That's right the squirrels of Portland owe me a favor

The best fortune cookie I ever received said simply:

“Your kindness to small animals will soon be rewarded.”
And I thought to myself after reading it:
“Its about time!”


....it stayed in my wallet for 5 years.

Lent

So to honor the season and give a nod to tradition I have decided to list the things I have given up for Lent. They are listed in no particular order.

Coffee and tea
Milk with my cereal
Condiments
Chocolate cake and brownies
Gushers
Smoked Salmon
Public Speaking
Fruit
Self-help books
Tapioca and related gelatin or pudding foodstuffs
Smoking
Reality TV shows
Hummus
Precise spelling
Using the treadmill
Optimism

I am on the mend. At least now I can say that I am trying.

My summer has now taken form and been graced by the first significantly good news of the year. First of all the cyst I had developed and had mild surgical treatment for has healed in such a way as to preclude further surgery. And after the agony of the initial work that is incredibly good news. Secondly Elaine and I will soon be able to attempt the pregnancy thing again. The hormone levels that had been worrisome are finally giving up the ghost. Also I have achieved gainful employment for the summer.
I will be looking and listening for these: Marbled Murrelet In this: old growth forest

It is an avian survey job at the coast with provided housing and the ability to come home on the weekends. It makes me nervous every time I start a new job and when I was hired it was made very clear that I need to do very well at this job to warrant my being hired without all the experience they were looking for. At least I have a little more than a month to prepare myself as best I can before the official training and the start of the job.
It is good to have work lined up, the pressure has evaporated somewhat. The only place left to hear from is college.

The sign language of the mad

So among my Christmas gifts I received this shirt from my sister-in-law so in honor of the shirt I will post the most recent installment of “mixing with the crazies.” I should also mention that my friend Stacy received a similar shirt since she is in this story as well.

Ok so I had gone to Henry’s downtown with friends to grab a beer and after the bar closed everybody took off but Stacy and I decided we would just move to a different bar since we didn’t have anything going on and we were having a good time. We moved over to the Mcmenimans on Burnside sometime around 1 am. We grabbed a booth by the window and ordered drinks. We had been there awhile when this guy walking by outside stops outside our window gives us a huge smile, blows Stacy a kiss and begins to attempt an involved conversation with us via hand motions. Now I can tell you for sure it wasn’t sign language, there was no swiftness, no economy to the hand movements the motions were sloppy, wide, imprecise things that bore no resemblance to any common hand signals. It was as if he were attempting to elucidate Hegel’s’ notion of freedom using interpretative hand gestures periodically thanking us the audience by blowing the odd kiss. We stared at him blankly, completely lost and he, feeling that his point had been made, he gave us one last smile a nod as if to say “there you understand, I knew you would” and turned and continued down the street. That by itself would make a convincing argument that we deserve those shirts but wait...it gets better.
About 30 to 40 minutes latter a guy who had been sitting with his back to us at the bar got up and shambled somewhat unsteadily out the door and proceeded up the street. When he got level with our window he stopped and looked in at us and broke into a huge completely inexplicable beaming smile. His hands flew together and then apart towards us in a motion that looked something like he was trying to make shadow puppet doves and spoke of him being stirred by some great and completely unfathomable emotion. We stared at him blankly in shock that it was happening again and he blearily began his own hopelessly obtuse instructive lesson. Like the other guy even though we gave him no encouragement he never repeated a single hand motion to him apparently we were totally on the same page. He too talked at us for awhile and then with a final hand gesture and beaming smile walked on down the road. I to this day have no clue what they thought they were saying. But hey what can you do. It’s just one more night with the crazies.
I think part of it is Stacy and I both on our own attract nuts so with our forces combined we were a magnet that would suffer no crazy person to pass us by without paying homage.

wow thats a unflattering picture

Decision to decisions are made

People sometimes ask me what I am up to and I never have an adequate response. What I am doing right now is waiting. Waiting to hear back from the colleges I have applied to. Waiting to hear back from the jobs I have applied for already and applying to more as I find them. But what I am doing at the moment isn’t much. I clean the house, fold the laundry, clean the kitchen and just am all around domestic. Soon I should have a clear picture of what it’s all going to be. Until then I play Magic at the card shop on Thursday nights, play D&D on Saturdays when the option is open and hang out with Elaine when she isn’t working.


......................Oh and I add more flair then I need to me cork board of face book. It’s the lazy person’s way of doing a profile. Rather than typing in your favorite shows and objects of interest you simply slap a button on cork and let people figure out for themselves what it means.

Having thought about it I would describe the online personal sites thusly:

Facebook: It is the big party you go to. It’s crowded and loud and you can forget trying to communicate in anything more than fragments of conversation but everybody is there.
MySpace: It was the big party until better parties started and now everybody has pretty much left. It was the quieter party with lounge music where you could say a lot if you took the time.
BlogSpot: It’s driving alone in your car listening to music and letting your mind wander. Or if you prefer its like writing a journal that you insist your friends read.

Since I can't seem to post the flair anywhere else

I just signed on to Face book………..it has so far engendered only frustration and rage. The interface is horrible and unwieldy personalizing is a hopeless mess…..sure you can find anyone but so far I can’t seem to do anything to the page but add occasional updates of the “Jeff is…” nature that only document my growing disgust.

In the midst of this I realized one of my pet peeves…people using pictures of their kids as their profile pictures. Nothing is more annoying than pulling up a profile for a recent college graduate and seeing the picture of a four year old chasing a butterfly. If you weren’t sure if you knew the person by name only then too bad. Never mind that the person is named Daniel and listed as guy though the picture is of a little girl in a pinafore seriously people put those pictures in your album section….it isn’t your kids profile…I know this because I can guarantee that your five year olds favorite movie of all time is not Love in the Time of Cholera.

Ask the spacebaby

I am at somewhat of a loss figuring out what has happened since I blogged last. Well I guess I’ll summarize as best as I can even if the substance behind the remembrances is lost. I have been reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and I found a set of lines that perfectly encapsulates this.
“…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream – alone…”
The idea has been on my mind of late driving alone in my car at sundown when the horizon puts on subtle pastels and jet contrails look like brushes drawn across the sky and you know that even as it passes before your eyes it will fade from your memory with no way to hold it or share it with anyone else.

Well anyway…so Christmas was pretty good this year. Elaine and I did the family circuit, which put me in mind of the fact that the holidays are times that we get together with our families and are reminded how much they drive us crazy, though the beer tasting party we had was fun (incidentally that proves how most anything can be exponentially better if alcohol is involved).

We went to California briefly to visit Mary and Eric which was a lot of fun. I went to a metal show with Eric which was a new experience (only time I have ever had to wear earplugs at a concert). The band was pretty good and I had a good time even if afterward when I tried to remember the songs they played I could only hear the song Jack Blacks band plays at the opening to School of Rock. We drank a lot of beer and played a ton of the game Okami. If I were to rank the top five people I enjoy getting tipsy with, spouse aside, it would have to look like this. They are arranged in an order that holds no significance.
1. Jason (Dawn’s fiancé)
2. Eric Youngdale (you made my top five…good work)
3. Greg Davis
4. Stacy (late of the St. Patrick’s Day adventure)
5. Ryan (even though it was only that once and all he did was get really tired)

Other than that I have just been applying to a few jobs and colleges. Not a whole lot to report.