massive amounts of television

There isn't much to do at my parents' house.
I have spent much of the past few days (the time that I was not locked out of the house because the 'rents forgot to tell me that they changed the passcode for the garage door opener) watching TV & movies and ripping CDs so I can put them on my new toy.
Some thoughts:

Watching Kinsey with one's mother is a bit awkward. It's all about sex. The other netflixed movie my parents had was Bad Education. I think I made the better choice. Besides, I have already seen Bad Education.

The Real World: Austin is boring.

My mother's love of The West Wing is a bit frightening. She has seen ever episode of the show multiple multiple times & continues to watch it every time Bravo shows it. My mother's favorite TV station is Bravo: The West Wing, Queer Eye, Inside the Actor's Studio.

Gilmore Girls in syndication makes me very happy.

The Daily Show is funnier when I'm not watching it two months after its airdate.

Iron and Wine's cover of The Postal Service's 'Such Great Heights' is featured in an M&Ms commercial. They are everywhere.

And my new favorite show is 30 Days. It was created by Morgan Spurlock, the man behind Supersize Me. The premise of the show is that people spend 30 days stepping outside of their world into a foreign environment. In last night's episode, a Christian man from West Virginia spent 30 days living within the Muslim community of Dearborn, MI. It was fascinating to watch this man learn, to watch people explain their faith. In next week's show, a military veteran moves into the home of a gay man in the Castro district. Quality.

home (or whatever)

I'm staring at a flatscreen monitor in the suburbs.

When I arrived here there was a note on the dining room table:

Welcome home (or whatever), Rachel. Love, Mom.

My mom put dried mangoes and pickles beside the note. I like dried mangoes and pickles.

I am exhausted. Trying to squeeze every bit of fun and every moment with friends and as much cleaning as possible out of the final days in PDX, doesn't leave one with much sleep time. Conviniently, there isn't much to do here, so I'll be sleeping.

I don't live in Portland anymore. I got teary as I slipped my old house key through the mail slot. My dad, who helped me move everything across state lines, sensing the importance of the moment, took photos.

My mom's birthday is in a few days. I came up with a gift idea on the drive home. It's a book. The thought of going to the Barnes & Noble here, not my blessed Powell's, depresses me.

found magazine comes alive

F and R and in town.
Good times.

Yesterday, we spent maybe an hour looking at old postcards at Really Good Stuff. Most were already written. It is fun and sneaky to be sorting through other people's mail. Fascinating, though.

In general people write really boring postcards. Many about the weather. A surprising number documenting medical conditions. There was a series of postcards from an Ali to a boy named James who lived a few blocks from my house. She loved him. It was sad to see those postcards in a junk store. Had they shared a 'happily ever after,' the postcards would not have been on a rack for us to read.

And we bought an 8x10 of a couple with their unhappy looking cat to add to the family album.

hot hot miso action

Last week, I brought sushi fixings to the boy's house. We always eat out. He always pays. I thought I should mix it up a bit. He cooks rarely and he has no dining table.

We ate dinner sitting on his couch. He managed to spill hot hot miso soup on his inner thigh. It burned him pretty badly. He spent the rest of the evening sans pants, except for a trip to the drug store to get some aloe.

It was strange. I see pantsless men in very specific situations. Dinner is not one of them.

new toy

My creative zen touch is being shipped. It will be at my house on Monday, so says the UPS tracking website. I enjoy obsessively tracking packages as they make their way to me. It was last seen leaving South San Francisco at 6:47 am this morning.

And I love the randomness of my new toy's name. A creative zen touch sounds kind of dirty or spiritual or both. It's not. It's a better-than-ipod.

high demand

Within the past hour, the two fellows in this town that I used to date called. They both wanted to do something tomorrow. Dinner with W? A film about genetically modified food with He Who Shall Not Be Named?

I declined both offers. It felt good.

I already have plans with the boy I am currently dating. We're making sushi.

people watching

I spent most of yesterday with the female A. The zoo, a movie at Pix. In both places, the people watching was amazing.

Zoo: I had forgotten how many children there are in the world. The zoo ($2 Tuesday) was crowded with fieldtrips, toddlers in strollers, etc. If the children ever want to revolt against adult oppression, the zoo would be an ideal place for the revolution to begin. While waiting to see the 'Sea Lion Training,' A and I began watching the parents and spawn going past us. We searched for a parent with one child strapped to his/her front, one strapped to the back, and one in a stroller. We decided that a pregnancy could take the place of the child strapped to the front. We did not see our trifecta.

Another happy non-sighting: I saw no animals masturbating. The last time I went to the zoo, I watched a sea otter fellate itself.

Pix: a very different crowd, nearly all of age. They were showing Everyone Says I Love You, which I love. Beside me was a couple, a very physically affectionate couple. Slightly offputting. Towards the end of the movie, a group of friends walked in. They stood by the counter and ogled the desserts. One of the men in the group kept touching his female companion: asscrack, in the back pocket of her jeans (very Freaks and Geeks), beneath her sweater. It was entertaining to watch his hand wander, although it looked awkward for both of them.

a better use for cupcakes

I went to a birthday party on Saturday night. A friend of a friend turned 27. Our mutual friend is in Providence. She put us in contact when I came out to Portland. So I chitchatted for a few hours with people that I didn't know.

