This morning when I took the dog out the chill hit me square in the face: only 60 degrees?
The soaring temperatures this week have been hard on our lawn, the park across the street, the hanging baskets and the wildlife outside.
But I have nothing to complain about because I live in air conditioning and have a swimming pool in my backyard. But I had to share the pool with the wildlife as even insects swarmed because they needed cooling off as well.
At OHSU the threat was to campus-wide systems that are responsible for keeping the special research freezers going (many hundreds below zero) and enough power and backup power to keep the hospital beds cool. There were problems yesterday, but they seem to have mostly resolved today.
I would rather have this than snow any day.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Summer evening skies full of surprises...
Have you seen the International Space Station (ISS) pass by overhead yet? David and I wandered out to the backyard last evening around 9:40 pm to see it go....it's traveling very quickly but you see this bright star moving through the sky. You have to know when to look because it moves so quickly, so catch the next dates here.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Dance Like You Mean It!
I spent part of my Thursday afternoon at the Chiles Center at the Thunderbird Dance Camp watching the final recital of all of Oregon's dancers under the age of 25! Why? Trisha was there, that's why! She started texting me on Monday to come watch her dance, so I had x'd out one hour of my afternoon from work to be there.
I should have x'd out the entire afternoon because it was mayhem and an extravaganza of sweating dancing girls! I got there and found a seat up high in the nosebleed section. The parents were pretty competitive about the seats - groups from different places were holding seats and I was clearly an outsider, somebody who hadn't been ensconced in these seats all week, and the stares were fierce. "These seats are saved," they hissed at me until I finally reached some top section where one lone small broken seat remained for me.
The back biting and competitive nature of these parents was awesome to witness. It was worse than Little League dads - these dance mothers are fierce! I kept wondering, why don't they have jobs like everybody else? Evidently there exists moms who have nothing better to do than follow their kids around and bad-mouth the competition while munching on barbecue-flavored pringles. One nasty dancing daughter came up to her mealy-mouthed mom to exclaim: "Watch the girl next to me...she's awful! And she has spent the week trying to talk to me! Ick!" The mother replied, "just dance and forget her, don't talk to her, you don't want the judges to think you have anything to do with her!"
So, with baited breath, I waited for Trisha to dance. I could barely see her down below. But when her group of dancers emerged, I recognized her immediately. She was in the front row and she was smiling! She knew her stuff and she danced really well. She twirled and tumbled and kicked and gyrated her arms like she knew what she was doing! It was AWESOME!
My pictures (taken with my iphone because I have no other recording device currently) are pathetic and don't show much except attest to the fact that I, and I alone, watched Trisha in her finest moment shining at the Thunderbird Camp. I also noticed that she had lots of friends around her that she was enjoying. I hope that she had a great camp experience, that she always dances with girls who aren't very good, and that she just had fun.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Our Daily Bread
This all started when I got out of the shower one morning, David had already left for work, and I wandered into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast and found that the kettle was on full blast, the steam whistle was disabled and it was dry. David had absent-mindedly left it there and had I not been home, would have posed a serious hazard to the health of our happy home.
David became alarmed as well at the potential danger to our property and our pets and immediately went about to find another coffee solution so that this wouldn't/couldn't happen again. David found the magic of Macy's! He bought a grinder/binder/coffee maker extravaganza and brought it home that very evening. It's programmable!
Now, with coffee cups in hand, we stand on our new red floor and make obeisance to La Machine in the morning to grant us our daily coffee.
David became alarmed as well at the potential danger to our property and our pets and immediately went about to find another coffee solution so that this wouldn't/couldn't happen again. David found the magic of Macy's! He bought a grinder/binder/coffee maker extravaganza and brought it home that very evening. It's programmable!
Now, with coffee cups in hand, we stand on our new red floor and make obeisance to La Machine in the morning to grant us our daily coffee.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Caught in the Crossfire
My Dad’s mother Mary Jean died a week ago today, reportedly about 8:30 pm. She died in the same hospital ward where my Dad died almost three years earlier, but she died peacefully in bed whereas Dad collapsed on the floor outside of his room and died with a dozen people trying to revive him, voices raising in anxiety as Mom and I clutched each other in fear. I knew Dad was going, but I didn’t want to believe it. My Mom knew too, and she didn’t want to watch. She went around the corner from him and she sat down on an abandoned hospital bed and sat with her head in her hands.
Grandma didn’t want anyone with her as she died, and I kept her wish until she was unconscious and wasn’t in control anymore. Even then, though, I really didn’t want to be in the room with her; we weren’t close, she didn’t like me, and I really felt nothing at all as her breathing labored, her organs shut down and she passed. I was there to support my brother Bill and my sister Pam, who did evidently care about the event.
It sounds egregious not to care about your grandmother, but it was the truth. She was a difficult human being; she made my Dad’s life extra miserable and I had nothing to say to her in the last few years, and it was mutual.
This grandmother was an enigma to me; I didn’t pretend to know her, but she pretended that she knew me and later in life attributed all sorts of nefarious motives to my actions. I think I saw her about a dozen times, all told, throughout my nearly 50 year history. We didn’t talk on the phone. We rarely exchanged letters.
