post-it perfectionist

North Head Lighthouse @ Cape DisappointmentOn the advice of a friend, I assigned myself the task last week of letting myself make mistakes.

I mean, obviously I make mistakes all the time, because I'm A) human, and B) not perfect. Duh. I am biologically wired, however, to try to be perfect at everything, and only years and years of tamping down that dictatorial little personality streak like a 1980s South American despot has made it possible for me to be okay with just being okay. Hooray for maturity!

However. When I am under a lot of pressure and facing mounting tasks with unforgiving deadlines and high expectations, my inner dictator seizes the opportunity for a military coup of the State of Brittney. I'm in the midst of just that sort of period at the moment, in which work and website business pressures are combining to make me twitch a bit with the effort not to Be The Best At Everything by trying to accomplish all my responsibilities at once. Hence the advice of a friend for a little radical reverse psychology, to not just not be perfect, but to actually let the mistakes happen.

She may secretly be trying to kill me.

Last week, I was at the office late, trying to get out the door but with three separate piles that each needed to go to three separate people, and three separate post-its to be written. It's a good thing I was in the office alone, because as I was rewriting each of those notes, I had to bust out laughing at myself. Yes, you read that right:  I was rewriting post-its. As in, I had done a first draft, edited for mistakes and clarity, then rewritten them so that they would read well and fit nicely on the selected post-it size.

I, um, may have some work to do on this not-being-a-perfectionist thing.

(Yeah, the picture above has nothing to do with anything, I just love it. The pics from our daytrip to Cape Disappointment are posted, by the way, as promised.)

breakfast, Lunchbot Pico:

• oatmeal (with butter & maple syrup in the condiment containers), not yet cooked
• raisins, to mix in the oatmeal
• peach slices

lunch, Lunchbot Duo:

• Sal's Amazingly Wondrous Wings (the very last of the batch made on Saturday)
• wee potatoes
• celery sticks
• carrot sticks
• tomato
• dark chocolate and dried cherries

whose slender roots entwine altars that piety neglects

Oh the adventures we have had! So many to tell you!

Like Wednesday night's neighborhood game night, hosted at our house. Or Friday night catching up and watching stuff with ProcrastiGirl. And yesterday, Sal rode in the Bridge Pedal, which is a bike ride that covers 35 miles and ten of the city bridges (including the St. Johns Bridge). (Which means Sal logged almost 55 miles, since it was 9+ miles to the starting point and then the same distance home.) And afterward, we did up a big ol' batch of stir fry on the patio, because life is ridiculously good.

Saturday, while we took our time over the brunch Sal made, talking about what to do with the day, we decided we were long overdue for a driveabout. We were getting a late start, so we needed a closer destination than, say, the coast. We decided on Vernonia, since we haven't explored much of the Coast Range that lies between Hwy 26 and Hwy 30.

We often pack a picnic for a driveabout, but didn't have much in the fridge that wouldn't take some prep time, so we decided instead just to grab a few snacks and our water bottles and go. Daylight was burning, after all. (You'll note I didn't say "sunlight", as it was overcast almost all day. But still temperate and nice, so no complaints here.)

Vernonia is situated in a little valley in the forested hills of the Coast Range. (Which sort of makes it a mountain town if you consider the Coast Range mountains. We don't, but the rest of Oregon does, so.) We took the Scappoose-Vernonia Highway from Hwy 30, a two-lane highway winding through deep, dark (I mean dark) forest and up and over the hills/mountains.

the Nehalem River at Hawkins ParkIt's a nice little town, a bit bigger than I imagined, with a slightly-larger-than-a-pond lake at one end and the perennially-flooding Nehalem River running through the middle. We stopped at Hawkins Park, which sits right alongside the river. They've built an ingenious little dam there to create a nice swimming hole (in lieu of a city pool, presumably), complete with a concrete embankment so you don't have to walk in dirt to get to the water, a ladder over the side down into the deep end, a wooden lifeguard stand, and a charming bank of lockers. They even used a water diversion to one side to create a wading pool for little ones. It wasn't warm enough to draw swimmers while we there, not even brave ones, but it wasn't hard to imagine what it must be like on hot summer days.

Setting for a creepy horror flick? Do we commit the mortal sin of slasher films and go investigate the creepy abandoned building? Yes, yes we do.We headed to the lake next, where there's a nice paved walking path that skirts the perimeter. About a quarter of the way around, there's an abandoned building off the path about a hundred feet. According to the placard on the walking path, it's an old fuel house for a now vanished cedar mill. (The "lake", as it turns out, is the old mill pond.)  It stored cedar chips to stoke the mill furnaces. It now has trees growing inside it. I love the poetry of that. Of course we had to look inside. And if I had woken up that morning with the intent to have an adventure, I couldn't have planned a more perfect discovery of treasure.

inside, a marvelous surpriseThe interior was like something out of a story. All four concrete walls completely intact, seven trees growing around the interior's perimeter, with sword ferns and bracken ferns and vine maples spreading out in the corners. The walls are decorated with colorful graffiti in more imaginative style than mere tagging, collectively creating the effect of a mural. And every sound echoes so that you speak softly and sparingly. A row of concrete platforms running down the center look like old stone seats from some ancient pagan ritual site, one that's so old that no one knows for certain just who built it or what they built it for, and combined with the simple peaked roof gables and the light slanting in through the trees, it has the look of a cathedral.

We still had some time before we needed to head home, so instead of our snacks, I suggested the restaurant that had caught my eye as we drove through town. It was really the word "brewery" that caught my eye, because Sal loves few things more than trying a new beer in a new town wherever we go, and I have had long experience looking for the signs of such things.

The Blue House Cafe, Espresso Bar, & Brewery, as it turns out, was just as much of a treasure as the mill ruin had been.The interior is charmingly decorated, all yellow and cobalt blue, with delightful touches here and there (like the beaded curtain made of wine corks and the blue painted nail heads throughout) and an ingenious outdoor seating area. It's a quaint restaurant serving time-tested family recipies and run by people who obviously care very much about what they do.

Their menu is largely Mediterranean and everything sounded wonderful, although that's one of the toughest cuisines for me personally since there are usually several key ingredients I just can eat. (Feta, kalamata olives, lamb, gorgonzola, pepperoncinis...I could go on, but it's just depressing.) Which means scanning for something innocuous or that doesn't have too many ingredients to ask them to hold, all the while wishing I could eat more than my frustrating palate allows.

