beautiful, funny, sad & true

Pretty dang good weekend.

Spent Friday evening with Joan.  We intended to watch a movie, but it took so long to make dinner, and we had such a late start, that she ended up leaving after that.  Saturday I cleaned my apartment and did about a million loads of laundry, then I had a gig with Susie, and we stayed out too late drinking and talking.  Sunday I talked on the phone a lot, and then finally got the new tubes put on my bike.  Went to meet Joan again after all that, and we went to a good, cheap sushi place on Northwest 21st, then decided to go see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  It was a very touching and emotional movie; many people in the audience were sniffling or choked up.  I certainly was.  I can’t wait to read the book, and I highly recommend the movie.

Yesterday I took the day off from work, in order to play accordion on a radio show with Breanna and BassistChris for the Local Music Spotlight show.  As soon as Breanna posts the song on her MySpace page, I’ll post a link to it here for you to check out.

When you first walk into the building, there are five large-screen televisions in the lobby.  I turned to Chris and gestured to them.  “Wow, there sure a a lot of TV’s for a radio station,” and then we both turned around to see the huge sign proclaiming NewsChannel 8, the NBC TV affiliate.

We played two songs, and were done and out of there in about forty-five minutes, with CD in hand.  Apparently the songs will start being played on the air in June, at approximately the same time that the radio station’s compilation CD – on which one of Breanna’s songs will be featured – will be released.  After we were done, we went and had sushi at the same place Joan and I had been to the day before.   That’s how good it was.

I rode my bike to work today, which was the first time I’ve been on a bike in about two years.  It felt great.  That is, it WOULD have felt great if I’d eaten dinner last night, and drunk any water at all, and gotten more than four hours of sleep.  I totally bonked as soon as I got to work, and instantly gulped down three bottles of water before even having to use the bathroom once.  (Don’t you just love my blog?)  Ate a huge chicken burrito for lunch, and kept drinking water for the rest of the day, which made the ride home MUCH easier.  I’m not gonna lie, though.  I’m pathetically and comically lazy and out of shape, ever since I got my car.  But not anymore.  It’s a whole new spring, and time to shake off this lethargic winter.  This experience was a reminder that there’s a right way to exercise, and that I have to plan in advance in order to have enough energy reserves to do what I want my body to do.  Looking forward to a lot more riding!

And much more spring.  After many freezing weeks, it looks like spring is finally going to come, and the weekend is supposed to be hot and beautiful.  I, however, will be in Port Townsend, Washington, to play accordion with Fenbi, the Irish band.  I’m sure it’ll be just as beautiful up there.  Love that town.  The best pastry shop I’ve ever been to in my entire life is there.  Why, that would be the Tyler Street Coffee House; I’m glad you asked.   If I lived in Port Townsend, I’m sure I’d weigh four hundred pounds from eating there all the time.  So f’ing good.

Today at work, a friend surprised me by giving me six CD’s.  They’re almost all by groups I’ve never heard of, too, which makes it even more exciting.

I find myself, again, at a loss of how to tie up all these little loose ends, and come up with a really good name for this entry.

Well, since this was just a plain old good weekend, all around, I suppose that means that the name should be. . .

Northeast Broadway in Portland was quite the happening place today.

When I came home for lunch–I live off Broadway, in the Irvington neighborhood–I stopped at the grocery store on 30th and Broadway first. As I was leaving, there were police cars blocking off Broadway, because a car had driven up onto the median and ripped out its transmission, sending pieces of metal skittering out all over the roadway.

At about 4:30 this afternoon, the old Albina Fuel building caught fire, and it’s still burning strongly as I’m writing this. I drive not too far from there on my way home from work, so I decided to take a smallish detour to hopefully get a closer look, or possibly even a picture – yes, I was one of THOSE people today – but the road was closed off, and all of the drivers were being diverted into the surrounding neighborhoods. The black smoke and occasional flames were clearly visible, even from many blocks away. There isn’t much wind, luckily, so the firefighters are already starting to get the fire under control.

