adventures of a canoelover

So you grab a half-gallon of egg nog.  Usually, you grab the no-fat egg nog that uses seaweed or something to thicken it to fool your tongue that you’re drinking something with fat in it.

But this time you grab the wrong kind.

I tell you, this was like drinking lard with nutmeg in it.  Good thing we have a teenager with the metabolism of a gerbil to dispose of it.

1/2 cup serving.  What a joke.  I think a dose of Nyquil is bigger than half a cup.  The bright side – you get 6% of your Vitamin A requirement.

Beware,

 Canoelover

This might be the 20th pair I’ve built in the past couple decades.  This pair, however, is the most fun because I’m blowing off the pattern rules and just playing with it, experimenting with different crossings.  I hope to finish them tonight and varnish tomorrow and Saturday, then have them ready just in time for Sunday, when it will be 40 degrees and drizzling.

I got thirsty last night around midnight.  I walked downstairs to get a drink of something-or-other and stopped dead at the front door at the bottom of the stairs.  The moon was very, very bright and I could have easily read a book in it once my pupils dialated sufficiently.

I propped my little camera against the door to hold it steady, and the exposure was 3 or 4 seconds.  Doesn’t do it justice, but you can get the idea.

Been having trouble sleeping lately.  Probably a little jet lag still from Portland.  It’s only two hours difference but that means getting up at 4 a.m. vs. 6 a.m.  Big difference in my world.

Respectfully submitted,

  Canoelover

It was very good to spend time with my brother and a few thousand of this kids.  Okay, so there are only four of them, but they get around.  Vance (seen below, front left) is a subatomic particle…hard to predict where you’ll find him, but you can always tell where he’s been.  He is not a clone of his father, but if such things were possible, I’d believe it.  Given that I was 14 when Ry was born, I have very good memories of his particle-like behavior as well.  Karma served him a nice big slice of retribution for giving my mom some serious gray hairs.

Milo and I spent most of church this morning making origami frogs out of the programs, while Henry and Jude took turns leaning against me.  I’ll miss them.

Familially submitted,

 

 Canoelover

Portland is an eminently walkable city.  It’s pretty compact, and even without light rail I was able to walk from the outskirts of the city to downtown in a half-hour.

Portland’s Pearl District is the swank-yet-hip warehouses-to-loft-condo district.  Plenty of folks on bicycles, real and faux hipsters in abudance and at the same time, women dressed to the nines in Audi A3s.

The standard uniform for the average “man in the coffeeshop window” is a dark gray mock turtleneck and funky reading glasses, with a North Face or Patagonia soft shell over the back of the barstool, usually hunched over a Powerbook.  I hate to make stereotypes, but it’s true.  If I get the guts I’ll document it, but I still have a problem sticking cameras in people’s faces.

Paper valentines never worked very well for me.  They’re either cutesy-sick-lovey-dovey or they attempt to be “naughty” in the British sense.  So instead, I tend to write messages in the sand or snow to my valentine.

This long.