Random Photo of the Day

JELD-WEN Field, almost ready for first match on April 14. What had most recently been PGE Park has been converted from a baseball-friendly park to a futbol/football field for the Portland Timbers, now a Major League Soccer team. The entire season is effectively sold out already.

Seeking food inspiration

Two months without a blog entry? Have I no sense of shame?

Last week I finally started paying attention to the eruption of food carts here in Portland. One article I read reported that we had more than 200 now, scattered around town in "pods", which appear to share rent in an empty lot, along with utilities and dining areas. The familiar array on the Transit Mall downtown seems to be primarily Indian, Thai, Thai, Indian and Thai. Plus some Indian food. Elsewhere in town the diversity is much greater, and new pods appear constantly, requiring websites solely to track and review them.

Alex and Becky made a timely visit to Portland last week, and we chose the very new pod on Belmont near 43rd for our first exploration. So much to choose from! Mexican, Italian, Korean/Hawaiian, sausages, fresh produce, "comfort food", Thai, Middle Eastern... 

Although the Dawg of the Day was tempting, I opted for the pulled pork plate at Namu's Killer Korean BBQ, and the result was even better than expected. Shredded pork, slow-cooked with cabbage  was served along with sticky rice and a sauce (I chose creamy horseradish), and traditional Korean cucumber and spinach salads, and kimchee. Absolutely delicious.

Alex and Becky chose the Eurotrash cart and came back with equally delicious options.

Because we were having a late lunch, we almost had the entire site to ourselves. Based on observation at other locations, I'm guessing that the place is jumping during the noon hour and in the evening (almost all of these carts are closed by 10 pm). As pleasant as it was for us, on a cool summer afternoon, I have to wonder how well the carts will do in the Winter when the table umbrellas will offer little shelter. The Hawthorne pod has a big tent for seating, but most of the pods I've seen are highly exposed.

I say it's Spring

According to the calendar, Spring is weeks off but here in Portland it's well ahead of time. It made for a nice walk today for Ralphie and I, especially along Sellwood Blvd, where I found my dream house (or houses). Not only is this a beautiful old home with a beautiful old cherry tree out front (along with a beautiful not-so-old resident), but it offers what might be the best view in Portland. Sellwood Blvd sits on a ridge overlooking Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge and the Willamette River, with a clear view of downtown. Far down below is a walking and biking path, part of the 40-mile Springwater Corridor. The steep wooded hillside between road and path is already packed with songbirds.



I'm just having a little trouble deciding whether the nice lady should give me her house, or if I'd rather have one just down the street, because the other house has a widow's walk and therefore even a better view.



And this house is right next to Sellwood City Park, a real gem tucked away from traffic, while still a short hike to the Bybee-Milwaukie stores and antique row. Maybe the people who live here should give me their house instead.


Ralphie doesn't seem to care, just so long as I shut up and let him walk.


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Random Photo of the Day

There is always a lot of tugboat traffic down on the Willamette. Sometimes we forget that the city began here to use that river as a highway and that it's still very much in use. Most of the time, the tugs I see are pushing big or even huge barges. Today, it looks more like someone has decided to move the house.

I have a blog?

Apparently I do have a blog, but for the last two months or so, I've malingered. I'll try to be better.

The two beautiful hot dogs above are from Wayne's Chicago Red Hots, recently-ish opened on MLK here in Portland. Those dogs are the real thing: Vienna Beef hot dogs with the full complement of authentic Chicago goodies including pickle, tomato, onion, weird green relish, mustard and celery salt, all on the correct poppyseed bun. After several failed attempts to get a certain stepdaughter to bring Vienna Beef dogs back from Chicago, I've finally found a place to eat them.

Wayne's not only does the hot dogs properly, but they have a big screen tv on which to display Cubs' games while stuffing them down. In future visits, I'm going to be scouting for Chicago natives in hopes of learning how to eat the damn things without getting onions all over my shirt. I think there must be some secret for the angle of attack . . .

More snow and more snow and . . .

When I came out of the apartment this morning to slog to work I was shocked by how much snow had fallen through the night. This just does not look like Portland. At work we had to shut down a lot of bus routes and I think the customer response to that is not going to be pretty. A lot of people are going to have (or have had) a really difficult time getting home from work. I just hope a lot more of them decided this morning it wasn't worth the effort to go in in the first place.

That car on the right, where you can see that it's silver? That's mine. It's not going anywhere any time soon.

Please melt!

Better not be a white Christmas!

It's December 20th at roughly 4 p.m. and it has been snowing since about 8 a.m. There still isn't an enormous accumulation of snow, but for Portland it's pretty impressive and the forecast is for more and worse to come, including sleet or freezing rain. And temperatures are supposed to stay low enough through the week to call for more snow (or snow mixed with rain) right up to and through Christmas Day. Bah. Humbug.

