The ‘Dredge Report

My plan totally worked. I bought a new camera and got it this week, to replace the old one that I’d lost. Exact same make and model, same same same. Opened it up and took a picture or two, which you can see below. This afternoon, returning from the gym, I look down at the little nest area beneath my parking brake, and there was the little velvet satchel with my original camera in it.

People, I am not that dumb. I tore my damn car apart looking for that thing, and if it had been right there by the parking brake the entire time, I think I would have seen it. I’m not even going to think about what really happened or how it re-appeared. All that matters is that I’m selling the new one on eBay, which should provide me with enough to buy a new hard drive (Tom, I like your advice, but when I plugged it in again, it made a huge spark, so I think it’s best to let sleeping drives lie) AND subsidize my birthday dinner at Beast next weekend. The real tragedy is that I lived in France for a year and never tried steak tartare—what better occasion to fulfill this lifelong dream than my impending birthday?

RV’s new dog is in the house, and she is pretty dumb. Cute, in an ugly sort of way, although I wasn’t able to snap a shot of her with her ears down/back, which is way cuter than her gigantic clown-ears-standing-straight-up routine. Her name, which I thought of—because I think it’s funny to name animals after other animals, and because she is small for her breed—is Pony. She also responds to Muttface, and, not infrequently, GET OFF THE GODDAMNED COUCH. She is a good little dog:

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Re: everything here, it’s mostly all settled down by now.  I shelled out for a new camera, since the one I bought to replace the one that was stolen by the TSA (or AirTran, like it really matters which underpaid security checker lifted it) has gone missing.  That’s three cameras in as many months, but I’ve finally accepted this about myself: I am a somewhat scatterbrained Type A.  I’ve lost too many important things to count over the years—passports, wallets, check cards, you name it.  I can’t be trusted to protect my own personal property, so as a self-inflicted punishment, I’m making myself replace everything that I lose or ruin with my own hard-earned cash.  No scraping by with fewer material possessions for this gal!  This means I’ll be buying a new external hard drive soon, since I plugged in my current one and smelled smoke coming from it about two minutes later.  I kind of want to plug it in again and see what happens, but I shouldn’t tempt fate.

The other day I was standing at the windowsill in the kitchen, washing dishes and watching the sun set over our adorable neighbors’ garden (today they gave us four enormous funny-shaped squash. We love them.)  Out of nowhere I thought about this girl I went to high school with, first initial K.  K. was this quiet, unassuming Filipino transfer student who was painfully shy and utterly brilliant.  It wasn’t until I started getting to know her better that I realized she had a sardonic sense of humor that made mine pale in comparison.  I once mentioned I’d been listening to Ani Difranco (I know, I know, but stay with me here, it was high school) and she started talking about the song “Napoleon” from Dilate, which is, um, a pretty gritty song?  And it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t the only one scrawling Hole lyrics in my Bible during my Old Testament theology class.  K. also wrote, poems and stories that weren’t high-school-embarrassing.  Beautiful stuff.

All of this is just to say that she was totally awesome, one of the only people from high school that I wondered about, years later.  And I thought of her the other night out of the blue, and the next day I got a message saying she’d just joined Facebook and friended me.

I’m enough of a skeptic to be on board with the ‘coincidences are just that’ worldview, but man.  Isn’t it nice how things work out sometimes?

Via Paul Levy, I thought this was pretty hilarious:

I think it’s been awhile, and I wish I could tell you that I’d be blogging up a storm now that the Shack has wireless, but it’s not to be. Yet.

Honestly? These last couple of weeks have been kind of downers. Moving is stressful under the best of circumstances, which these have not been. Coping with landlords who turn from charming to slightly snippy in the span of 72 hours, gruff fix-it ladies who don’t show up on time (or ever), waste management services that won’t take your garbage and cardboard boxes. No furniture (though, update, as of Thursday we should have a couch and loveseat, financed entirely on money that doesn’t exist). Ants, to a minor degree. Damn you, ants. Basement carpets that smell faintly of dog, and it’s unclear if that will remain the case, and if so, for how long. A friendship or two on the verge of implosion. Utility companies that don’t want to believe that new people live here now. Prior tenants who were just fantastical douchebags in their lack of respect for this house, their surroundings, the good of mankind. A full-time job that has precluded the little things like putting in new lightbulbs and defunkifying carpet. Getting your car titled and registered in the state of Oregon (I chose the standard mountain license plates—they were cheaper than the salmon ones). Bleeding cash (or rather, credit) left and right for necessity after necessity after cheap-particle-board-IKEA-piece-of-shit necessity. And newly-acquired Oregonian allergies that have just knocked me flat on my ass. (Seriously, it is unreal).