We settled on the zataar flatbread, one with feta (for him), one without (for me). No idea what zataar was, but it was an adventure and that means you have to try things without knowing everything that's in them. He ordered their porter, I ordered a lemonade. Sal said the beer was decent, though nothing to write home about. The lemonade looked more like iced tea when it came, but I wasn't feeling particularly picky so I took a sip anyway. It was indeed iced tea, but so good I was glad for the accidental mix-up. It was infused with fresh mint and sweetened with brown sugar, so it had a delicious, crisp summery flavor that was most refreshing.

PLEASE SAL FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THIS FOR ME I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER AMENOur order arrived and with the first bite, I was in love. The flatbread was handmade and still warm, the zataar (a blend made of thyme, sumac, sea salt, and sesame seeds all ground together very finely) was mixed with olive oil and spread on the toasted flatbread, then topped with fresh tomato, cucumber, and onion. It was, in a word, heavenly. It may possibly have supplanted bruschetta as my favorite summertime treat. I'm still thinking about that meal two days later, and thinking a day trip to Vernonia may just have to be on our regular excursion list from now on.

You always take a chance on a driveabout that your search for adventure will end up being an uneventful day's drive in the car to nowhere in particular. You'll take your chances with the doubtful looking roadside cafe and it'll turn into a bust as often as naught. You'll point to a place on the map and arrive to find nothing much of interest. You'll have car trouble that is funny in retrospect, but anything but enjoyable at the time.

Still, even the least eventful driveabouts have their special moments: the hilarity that becomes a future in-joke, the music that imprints the moment just so, the odd sign or bizarre sight that makes you both go, "Did you just see...?" If they didn't, we wouldn't keep taking them. But every once in awhile, the search for a bit of adventure will turn up a little bit of mystery and a little bit of magic alongside those memories, and then you're hooked for life.

see the full set of pictures here

lunch, Paris slimline:

• stir fry (chicken, collard greens, baby bok choi, green beans, onion, garlic, broccoli, and a special sauce blend) with jasmine rice and crushed cashews for garnish
• cucumbers and carrots in rice wine vinegar
• a few bites of zucchini-sweet potato bread, courtesy of the neighbor who brought it for game night lst week
• blueberries (from our bushes!) and cherries

title taken from "Among the Ruins of a Convent in the Apennines" by William Wordsworth

zeus uses the neighborhood for target practice

Well the early morning pyrotechnics yesterday were the talk of the neighborhood. Seems we weren't the only ones who thought something had crash landed in the vicinity. Some people thought it was a plane crashing, others that the bridge had been hit with explosives. Nothing like the thought of horrible disaster in the pre-dawn quiet to get the blood flowing, eh?

And apparently, the flash bulb effect of the lightning that lit every house like a blue sun was due to a direct strike nearby. It hit an old Sequoia and sent pieces flying two blocks away. Very sad about such an old tree. Although I guess it's a good thing no one was hurt and it didn't start a fire.

lunch, pink Natural Lunch:

• pad Thai with chicken, and green onions for garnish
• cucumber and carrot slices
• cherries
• blueberries

a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning

At about a quarter to five this morning, Sal and I were woken from a dead sleep by the sound of something crashing on top of the house. Nothing actually did crash on top of the house, but instead an extremely close and especially loud thunderclap, but it certainly sounded like it. In fact, it set off all the car alarms on the street.

Admittedly, thunder and lightning are a rare occurrence here. Once a summer, maybe. But it's not as if I've been away from Wyoming so long that I've forgotten how loud thunder is. This was one of those rare types of thunder that just kind of sneaks up on you, the meteorological equivalent of someone jumping out at you from a doorway and shouting "Boo!"

After we recovered from the heart attack, I finally laid down again and closed my eyes. A minute or so later, a brilliant flash of white blue behind my eyelids and then another booming crash immediately following. Let me repeat that: I saw the lightning flash with my eyes closed, in a room where there's no direct line of sight to a window. That is some primeval shit right there.

lunch, black strawberry:

• pad Thai with chicken
• peas
• carrot sticks
• fresh raspberries from our garden

title taken from The Tempest, obviously

it's a hole-in-the-sock sort of day

My day started out behind. I extended the snooze just a little too long, fumbled the cats' food a bit necessitating some cleanup that cost me soem time, and even my hair seemed downright uncooperative. Nonetheless, I managed to mostly catch up by the time I started getting dressed.

But as I put on my black dress socks, I discovered a hole the size of Saskatchewan right smack in the middle of it. Not in the heel or toe, nor even along the top where I've put holes before from being a little too vigorous pulling them up. But right there, smack in the middle of my shin. So weird.

It was fortunate in a way, since it's in a spot that can't be seen. And anyway, I didn't have time to run upstairs and rummage for another pair (where I would've likely pulled out a pair of dark blue ones and then looked like a dork all day). But I sat there for a moment, contemplating whether it was a sign that the deck was stacked against me today and it might just be best to go back upstairs and crawl under the covers.

And that sock seems to be the metaphor for my day: everything looks fine, but underneath, something's a little bit off in a weird way. And even though I know no one else can see it, I know it's there, and it's just going to bug me all damn day until I can get home and dispose of it.

lunch, French bistro:

• pepperoni and smoked mozzarella in a sun dried tomato wrap
• steamed broccoli
• corn
• dried cherries

fleet week

guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG 86), taken at the 2009 Rose Festival; U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Maebel Tinoko [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsWith the Rose Parade on Saturday, the military and historic ships started coming in yesterday, with the really big ones coming in today. I didn't see any coming down the river yesterday although I did make it a point to go out on the porch periodically to check. But, I did see the Broadway Bridge go up, so I know there was at least one going by me when I was downtown.

The river is usually about seven feet above normal during fleet week, necessitating some bridge lifts so the bigger ships can pass. This year, however, the river is 17 feet above normal (and still rising), which has meant bridge lifts for pretty much everything, and that's been true even before the fleet started coming in. It's translated into traffic backups all over the place for the last few weeks, which is something you don't really think about until you live in a city of bridges.

I remember last year that the river was abnormally high, and some of the ships couldn't come because they couldn't clear the St. Johns Bridge (which doesn't lift).  The St. Johns Bridge sits 200+ feet above the water, so we're talking about some pretty big ships for no bigger than the Willamette River is. Anyway, the tallest one that they could get through last year just cleared the bottom of the bridge deck by four feet. (And I'll bet they sweated through every inch of that clearance until the ship was all the way through.) I'm guessing they probably had to cancel a lot more ships this year.