At least it's a weekend, so my demands at work relating to this weather have been reduced. There are a lot of people traveling on public transit today, though, because it's the last shopping weekend before the gifts fly on Thursday. I've been hoping and planning to host a Christmas dinner with my parents (86 and 91 y.o.) and my son Alex. The kid may be the only person to show up.

So, thanks, it's all very pretty but it's also cold and Portland doesn't cope with snow very well. I know there are people out there laughing at us, but they live in regions where snow is a normal part of winter and they're equipped to deal with it. I think the City of Portland has all of three snowplows. 50 miles south of here, from Salem on down, they've got rain and grass. Not a bit of snow. Humph.

Random Photo of the Day

Several of my co-workers have bought Smart Cars recently, and I have seen a couple of the cars around town in this particular color scheme. I'm obviously not the only person who was struck by the resemblance to a bumblebee. The license plate has a special joke, though, once you know that the owner is a bus driver.

Random Photo of the Day

Part of the charm of the new apartment, at least to date, is that there are a lot of trees on the grounds, mostly conifers. Since the building dates back to the 1970s, I'm guessing many of the trees do as well, and the height of some of them certainly lends itself to that idea.

We finally have a break (probably brief) from the constant gray skies of a Portland autumn, and this fellow appeared to be enjoying the warmth of the sun as much as I am. I shot this through one of my bedroom windows (a bedroom, I might add, easily three times the size of my old one) after I spotted him dozing on a limb. Even the sound of the blinds going up and the window sliding open wasn't enough to rouse him. I'm mellowing toward squirrels now that I no longer have to worry about an attic under constant attack by the rodents.

I'm not crazy about unpacking, either

I just put all this stuff in the box and now I have to take it out? Arggggh.

The layout of this apartment is completely different from the old one, with strengths and weaknesses that are quite different. Trying to figure out where to put things in the new configuration is bad enough, but now I've got a big stack of essentially "new" U-Haul boxes that I can't imagine recycling and great wads of crumpled newspaper that need to be schlepped down a flight of stairs and well across a parking lot to be recycled. And I've discovered it's inadvisable to do this in the dark because some moron built a "trip the tenant" obstruction in the pavement right in the middle of the pitch-black enclosure. I'm lucky I didn't end up in the dumpster myself.

Yesterday was dedicated to cleaning, scrubbing, sweeping and mopping the old apartment to assure my deposit is returned in full--and the managers explained during the walk-through that the whole place would be painted, and then cleaners would come in after the painters, but I still had to return the apartment to pristine condition after living in it for 2.5 years.

And I can't find anything!

I still hate packing

I'm getting down to the last gasps, running out of boxes and long since run out of patience. What is all this crap!??!

Goodwill has gotten significant benefit from this move, believe me. Tons of clothes I'll never wear, glassware, furniture . . . and I found a beautiful dress shirt in the closet that I didn't know I owned. Score one for the closet.

What is freaking me out now, as I write this, is the knowledge that 48 hours from now I'll be ass deep in crumpled newspaper and broken-down cardboard boxes while I unpack everything I've so laboriously wrapped and stuffed and taped and heaved. I don't think I'll be wondering too much about "why the hell did I keep this?" because I've been fairly brutal in winnowing out the unwanted and unneeded. And there should be a lot more room for putting things away--more cupboards, more closet space, and simply more room. I'll be able to walk around my bed and tuck in the sheets on the far side!

It will be worth all the trouble, I know. But from right here and right now it seems like a long way off.

I hate packing!

(The rewards of hard work; see Update 2)

I'm going to be moving in one month, so I've already started boxing things up, sorting things out, throwing junk away and setting aside a lot of donations for Goodwill. I have just spent a good chunk of the day packing the living room books (which are most of the books that will be moving with me), knocking down the bookcases and setting aside books I no longer really want.

The 500 lb. gorilla is downstairs in the storage unit: decades of accumulated books that have rarely seen the light of day since . . . well, maybe never. I've been schlepping them around from basement to basement, adding to them when shelf space got low or a new book obsession displaced the old one and whenever it was time to move I've looked at them with dread. The new apartment is considerably larger than this one but the storage unit is small and those books are just not going with me. The good news is that I've combed through them over the last 2.5 years and have a pretty clear idea not only of what is down there, but how little attachment I have to most of them.

Still, this is going to require work. I've got to dig the book boxes out from under everything else down there (what do I need with an electric chainsaw?) and make a final pass through the books, perhaps ambitiously sorting them by topic, all the better to impress the buyer at Powell's. Fortunately, the basement can be accessed by a ramp around the side of the building, which means I can roll a cart down there, pile on the doomed boxes and them roll them out to the car (and roll them, one hopes, into the Powell's warehouse). I will be doing well if I get out of this with only one box that can't be gotten rid of. Well, two, because I know there is a box of paperback science fiction that I can't lose. And there are picture books from when the kids were little (that was my excuse).

