beautiful, funny, sad & true

After yesterday’s post, I walked out and about in my neighborhood and took a few pictures.  This neighborhood is beautiful anyway, but with this much snow it’s even more beautiful.  And the Christmas lights and everything. . .it’s just an amazing treat.

Here are the ones from last night. . .

. . .before I went home to my sort of warm apartment.   I woke up this morning to go to work, and found that it had snowed a couple more inches overnight.  I had to take a picture of my forlorn little car.

Luckily, my friend was warming up his truck to take his girlfriend to work, and they offered to drive me also, since her work is right near mine.  That really made my morning.  There were only a handful of us who actually made it in to work today, and it was so cold inside the building that most of us bailed out after a few hours.  I left at noon, and I’d worn my jacket and scarf the entire time, and even my hood occasionally.  Three people left around ten-thirty, but I stayed until my fingers couldn’t really type anymore.  There were a couple of diehards who stayed on after I left, but they didn’t think they’d be there for long.

I certainly wasn’t the only one who was home from work today, either.  The streets were filled with families and couples who were out enjoying the snow.  And they were friendly, too!  I couldn’t believe it.  Everybody greeted me, or waved, or smiled, or even flirted, in a way that (I’m here to tell you) they rarely do.  I kept thinking, ‘Where was all this friendliness in all those times when I was feeling lonely and sad, and felt like something must be wrong with me because no one would so much as glance at me when I was walking on the street?’  But that’s neither here nor there.  It was nice, and I appreciated it.  It was so nice, in fact, that I kinda wanted to stay out longer, and keep crossing paths with people, on purpose.

I stopped in at Aztec Willie’s for a yummy burrito, which gave me enough energy to shovel my sidewalk, which I found still sucks after all these years.  You’d think that with technology being the way it is, there’d be some sort of process that could make the act of shoveling obsolete.  C’mon, science, can we get on that, please?  The polar bears need all the ice they can get.  Isn’t there some way to get this up (or down) to them?  I mean, JEEZ.

So then it was time to deal with my car.  I got all the snow off it, but the windows and sides are encased in ice that’s about a quarter of an inch thick.  Clearly I’m going nowhere today, unless it’s by foot.

This couple had the right idea; forego the driving and the walking, and go straight on to skiing.

I also have a smallish secret that I’d like to let you in on.  Every time I see her walking on the other side of the street, to the grocery store or something, I want to say, ‘want to go to breakfast?’ or ‘your eyes are beautiful; what color are they?’ or ‘ditch the zero and get with the hero’. . .you know, something really romantic like that to completely sweep her off her feet.

Anyway, don’t tell her I said all that.  She and her guy seem really genuine and nice, and I don’t want to mess that up for them.  Really I don’t.

So to change the subject back to the actual one we’re SUPPOSED to be talking about, I’ll leave you with this nice picture of my snowy, wonderful neighborhood.

This weekend we’ve had quite the snowstorm, which is extremely unusual for Portland.  I’ve lived here for almost thirteen years, and I haven’t seen snow like this before.

Yesterday I was supposed to go to a Christmas party in an eastern suburb of Portland, so I got my car all scraped off and warmed up, and it drove fine (six inches is not a lot of snow), but the air was so cold, and there was so much blowing snow that the windows kept freezing over, and I kept having to stop and scrape them off every few blocks.  That got old really quickly, so I called my friends and said, “I’m gonna have to veto this trip.”  They actually persevered and drove out, but ended up staying overnight (which RockShowGirl and I weren’t prepared to do; luckily we stayed home), and I just got a call from them saying that their car was stuck and that they were waiting for a bus.  Luckily, they just now caught one.

Earlier this afternoon, I wanted to take a walk and get some pictures of my neighborhood, on my way to ApparentlySafestGrocery, since this much snow is so uncommon.   The pictures I took didn’t end up being very compelling, but here’s what the neighborhood looks like.

Some good Samaritan took the liberty of pulling lots of the wipers off of the windshields of cars, so that they won’t get frozen when the freezing rain starts.  Wait a minute. . .what am I saying?  It’s already started.

Most people are heeding the advice of the weather forecasts and not driving.  In fact, I saw lots of people who appeared to be out walking in the snow just for fun.  One family had a young son who decided to ski, and I thought that would make a nice picture, so I grabbed my camera, and as soon as I did, the kid fell face first into the snow.  I’m not gonna lie; it was hilarious.

So I ran my errand, bought my ingredients, and came back to make dinner, which consisted of mushrooms, red peppers, onions and garlic cooked in red wine, butter, salt and pepper.  The vegetables were then served over a bed of linguine.  (I’ve always wanted to say ‘bed of linguine’, can’t you tell?)  It may very well have been the best dinner ever.  You should totally try to make it yourself; it’s easy, delicious, sexy, and totally improvised.  You just start adding ingredients and seasonings to your own taste, and it’s perfectly acceptable to taste it while you’re cooking to see how it’s coming along.

So now I’m in for the night, but I’ll leave you with a short video to show you what it was like today outside my apartment.   The snow was falling, and the wind was blowing, and it was all very pretty.

The Plan for this evening is to get all bundled up and walk out to Broadway, to take some pictures of the snow and the Christmas lights.  Wish me luck!