In short, it’s been beginning to look a lot like Shitmas, everywhere I go. This weekend I even attempted to reel it in and get myself together; I attended a 3-day (god help me) yoga workshop at the snooty overpriced yoga studio that just happens to peddle the brand of yoga I prefer. It was all well and good (minus the allergies) for the first 2 days, despite being made to stare into the eyes of a stranger for a solid 4 minutes. (Thanks, teacher. Most uncomfortable four minutes of my life). The second day, I accidentally dropped my combo lock on the ground, which jammed the metal frame inward to where the wheel couldn’t turn, and I couldn’t open my lock. Not only did I have to endure stares and unhelpful help from a bunch of ashtanga-besotted weenies, I had to wait 2 hours, wield an insufficiently-strong pair of bolt-cutters, and, finally, call an emergency locksmith. I was sure my wallet was in my bag in my locker. I was wrong. Neither was my phone. The poor locksmith, who was apparently at risk of being chain-whipped by his boss if I didn’t pay, had to drive me home to get my credit card so I could pay. $100. I meant to mention that in such a crisis, the front-door girl at the yoga studio will not be your advocate or defender, so don’t even try. It’s not that she was stupid, just yoga slow. I wanted to smack her and raze the entire building, especially the vegan cafe.

Tell me the truth: overreacting? I don’t think so. I skipped the final day of the workshop, even though I had already prepaid. So there.

So it’s been a bit of a mess. The one bright spot is living with RV, a roommate who manages to make me laugh constantly and, less often, annoy the living crap out of me. Since we’ve been doing all this shopping and planning and gardening and so on, we’ve been using the “we” a lot. Obviously, this invites comments. The idea of us being a couple is no more ridiculous than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney being one, after all. But this whole platonic life partner thing is actually really great, and is quite possibly the only thing keeping my head in the game. I e-mail the landlord to URGE him to re-assess his priorities and figure out the bills, while she (unemployed, thank god) cleans up the gardens and supervises the cable installation and has dinner waiting for me when I get home from work. Not to get all LOLcat on you, but is pretty grate, aktually.

I’m not even going to bother with the tired “moving sucks” clichés. Moving itself didn’t suck, per se, despite me forgetting to lift with my back about 75% of the time (and the resulting damage to my spine). But we rented a 24′ U-Haul to get the stuff from point A to point B, and naturally it wouldn’t start once we had it unloaded and ready to return. RV, who’s totally into cars and fixing stuff and doesn’t even really qualify as a girl (her words), thought we had a dead transmission on our hands. Lo and behold, we call the U-Haul fix-it guy, he comes out, he turns the key, and…the engine starts. Now that was a cliché. And then we went to the gas station before returning it, and RV misjudged the width between the truck and the concrete block that borders the gas pump, and she managed to get the truck’s frame wedged onto the block, to the point where gunning the engine didn’t help it budge.

We called the U-Haul place, and they sent a girl to come help. She managed to dislodge the truck. OK, she was a girl, no cliché there. And then, later that night, as we celebrated on the porch with Veuve Cliquot and cheap cigars, our landlord Andy dropped by to pick up our check and do a walk-through of the house. Andy’s wonderful, and we love him more than we should. He’s kind of like a lovable, yet incredibly smart and resourceful, reformed frat guy, complete with frat guy voice. We would say things like, “Yeah, we want to garden and plant stuff,” or “Yeah, we’ll totally patch up the walls before we leave,” and his constant refrain was heart-stoppingly charming: “I love that about you.”

Anyway, I couldn’t get my queen-sized box spring down the rickety, narrow set of stairs that lead to my dungeon/room in the finished basement (trust me, it’s nice). So we say to Andy, “Help us, plz?” And yes. You know what happens next. Andy the Man helped us cram the boxspring and mattress down the teeny stairs. Seriously. How ridiculous! (NB: Andy we love you).

And since then it’s been endless carpet shampooing (not of our doing), and unpacking and me pointing to things and saying to RV, “Can you [set up my desk/hang my art/put together my bedframe?]” It’s not that I can’t do those things, it’s that I can’t do them well. Thank god for handy friends.

