Month: April 2021

Oh these days. These days of waiting on the cure. Get the first vaccine. Wait for the second. Wait for the second to fully take effect. Oh, these days. Oh, whine, Oh self-pity. We have a library. How is yours? Ours is great. Oh so very good. Everybody can go online and request a book. When it is ready, at your branch of choice, they send you an email telling you of it’s available. You have to make an appointment for when you can pick it up. I have arrived at another time and it is OK. Until yesterday. I had a 2:00 appointment. Anytime between 2:00 and 3:00 and, shame on me, I forgot. A time of my choosing on a day of my choice and I forgot. Shame on me. Until I received an email about not showing up.

Hello!

You had a library hold pickup appointment yesterday. Although you missed it, you are welcome to come pick up any time within the next five days, no need for a new appointment.

If you have new holds that have arrived, please let the person stationed at the desk know that you have missed holds and new holds to pick up.

How is that for a deal? I even got to pick up a book for my wife. She had not even made an appointment yet. They, the Multnomah County Library, is my first stop for books. All the time. Every time. They are great. Now if I can find the two books I have checked out and have someplace, somewhere, in my house.

I would like to return them.

—— MichaelRpdx

“An Ink Guy”, if you are looking for an ink and you have YouTube that is the place to check out. This guy reviews an ink every day. There are hundreds of inks stored on YouTube. They are divided into colors, into manufacturers, and perhaps another group I cannot remember now. But, if you are looking for a red or a grey or a green or a whatever you can open up his playlist. There are lists for manufacturers (as I wrote) and colors (126 at this time) like red (am I getting repetitive?) but with over 1,000 inks reviewed you can find the ink you are after. And a lot of time lost down that rabbit hole. Let me tell you, it is easy.

Are there other people here learning Spanish? It would be good to communicate with you en espanol.

JPB of up north, have they rerun the Hemingway a week later? They used to do that for us. I saw they were on Amazon’s Prime service also. As to needing a white-out or other erasure, now I set a bad example, but not to worry about typos here. People seem to be very accepting of it.

Mornings with 30-degree temps are vanishing. That is a good thing. Our first days of 70s weather is almost here. I plan to walk around at 7:00 or so in the evening and pretending I am in the tropics. Oh, I will need to pretend that it is warmer, but it is close enough.

— MichaelRpdx

What a week. We watched Hemingway two and a half times. We took turns falling asleep during the screening and watching it again. But now it is over. Though, I must admit, there is episode 4, four, that is the first episode in Spanish. The narrator is very fine. The dubbing is terrible. You see the actor’s mouth moving and hear the monolog but there is no coordinated action between the two. I hope it includedes Spanish subtitles. That will be great fun to watch.

I read a lot here about fountain pens. If you would like one or two let me know. The offer is good through the supply I have.

This version of my writing will be the first shrunk down as Daniel requested.

Good sentences escape me tonight, so Goodnight.

— MichaelRpdx

It was a tense time today. First to the doctor to check on a biannual procedure. Then to home and waiting for the time to elapse until I could finally go and get my vaccination. Yes, at last, a vaccination for Covid. Now we enter into the waiting period for my wife’s permission if you could call it that for her turn. There were to my eyes thousands there in lines. Six lines each one with a half dozen people handling your paperwork and then two dozen people administering shots. And a cherry bye to the woman who jabbed me and I was off to the waiting place, the only place in the entire place where you had to wait, as it was 1O minutes to ensure you were OK after the shot. From entering to exiting it took less than half an hour. Before this month is over I will have the shots complete.

I got books out of the library today, well just one, and ordered two copies after. This came about due to Barbara’s zoom meeting with four authors talking about Noir. I will let you know how the books work out.

-— MichaelRpdx

Baking bread tonight, or whether I am forming the loaf for an overnight of rising.. But first I do have to form the loaf now,

He rode a bicycle up to the front to deliver candies and chocolates to the soldiers. He had been driving an ambulance for only two or three weeks. Standing at the front a shell exploded three feet away from him. Two men were killed. He was taken to a hospital where he spent weeks getting operated on. He spent time falling in love with a night nurse. She was seven years older than he was. Before all of this when he was seventeen he worked for a newspaper. After this the woman wrote to him and declared she would marry the doctor she had been engaged to. He drank more. He paddled across the lake with his sisters to meet other kids. His mom was invuriated with him. All of this happens before he turned twenty-one.

This all happens in the first twenty minutes of the Hemingway series from OPB and Ken Burns. It is good.