The St. Johns Bridge, by the way, was dedicated during the Rose Festival 80 years ago (June 13th, 1931). And that's your fun Portland bridge fact for the day!

lunch, french bistro:

• omelet/scramble/frittata?...whatever, it's bunch of stuff cooked with egg -- spinach, mushroom, caramelized onions, green onions; a garnish of fresh spinach to eat with it
• part of a Braeburn apple, with corn as gap filler and more fresh spinach to eat with the egg dish
• celery pieces (cleaning out odds and ends in the fridge)
• dark chocolate covered raisins

all is forgiven, george lucas

Hilariously awesome astronaut factoid that cracked me up:

"The mental readjustment [returning from space] can be just as tricky. In 1973, Skylab 2 astronaut Jack Lousma told Time magazine that he'd accidentally smashed a bottle of aftershave in his first days back from a month-long sojourn in space. He'd let go of the bottle in mid-air, forgetting that it would crash to the ground rather than just float there."

I srsly lol'd at that. Speaking of hilariously awesome, there's this, which made the rounds of Tumblr last week (and appeared on my dash on May 4th, natch). It reminded me that his codename is Renegade for a reason:

Look at that stance -- that is the stance of a man who knows his way around a paduwan training course, is what I'm saying. OUR PRESIDENT IS A SEKRIT JEDI MASTER YOU GUYS.

lunch, Paris slimline:

• Cotswold and Niman Ranch ham in a sundried tomato wrap (with just a smidge of plastic to protect it from the asparagus spears)
• blanched asparagus spears
• Murcott tangerine sections on a bed of freshly-shelled peas, courtesy of OCI's culinary students (who had to shell a bunch as part of a meal assignment)
• a lovely carved radish, courtesy of the exceedingly talented Chef Salvatore, with more peas as gap fillers
• BOTH yogurt covered and dark chocolate covered raisins

new boxes + family fun = happiness

There are many things to be excited about today, but two things that are bummers. Bummer the first: I was sick yesterday and still don't feel so great. Well, sick-ish. Not full-blown sick, but just kind of meh and I figured that was A Sign. I still feel sort of meh, but knew if I didn't get into the office today to at least simmer down some fires, it'd be a full blown conflagration in no time. My job title should really be "firefighter".

Bummer the second: New Seasons will stop doing grocery deliveries in a couple of weeks. This is totally a first-world, problem, I realize, so I hesitate to use such words as "devastated" to describe how I feel about it, and yet.... It's only because of New Seasons' delivery that we have had food in the house for like, the last seven years. The thought of having to somehow fit regular trips to the store into our crazy schedule just makes me want to curl up in a fetal position.

Onward to the good things! Firstly...new bento boxes! I updated the Bento Gear page so you can see all the specs on both of them. Because of no bento yesterday, and they're both smallish, I'm using them both today for a kind of early lunch/afternoon snack combo. Aren't they delightful?

lunch, french bistro:

• ham, Cotswold cheese, in sun dried tomato wraps
• carrots and snap peas
• my famous potato salad -- potatoes (those small creamer potatoes from the bin), dill, oil, apple cider vinegar, with some fresh chives for garnish

snack, matryoshka:

• two molded eggs (haven't seen those for awhile!) and a couple of snap peas for garnish
• tangerine
• cherry decadence trail mix
• sea salt for the eggs in the small container

The other good thing...a wonderful, fun-filled and inspirational weekend with Sister for a Girls' Arty Weekend, in which we shopped 'til we dropped and made big messes with paint and crayons and glitter, oh my! Because we are secretly twelve, she brought her allowance, I brought my birthday money, and we proceeded to fill bags and bags with art supplies.

She came up right after work on Friday and we hightailed it over to Collage to get a headstart on the shopping. Then on to Pizza Fino, where, despite 40 minutes on the waiting list, the delicious meal that followed more than made up for the wait.

Saturday, we stopped across the street from the art store for a quick bite and coffee/hot chocolate at Caffe Umbria. Then it was on for a tour of the wonderousness of Utrecht, where I proceeded to give her a tour of all the different kinds of mediums and tools. AND! She bought her very first acrylic paints! A basic color theory set, along with a starter set of brushes, palette knife, gesso, and gel medium. (And other things, too, of course.) And later that night, we did a little tutorial on the basics of acrylics and then I just set her loose and she's officially in love with acrylics now. SCORE!

Their inventory sufficiently decimated by our shopping spree, we headed over to SCRAP. For those unfamiliar: it's a non-profit that takes in donated (mostly used) items to be used for arts and crafts and sells them for cheap, cheap, cheap. They have everything -- fabric, yarn, thread, paper (omg the paper), paints, crayons, pictures, tiles, calendars, old books, old electronics, old craft kits, glass...well, you get the idea. They take a lot of stuff that isn't even art supplies, but that artists end up turning into something really cool.) I thought poor Sister's little head would go kaplooey at all the stuff to see and look at. Many things are sold by the handful (ex. crayons are 25 cents a handful) or by the inch (old photos are 10 cents an inch, meaning how high your stack is. I get a lot of ephemera there for my mixed media collages and art journal, because I can walk out with a bag full to the brim and only have spent 5 bucks. Oh SCRAP how I adore you!

thanks to birthday money from my momSo here was my haul for the day:

Collage:

• new set of acrylic alphabet stamps (most expensive item I bought there)
• 2" alphabet stencil pack
• 3 gel-ly roll pens (white, purple, black)
• 1 blue Tombo dual marker (forgot to include it in the pic)
• 1 pink Sharpie paint marker (also forgot to include it in the pic)
• 5 little wooden stamps (including one of a grasshopper for Miss M) that were on sale

Utrecht:

• a set of 4 black PITT pens with different tips, which I've wanted forever
• a set of technical/design pencils (5B to 5H) -- for sketching, especially working on faces
• a tube of dioxazine purple acrylic paint -- I have a good range of colors now and of course can mix purple, but I use so much of it that it's just easier to have this one as its own tube
• a tube of alizarin crimson acrylic paint -- same as above
• a new offset oval palette knife with a nice wooden handle -- I have my old straight palette knife but I'm doing so much work at table level rather than on an easel that having an offset knife is useful
• a wee (like 2" high) wooden easel to use for my business cards at work :)

SCRAP:

• two metal printing plates from an old greeting card maker (SO COOL OMG)
• a large acrylic stamp w/block (I don't care about the stamp, just needed the block part)
• a partially used white pigment stamp pad
• some random thermal set letters from an old print shop
• a big handful of used stamps cut from envelopes (10 cents per handful!)
• a big assortment of photos and promo cards, various sizes
• an old slide of a lakeshore
• a negative sheet of random photos
• an old sheet music booklet (sonatas and concertos, mostly)
• a vintage women's jacket and skirt set sewing pattern for collage backgrounds
• a set of 10 transparencies from an astronomy teaching book
• 4 random upholstery fabric swatches
• a small bit of really pretty rainbow yarn
• a small ball of ugly orange/yellow/brown yarn (I wanted something that I didn't care about the color, since it gets covered with paint and glue to use as texture for a collage background)
• a small stencil with two stars on it

We spent the rest of Saturday happily creating our little hearts out in the studio, then a late night viewing of Tangled, which she hadn't seen yet (WHAT), and then when we were headed to bed, got sidetracked with more fun in the studio. Hee. After pancakes the next morning (made for us by Sal), it was time to bid her adieu. Goodbyes are never fun, but I'm so, so thankful that we get to do these weekends, and that Guy and Miss M and Sal are so accomodating to make them possible. In other news: Best. Family. Ever.

if the oregonian were more regularly this awesome...

