The ‘Dredge Report

My little brother has parkour and swing dancing; my older brother has vegetarian cooking and ham radio. Me? I’ve been watching a lot of surfing documentaries lately.  This is pretty inexplicable. I’ve never been surfing, never even really been to the kind of beach that has surf-esque waves. No Hawaii, no Bahamas, no nothing. Sure, I guess theoretically I could have learned to surf in the oil-slicked currents outside Galveston, but let’s be glad I didn’t.   And I know that surfing is hard – really hard.  Lately I’ve become a little preoccupied with the notion of surfing and the possibility of doing it someday.  But what good is a Harvard grad who doesn’t do laborious research into her chosen topic?

Hence, surf documentaries.  Netflix has quite a few (and several are available through Instant.)  They are, on the whole, pretty well done and interesting, a few poor soundtrack choices notwithstanding. Here’s a few I’ve watched:

• Surfwise - Not really about surfing per se, but a crazy coot of a man who decided that surfing and having a large, unorthodox family was his ticket to happiness.  ”Doc” Paskowitz never sent his nine kids to school, and the family lived in a 24-foot trailer, moving from town to town.  Half of his children now loathe him for their upbringing; the other half still see him as a role model.  Overall, a really sad look at the evolution of this family.
• Riding Giants - I only made it halfway through this one, not because of anything boring about the film, just time constraints on my end. Looks at the pioneers of big wave surfing in Hawaii.
• Bustin’ Down the Door – How the Australians came to Hawaii and started being a big bunch of arrogant asshole surfer jerks who took over the islands.  Also: surf gang wars.  Furthermore: Ed Norton narrating.  Don’t miss this one.
• Step Into Liquid – I enjoyed this one, but it’s a little gimmicky. The premise is that surfing isn’t just for tan buff dudes on the North Shore, and the film examines all sorts of kooky examples of unexpected people surfing in unexpected places.
• Billabong Odyssey - If I may lapse into surfer slang, this one is pretty rad.  Apparently there is a subculture of surfers devoted to “tow-in” surfing on 100-feet waves; basically, they get towed into these otherwise impossible waves by a Jet ski and then go to town.  The science behind finding out where these waves are and what kind of surfboards work best on them is really interesting.

A lot of the commentary around the Haiti earthquake centered on the fact that developed countries can generally withstand natural disasters that destroy developing countries where lax building codes and shoddy construction materials are more common.  So, how’s Portland going to fare?

In the reasonably near future, perhaps within our lifetimes and quite possibly as soon as tomorrow, an earthquake will strike Portland with roughly the same force felt this month in Port-au-Prince.

But while the Jan. 12 Haitian quake lasted less than 40 seconds, the shaking in Portland will continue for at least four minutes. Portland will feel a quake with a strength, duration and destruction never before experienced in the developed Western world.

Our cataclysm will begin 75 miles off the Oregon coastline. The ocean floor will split, sending shock waves racing under the water as fast as 17,000 mph. Those shock waves, felt first as a rumble, will slam into Portland in 30 seconds. The rattling will grow into a pulsing undulation that will repeatedly shove the ground up and down as much as 6 feet.

[much much more city destruction redacted]

About half an hour later, a 30-foot wall of water will crash into the Oregon coastline, with the tsunami flooding as high as 100 feet above sea level, sweeping in and out for hours.

This is not a pitch for the next Hollywood disaster movie. It is the scientific consensus on what will happen here sooner or later. And the latest data suggest it may in fact be sooner.

And, by the way, the odds aren’t as remote as I’d thought when my crazy friend Tommy first told me about this in one of his typical conspiracy-theorist rants. “Goldfinger’s estimates place the odds of a similar major earthquake in the next 50 years at 10 percent to 14 percent—about a 1-in-8 chance.”

ONE. IN. EIGHT.

While I’m heartened to see that Portland and nearby towns are beginning to get serious about contingency planning, I have to say that I’m a little bit entirely scared shitless at this news.  Aside from assembling a small stockpile of toilet paper, water, Lara bars, playing cards, flashlights and cash, what else is there for me to do?

Anyway, read the whole article so that you’re mentally prepared when all of this goes down and I’m tweeting updates from a floating house.