Our Internet access is currently in limbo until we produce a copy of the lease and a statement remitting our souls to Comcast, so right now the only access I can poach is when I sit on the front porch and steal from my neighbors. Our neighborhood, Alberta Arts, is about 70% crunchy, 30% too hip, and 10% shady. So we’ve got neighbors on the left who maintain an impeccable garden and offered us their spare cucumbers last night, and neighbors on the right who board up their windows and keep soiled La-Z-Boys on their front porch. Alberta Street itself is lined with scads of Thai joints, overly clever bars (one’s called “The Know”), and brunch places. Truly this is hipster heaven.

More later, when I’ve had a chance to NOT BE MOVING NO MORE.

UPDATE: I just realized my percentages add up to 110%, but I stand by them, because Alberta is 110% awesome.

Look, we all love a good NY Times trend piece. I understand that. But this is just ridiculous. I’d loudly proclaim a NO NO NO DEAR GOD NO if I thought that the men in shorts “trend” had a snowflake’s chance in hell of spreading beyond the men and companies featured in the article.

Just in case, here’s why these men look ridiculous. 1) Because if you’re past the age of 7 and you’re not hunting for Easter eggs in your grandmother’s backyard, wearing a blazer, tie, and shorts looks absurd. 2) So it’s too hot to wear pants, but not too hot to wear a button-down, a blazer, and a tie. What??!!

I’ve long thought that the ’small plates’ motif should be extended beyond Spanish tapas. While tapas are great, there are times when you’re just not in the mood for octopus drizzled in olive oil. Am I right?

Lo and behold, my dreams came to life at Navarre, a restaurant I’ve walked past dozens of times on NE 28th Ave’s restaurant row. Since my time living on 28th is soon over, I decided to finally check this place out. Fresh, local, seasonal are the buzzwords here, as they are at so many other Portland bistros. Oh, and a quirky wine list, also the norm throughout Portland. Anytime you go to a restaurant that offers a prix fixe “chef’s choice” deal, you take it, right? Unless you’re dying for something specific or are a picky eater, in which case, why are you going to a nice restaurant anyway? So that’s what I did, along with a “we choose” wine pairing.

They started me off with a pickle plate (teeny carrots, teeny cornichons, teeny onions), teeny radishes with French butter that I’d sell my liver to taste again. OK, so far so good. Radish with butter, c’est très français. They paired it with a Prosecco. Did I mention they had Neil Young on the sound system? Oh, and a plate of wafer-thin cured meat. I can’t tell you what it was, but I can tell you I ate it with my fingers.

The second course consisted of four little plates, each more insanely addictive than the last. A crab cake, halibut with aioli (ohhhh, swoon…did I ever tell you about the time I went to an aioli festival in Aix-en-Provence? Another time.), farro and parsley salad, and green beans with melon, which was much, much better than it sounds. The wine was a viognier that wasn’t all that special, but went well with the fish.

And then I thought I’d get a small dessert plate and be done with it, walking away just content enough—not full. What a fool was I. The last course was four more small plates. Four! That’s eleven plates in all! Each with a completely satisfying portion! A little lamp chop with roasted beet greens that were so good I considered taking some home in my purse. A potato gratin. Boudin blanc with nectarines. And some dark green vegetable—was it kale? Spinach? I can’t remember. I was high on variety.

Seriously, this is the way to make a meal for my people. We read 100 blogs a day, have 4,000 songs on our iPods, and read 10 books at the same time. What sense does it make to go to a restaurant and strap on a big heavy entrée like a feed bag?

Honestly? I think I got special treatment because I sat at the bar and was quiet and polite and totally non-demanding. I took a menu and added up the price of all the small plates they served me, and it was well north of $60, so either I got a lucky break or they’re losing serious cash on the table-tops.

And, yes, dessert. As I arrived, they had taken 3 homemade pies—roughhewn buttery crusts folded over the edges of the pan–out of the oven. How often do you see peach pie on a menu anywhere, let alone at a nicer joint? Not. Not that often is how often.

I don’t know, it just feels like I got away with murder or something. 11 courses, 3 wines, and a slice of pie for $45? Seriously?

This is perhaps a frivolous post, but don’t blame me. It’s brought to you by the Committee to Convince Jacob Grier to Move to Portland.