...I might actually subscribe to it. Hat tip to April Henry, who posted the following yesterday about the headline that's got everyone in town talking:

Actual front-page headline in today's Oregonian: "Scary Bright Ball in Sky Will Go Away."

It was sunny yesterday.

The last time before that?

41 days ago.

distilling a personality with four simple letters

Today was another work retreat like the one we did last month. Which meant bringing in both a breakfast and lunch and again eating it while everyone else ordered from the restaurant menu. For someone who prefers not to call attention to herself, I've become remarkably ambivalent about this. Remarkable only to me, perhaps, but still.

We took one of those personality/temperament tests (a Myers-Briggs sort of test) as a team building exercise, and let me just say that I am apparently the most textbook case of the "Rational" temperament ever invented. I am, in fact, an INTJ, quantified in this particular test as a "Rational Mastermind". Which makes me sound like the most boringly benign super villain ever. Among other things, I:

• have a temperament (Rational) considered rare (5% to 10% of the population) and a personality type (Mastermind) even more scarce (1% to 2% of the population). [No wonder I often feel like I'm from another planet.]
• value logic and pragmatism above almost all else. [And that planet was apparently Vulcan.]
• am ingenious, independent, strong-willed, and skeptical.
• am generally even-tempered and goal-oriented. [Unless there's something good on TV.]
• yearn for achievement and accomplishment. [A high score on the Scrabble game on my phone counts as an achievement, right?]
• have an innate ability to grasp a project's necessary progression and understand how each step leads to the next.
• prefer to stay in the background, reluctant to take command despite a skill for big picture thinking and focus on details. [HAHAHAHAHA TEST PEOPLE HOW DO YOU READ MY BRAIN WITHOUT A PROBE SCANNER THINGIE FROM A SCI-FI MOVIE.]
• am fascinated with developing strategic plans for others to use. [Hello, my entire job.]
• prefer a work environment where I can exercise intellectual freedom, am provided with challenging work, and have flexible hours, needing time to play at my own outside interests. [Otherwise, I get a little stabbity stabbity.]
• am more comfortable alone than in a crowd, and if a job or social situation requires me to be outgoing or take center stage, I can soon become exhausted and need down time in a quiet place to rest and recharge. [SRSLY TEST PEOPLE YOU ARE KIND OF CREEPING ME OUT WITH YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF ME.]
• draw energy from private, solitary activities, including reading, listening to music, and working by myself on my latest project or hobby.
• crave closure and finality, as well as orderly procedure, and can be quick to make schedules, agendas, or timetables for myself or others to follow. [Excel is my woobie.]
• feel unhappy or unsettled when my personal space is a mess. [HAHAHAHAHA NO REALLY]

There are actually 18 pages of details and charts in the report. My entire me-ness distilled into 18 pages with the accuracy of a DNA test. I read some of it to Sal last night and it was so spot on that he just started laughing. Somewhere around page three.

breakfast, cute animals sidecar:

• cream cheese and barrel pickle in a sundried tomato wrap
• Fuji apple chunk with an heirloom carrot garnish
• peanut butter for dipping

lunch, Paris slimline:

• honey-glazed red garnet yams, with a yam garnish
• steamed broccoli
• parmesan-breaded chicken breast
• orzo pasta salad (mushrooms, roasted red peppers, caramelized onion, parsley, rosemary, and balsamic vinaigrette)
• Fuji apple slices and heirloom carrot sticks
• peanut butter for dipping with carrot garnish
• yogurt covered raisins with carrot garnish

shame, shame, shame

Most everyone who knows my history knows how strongly I feel about the labor movement and how much it shaped me. It's not hard to imagine, then, how wrapped up in the Wisconsin situation I've been. Or how much of a gut punch yesterday's outcome was. This sums up my feelings pretty well:

If you're outraged by the movement to obliterate unions and want to do something to help, ActBlue has several campaigns where you can help fund recall efforts for the governor and Republican senators who perpetrated this travesty.

lunch, Laptop Lunch:

• peanut butter and strawberry jam on whole grain bread (with the cut-off crusts as gap fillers)
• rainbow carrot sticks and peas
• hard boiled egg with dried cherries in the little container
• cinnamon apple sauce

a prompt for a twofer

You will groan at that play on words when you've finished reading this post. It's a really bad play on words, but I actually wrote most of this post last night and it was the best I could come up with at midnight.

And so anyway, I had two full on bentos today: one for lunch, one for dinner. "But why do you have a bento for dinner?" you might ask. Because tonight, my dear chickadees, was the first night of Prompt, the 10 week writing workshop run by Write Around Portland. It was my main birthday really-for-reals present from Sal. (I know, I was super extra spoiled this year.) It was also the reason I'm only now getting this post posted.

With the exception of a week-long writing camp when I was 15(?), I have never participated in a writing workshop-ish thing before. I am tremendously excited and I have no idea what to expect. You should come read about it over on my writing blog.

It's a brown bag event, hence the reason for a dinner bento. It's held at Powell's, which is kind of the best place in the world, I think we can all agree. It is also something like Disneyland for writers, so that is a thing.

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• The Halls' Patented Cold Weather Soup, concocted from a roast (chuck roast, in this case) and a bunch of whatever-vegetables-we-have-in-the-crisper-and-need-to-use-up (this go-round: potatoes, carrots, onions, Swiss chard) thrown together in a crockpot -- with one or more of the following: tomato sauce, beef/chicken/vegetable broth, tomato paste -- and left alone for eight hours
• sourdough bread
• half of a Rancho Royale apple
• plain yogurt with fresh (frozen) blueberries*

dinner, Paris slimline:

• spicy meatballs
• steamed broccoli as gap filler
• mandarin halves, Rancho Royale apple slices, and fresh blueberries*, with a wee cup of yogurt covered raisins

*From our family berry picking adventure in August, which I just realized I forgot to post about. To celebrate Sister's and the Fabulous Miss M's birthdays, we spent the day at a U-Pick farm on Sauvie Island, where we proceeded to pick a buttload of blueberries and marionberries. And then had berry pancakes for breakfast the next morning. And berry-everything for several days afterward. And froze the remaining three quarters of a buttload and packaged them in handy vacuum-sealed portions.

