Oishii Tabemono

Received in the mail this week: Bird Nest Drink
Ingredients: Rock sugar, ginseng, bird nests

It's really not so bad. It tastes a little like mild dish soap, with sugar. Boyfriend actually really liked it, which works out, because according to the box, bird nest drink is supposed to increase manly vitality. And as Boyfriend has a show every night this week alongside work, he needs all the vitality he can get.

Eaten this week (several times): vegan ramen
From:Miho Izakaya

Miho Izakaya, my favourite restaurant in town, has a menu full of delishusness, with occasional specials that are even more delishuser-such a this week's vegan ramen. They say it might become a permanent part of the menu, since it's soon to be "soup weather." Nothing would make me happier. I'll probly be eating dinner there nearly every day!

Eaten every morning this week for breakfast: vegan cake
Main ingredient: coconut milk.

We are out of sugar, so we made the cake with brown sugar, which is way better than regular sugar. Specially when home-made from regular sugar and molasses, though that's part of the reason why we're out of regular sugar.

What extra-oishii foods have you eaten lately?

A Pillow with a View

Knits with Wolves

Of my winter knitting project, I have already finished 2 squares. But now, I have been stuck on the same knit sample square all week. I can't seem to get past the first row. The pattern wants me to increase by 4, then decrease by 5, and that just feels wrong to me. I'm sure the stitches come back in the next row, but as I've been working on it piecemeal on breaks at work, I just get flummoxed and give up. But now that I have a weekend ahead of me, maybe I can finally figure it out.

In other news, temperatures in the mornings, when I bike to work, have been consistently in the 40-46 F range. So, I've put away my summer clothes and busted out my winter clothes. What a sad summer! I'm pretty sure I only just put away my winter clothes less than 3 months ago.

Whiskey "Dolla Dolla Billz" Burkle, the kitten, has been most confused by the change in weather - especially by that thing we call "rain." Even though her first tender weeks were spent outside in the cold mountain air, since Boyfriend and I brought her home she has only known artificially heated domiciles and summer sunshine.

She still wants to be outside all the time, but once she goes out and feels the frosty chilliness, she cries to come back inside. 5 minutes later, she wants back out, as if she expected something to change. Rainy days are even worse.

Maybe I'll have to knit her some sweaters.

Crayon Been Blogged!

By someone other than me! Finally, world-wide stardom is within his grasp.





A fellow librarian just started this blog, starring animals in sweaters (because when you take regular animals and add sweaters, you increase their natural cute levels by a factor of OMG).

Now it's Official!

Finally, I'm a real librarian! I get to catalog manuscript collections at the Oregon Historical Society - collections that have been briefly cataloged once before, in card form, but now need to be brought into the 21st century!

Yes, this is the very same job that I didn't get two months ago - but luckily for everyone, the girl they hired over me got an even better job (for her) at the county archives, so, as the second person on the original 2 person short list, I got the call. I'm really glad it worked out this way, because I like my predecessor, but it was hard for me to overcome my jealousy and be nice when she had the job I wanted. So now we both have jobs and everyone is happy!

So far I've gotten to catalog some interesting stuff, including some letters from President Buchanan to various people, including President Polk, about the "Oregon Question."

By far the MOST interesting item I've come across I didn't actually get to catalog myself, the former Project Cataloger cataloged it as she was training me to take over: a paper purporting that many, if not most, Pacific Northwest place names that we generally accept as Native American in origin are actually Russian. Including Sacagawea, which he asserts is actually Russian for "Fat Bitch." The author makes these claims without any citations whatsoever, without even using the international phonetic alphabet to back up his claims of similar pronunciation, and finally, without anything even resembling a historical linguistic analysis.

Perhaps that's why it has been sitting in the OHS vault uncatalogued for 60 years. In any case, it's sure to be a fascinating read for students of either linguistics or the racism of the 50s.

The Weather Turns

Now that the temperatures are beginning to dip below 50 and the rain keeps me indoors, its time to turn my crafty attentions back towards the type you can do whilst cuddled under a blanket in front of a roaring heater duct: knitting and crochet.

I tend not to do many yarn crafts in the summer. I think its because it feels too sedentary for nice weather and because the pile of yarn that must sit in your lap is much too warm. But it's perfect for winter. I can knit and crochet while cuddling with Boyfriend and watching movies (I do like to multi-task).

For the past few winters I have been ever so slowly working on a large collection of sample squares which I have been combining into a giant knitty-crochet quilt:

I figure its a good way to develop a feel for the different types of stitches more complex patterns may call for. It also develops my pattern reading skills, which I may say is quite good at this point. I can read almost any pattern with only an occasional call to my mother.