— MichaelRpdx

Lighthouse is on my mind recently. I came across the word looking up the translation for “leuchtturm”. Do you know how it is, you see a word and you know, you know, that there must be something to it, something special to it? So it was with leuchtturm and a notebook.

It is officially Spring what with the Easter day, which I for some reason did not understand. I did not get it until today that Easter was coming. I have had difficulties remembering words but this takes it to a whole new bit of spacyness. Perhaps I will be wondering about the Fourth of July.

Another sign of spring is greenhouses. Driving down the road we see green through the doors of greenhouses. These feed into the nurseries, nursurys?, of which there are scads and scads in our area. People are planting. In our area, my wife has lots cf greenhouses on our window sills. Half-pint jars, jelly jars, they make up our greenhouses. The plants will grow in them for at least a month. At least, until it warms up outdoors Flowers and vegetables and cotton. She likes to grow cotton because they are beautiful, beautiful plants.

When I was in the hospital I remember the bolls of cotton in my room. One nurse, a Russian guy (if I remember correctly, he could be of another eastern European descent), admired them. He talked about how much gardening he and his wife did. I pointed out how they could get the seeds and plant the cotton and grow it. You can have it, I said. He was thrilled. I have not kept in touch with him, so I do not know how their cotton crop worked out. I suspect it went well. They grew a lot of things. We have multiple generations of cotton, about seven years now. The largest enemy is the squirrels. They love eating them. Little fuckers.

— MichaelRpdx

XKCD, a cartoon, had an episode (https: //xkcd.com/1053) that talked about the average person who heard about something that every adult knows. When you hear about something for the first time it is a delight. Like today, a bunch of people are hearing about Noir for the first time. Based on 4,000,000 US Births per year and some subject that “everyone” has heard of by the time they are 30 years old, 10,000 people hear about something each day (I have not figured this out, my numbers do not add up, or divide out, but…) I had a “first-time” experience last night.

This movie came out in 1984. It was fairly popular. I had never seen it. Well, I think it was popular. Maybe not. It was a Noir; no doubt about that. There were a bunch of characters none of who (whom?) understood each other. They thought they did. But the basic realities they lived in were very different. My wife has seen the movie at least three times. But me? Nah. I had seen Amadaes, Terminator; Paris, Texas; Spinal Tap, Broadway Danny Rose, lots of great movies from 1984. But Blood Simple? Nope. Never until last night. It remains great. The Coen Brothers – it was their first, make that “first”, movie. First of many. It held up well. And oh so Noir. Noir!

When you think “everybody knows that”, cut them some slack. Or perhaps celebrate with them. A first thing to experience. Wow, what an experience. I wonder what else I have waiting to experience? By the way, if you have not read XKCD, well there are 2445 so far. There is a random button. Be careful of the rabbit hole.

— MichaelRpdx

We also had a “tater tot casserole” for breakfast. Another First! And the plants are exploring their first lives. Lots of things to have fun with.

On 28th there is one, one of many in Portland, taco truck. This is a nice one as it serves vegetarian foods. It is right next to Reed College, so yeah offer vegetarian food or wave goodbye to lots of customers. This one also offers vegan food, that is what it says right there on the menu Vegan, “We’d like two vegan burritos, please. No cheese, we need it to be vegan, it is Lent.” She seemed to understand. Did we want black beans? Yes. I grabbed a bottle of Coca-Cola my wife has wanted some lately, she doesn’t drink it very often but lately, she has wanted one. I pay up and wait.

They are right next to a “Berry Good Produce” maybe they sold Soy Curls, a haven to people with vegetarian or vegan wants. They are great but kinda hard to find. I wander in and checked out the produce, which is most of what they have there, and then asked if they had them, or it. After a little bit of explanation, we agreed they did not. Shucks, it means we will have to stick to ordering a case from the manufacturer. It is an Oregon outfit so that is OK,

As I arrive home my wife is still gardening, it is cool and sunny so it is a wonderful time to work on the garden. I call out, it is just after 2:00 so we are ready for lunch. I explain what I ordered and where I got it. Within the two-mile radius of our home, there are, that I remember right now, five places to choose from and the Portland Mercado with six or eight trailers with food from all over the Latin area. We have a lot of places to choose from. It was on the loop of the errands I was on so there we are. We start to eat them. Yay.

Yay right up until we discover chicken in our “vegan” burritos. I ended up m going to Los Gorditos, we know they will serve vegan food when we order it.

— MichaelRpdx