Only one other person in the group brought their dinner, so I felt rather conspicuous eating mine in front of everyone. As I opened my box, one of the other people in the group said, "That is the cutest lunch box I have ever seen." Remarkably, my head did not burst into flames from being the (very brief) center of attention. It says something about how much I've changed that I forged ahead and ate it anyway rather than stuff it into my bag and go hungry until later lest I call any undue attention to myself. Usually whilst admiring the person who forged on ahead and ate her lunch/dinner seemingly without embarrassment. Perhaps there was another person sitting there thinking that thing I used to think, and maybe she'll bring her dinner next time.

and then he made me a cake

@ Powell'sOh my, what a terrific day! Brunch at Gravy, a trip to SCRAP, then downtown where Sal had reserved us a room at the Ace Hotel. Which is pretty much the kind of hotel we would have if we were hipper and cooler than we are. Seriously, what can you say about a place that has a vintage photo booth in the lobby, old payroll ledgers decoupaged in the bathroom, and an illustration from a sign language instruction book painted above the bed, except that it is indisputably awesome?

The hotel's location is perfect. It's a block from Powell's, across the street from the Living Room Theater, next door to Kenny & Zuke's, and within a block or two of several great shops and restaurants. It also has an on-location Stumptown Coffee (Sal may have bowed in deference) and the hotel restaurant is Clyde Common, which apparently makes the usual best-of lists. (I didn't know -- when I asked Sal what kind of restaurant it was, he said, "You know, basically a run-of-the-mill Pacific Northwest place." Why would we want to go to a run-of-the-mill place? "Oh, it's a good place. It's won awards." Well that's hardly run-of-the-mill if it's won awards. "All right then, Miss Pedantic. 'Typical' would've been the better word. Yeesh.")

A downpour started just as we headed out for Powell's, so happy birthday to me from the weather gods. They sure know how I love a good rain. We managed not to spend our entire evening browsing the bookshelves, and even more remarkably, came out with only one bag full to bursting. We've learned restraint in our old age.

The wait at Clyde Common was far too long so we opted for Kenny & Zuke's, instead. I'm glad it worked out that way because we had a really great meal in a comfortable atmosphere. Sal had a Reuben, since he will always opt for one if it's on the menu, and I had the best damn burger I've had in a long time. Plus, homemade garlic dill pickles!

Afterward, we walked up a few blocks to Cacao, a speciality chocolate shop, for a wee cup of drinking chocolate. Not hot chocolate. Drinking chocolate. I mentioned on Tumblr last night that I thought I knew what chocolate was, but oh, how very wrong I was. Pure chocolate in a custom blend -- mine was a blend of two different dark chocolates and a milk chocolate with a dash of cinnamon -- served warm and creamy, rich but not too rich, nor too sweet, just perfect.

Which is basically the description of my entire special day. Just perfect.

chocolate chiffon cake with pastry creme between the layers and Italian buttercream icingAnd then he made me a cake.

and it's lincoln's birthday, too

I took today and Monday off as a little gift to myself for my birthday. It's not a milestone birthday or anything, but it has slowly morphed into an extended extravaganza-ish thing.

It started yesterday, actually, when ProcrastiGirl and my assistant treated me to lunch at La Provence. It was delightful! The meal was delicious, ProcrastiGirl had her first Monte Cristo, and instead of a cupcake at the end, they had a wonderful fruit tart brought out with a candle to blow out. And because they like me, did not sing to me. Bless.

Today included a facial and massage, my gift to me, the arrival of two packages, one from Cat, the other from The Albino. And a haircut, which made it an Inadvertent Day of Beauty. I'll be spending the rest of the evening playing in the studio in between snuggling on the couch with the kitties and watching S2 of Parks and Recreation (OMG CAT I STILL LOVE YOU FOREVER THIS SHOW IS OUR TRUTHHHHHHHHH).

Tomorrow, the actual official day, will be spent with Sally. He has plans, but they're mostly a surprise. I know that the day starts out with breakfast at Gravy and includes an overnight stay at a downtown hotel, so it will be a pretty great day all around. Gotta love that guy for being such a thoughty hubby.

Feeling downright spoiled this year, as a matter of fact, since a joint birthday/mutual-Valentine gift is tickets for The Decemberists concert next weekend, and my gift from him was enrollment in Write Around Portland's 10 week "Prompt" writing workshop. AND, we'll be spending part of Sunday with Sister and the Fabulous Miss M for park picnic.

See what I mean? Seriously spoiled.

honor guard

Earlier this morning, I happened to glance out the window and noticed a long stream of police cars with lights flashing on the St. Johns Bridge. So many, filling up the eastbound lane. I went out to the porch to see what was going on, hearing helicopters overhead and had a moment of dread -- don't let it be a jumper, I whispered to the universe. There's been enough sadness and death this week.

I saw that the line of emergency lights spanned the bridge, across the river and down Bridge Avenue leading up to the bridge, and further down Hwy 30 SB. And then I remembered that Rainier Police Chief Ralph Painter's memorial is today.

The little town of Rainier, Oregon is located just a little way up Hwy 30 from us, about 40 miles. You pass through it if you're headed to Astoria or are taking the Lewis & Clark Bridge across the Columbia to Longview.

Their police chief, Chief Ralph Painter, was shot and killed last week trying to disarm a violent man in a store. By all accounts he was a good and decent man and well-loved in a small, close-knit town. He had seven children and twelve grandchildren. He was a drummer and long-distance runner. He was thinking about retiring to teach new police cadets.

Law enforcement and emergency services personnel from all over the country and even Canada planned to come to his memorial service. The town quickly realized that there would be far too many people for their little town to accomodate, and the service was moved to the Chiles Center at the University of Portland, just a few miles from our house here in North Portland.

The processional included hundreds of police cars and motorcycles, fire trucks, and ambulances. Our postman came up the steps as I was on the porch and we watched together in silence. He wondered quietly if every police car and fire truck in the state was slowly making its way across the St. Johns Bridge. It sure looked like it.

Mark Twain supposedly said, "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." It's advice I think about often, and try to remember when I get caught up in my own pettiness. I fail more often than I succeed, but it's still advice I think is worth heeding. It seems Chief Ralph Painter thought so, too.

vacation's all i ever wanted

Hello, internets!! I have returned, you may rejoice! Or roll your eyes, that works, too.

