamari.  Which was probably the best of both I've ever had.  I'll be going back often!  We walked all over Nob Hill and I showed her Zupan's before we decided on a dinner spot.  We chose Bartini since they have an all day Sunday happy hour and that's always a good thing!  We had smoked cheese fondue that was really good, and since it was happy hour was only $5.00!  So, we had martinis, too!

We had to go back to the apartment and change into elastic pants our shoes.  And I regret to tell you that I left my purse because we were just going to dessert, and well, forgot my camera.  So you're missing out on the most beautiful part of our progressive dinner!  We had decided to go to Papa Haydn's for dessert long before we thought up the dinner plan.  Their dessert menu is longer than the restaurant's, so we knew it had to be a good sign, and we were right.  It was a tough decision, but I went with the chocolate truffle cake and Katie had the lemon chiffon cake.  Oh good heavens!  It was just perfect, I don't know what else to tell you, except go there right now.  It was a lovely setting (we ate outdoors all evening), amazing dessert with great presentation and the server was super nice and very attentive even though we only had dessert.  Just go.

Our leisure progressive dinner lasted four hours, and Katie and I decided we could travel Europe together since we both love eating so much.  And at the Snail Restaurant when she suggested I make a notebook of places I've tried & what's good/what's not so I could recommend places when people come to visit, I immediately pulled a Moleskin out of my purse and started writing down hours, cross streets and notes on the food, because although she may have been joking, we both knew it was a great idea!  And she let me take pictures of our food.  These are important qualities in a friend.

Going green, literally

So, thanks to a little someone also named Katie (because her mom has good taste like that) I did not paint my walls yellow.  She subtly suggested that in combination with my brown furniture my apartment would be the colors often found in a toilet.  Although I really liked the cheery yellow wall idea I knew I wouldn't be able to see my living room the same ever again, so I decided on Mardi Gras Green when I found it online.  Then I went to the store to pick up the paint chip and totally panicked!  It was a lot bolder than I pictured and chickened out and took the way lighter paint sample to my local Miller's to get no VOC paint ("green" green paint - get it! ha!).  I was totally kicking myself as soon as I got one wall section painted, shoulda stuck with the first choice.  Folks, they call this color Everglade Glen.  I call it neon fucking green, but whatever.