No, Thursday's Out....

Yesterday was World Emoji Day! I should throw some emoji in here (emoji? emojis? – I don’t care, and I intend to switch between the plurals at my own whim).💚🧀. That's a green heart and a wedge of cheese, in case it doesn't come through for you. No reason for those symbols. And no reason they shouldn't come through for you. Emojis are unicode, and I am told unicode is forever.  I'm a bit jumpy around emoji. I barely got my head 🤕 around emoticons. My chance of misusing an emoji with a dirty meaning is sky-high. I only found out about World Emjoi Day because I was listening to a podcast. https://www.alieward.com/ologies/curiology And the podcast factoid that riveted my attention was this: people who use a lot of emojis in their texts have more sex than those who don’t. Don’t look at me, it’s what THEY said. They said it on the podcast! What they didn’t say was whether these folks are couples who lovingly festoon their texts to EACH OTHER with buckets 💑of emojis, o...

Our 50 th high school reunion had two parts – Friday afternoon in the back garden of the Roanoke Tavern, and Saturday night at the big community center. The first person I saw on Friday recognized me. He introduced himself, and I froze. He said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” and I said, “No, no, I do, really, I am just getting used to being here,” or something equally odd. Actually, I was at a loss for words. At an earlier reunion, one classmate did a Rumplestiltskin thing on me: didn’t wear a name tag, told me I had the evening to guess his name, kept circling around to see how I was doing. It turned out that he had been buddies with my neighbor. That neighbor was now shaking my hand. I’d planned to go to THIS reunion and greet Rumplestiltskin warmly, by name, sortof sharing the joke with him. That’s the best part of reunions, when it happens – seeing people being grownups in the best way. But then the pre-reunion emails listed him under “Classmates Who Have Died.” Too late to ...

When my daughter was little, we’d sometimes leaf through clothing catalogs together, comparing style opinions: Yes, No, NEVER. One time, we finished a catalog, something like Forever 21, and I said, “Wow, I didn’t like one single thing.” She gave me The Look and said, “Mom, it’s not FOR you.” This still slays me. I’ve been not-the-target audience at two events recently: the Radical Faerie Arts Fest, and the 11 pm showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Clinton Street Theater. I went to the RadFaF opening because a friend had his paintings there, and because the timing was so easy. I had to be downtown anyway, an hour later, for a dinner meeting, dress code: Business Casual. So I had on a dress, and my white jacket, and my pearls – I looked the very opposite of Radical or Faerie-like, not that I generally look all that close. There were two greeters on the door, both bedecked in tie-dye and jewels and feathers, and they weren’t sure about me, for which I don’t blame them...

A desire to clean out the fridge seized me. That happens VERY rarely. You know that oft-quoted Mary Oliver line, from Poem 133: The Summer Day: Tell me, what is it you plan to do /  with your one wild and precious life? I have never gotten a life plan together, but I know for certain that I do not want to spend it cleaning out the fridge. Or cleaning much of anything. Still, once in a while, the urge hits, and this was the urge for a serious cleanout: every jar and bottle had to be opened, eyeballed, sniffed, and tossed if found wanting. This could devolve into a horror story, I know, but we are avoiding that and going for a MYSTERY instead. The mystery involved two jars of yeast in the lowest and least-used fridge door pocket, one marked in Sharpie as BOB’S. I know a few Bobs, but none likely to bring their private yeast stash over to my house and put it in my fridge. I snapped a photo and sent it to Rick, who was out of town. He said: No clue. If you examine it closel...

I never belonged to a book club or wanted to, until - during the pandemic - I got super lonely, and joined two, one online. The offline one has a delightful new member, and when we started this month's book discussion, she spoke up first, saying “I LIKED it!” This novel (like many) moves back and forth in time, with multiple story lines. Other people in the group said they liked THIS bit but not THAT bit, or THIS character was so thin as to be just a resumé , or this resolution was too pat … and when we got back around, our new member agreed completely and said, “Well, I skipped the parts I didn’t like.” Soul mate! I did this a few years ago with a thick bestseller that alternated Tragic War Story and Poignant Love Story. After a few chapters, I read one, skipped the other. Powered through, found out what happened, got a taste, I dunno.   If I really dislike something with a compelling central mystery, I’ll read just the last chapter, before I return it to the library. Freedom!...

Went to Wildcraft (first time), took a class in basket-making and made a tiny basket (first basket ever)! The teacher kept reassuring us that our baskets were imperfect just like a “first pancake” is imperfect.  I liked that. Showed my basket to my neighbor, thinking he would be impressed, but no – he earned a merit badge in basket-weaving, back in his Boy Scout youth. I think he is the first guy I’ve met who earned a merit badge in basket-weaving. Feel free to correct me if you too are a guy with said badge! Met a baby in the park named Alfonso. I think he is my first Alfonso, but again, do set me straight if I’m wrong. Got my first strawberry of the year from our garden. Most of it. The slugs got the other side. We specialize in rare, shade-grown strawberries, which do not drain the soil because each plant puts out maybe three berries, tops.  I'm kidding. We have feeble strawberry plants. But our local greengrocer has the first Hood strawberries of the season, and I at...

Before the pandemic, there was a wonderful website called Is a Train Blocking 11 th ?   This is important trip-planning info for Inner Southeast Portland. If you clicked on it, you got a full screen answer, either YES (white on black) or NO (black on white), plus a little timer showing, if YES, how long the train had been there. (That last was interesting but useless, since it couldn’t predict when it would clear. Sometimes, 11 th was blocked for 45 minutes.) What I liked best was that it was maintained by humans whose office window overlooked the intersection. It wasn’t a sensor, or a traffic cam.  I miss it. Nowadays, I skip 11th entirely, if I am in a rush, and go all the way to Powell on 21 st . Seems like the long way, until it isn’t. My Seattle friend told me there is a similar Washington site called Is The Mountain Out? I went looking, and it seems there are at least three versions:   webcam at https://ismtrainierout.com/ , crowdsourced map at https:/...