So vacation is officially over and I am officially depressed. (not really) Nineteen days away from work is really the bestest invention ever and should be something I do every month. Ha ha, I kid. (no really, nobody fire me, kay?) The downside of nineteen days of vacation is the coming back part, which is decidedly not part of the bestest invention ever, but I knew that going into it, so.

yes, it's really a screenshot of my Inbox (we don't count the Sustainability folder since it's all from automated online mailing lists)But you know what else is also not the funnest thing ever invented? THE TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN EMAIL MESSAGES WAITING IN MY INBOX THIS MORNING. Jesus H, people! Email in the workplace is srsly of the devil. I suppose I should be grateful(!) that I was gone when many people were also gone for various lengths of time for the holidays, because holy buckets I would not even want to contemplate the horrors. I'm hoping that half of that will be variations on "hey everyone I will be gone for the next 3/5/whatever days so long losers" and "oh yay vendors have brought holiday treats don't trample each other on the way to the kitchen" and thus deleted with no further effort. I AM VERY OPTIMISTIC IN THIS WAY. I kind of don't know yet how bad it is because I am feeling particularly avoidant today and thus haven't delved too deeply. Well, and I had meetings from the moment I walked in the door until, well, right now. Let's see, lunch or cleaning out my inbox...hmmm....

So, vacation! Was, as I mentioned, totally badass! It was a little more hectic at the start than either of us would've preferred due to some scheduling obligations, but nothing too traumatic. Things That I Did On My Vacation: A Thesis:

• completed the creative room, woot woot! (now renamed officially to the studio, except on the web pages here because it would break all the links and I don't feel like fixing them all)
• created our little hearts out in our creative room studio, woot woot! and left projects half-done, and all our stuff out, and it's totally okay because it's not in the middle of the kitchen or the living room and the cats can't get into any of it to chew on things and barf them back up and just generally yay for dedicated creative spaces!
• did some writing on Book 2 in the new creative room studio; also, at the coast
• made some way awesome presents for the homemade Christmas with our Smiley family, as mentioned in the last post (and yes, I still owe a write-up and pics of that...coming soon!)
• finished Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which makes me sad because ye gods and little fishes that show is goddamn freaking awesome and joins the list of great shows that died too soon and I may now be madly in love with John Connor and his almost-human Summerbot and also also ALSO Sarah Connor the mother of us all and Derek Reese of the Reese clan and omg Shirley Manson still a Scottish badass and also in addition I need to see more John Henry playing D&D oh woe why why why was this show cancelled
• went to the movies (saw Voyage of the Dawn Treader but still haven't seen Tangled so we're hoping we can fit it in next weekend before it's gone from the theaters)
• played utterly ridic amounts of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii; in other news, we are hilariously behind on gaming trends (hahaha as if we have ever been up-to-date on gaming anything, we are srsly 124 years old)
• got my website clients updated for January (those who sent me their updates, anyway) -- not really a vacation-y thing, but a considerable accomplishment considering my general attitude throughout vacation was "if it looks like work, then I'm not doing it, damn it"

a winter storm raged like a banshee the entire time we were at the coast, and of course the morning we left, it looked like this

• spent four quite glorious days at the Oregon Coast
• went out to eat at a new restaurant (Tasty & Sons); well actually, two, since we tried out Little Big Burger for the first time, as well
• went to brunch on Alberta -- hahaha Tin Shed on any day of the week what was I thinking trying to get in for brunch? god bless Alberta's many coffee shop alternatives or we would have been hungry and thus cranky otherwise -- and then to Collage with Sal and managed not to buy everything in sight
• started (finally) Wheel of Time: The Towers of Midnight and spent much happy time curled up with a satisfactorily heavy book either at the coast with a terrifically ferocious storm raging outside or at home in my terrifically cozy library; also, I have an addiction to adverbifying adjectives
• slept in...like, a whole lot
• did silly time-wasting things like playing an embarrassing amount of Angry Birds on my phone (what I don't even), for which I make no apologies because I freaking PWN that game, dude
• oh yeah, and spent every available moment with my dear and beloved Sally Bear which was still not enough but way, way more time than we've had together in a long, long while

Our vacation clearly rocked it, I think we can all agree. There were a few things not done that we'd hoped to -- no LOTR marathon this year, unfortunately -- but there's no reason we can't do them anyway. It's going to take some time to get back into the routine of things, and there's always that period of the doldrums following a vacation, but it was worth it. Also, the cats have gotten WAY too used to having our attention practically 24/7 so I expect retaliation when I get home tonight. In other news, we live with terrorists.

And you know, we actually aren't planning to get back into the routine of things. We've long since decided -- and vacation was partly used for the planning of making this happen -- that we need to refocus our efforts on boundaries with the demands on our time versus spending our time in a way that's important to us. That refocus is something you just have to do on a regular basis, that resetting of boundaries, and we just haven't had a chance to catch our breath long enough to do it. So we did. Will. Are.

New Years' Resolutions? Nay nay, for we do not believe in them! Instead, these are Our Goals That Just Happen To Coincide With The Beginning Of A New Year No They Are Not Resolutions Shut Up. Anyway, 2011 will hopefully be a good year, better than 2010 was and it better be a damn sight better than 2009 or I'll demand a refund because holy crap, 2009 sucked it.

Anywhoodle, I'm back to work, back to posting, back to catching up on the past house projects so I can post on the creative room studio project, back to folding laundry and doing dishes and other illusions of responsibility, but in a new and revised format in which responsibilities and obligations get a portion of the pie than they were getting prior to vacation.

I'm also back to bentoing. I missed doing it, and I didn't. It was nice being all free spirit-y and lackadaisical about mealtimes and such, but I sure enjoy my pretty packed lunches, lo they give me great joy, Charlie Brown. Still, it's good to take a break sometimes, just so it stays fun and enjoyable instead of becoming another obligation, non?

lunch, Paris slimline:

• jasmine rice with a stripe of peas
• orange sections and Rancho Royale apple slices
• Sal's custom blend of flavored nut mix (part of his homemade Christmas gifts)

special treat, cute animals sidecar:

• sugar cookies Sal made for me last night as a special treat for my first day back to work, which he presented to me as bento animal cookies I KNOW RIGHT HE MADE ME HOMEMADE ANIMAL COOKIES HE WINS ALL THE AWARDS IN EXISTENCE

lol somewhat homely bento I maybe didn't put much effort into it. The protein part of the equation is a tad, um, lacking, but whatever, it's still a bento and it's still one more meal I'm neither skipping nor resorting to less healthy means for.

scenes from an art store and other paint-related adventures

Proof that we totally weren't kidding about the Pepto-Bismol thing.Less than a week until vacation, holy crap! So much to get done, but I'm so excited that the OMG CRUSHING WEIGHT OF IT ALL isn't even stressing me out. Well not much, anyway. And poor Sal...well, he's just got his head down, plowing through this final week and then I expect he'll reward himself with one of his bigger bottles of homemade beer.