Tonight I’m going to see a documentary about the closing of a famous record store in Northwest Portland, which has been a neighborhood mainstay for thirty years. It’s going to be a bit surreal, because the filmmaker is a woman I actually kinda know. I came across her profile on MySpace, on a page dedicated to a recent Japanese movie that I really enjoyed. “Wow,” I wrote to her, “we have enough in common that it seems like we’d make really great friends, at the very least. Take a look and see what you think.” So we met for coffee, and talked for over three hours. We went for a walk up and down Northwest 23rd, and even went to that record store for a while, before we had any idea that it was going to be closing its doors. We had a really great time, but I haven’t seen her since. Which is kinda weird, and I don’t have a good answer for why we aren’t closer than we are. I thought for sure that we would be. Just another instance, I suppose, to illustrate that sometimes things don’t work out in quite the way you think they’re going to. She’s tried to come to some of the things I’ve been involved with, and I’ve tried to come to some of the things that she’s involved with, but we both have fairly crazy schedules, so it hasn’t happened yet. Tonight may very well be the first time that we run into each other.

Weird.

Should be cool, though.

I gotta go. Sort of nowish.

Well, I made it through the rough patch.

I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but there was a combination of factors that led to that little meltdown. Add a few sad dreams–I’ve had a few brutal ones lately–and a liberal dose of exhaustion, and that makes a perfect recipe for depressive episode.

I walked to work three days this week. It’s about a half-hour walk each way, so I get a pretty decent amount of exercise when I do that, and it’s a great way to wake up, too.

Luckily, my dreams have also been more normal. Well, okay; normal for me. The one last night involved a friend of mine who was selling a brand new BMW (but it looked more like a swoopier, sportier SmartCar) to a guy he met online. My friend needed me to go over with him to help drive it over. The guy lived in a town that was perched on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the ocean, like Big Sur or something, so we drove through a curvy, mountainous road, and through an old mining area with a water slide (I don’t know, it was a dream!). When we arrived at his house, I saw that he had a drum set, but it wasn’t like any that I’d ever seen before, so I was trying to figure out if I could jump back there and play it while the guy was testing out the car. There, you see? Completely normal dream.

Tonight is RockShowGirl’s birthday, the third of the three Capricorn girls I know. I could barely keep my eyes open at work, so I’d love to take a nap before heading downtown, but I don’t know if I’ll actually do it.

My friend Maddy has been raving about a book called The Unhooked Generation for weeks now, and I finally made it to the library today. Coincidentally enough, it turned out that today was the perfect day to go, because there was a woman working there who seems to be exactly my type, who I’d very much like to ask out when I go back. I normally wouldn’t share that here, but I did for the simple reason that I’m a little bit shy, and I’m more likely to do it if I’ve told someone about it.

I also checked out some DVD’s; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Mondovino, an excellent documentary which I’ve actually seen before. It’s about the wine industry, and it compares the ‘new’ practices of the industry–led by American companies, naturally–with the more traditional, mostly European ones. It runs the gamut from the super-ultra-mega-producers like Robert Mondavi to a tiny French vineyard run by a single octegenarian gentleman, and everything in between. Alyssa and I saw the movie about a year ago, and I think you can probably imagine which we preferred, and found ourselves rooting for.

Tomorrow night is a Susie Blue gig, and although I’ve played accordion or keyboards with her for two years now, this will be the first time I play cello with her, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Our rehearsals have felt great.

The rest of the weekend is wide open. Here’s to some wide openness!

This week has been very strange and emotional. Been to visit MostRecentExGirlfriend in the hospital a couple of times, and I’m planning to go again today. Suffice it to say that I feel very churned up by all of this. She’ll be out in another day or two, and we’ll see how she fares. I have all my fingers crossed, my legs crossed, even my eyes are crossed hoping that she’ll be okay once she’s out and on her own again.

In other and better news, TossedIn and I did more geocaching yesterday afternoon. There are lots of good pictures to come. Mine are ready, but T also took a bunch, and I want to be able to include them too. Well, okay, here’s one:

Portland has a whole bunch of water storage reservoirs scattered throughout the parks in the city. There are two or three in Mount Tabor Park, and then there are others in Washington Park too. This one is in Washington Park, and it’s empty. I’ve lived here for twelve years, and this was the first time I’ve ever seen one empty. I don’t know if that means we’re having some sort of water shortage, or if the tank is just being cleaned or something. The angles and shading caught my eye, so I took a bunch of similar shots.