The waterfall photos will continue until morale improves.  From a few weeks ago, a waterfall new to me, Ponytail Falls (much nicer photos here):

Shut up on the post title, it’s been a long week. I regret I wasn’t here to regale you with my year-end and decade-end “best of…” picks, but truth be told I was spending the last week of December 2009 trying to studiously avoid the unceasing tide of inane listicles.  I’m not even sure what my favorite album of 2009 was. I have a bad habit of liking something and then realizing it was realized in October 2008 or somesuch.

Since then, life’s been pretty okay — and I’ve been making some solid progress on my 2010 goals. Most surprisingly (to me) is how well I’ve kept up with the yoga. Granted, it’s only been 3 weeks, but I’ve been doing it 4-5 times a week without any major impediments, and it feels really good. Cooking dinner, reading, and hiking – doing some of that too, although I’ll admit it’s hard to balance the reading goal with my “watch all five seasons of the Wire for the second time” goal. (NB: As of last night I’m done with Season 4. I’d forgotten how great Bodie’s character was — he had some of the best lines and scenes in the whole show).

The book I’ve been reading lately deserves a special mention, because I really want all of my nerdy male friends to read it.  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz — man, this is a great book. Great. Don’t take my word for it – ask the Pulitzer committee!  It is one of those sprawling, multigenerational immigrant sagas along the lines of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, but with so much more verve, attitude, and humor. If you’re any kind of comics/sci-fi/J.R.R. Tolkien fan; if you want to learn about the (brutal) 20th-century history of the Dominican Republic; if you want to find yourself empathizing with fat Dominican nerd-boys; or if, in general, you’re into the work of Chabon, Eggers, Eugenides, and DFW, please read this book. I don’t know how else to describe it except to say that it’s bad-ass.

Because, like I said, “resolutions” are crap.  But by the Grace of Spreadsheets, all Things are Possible.

1. Read 2 books a month.
2. Go hiking 18 times.
3. Practice yoga four times a week, and YES this is a lofty goal; however, I’m loosening my standards to include basically anything and everything – 20 minutes at home? 90 minutes in the studio? Yin? Power Vinyasa? It takes all kinds.  With a 3-month unlimited pass to Yoga Pearl already purchased, I’m off to a good start.  There may or may not be a meditation goal attached to this, with even laxer standards (10 minutes of sitting quietly with eyes closed? Sure, why not.)
4. Cook dinner 3 nights a week. I used to be much, much better about cooking when I lived with RV since there was an impetus to make food to share with her in the hopes of having her share her dinners with me, thus cutting my overall cooking time.  I just need to get back in this habit of making stuff, even simple stuff, rather than heading out somewhere or, sigh, eating a sandwich and a bag of popcorn.
5. Go camping at Crater Lake! See below for why.
6. Various and sundry financial goals that aren’t really relevant here, but amounting to “Save More and Pay Down Student Loans”.  But a smaller goal that I think is worthy of your consideration — and which I’ve already put into place — is to save up $10 a week in an online savings account, and donate it to a charity at the end of the year.  Having worked in nonprofits I know that $10 and $20 donations to a smattering of organizations might make you feel good, but it’s almost the same as giving them nothing at all, as they have to then process that small payment and get you into their database and mailing list.  Better to save up a larger chunk and focus it on one charity that’s especially compelling to you.  $10 a week isn’t a huge amount, but it’s large enough that I feel the hit to my budget.  SmartyPig is an online savings bank with a decent concept – when you sign up, you have to state a specific savings goal and schedule automatic transfers from your checking account, and they basically won’t let you cancel it or withdraw the money until you’ve met said goal.  Their interest rate is 2.01%, quite a bit higher than ING, and the site has some social networking features where you can invite others to view and contribute toward your goal.  If behavioral economics gives us nothing, let it give us a scheme of voluntary forced savings that’s directed toward worthy goals.

OK, here’s the thing: we all know that New Year’s resolutions are bullshit, made in a panicky haste to reassure ourselves that we haven’t just let another worthless year pass, because the next one will be different.  Before I start quoting The Cure lyrics, let me note that resolutions, done right, are decent things to set and strive towards.  ”Goals” would be a better term.

My work has a whole system of “career development” tools that they encourage us middlings to use when thinking about what we want to achieve during the year — apparently, “not getting fired” isn’t ambitious enough.  So, goals must be SMART. Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.  None of this “lose 40 pounds” crap, which relies on all kinds of bodily machinations that you have little to no control over, like metabolism and such.  Ideally, you measure inputs versus outputs.

