It's a beautiful autumn morning in Portland, and I'm in the happy, artsy ladyland known as Alberta. Very exciting to be surrounded by golden autumn leaves again, with a nip in the air and yes, accordian music drifting down the street. Accordians are very popular in Portland, it seems, along with Stumptown coffee and groovy woolly hats. Off to Tin Shed (breakfast) or Random Order (coffee and big pies!) and more, in the company of Emma the bat-eared dog.
More soon about graduation (yes, I am the proud recipient of a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture, thank you very much) and the crazy, completely unexpected and amazing surprise birthday party, aka Operation 40 Candles. And that, thanks to K's unflagging persistence in the face of the many flakezoids of Craigslist, we now have a place to hang our hats, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Al di la and Brooklyn Fish Camp.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Ridin' that train
Oh, I'm sleepy! To no one's surprise, the train up to Portland is running an hour or so behind schedule, so I'm camped out in the waiting room of the Emeryville station, a large ,clean but dull place. During the daytime there's a nice little Peet's coffee station, but in the evening, it's nothing but rows of grey molded chairs and across the room, a bunch of vending machines. I'm crouched in a corner next to the industrial-sized fan that I've unplugged so as to power up my laptop. For a little while there was a random wireless connection floating around, but just as I was about to check my pal Shuna's blog for all her good Portland recommendations and musings, the connection got sucked back into the ether. So I'll have to wait. Don't think trains can have the wi-fi, though.
I am D-O-N-E, done, with all this travel and stumping around in the cruel shoes all over the city to get from here to there, dragging my life in suitcases around with me. It's time to settle back down in a real house of my/our own. I want an address, my own coffee cup, my own bag of decaf on the shelf. I've woken up on a lot of other people's couches and guest beds over this last six months, and I'm really done with this peripatetic life. The most rooted I've felt was that 2 weeks where I was house-sitting on Olive St, with the record player and the purring kitties, the apple tree, the quilts, the familiar books and my own civilized dinner parties, with cloth napkins and roast chicken and cake plates. Apple gingerbread , lard-crust apple pie, mmm.
Pig salad! That was the best thing I had today. It came from San Francisco's South Park Café: Frisee lathered up in a pungent mustard-and-horseradish dressing, layered with sliced apples, and then tossed with crunchy-chewy deliciouso pork chunks. If carnitas ever craved a salad, this would be it.
Other good things: banana-chocolate-chip and pear-and-fig muffins from the bakery-café behind Liberty Café, in Bernal Heights. And a bite off Jen's orange-spice Dove dark chocolate bar, pretty darn good, in that cinnamon-spicy-orangey way, like Jacques Torres' Wicked Hot Chocolate with a shot of Grand Marnier.
Ah, le train est arrive! Off to ride the rails...
I am D-O-N-E, done, with all this travel and stumping around in the cruel shoes all over the city to get from here to there, dragging my life in suitcases around with me. It's time to settle back down in a real house of my/our own. I want an address, my own coffee cup, my own bag of decaf on the shelf. I've woken up on a lot of other people's couches and guest beds over this last six months, and I'm really done with this peripatetic life. The most rooted I've felt was that 2 weeks where I was house-sitting on Olive St, with the record player and the purring kitties, the apple tree, the quilts, the familiar books and my own civilized dinner parties, with cloth napkins and roast chicken and cake plates. Apple gingerbread , lard-crust apple pie, mmm.
Pig salad! That was the best thing I had today. It came from San Francisco's South Park Café: Frisee lathered up in a pungent mustard-and-horseradish dressing, layered with sliced apples, and then tossed with crunchy-chewy deliciouso pork chunks. If carnitas ever craved a salad, this would be it.
Other good things: banana-chocolate-chip and pear-and-fig muffins from the bakery-café behind Liberty Café, in Bernal Heights. And a bite off Jen's orange-spice Dove dark chocolate bar, pretty darn good, in that cinnamon-spicy-orangey way, like Jacques Torres' Wicked Hot Chocolate with a shot of Grand Marnier.
Ah, le train est arrive! Off to ride the rails...
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