Beer & Bikes

Guest Blogger:
And while Abby was creating Otis, Mike was getting the Old Man (Poppy) lost on his bike in Vancouver. We found our way back home after breaking into the home brew shop after hours to get a replacement part for the mini-keg. Beer samplers at Widmer for lunch and more beer at Yetti's for dinner -- we need a brewery sponsor for an STP team.
- Poppy

CHAP!

Saturday was my first "hands-on" volunteer experience with CHAP. I've been helping them out with some graphics work for the last couple of weeks, but on Saturday I jumped in to volunteer at one their birthday parties - this one was for a 5-year old girl and all her friends. It was a great time; painting, stenciling t-shirts, painting their feet so that they could jump on the "bed" and eating cake. I love the energy that this non-profit has for their work, and I'd encourage everybody in the Portland area to check them out.

Oh Don Julio...

Tuesday night was Don Julio night, thanks to Mom's wonderful purchase at the Puerto Vallarta Airport duty-free. Mike and I, along with Mom, Rob, Remi & Andrew gathered at the Portland studio to eat mexican food, eat leftover valentine's treats, reminisce about past trips to Mexico and toast eachother with a little Donny boy.

Maga

Miriam Toews

I just finished reading three Miriam Toews books back-to-back. What wit!

I share two excerpts from A Complicated Kindness:

Went home. Came down. Got sad. There was a note on the kitchen table. Nomi: Any plans for after graduation? That's how we communicated large, vague ideas. On paper that can burn up in less than one second. I stared at the words for an exorbitantly long time. Then I wrote. Dear Dad: I intend to become a model of courage and dignity.


When I was ten Tash took me swimming in the pits and we had this little dinghy with a rope around it and we were diving off it and after this one dive I got my foot stuck in the rope and I couldn't get it out and I thought I was going to drown and Tash hadn't noticed until the last possible second when all my air was gone and then I felt her hand on my foot and the rope being moved and I burst to the surface and then into tears. Later that day I realized that I could have died and I decided it was time to create some type of legacy so I asked my dad what people would sooner remember, the things I said or the things I didn't say. His response was: Forgive me, but what people?


My kind of humor.

Ceiling Creativity

I pose a question to anybody out there who can be creative with building materials:

What should we do about our kitchen ceiling?

For some reason, the ceiling in our kitchen is textured in two different patterns. One option is to rip the darn thing out, but I'm wondering if there are other options? Cool ceiling tiles that we can put up?

And furthermore, can anybody tell me why you would put two different textures up on the same ceiling?

A dirty weekend

Another weekend, demo continues. It is amazing what dirty things you can find in your walls.. in more ways than one.


This weekend we finished tearing out all the dry wall and plastered-plywood to fully expose the crawl spaces and all of the nasty insulation. There were two layers; the standard fiberglass blanket roll that makes your skin crawl and your throat scream, and a kind I've never seen before - a kind of loose-fill fabric type, that reminds me of billions of dead mice. It didn't make me itch, but it took hours to remove, dustpan full by dustpan full.



Mike and I split up, each taking one side of the house. We found an assortment of odds and ends buried in the insulation: two mismatched shoes, a marble, several christmas ornaments, a shopping list and a cute outfit for a paper doll. But the most surprising find was a little plastic baggie full of polaroids. I wasn't wearing my glasses or contacts at the time, so it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at, and then I felt very dirty indeed. We uncovered some lovely couple's homemade porno polaroids, appearing to be from the late 70's/early 80's. It made us very happy to be gutting that bedroom and starting afresh.

Last Chance, Indeed!

I do love a good deal, and I will pay extra attention to items on sale. However, I'm not stupid.
The item does actually have to cost less in order for me to consider it a good deal.

A Master Bedroom in our Future

Demo Begins!
Over the weekend Mike began "officially" demolishing the upstairs bedroom. We've picked away at it ever since we bought the house (the lemon-yellow shag was gone before we even moved in), but this marks progress in a more formal sense.

The Master Bedroom, before we bought the house

The Master Bedroom, as of Sunday night