OneYearAgo

Still in the middle of another CrazyWeek.  It’s been non-stop, full of recording (both with IrishBand and with Breanna), a really late but super-fun gig with IrishBand, and then tonight I’m going to watch my friend John play a gig, as he opens for a songwriter whose CD I love but who I’ve never seen play before, and a band who I’ve heard are good but I’ve not heard them at all yet.  Should be a good time, all around.

Slightly dark and stormy times in other ways.  Work’s been ‘teh’ stressful lately; so much so that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were almost unbearable.  Suffice it to say that I’m glad they’re over.  Financial times have been really tough too, for almost five months now.  Car problems and other problems have really been plaguing me lately, all at the same time.  I actually had to swallow my pride and borrow some money from a family member a week and a half ago.   There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still definitely a tunnel.

The first big storms of the year are rolling in as I’m writing this.  It’s pouring rain today, and the wind is actually whistling through the windows, which is extremely rare in my sheltered apartment.  There are sirens blaring through my neighborhood, coming from what sounds like an ambulance.   Portland may get hit with snow this weekend, which is pretty rare, and absolutely grinds the town to a halt when it does come.  I have an important gig on Sunday (playing drums in a wedding reception band, which will be a total blast) in the West Hills.  Luckily, my little Honda is great in the snow, and I have chains too, just in case the weather really takes a turn for the worse.  I’m sure I won’t need them, though, and I’m going to go on record and say that I don’t think it’s going to end up snowing after all.

Guess we’ll find out.

Heading back to work now. . .

My friend just called to tell me that he got a message on BookOfFaces from a girl in his high school class.  This year is their twentieth reunion, so the class is using that web site as the point of connection for everyone.

So he got a message from a woman saying that she remembers him from choir, and asking him if he also used to play in the band Iron Horse.  My friend said he did, and she told him that to this day she’s married to a guy she met at one of our shows.  To the few and the proud who may actually have been in attendance at Iron Horse shows back in the day, and who might also be reading this, it was our show at the Ahtanum Youth Park.

There, you see?  Music really does have the power to bring people together, especially if it’s the music of INXS, Yngwie Malmsteen, Van Halen and the Beatles.  And, of course, the Fat Boys.  She said they slow-danced to our version of “Honesty” by Billy Joel, which we did an off-the-cuff version of (along with many other songs) in order to stretch out the night.

This is one of those blog moments when I wish I had a VHS-to-computer transcriber thingy, because I have that show somewhere on a videotape, but I have no way to get it onto my Mac.  So I could totally allow her to relive the magic all over again, by finding her on BookOfFaces and sending her a link to this blog entry, with a hilarious old video of the song she and her husband danced to, way back when.  I suppose it’s the thought that counts, right?  I’d totally do that if I had the technology.  Grrr.

That story made me laugh, warmed my heart, and brought a little tear to my eye all at the same time, mostly because A) those of us in the band thought it was a fairly crappy but funny show, where we did all these weird songs we’d never played before, and B) I just think it’s awesome that not only did she meet her future husband at that of all shows, but that they’re still together now, over twenty years later.

Le Sigh.

I took today off from work to hang out with CincinnatiFriend, who’s in town this week to defend her dissertation.  As of yesterday, though, I realized that I’m going to have to change her pseudonym to DoctorLove now (her last name means ‘love’ in German), cause she done dissertated that shit, and now she’s all up on her way to officially becoming a doctor.   Frealz, yo.  Much love to DoctorLove!

But in typical BFS&T fashion, that’s not the real story I originally wanted to write about.

The real story is that while I was lying in bed this morning, I sent out a quick message on Twitter saying something to the effect of, ‘Sure is nice to lie in bed and listen to the rain.  I could do that all day.’  My phone rang instantly.  It was barrington, calling to say, “Oh, man, you’re so lucky you get to still be in bed.  I had to get up, get in the car, drive around everywhere, get out of the car, come in to work. . .all in the pouring rain.”

I laughed.  “I love how you listed ‘get in the car’ and ‘get out of the car’ as two different things you had to do today.”  I started to mimic him, gesturing each item in the air with my hand, which he couldn’t see over the phone.  “I had to GET IN the car, I had to START it, I had to put it in GEAR, I had to STEER it, I had to push the ACCELERATOR.  Oh yeah, AND push the BRAKE pedal. . .”

He laughed and continued the riffing.  “Yeah, it was ALL in the RAIN.  I had to turn the WINDSHIELD WIPERS ON. . .”

“Daaaaaang, no way!  Did you have to turn the DEFOGGER on, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, man, YOU have a rough life.  At least you don’t have a STICK SHIFT like I do.  I’m gonna have to do that when I go out today, and push in the CLUTCH a million times.  Ugh.”

Ahhh; just another day in the life of two Portlanders.

So now I’m up, and eating BREAKFAST, and doing LAUNDRY, and taking a SHOWER, and then heading OUT to pick up DoctorLOVE, and it should be a REALLY GREAT DAY, despite the fact that I’ll have to push in the CLUTCH and SHIFT GEARS a whole bunch of times.

Incidentally, I have TWO sets of windshield wipers (front and rear!) that I’ll have to turn on, while I’m doing the clutch and the gearshift.  Think about THAT.