I've got another update posted on the work we did two years ago -- this time, the painting in the library. Yep, we finally, finally exchange the heinous pink for a radically different -- radically awesome -- color.

Also, the Lord of the Rings wins all the things.

lunch, black strawberry:

• two molded eggs, both the star AND the heart
• roasted yam
• celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins
• satsumas and pomegranate seeds as gap fillers

Following an appointment downtown last night, I took a detour to an art store nearby that I like. As I was browsing, a woman came in and asked the clerk at the counter for advice. Her husband wants to become a painter, she says, but he's never painted before. She wants to get him paints and brushes for Christmas, but isn't sure what to get. Acrylics? Oils? Watercolors?

After some discussion, the clerk helps her figure out that the type of painting her husband wants to try isn't watercolors; more back and forth and she finally settles on acrylics (easier to clean, recommends the clerk). He shows her to a nice starter package that includes a good set of paints in a nice wooden case that can hold 9"x11" canvases. She wants everything her husband needs to get started, so the clerk smartly loads her up with gel medium, gesso, brushes, canvases, palette knife, and an easel. Dude is gonna be set.

The whole time, I'm quietly amused as I listen to the conversation (they were loud, I wasn't eavesdropping), imagining the husband and his newfound passion for painting. I'm thinking how sweet that his wife wants to encourage this new interest and what a nice Christmas gift he's getting under the tree this year. And I can't help but wonder: just what has prompted the sudden desire to be a painter?

I'm behind her at the checkout counter so while the clerk is adding things up, I motion toward all the supplies and say, "That will make a really nice gift. I'm sure your husband will be thrilled." She smiles and agrees, saying that he's always been hard to shop for so it's nice to finally have something really special to get him. I take the opportunity to ask my question: "So what prompted his interest?"

She grimaces, then laughs a little. "Well you know, they've been showing that guy on PBS again, and I think my husband just got inspired to give it a try."

"Oh, Bob Ross? I'll bet he's inspired a lot of people like your husband. That's pretty cool."

"Yeah, but if he starts talking about 'happy little trees', I'm having him committed."

decorating my nest with bits and bobs and shiny things

Planning and preparation continues apace for the creative room project. I've been spending ridiculous amounts of time on Etsy, ordering handmade treasures for our new room to make it a place of joy and inspiration and creativity. Little packages arrive on my doorstep every few days, and it's become such a lovely thing to come home to, some little package from someplace far away specially wrapped with a little extra thank-you surprise tucked in. My most recent package arrived Monday from Norway, a small packet of a thing that was wrapped beautifully by an artist whose love for what she does shows in her painstaking attention to even the smallest detail, like the illustration scrolled around the return address on the envelope. It makes me want to keep ordering things as a regular state of being, just for the sheer delight of it all. My adamant anti-consumption-ism be damned.

And there are other special treasures that I've gathered for some time now, waiting for me to unpack them and discover them anew. Altogether, it may sound like there will be a lot of clutter and things to dust, but no. Altogether, there will only be just the right amount of things. Altogether, just enough to make it a reflection of us. Me, mostly, but us, too.

As requested, I give you the various prizes of my recent Etsy spending spree. Well, spending sprees, if I'm being completely honest. I, um...may have given in to a list of long-held wants. I don't buy things often, certainly not things for myself, so I'm telling myself it's okay. That I'm supporting individual artists in a sustainable form of commerce. That it's just this one thing, that's all, and then I'll stop. I can quit any time I want, really.

Oh, the dangers of addicition...

It all started with the hunt for a unique pencil cup for my desk. I've long been on the hunt for something that was special and different and fun and handmade. This one fit the bill perfectly:

Unfortunately, my case of The Wants turned into a full-blown fever. I have things for this room already, carefully tucked away. But perhaps it would do no harm just to look for a few more things? Things I've been seeking for awhile for this room, that I've pictured in my mind when I envision it? It couldn't hurt to look, could it?

Oh, how naive I was.

My vision included a big letter "B" to sit on top of a cabinet or shelf. I love decorating with words and letters. Such a surprise, I know. What I saw in my mind was some wonderful cut-out letter, or something delightfully knocked-about and weathered from an old sign, perhaps. It wouldn't have to be a "B", necessarily, since one cannot be choosy when it comes to random letters reclaimed from old signs. But if I found something that didn't cost a ridiculous amount of money, then perhaps...?

There were several that fit the bill, ones made and ones reclaimed, and happily, a great one that was made to look reclaimed. And a "B", no less! AND! They were happy to oblige when I asked for it in dark turquoise instead of gray (shown here):

And speaking of decorating words, how about this oh-so-appropriate sign/decoration for Sal's creative area in the room?

I was on a roll with no intention of stopping by that point. Such a worrisome turn of events! What more could I find to fulfill my envisioned little room? It became a challenge, a sort of treasure hunt -- how many items from my imaginary list could I find? This is never a good sign.

Because I have a thing for stars and suns and moons, I wanted some rusty metal stars hanging from a shelf support or sitting on the door lintel. So imagine my delight when I came across someone in Nebraska who was selling rusty metal stars made from the roof of her great great grandfather's barn (built in 1912) after it was dismantled. Don't you just love stories like that? I do. I got a small one and a large one:

    

Oh how I love those rusty metal stars. So when I found another one made from vintage ceiling tin, I had to have it, too:

And there was the artwork. So much I would love to have, and so many Etsy artists I adore! One of my favorites is located in Norway, and she has so many pictures I want that I simply couldn't decide. But alas, my poor checking account! I couldn't afford to buy all that I wanted in the larger sizes, especially with the cost of international shipping. But! She offers postcard prints of her work, and in packs of 3, no less. Huzzah! I thought to myself, Wouldn't they look so sweet in small frames, sitting on narrow shelves with a few other favorite little things? A sign that the Universe wants me to have them, surely! It was still hard to decide which pack to pick, but I consoled myself that I will absolutely can always order others later. I settled on the pack that included a print of one I wanted in a larger version, the one with the little girl who's floated up into the air so that only her blue-stockinged legs can be seen:

Oh, and the photographs! So many of books, of overstacked bookshops and battered typewriters and other writerly sorts of subjects! How to choose?

There was one photographer in particular who had so many photos of so many subjects in such a lovely, aged vintage-y way that I could fill walls and walls with his framed photos. But I do not have walls and wall on which to hang them. And there are other things that I also love which must find space on those walls and walls I do not have. Such a quandary!