Came home, ate dinner and laid low for a while, then T and I met up again to go see the movie The King of Kong. Totally brilliant and hilarious; I recommend it whole-heartedly. You don’t even have to be a video-game geek to enjoy it, but it will certainly help if you are one. It’s more about the nature of competition, and the sacrifices people make, and the lengths to which they will go to be on top. Classic line, that won’t ruin it for you: “Some people waste their whole life trying to get in [to the Guinness Book of World Records].” Yup, great movie. Loved it.

Gotta clean up and make another hospital visit now.

This week has been a bit much.

Friday night was the marathon night; straight from work to Ratatouille, then to the Gypsy bar, then to the Flaming Lips listening party, then to the double-shot of gay bars.

Saturday was a big show–the second week of the Voices For Silent Disasters series–at the Mission Theater with both Susie (I played accordion) and Breanna (I played piano, believe it or not). Very fun.

Sunday was dinner with John, where the waiter thought we were a couple and told us to “keep taking care of each other.”

Monday was a well-deserved Crash and Do Laundry Day.

Tuesday was SarahC Night, which originally meant that she and I were going to see the movie “Darjeeling Limited”, but the theater didn’t take credit cards, which was all we had. So we ended up hanging out and talking at the Sapphire Hotel–where they gladly accept credit cards–for a few hours instead.

Wednesday was another of TossedIn’s play readings. The play this time was a not-for-the-faint-of-heart epic that was written by one of the members of the group. It was hilarious and over-the-top. The author had his head in his hands for much of the play, saying, “I’m sorry,” for the unimaginably X-rated language and situations involved. He even told us at one point about how his so-called friend had said, “Look buddy, I don’t think this play is really ready for reading, so I’m not going to make it to the reading tonight” and that he’d “see if I can give you some criticism that would help you out.” Isn’t that a horrible thing to say about a work-in-progress? Anyway, after that, T and I and a couple other people from the group went on a bit of a scavenger hunt. Apparently there’s a game that’s sweeping the world, and it involves using your GPS unit (assuming that you have a GPS unit) to find hidden trinkets and coins, and signing your name on a tiny paper scroll inside. It was a total blast. I still have one of the coins; I need to figure out what to do with it. Hopefully someone’s not going to show up on my doorstep with a GPS and start digging around my apartment building.

Last night was a Breanna gig. There were two other songwriters on the bill, and the show went from 9:00 until midnight. It was pretty grueling. Also, there were only about eight people in the audience for the entire show. Oh well; I’ve played for fewer people, and for far less attentive ones too. So it was a good show, but pretty exhausting. Thank gawd for cheap food and free drinks.

And that’s not even saying anything about work, which was extremely stressful this week, especially yesterday and today. It’s also not saying anything about the fact that J started seeing a new guy this week, which brought a heaviness to my heart because of the connection that she and I have, even despite (or maybe because of. . .?) everything we’ve been through, and as close as we still are. Incidentally, she’s had the same lump-in-the-throat feeling whenever I’ve met someone new, so it goes both ways. We both care about each other so much that it’s sometimes hard to believe that a romantic relationship between us would never work, but we both know it. The good news is that her new guy seems really great, and even from the little bit she’s told me about him, I give their relationship my full support. Can’t wait to meet him. But it’s still kinda bittersweet for me at the same time.

So after this crazy week, I really needed to do simple, relaxing stuff that’s good for me, and that I just enjoy doing. It’s the kind of night that if I was a girl, I’d rejuvenate myself by taking a bath and painting my toenails or something, but what does the trick for me is cooking. I always feel like I’m Taking Care of Myself if I make a nice dinner, because I love to cook, but I never take the time to do it anymore. So tonight I made this:

It’s pasta with Alfredo sauce, smoked salmon, green onions and whole peppercorns. I got the idea from a meal I had at a local restaurant, and then I added my own touches to it. I’m still trying to improve it but even so, it’s always excellent and super easy. Tonight was no exception.

So that was Part One for tonight. Part Two involves watching a DVD I just rented called Haibane Renmei, which was written by the same guy who wrote Serial Experiments: Lain, a very dark, strange, and beautiful anime series. It’s one of my favorites, and I’m very much looking forward to this newer one.

Well, this entry turned out to be quite the novel. I really appreciate you for sticking with it clear through to the end.