I never knew when her actual birth year was. Like many in her generation, she was probably born at home and there was no hospital record of her birth. Her birth date was in December, but the year continued to be mysterious. Like many women of her generation she wanted to be older when she was young (so she could get married) and then she wanted to be younger when she was old (to collect Social Security and be on Medicare). Everyone claimed that she was 102 at her death, and that sounds like a good compromise. The range could have been as old as 105 or as young as 100. What it actually was, we’ll never know now. In any event, she was old enough.
My first memory of her was being dropped off at her house on Country Club Road in Eugene. It was a cold, formal, oppressively quiet house with a grandfather clock that ticked ominously in a corner, bursting out in a gonging noise at the top of the hour. It stood a hundred feet tall and mesmerized me until she hissed at me “Don’t Touch Anything!” Everything was white, cold, immaculate, uncomfortable. Our house at home was worn, messy, probably a bit dirty and lived in. We had a noisy chaotic family and no part of the house was off-limit to the sticky curious fingers of young children. To arrive in this mausoleum was a bit much for us youngsters, and it left an indelible impression on me that visits to these grandparents was a hushed event.
A few years ago I read an article in a Catholic magazine disparaging young couples of today for using birth control and not having children – the writer had interviewed one childless couple who reported facetiously that they had just installed white wall-to-wall carpeting and therefore couldn’t have children. When I read that, I burst out laughing because it reminded me of my grandparent’s home on Country Club Road where children really were not welcome.
Mom dropped John and me off to babysit while she grocery shopped, although this was not a normal event. Normally we went with Mom, and why she dropped us off this day is not known to me. Maybe she wanted us to get acquainted. Maybe she was just sick of us. I don’t know. John and me, caught in whatever cross-fire was going on between my parents and grandparents didn’t know what to do or which way to turn. John looked outside and saw a fountain with some sort of stone statuary in it of a young boy peeing in a pond. There were goldfish in the pond. We were country kids and we knew that you fished when you saw fish in a pond. John and I found a string and some sort of paperclip or diaper pin or something and we sat outside fishing in the pond. For some reason I remember John singing a song as he fished. My grandfather appeared about that time bellowing at us that we’d better not be harming his goldfish! I think he was kidding, but he scared the living daylights out of us. It set the tone for our relationship together – John had little to nothing to do with them; I made some attempts to get to know them, but would always be rebuffed.
Grandma didn’t want anyone with her as she died, and I kept her wish until she was unconscious and wasn’t in control anymore. Even then, though, I really didn’t want to be in the room with her; we weren’t close, she didn’t like me, and I really felt nothing at all as her breathing labored, her organs shut down and she passed. I was there to support my brother Bill and my sister Pam, who did evidently care about the event.
It sounds egregious not to care about your grandmother, but it was the truth. She was a difficult human being; she made my Dad’s life extra miserable and I had nothing to say to her in the last few years, and it was mutual.
This grandmother was an enigma to me; I didn’t pretend to know her, but she pretended that she knew me and later in life attributed all sorts of nefarious motives to my actions. I think I saw her about a dozen times, all told, throughout my nearly 50 year history. We didn’t talk on the phone. We rarely exchanged letters.
I never knew when her actual birth year was. Like many in her generation, she was probably born at home and there was no hospital record of her birth. Her birth date was in December, but the year continued to be mysterious. Like many women of her generation she wanted to be older when she was young (so she could get married) and then she wanted to be younger when she was old (to collect Social Security and be on Medicare). Everyone claimed that she was 102 at her death, and that sounds like a good compromise. The range could have been as old as 105 or as young as 100. What it actually was, we’ll never know now. In any event, she was old enough.
My first memory of her was being dropped off at her house on Country Club Road in Eugene. It was a cold, formal, oppressively quiet house with a grandfather clock that ticked ominously in a corner, bursting out in a gonging noise at the top of the hour. It stood a hundred feet tall and mesmerized me until she hissed at me “Don’t Touch Anything!” Everything was white, cold, immaculate, uncomfortable. Our house at home was worn, messy, probably a bit dirty and lived in. We had a noisy chaotic family and no part of the house was off-limit to the sticky curious fingers of young children. To arrive in this mausoleum was a bit much for us youngsters, and it left an indelible impression on me that visits to these grandparents was a hushed event.
A few years ago I read an article in a Catholic magazine disparaging young couples of today for using birth control and not having children – the writer had interviewed one childless couple who reported facetiously that they had just installed white wall-to-wall carpeting and therefore couldn’t have children. When I read that, I burst out laughing because it reminded me of my grandparent’s home on Country Club Road where children really were not welcome.
Mom dropped John and me off to babysit while she grocery shopped, although this was not a normal event. Normally we went with Mom, and why she dropped us off this day is not known to me. Maybe she wanted us to get acquainted. Maybe she was just sick of us. I don’t know. John and me, caught in whatever cross-fire was going on between my parents and grandparents didn’t know what to do or which way to turn. John looked outside and saw a fountain with some sort of stone statuary in it of a young boy peeing in a pond. There were goldfish in the pond. We were country kids and we knew that you fished when you saw fish in a pond. John and I found a string and some sort of paperclip or diaper pin or something and we sat outside fishing in the pond. For some reason I remember John singing a song as he fished. My grandfather appeared about that time bellowing at us that we’d better not be harming his goldfish! I think he was kidding, but he scared the living daylights out of us. It set the tone for our relationship together – John had little to nothing to do with them; I made some attempts to get to know them, but would always be rebuffed.
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