But The Wants care not for my quandary of walls and things to hang on them. I found pictures for Sal that I knew he'd love and would be a piece of him in this room and would fit in with everything else, too. Oh dear, but so expensive, even limiting myself just to the two I knew he'd love the most, nevermind all the ones I could choose for me. But this crafty photographer, you see, he anticipated such a dilemma. He offered a special -- a package of any 4 prints from a specific selection upgraded to a 12"x12" size for a significantly reduced price. Be still, my heart. You sure have to look out for those cunning artists and their plan to fill your home with so many wonderful things! And the two prints for Sal were available in the selection, as were my two favorites. So I couldn't really pass it up, could I? It would be like kicking karma in the shins. I couldn't do that to karma. I dutifully ordered, two for me, two for him. Hmmm...I wonder which is which?

    

    

I had sworn off more purchases, though there were still so many I wanted mightily. Wait to see what space you have left, I told myself. You don't want to clutter up the room, after all. And you already have a nice collection of things you've been saving up for awhile. And you'll want space to hang your own creations. No need to be greedy. Remember your mantra about consumption? Besides, your account could use a rest. This fiscal irresponsibility is so unbecoming!

But then I found Elly MacKay. I spent an hour or more just looking through her portfolio. Her process is amazing and her images capture something...magic. I read her blog and a bit about her fascinating, inspiring life. I looked through her portfolio again. The little boy with the whale. The little girl making shadow puppets. The little boats at the edge of a waterfall. The little girls doing crane poses. I showed them to Sal. He fell in love, too. A sign, surely, that I needed to order just this one more thing? How I picked which one, I have no idea. I want them all. But I did decide on one, and I can't wait to see how it will look in my room of inspiration and creativity.

There are other artworks sitting in my shopping cart, just waiting for me to click "Checkout". I'm hoping for the fortitude to resist pressing that button. We'll see if I can restrain myself.

remembering our accomplishments, one step at a time

As promised this weekend, I've begun posting write-ups and picture galleries of the work we did a couple of years ago on the library and guest (& creative) room. It's been interesting looking back through pictures and remembering all the work that went into those rooms. And a challenge to remember the particulars, the hang-ups and obstacles and delays. Which is why I've been documenting our home improvement projects here, so we'd have a record of all the work that went into it. Note to self: that record is much more complete when you don't wait three years to write it down.

Anyway...part 1 of each of the projects (basically the "before" pictures) is now up for your reading pleasure and entertainment:

guest & creative room, part 1: getting started

library, part 1: getting started

When I wasn't busy skimming through old photos on my computer and trying to remember exactly what we did three years ago, Sal and I managed to fit in an excursion to the Portland Opera for a matinee performance of Hansel and Gretel. One of his co-workers helped cater a function for the opera and received two tickets as a thank you. She wasn't able to go so she offered us the tickets.

After the show, we went for dinner at Pizza Fino in Kenton, and what started as dinner after the show before heading home became a three course meal lasting a few hours. We haven't been out to dinner like that for a couple of months so it was lovely to converse over a wonderful meal in a nice but relaxed atmosphere.

Lunch today consists of Saturday's leftovers, namely chili. Saturday was a series of downpours, some of them downright biblical, so it was the perfect day to break out the crockpot to make that chili I'd been thinking about last week. It's probably the best chili I've ever made so I'm glad that we made a huge batch.

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• chili: chili and kidney beans, several red and green peppers of various degrees of hotness and sweetness, onions, garlic, tomatoes, beef, seasonings of spicy deliciousness, with a garnish of (melted) cheese cubes
• small mixed green salad, with radishes and rainbow carrots and a small container of dressing tucked in
• Honeycrisp apple
• orange cheesecake made by Chef Salvatore

Unrelated to anything, other than being cool news on an otherwise ho-hum Monday, I see that scientists have successfully created a "mini big bang" at the LHC.  How indescribably cool is that? (It'll take weeks (months? years?) to analyze the data, but one of the things they hope to find is evidence of the Higgs boson particle, otherwise known as "the God particle" (despite scientists' preference otherwise).) They generated temperatures of ten trillion degrees and created sub-atomic fireballs. Sub-atomic fireballs, you guys! You don't even have to be an astrophysics geek to get excited about that.

bento-versary!!

Today marks one year since I officially renewed my bento obsession with bento 2.0 baby!, resulting in about 130 bento lunches and breakfasts in the last year. It's safe to say, I think, that my plan has been a success. I've eaten out for lunch only a handful of times, stopped my (very bad) habit of not eating at all during the day, cut down on lunch expenses, eaten better, felt better, refined my bento routine, and converted a few people to the bento way of life along the way. I've even had a few pretty lunches here and there.

If it weren't the first of the month -- the busiest time of my very busy life -- and if I had my act more together, lunch today would have a bit more panache (and be a tad less monochromatic) to mark the day than simply using the same container as my lunch from a year ago. Then again, that wouldn't really be in keeping with my way of bento-ing, where pragmatic takes precedence over picturesque. Still...there's always room for a few carrot shapes!

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• garden vegetable soup, with a julienned carrot lattice" and heart and star carrot cutouts for garnish
• wraps: herb roasted turkey breast and cream cheese in a flour tortilla
• heart and start carrot shapes, grapes

1,600+ food items filling our lobbySpeaking of food and doing very good things, our office just completed a month-long canned food drive for the Oregon Food Bank and we were, as you can see, mightily successful.

pumpkins from the decorating contest that ProcrastiGirl handpainted with the company mascotOur office is divided into teams so to make things interesting, the food drive was actually a competition among the teams to see who could bring in the most items, with a prize for the winner at the end of the month for the winning team. We also challenged our vendors to try to beat us, and as a result, we ended up with over 1,600 food items.

And finally, just randomly...a week ago, I was on my way home late after an especially stressful day, rushing to pick up my CSA before the deadline and thinking about all the things I needed to take care of when I got home afterward. As I got onto the freeway, I remembered I needed to put gas in the car lest I be stranded on I-5 NB waiting for Comet in busy Tuesday evening traffic. So it was right back off the freeway at the next exit, wading through traffic to a gas station and waiting for the busy attendant to get to me, all the while thinking, "and miles to go before I sleep".

We'd had some impressive storms throughout that day and the three or days before, with dark, dark clouds and rain that came down in a torrent, relentless. But as I was sitting at the light waiting to get back on the freeway, the sun had come in under the the clouds as it was setting, lighting everything up -- including the array of trees in many colors in front of me -- against a backdrop of sky so dark blue gray that it was almost black. A reminder when I probably needed it to be mindful of the now and not to lose sight that life is happening in this moment, and this one, and this one.