I've just printed up a thick new stack of square patterns for this winter (downloaded for FREE! from Knit and Crochet Now). I'm ready for you now, Winter!

The Adventures of Sara and Jessica: Episode 1

Obviously, Jr. High School in California taught us a whole lot...

...about killing time.

High School Photography

Halfway through my senior year of high school, I decided to drop French and take up Photography. Many of my friends were taking photo, and it seemed like a fun way to ride out the end of high school with minimal work. I was also taking yearbook class that year and had learned early on that a camera in hand was as good as, and oftentimes better than, a hall pass.

I had so much fun that I also took Photo in college, and discovered that it was a lot harder than high school made it out to be. I could never get the film to develop correctly on my own, and in college I could no longer depend on my friends to do it for me. My borrowed camera had a broken light meter, so I never got the exposure quite right. Most of the assignments were about nature and since I worked when I wasn't in school, I didn't quite have the time to drive out to the countryside to take photos of cows. I didn't do as well in the college class.

I wish I had stuck with it though, it was a lot of fun and I'm not terrible at it. And now if I want access to a dark room, financial aid won't cover it.

Here are a couple of my favourite high school photo class works:

The assignment was patterns or something. All I know is that the photo teacher liked this one so much, he made me submit it to a photo show. Sure, it was just at a bank, but in Concord, CA that's probably about as prestigious as it gets.

The assignment was shadows. This isn't the one I ultimately turned in - I thought it was too obvious what the shadows were shadowing, but over the years I've decided that I really like this one.

And the requisite Murray photo. Printed in reverse.

Profit Model : Lie to the Customers

Today, as I was walking from the Oregon Historical Society to the Multnomah Public Library, as part of the Portland Archives Crawl, I stopped in a store which advertised bulk vinegars and olive oil, Benessere Oils and Vinegars.

The place looked nice, filled with row upon row of urns filled with myriad flavours of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The employees seemed friendly. I was greeted immediately upon my entrance by a smiling woman who invited me to sample as many of their wares as I desired. The prices seemed outrageous - most being $10 for 6.76 fluid ounces. But I like to support bulk vendors, so I asked the smiling woman how they felt about people bringing in their personal bottles to fill up... and got a stuttering non-answer about the health department and how I'd have to buy a bottle from them.

Now, I can understand if it's their policy not to allow personal bottles. Some places want to force you to give them extra money. It sucks, but if that's how they want to play, you can't argue. You just don't shop there. But to pretend it's health code? That's insulting and manipulative. I have entered many a fine purveyor of coffee and used my own mug. I have entered many a grocery retailer and filled my own containers with bulk goods. If that's a violation of health code, then a lot of establishments are in great danger of getting shut down.

I simply smiled sadly and said, "that's unfortunate" and walked out. At least I got to sample a couple of vinegars.

Oh, and the Archive Crawl was fab. I didn't win the raffle, but I got a free Buffy comic book! And knowledge. Lots of knowledge.

What it means to be Polish

According to the annual Polish Festival in Portland, being Polish apparently means:

Beer, sausage, dancing and Chopin.

I can get behind that.

I've often felt, as a white American, a strange dearth of culture. Sure, we Americans have our contrived consumer culture, with our Christmas and our Fourth of July and all the requisite plastic trimmings. We even have our national heroes and our legends, with our George Washington and our Johnny Appleseed. But it all seems so bland, so saccharine and so... recent.

I don't know if I'm the only one who is left empty by the vapidity of most American "culture", but the result for me is that I've always been really interested in learning about other cultures, especially those that belonged to my great-great grandparents.

As far as I know, bits of me belong to the Irish, the British and the Poles. Part of being American means that most of my ancestors came here running from something, be it famine, persecution, or war. On top of that, the pressure to assimilate to American ways has always been great. So, much of my family history stops about 2 generations back. I have one great-grandfather who was a run-away and never spoke of his family, and another who escaped communist Russian rule in Poland to buy a dairy farm in Vancouver. And that's where the knowledge ends.

I've always felt closer to the Irish side of my family, mostly because I spent more time with my Irish grandmother than any of my other grandparents. But she was more southern than Irish (she grew up in Mississippi) and the cultural wisdom she imparted to me was limited to Jesus, Yams and racism (seriously). So it was interesting to learn a little about Polish culture, even if it was just in a form easily digestible for the masses (i.e. kielbasa).

The dancing was great, the beer was amazing, and who doesn't like a little Chopin? I think I'll join the Polish Association, and see if i can find an Irish one too. At the very least, maybe I can learn a few new dance moves.