Using that method, I set a resolution a few years ago (which I documented on my long-lost old blog) to read a book a week.  I set some very basic minimum standards — no comic books, no magazines, no cookbooks, and no beach book/chick lit garbage. Other than that, anything was fair game, so on a week after I finished a 500 page monster, I could follow it up with a breezy novella and still meet my quota.  I achieved the goal, people rejoiced, the world became a better place.

In 2009 I set an exercise goal of “exercising” 125 times during the year, or approximately once every 3 days. Sure, pretty weak sauce. The trick was in defining what counted as a “1″ on my Excel spreadsheet.  Any yoga class >60 minutes counted, as long as it was vinyasa or power vinyasa (no yin).  20 minutes of yoga at night before bed didn’t count.  A trip to the gym counted as long as there was some semblance of at least 25-30 good minutes on a cardio machine.  Back when I screwed up my knee and took physical therapy, those sessions counted, if only because they were Hard As Shit and left me breathless and slightly stronger.  30-Day Shred counted for either 0.5 or 1, depending on how hard I worked myself (lest you laugh, Jillian Michaels don’t play).  Finally, walking and/or hiking only counted if done for more than 60 minutes at a time.  Walking around town and on my commute didn’t count for a dime.

Still, this was a pretty low bar to clear, and I was hoping to do much more, but I let myself get lazy at times.  I managed 128 times as of today, so I met my goal, barely.  Catherine is trying a different tack and attempting a bajillion and one goals, most of which are fairly reasonable.  I’m thinking about 2010, and I’ve got some things lined up in my head. I definitely have a career goal I’d like to achieve, though it’s a pretty black/white thing that I either will or won’t be able to get done.  I have a slew of personal finance goals (and I came a l-o-n-g way in that regard this year, fyi).  Two books a month sounds reasonable.  I’m still thinking about an exercise goal, or maybe a yoga/meditation goal, but I haven’t decided yet.

All that really, really matters is that 2010 be a better year than 2009.  And quite frankly: how could it not?

Happy New Year, kids.

My e-mail inbox still accepts e-mail that wasn’t meant for me.  There are like five guys named Adam, two of whom are in bands and one of whom has apparently applied for a lot of accounting jobs, that are missing a ton of messages.  And then there’s this:

Dear Rawhide,
Thought you might enjoy my slide show.  No Nails, Skittles and I are getting together this weekend.  Wish you could join us!  Hope all is well.  How are the jobs?  Drop me a line sometime.

Moonwalker

The slide show was attached.  I’d like to meet this Rawhide character, wouldn’t you?

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and hey, WAIT a minute, I didn’t even tell you about my Halloween trip to D.C.  This blog’s new title is Dereliction of Duty.

D.C.

I spent about 5 days in D.C. around Halloween because I’d found an absurdly cheap plane ticket back in May or June.  It turns out I had the right idea, because by the time late October rolled around, I was so burned out and frustrated with my job that a respite seemed in order. Also: FICKEWEEN. Halloween has always been a weirdly big holiday in D.C., but maybe that’s just because my friends throw big parties that make it seem big. Anyway, I’d been to all the Casa de Libertarios Halloween parties back in the day, and Fickeween, the successor, was something I wanted to attend at least once.

It was all pretty nice.  For the first two nights I stayed with my friend James out in Metro-inaccessible Bethesda, mostly because he lives in a real house with a real guest bedroom I could call my very own. His house also features a ManCave ™ with soundproofed walls, thick white carpet, and nothing but (1) a comfy chair and (2) the most ridiculous sound system you could possible imagine.  He has his own music server with something like a trillion gigs of music, and it’s all remote-controlled and conducive to actually listening to music, instead of the iPod-on-bus-nonsense that I prefer.