And when everything in the apartment is sorted, packed, boxed (what about the booze bottles?) and the new apartment is ready, I won't have to lift a finger or carry any of the boxes up that flight of stairs to the new place--the wonderful people at Thunder Movers, who moved me into this place in June 2006, will knock down the bed, strap up the tv and the liquor cabinet and woosh! in no time at all I'll be standing in an apartment surrounded by unopened boxes, desperately trying to find the booze and the cocktail glasses.

UPDATE: It appears that my old friend, Mike Horvat, will be taking a lot of these books off my hands, driving up from Stayton, OR after I get through sorting them out. It probably won't completely free me from the book buyer, but one never knows.

UPDATE 2: Maybe it was something about the time change, but I had an ungodly amount of energy this morning and was feeling restless. As a result, I tackled the gorilla, got all of the boxes out of the storage space and sorted through everything. Gack. After a couple of hours, though, I had boxes sorted by category and ran across some treasures I'd forgotten all about. At the top of the page is one of them: the August 9, 1974 6 am final of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Outside of the usual yellowing of newsprint, it's pristine. I should get it framed.

Random Photo of the Day

Fooling with the digital camera at night. Moon and trees and breeze.

Mixology Competition

Today marked the second annual Mixology Competition as part of the fourth annual Great American Distillers Festival here in Portland. I was working as the timer in the competition -- each bartender had seven minutes to make the required five cocktails for the judges. The recipes had to include at least one of the alcoholic beverages featured at the festival, and included a lot of homemade ingredients like syrups, bitters and some very odd approaches to the simple (ha!) ice cube. Lighting conditions were awful, particularly since I didn't want to disturb the contestants with a flash. But this one I actually like.

I only managed one clear picture of a competitor, Alyson Dykes from the Teardrop Lounge. That's what I get for being a nice guy and not using a flash.

Random Photo of the Day

It's a beautiful time of year in Portland, sunny and mild. Lilacs are blooming, the white dogwoods are blooming, and the pink dogwoods will open completely within the next few days. A wonderful day for a bike ride (or even two!) to get me out of the apartment into the fresh air (and away from watching an awful awful baseball team on television).

Random Photo of the Day

I've never been completely convinced that Wood Ducks were real birds. There was a small flock of them at the Rhododendron Garden in SE Portland, mixed in with a zillion mallards, Canada Geese, Buffleheads (very shy) and Cinnamon Teal. Those are all unquestionably birds, with their occasional splashes of color all looking their best at this time of the year. Wood Ducks, though, don't have any clear relationship to the rest. They peep, for one thing, rather than quack or squawk, which is suspicious on the face of it. But the main thing is the males, like this one. How could a color scheme like that (with big fake red eyes!) possibly evolve? It seems far more likely to me that there are sweatshops somewhere in Asia cranking out Wood Duck robots and hand painting them in this ridiculous outfit. The peeping is just the product of bad robotic programming and now they're stuck with it. If Wood Ducks began quacking like real ducks, people would be suspicious and might try to eat one. Good luck with that.

Random Photo of the Day

We've been having interesting weather. Last week it felt like Spring was in the air, but now Winter has definitely grabbed us by the, er, ankle. I didn't see snow today (although there was a brief hail storm) but there were reports of it this morning all around the region and predictions of more tonight. This was shot at about four p.m. today. Beautiful white cherry blossoms against the dark bark and the equally dramatic clouds building in the background reflect the contrast in the season.

Random Photo of the Day

Spring has sprung in Portland. This cherry tree is just outside my front door, and all over town the daffodils are being joined by flowering trees. I still haven't seen tulips blooming, but they are almost there. Yesterday was a glorious sunny day (although the morning started out in the low 30s) and today is back to grey and wet. I guess it must be March.

My Aikido teacher

We hosted an Aikido seminar this weekend at my dojo (pictures to come). K. Chiba Shihan was scheduled to come to Oregon for what may well have been the last time since he's retiring after 50 years of Aikido training. Unfortunately, he was very ill and couldn't travel, but we held the seminar anyway, with a number of excellent senior instructors in attendance. This is Fleshler Sensei, who has been my teacher since he came to Portland in the late 80s. Since I have a nasty cold, I had the opportunity to take photos rather than have my body thrown through the air. Some would say that was a good trade-off, but I chafed at the bit. Still, I did shoot nearly 1,000 pictures during the seminar and one or two of them are pretty good. At some point, I'll post more but I wanted to acknowledge my debt to my teacher as a gesture of thanks.

About those lemons . . .

Last night I served the lamb tagine that was the target for the preserved lemons. It was a fairly complex (and expensive) dish, done with lots of spices, crookneck squash, Kalamata olives and 16 wedges of the preserved lemon and four pounds of lamb shoulder in big pieces. We had a great dojo potluck the Saturday night of a big Aikido seminar.

The tagine was a hit. In fact, I was lucky to get any myself since it was mostly gone by the time I got into line. Several people asked me later if I'd tasted the lamb dish and then wanted to know how it was done. I love cooking for people when they appreciate what I've done!

Somehow, after spending the entire day photographing the Aikido seminar, I neglected to take a picture of the tagine. Damn.