And then the fire was built and more beer and tequila was consumed and things got entertaining:

throwing cupcakes!

There were a box of cupcakes that no one was eating. Who would choose a yellow store-bought cupcake when there was delicious coffee-chocolate cake available (my mom, but that's another story). As the level of intoxication increased, people decided it would be a good idea to throw cupcakes. First at the fire, then at each other. It was very entertaining and I managed to keep away from the splattered frosting.

the joy of suburbs

I've been going out to Hillsboro, a hideous suburb, quite regularly recently. The male A lives out there. [His employer is located there.] So I trimet myself there frequently. It takes about an hour and a half. I get a lot of reading done on the max and buses.

And then I arrive in a wasteland. There is nothing in Hillsboro. There are many many apartments and a tiny pretend airport. There is one of those malls that tries to look like a city street - all of the stores open to streets that weave through the mall. I hate those kind of malls even more than the regular kind. They make no sense in a rainy place.

I have only seen one non-chain store in the whole town. Gross.

A doesn't like Hillsboro. If he did, I might have to stop liking him.

construction worker dj

The neighbors (not the rockabillies, the ones who keep a tally of the American war dead in their window) are having a new garage built. It is noisy work, the constuction goes from 8 to 3 every day.

And then there's the construction worker's music: good (not performance today) classical and jazz standards. When the work they are doing isn't too loud or fumey, I sit outside, reading and enjoy their music. It's nice.

and there's this, courtesy of the brother AKA logo (his preferred camp name) or sumo (my preferred camp name for him), who was in town for part of the week.

and I'm at homestar, home of the bad coffee and worse music today. Headphone helps with the latter. Fresh Pot and Stumptown both have unreliable networks. Lame.

coffee & internet should equal happiness

The neighbors are no longer providing me with free wireless internet. It was too good to last.

I am no longer working, which means no time-wasting interneting at work.

So I am now on a quest for the ideal coffeeshop with wireless in which to keep myself connected to the wider world.

The requirements:
good coffee
reliable wireless network
music that I can stand
good people watching
not too far from my house (the laptop gets heavy after a while)

I have been to two coffeeshops this morning. Neither is a taker.

Common Grounds Coffeehouse
I was willing to overlook my hatred of the punny name for this place. I like their coffee. Their music is generally good - they play XM. This morning's barista likes blues. Blues is okay. The place is close to my house. It is busy enough in the morning to keep the people watching interesting. Their downfall: their wireless network was very spotty. It kept cutting out. I tried 4 different seats, continuously rotating my computer, trying to figure out the ideal placement of my laptop. I did not succeed.

and now I am at Homestar.
It is the closest coffeeshop to my house. I had never been here, before, so I had high hopes for it. They are dashed. All it has going for it is a reliable internet connection. Their coffee sucks. E told me it did months ago. She was right. They claim it is Stumptown, but it doesn't taste like it. It is bitter and foul. And it cost 50% more than Common Ground's. Their music is not so good. Fiona Apple was on when I came in, which is enjoyable sometimes. The barista quickly switched to performance today. I hate performance today. The space is interesting. The people watching is boring.

So the quest continues.

polished

I spent Friday night with A, the new boy, in his fancy apartment in the suburbs.

The boy is polished. He has at least twice as many toiletries as I do. His furniture is not thriftstore or streetcorner finds. It is not hand-me-downs from parents or landlords. It is not the same furniture from his childhood bedroom. He buys furniture, kitchen items, clothing, etc. new. Because of this, he has a color scheme for everything. His cups match his rugs match his comforter match his towels. I buy nothing new. I can probably count on two hands the items of clothing I own that I have bought new (excepting underthings). He reads more books than I do and those books are literary, not the graphic novels that I have come to love.

He speaks 5 languages.
He wrote me a thank you e-mail Saturday.

This is all very strange.

got crucifix?

Only 6 more hours of work.

Two coworkers had a card waiting on my desk for me this morning. It contained a small gift: a crucifix pendant. I now own a crucifix. What does one do with an undesired crucifix? Are there special instructions for disposing of it, like there are for a flag?

It just seems so weird and presumptious of others to give me a religious object. I have never told them that I'm a big fan a Jesus. It is curious that they would assume so. Maybe I just appear to be a 'good christian girl.'

I gave my brother a chalice pendant once. He told me exactly which one he wanted. I knew his religious identity. That isn't presumptious.

Anybody want a crucifix?

and now, hopped up on donated starbucks doubleshots I will try to get though the day. I was up too late with F & a pair of twins on a Greater Trumps/First Thursday/Portland Coffeehouse/Voodoo Donuts adventure.

management tip

If you want your employees to have a productive afternoon, do not announce to them at a noontime meeting that someone in the organization has been laid off, but you are not allowed to disclose who it is. My supervisor did that at a meeting with half the staff today. Rumors and speculation are comprising the majority of our afternoon.

In other news, my coworkers are taking me out for dinner on Friday, after my last day of work. Chevy's and Olive Garden were both discussed. Thankfully, I was able to convince people to do Thai instead.