Things to think about during church

So the sermon today was kind of boring, or I guess I couldn't get into it. I was quite hungry, and I spent a large portion of church thinking about my lunch. Here is the result:

Grilled Cheese, with Tillamook Cheddar Cheese. Collard greens sauteed with apple and bits of paneer cheese I made, with a few apple slices on the side.

It was delicious. Yet another thing good of going to church.

Three sentence movie reviews--500 Days of Summer

This movie gets points not only for its incredibly clever nature, but also for illustrating the inexplicable phenomenon of grown men* wearing normal t-shirts under their work button-down shirts instead of buying undershirts. It looks dumb and I don't understand why it continues to happen. This is a different kind of romantic comedy as explained by the tag line** and I laughed hard at the first words on the first screen and audibly gasped at one part in this nearly perfect movie.

*the same grown men who wear normal t-shirts under their work button downs would probably enjoy this movie very, very much. After you see it together you can perhaps go and buy some undershirts. They are available everywhere.
**"This is not a love story. This is a story about love."

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2009/five_hundred_days_of_summer.html

The Great Pumpkin

It's great pumpkin time! The Fred Meyer near my house has huge pumpkins for sale. I came upon this one and "he he he he he" took a picture because my boss's name is Tara and I had intended to give her a hard time about her 79 inch waist. The human version of Tara is rather small and I think this pumpkin might outweigh her.

A good look at "Tara"

But then I came around the corner and found me (sort of) with a much larger waist. Unlike Tara, I outweigh "my" pumpkin.

A big picture look at "me"

I asked, and found that they named the pumpkins after the store's managers.

A Poem Encounter

This was on  a power pole in Northwest:

When I google "13th head prose and poetry" this is the first link.  When I google phantom billstickers ltd I found that they are a New Zeland firm that specializes "in the production and placement of street posters, shop posters & flyers (retail), programs, brochures, postcards & handbills promoting music, arts, events and street culture."  The web site goes on to explain that they have offices on Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, & Dunedin.  So how the heck did this get put up in Portland?

Ah-hah!  A visit to the site's blog leads to this entry about a "poster run" in Seattle and Portland which happened in October.  There are multiple blog entries on poster runs to different American cities, so this is apparently something the company does.  The blog entry is worth reading, though the author mostly talks about Seattle.

What a fun thing to discover.  Thanks phantom billstickers!

License

Years ago, living in Massachusetts, I went to get a new official Massachusetts driver license.  It all went well, I showed my current Idaho license, paid my (exorbitant) fee and brought along my other documents.  Then, I went to take my Idaho driver's license back from the clerk and the woman snatched it out of my hands.  It seems that I had to surrender my current license to get the new one.  There would be no holding on to this half-profile under-21 snapshot of my life.  So I let it go.

When I went to renew my Oregon driver license I remembered that incident and took a picture of my old one before I went inside.  Above you can see my first license in Oregon.  When I got it, I was astounded that I didn't have to renew it for eight years.  "Eight years!" I exclaimed to more than one person. "I'll be 35!"  I didn't mean, as many people assumed, that 35 was so old, just that it was so far away from where I was at that point.  Eight years was a very long time.

And now those eight years have elapsed.  I've lived in four different homes/apartments in my time here and I've gotten rid of that striped turtleneck and jean jumper.  My hair has gone through many incantations and my weight isn't what it says there.  However, it wasn't when I got the license, either.  I've had three jobs and one boyfriend and a host of friends.  It's been a good eight years, and I wanted to keep a memory of my first Oregon driver license.  According to this calculator (http://www.livingto100.com/) I have about seven more Oregon Driver Licenses in my future.

And guess what?  After they had done all the paperwork for my new license, they punched holes in this one and gave it back to me.  So I have it anyway.

Three sentence movie reviews--Reality Bites

poster from:  http://www.impawards.com/1994/reality_bites.html

Would re-watching this movie leave me with that uncomfortable bipolar feeling of intense embarrassment/disgust at the sometimes cheesy-ness of the plot combined with crazy strange love for the characters?  Indeed, the movie hasn't changed after all these years, nor has my reaction to it.  My favorite part was the 10 year retrospective in which I spent a lot of time wondering why in the heck Helen Childress hasn't ever written anything for movies ever again.

Noam

So, you have to work with me here. Nearly halfway down the picture is a piano.  And a tiny bit below the edge of the piano is a white blotch.  And that white blotch!  It's Noam Chomsky's hair!  Which is attached to the rest of Noam Chomsky, whom I heard speak!  I volunteered at First Unitarian where they were having some sort of social justice conference.  My job was to take tickets at the door, which was sort of easy, sort of hard.  The people in charge were expecting trouble, which wasn't there at all. People were very chilled out.  Except the organizers.  One of them ended up screaming at me, which wasn't so cool.  I hope she remembers that moment with shame for years. I was just a volunteer, for chrissake, trying to do my job as best I could under the circumstances.  At any rate, after I took all the tickets, I climbed up into the balcony and heard Noam speak.  Great fun!