Then for the latter two nights, I stayed with two dear Smithie friends that are roommates and have a darling place together in Adams Morgan.  So, what I did.  I went out a bunch, met old friends and colleagues and colleagues’ well-behaved babies. I got a massage at Joanna’s stellar Lunar Massage. I went to H&M, which is sorely lacking in Portland. At least two out-of-town but formerly-in-D.C. friends came into town during the weekend, so I convened with them.  Weirdly, I spent a lot of time in Dupont Circle (I know). I scooped out pumpkin guts.  I attended both Fickeween Prep Night, where I caught up with the lovable D.C. bloggerjournalist cabal, and Fickeween itself, in which I spent a lot of time confusing people by making them spell words.  I was the cutest goddamn Scripps National Spelling Bee that ever was.  I ate pancakes.  I met a lot of people that I feel like I should have met and/or known prior to this visit, but for whatever reason had never met.  And that includes a few awesome co-bloggers on that other blog I write for.

It was all kind of great, moderately crappy weather notwithstanding.  But the weirdest thing happened. I’d been toying with the idea of maybe moving back to D.C. and/or Baltimore if my career options out here crapped out, so I was testing the waters of what that really meant with this visit. And…it didn’t feel right.   I love(d) D.C. for the people in it. The city itself, and its culture, kind of drive me nuts.  My friends there have carved out a wonderful community for themselves there, no doubt.  But I kept missing Portland, even the parts that usually annoy me.   So it looks like I’m going to try to stick it out here for as long as circumstances will allow me.

Thanksgiving

We had a Friendsgiving here in Portland, the third in a row that I’ve successfully helped put together.  RV and I had our Smith BFF (sorry, there’s really no adequate descriptive term for these two) fly out here, and we spent a week reveling in Portland-dom, eating, touring, drinking, watching bad TV, and basically being together, with some guest appearances by significant others, gay ex-roommates, childhood best friends, and recent Craigslist friends (<–RV).  The highlight was several thousand episodes of early seasons of Roseanne. No wait, the highlight was me driving us all out to the Columbia River Gorge for winetasting and discovering upon arrival that I’d forgotten my wallet, my money, my phone, and my I.D.  No! Wait! The highlight was the Thanksgiving spread, which included a turkey smoked on RV’s wood-pellet smoker, green-onion laced mashed potatoes, herbed rolls, roasted brussel sprouts, two vats of cornbread sausage stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, one apple streusel pie, one pecan pie, a few gallons of home-fermented hard cider, and the largest, most alcoholic bowl of homemade eggnog you could possibly imagine, featuring an entire fifth of bourbon.

And about 11 bottles of mostly-cheap wine.  I decreed that if we went through them all, we would have to go to the grocery store and buy boxed wine as penance.  Luckily, we survived the week without breaking into the emergency wine ($3 Chuck Sauvignon Blanc), but I’m taking care of that as I type.

It was all very warm and cozy.  We’re like those Sex and the City gals, by which I mean we’re the exact opposite of those Sex and the City gals, but there are four of us, and we are all women.  And unlike our last gathering in Vegas, we weren’t seduced by a last-minute upgrade to a penthouse suite and the shiny, shiny lights of the Strip. We just hung out. And occasionally yelled at each other. And then got over it.  And had a good time.

To apologize for not posting in the past, oh, 10 years, I give you a special treat.  A few months ago the Flaming Lips held an open casting call for their new music video, which they shot here in Portland at Mount Tabor (a lovely place to hike and bike, by the way).  The requirements were that you had to have/bring a bike, and you had to get naked.  In a town where 5,000 participated in the annual World Naked Bike Ride, this was a pretty easy sell.  I had a quasi-family Thanksgiving meal the other night, and somebody there was actually at the shoot.  He tells me that 80% of the people who showed up were turned down, and implied that Wayne Coyne “hand-picked” some of the girls for prominent appearances in the shoot.  But Wayne’s a devoted husband, so I close my ears at that rumor!

Anyway, the result is a big, naked, hippie mess. NSFW, obvs.

Part II of my Past Weekend Travelogue.  I drove up to Seattle with two goals in mind: (1) See some family and friends and (2) See whales.  Mission accomplished on both counts.  Friday was all Seattle — I drove up in the morning, intending to get there around noon.  And if not for a trifecta of torrential downpours, traffic, and Google Maps apparently not understanding Seattle’s intricate geography ONE WHIT – I might have actually made it on time.  I’ll be honest; I don’t really understand Seattle’s geography either.  There’s a lake on one side, and a sound on the other, plus islands, and outside of downtown, the street grid doesn’t appear to follow any set of rules that I’m aware of.  Throw in a bunch of 60-degree-incline hills and not one single parking spot anywhere, and you’ve got a recipe for getting lost, constantly.

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