*book group selection | bolded means favorite
*The Extraordinary Orbit of Alex Ramirez by Jasminne Paulino
*Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
*Truth, Lies, and the Questions in Between by L.M. Elliott
*Rosa by Any Other Name by Hailey Alcaraz
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 2 by Beth Brower
*A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, A Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out by Nicholas Day and Yas Imamura
The Guardian has a new game called Film Reveal in their Guardian App. You get three actors and three categories and then must guess a movie that fits the nexus of the two. The less common your guess, the higher your score.
Here’s a finished one:
It’s very interesting to see what category is hard. Sometimes it will be an actor I can’t picture in any movie, much less in a specific category. Sometimes, I will get stuck on just one film the person is in, and can’t for the life of me think of another.
I’ve also learned that it’s best to look at the different categories before committing a movie to a specific one. I might be able to think of several two-word titles, but only one film between 1990 and 2000. If I’ve committee that one film to the two-word titles, I gnash my teeth.
This was a particularly good score that I got at the very end of the puzzle day.
For decades before 8004 was built and before I lived there, the neighbor’s walnut tree has been part of my visual landscape. It doesn’t show up a lot in photos, because I’m usually standing on the back porch looking at the point in the backyard, but you can see the edge of it in this post about Matt’s pandemic haircut.
It’s been changed over the years. The owners of the motel next door didn’t like a branch hanging over their roof, so that branch was removed. But it’s been a pleasant visual companion and has fed generations of squirrels with the walnuts it produces.
“I heard a very loud noise the other morning,” Matt said one day. He couldn’t identify what it was. A few days later, I went outside and noticed a very large branch had fallen off the tree and was covering most of the back yard where the tree lives. That probably solved the loud noise mystery.
Today, I realized I’d been hearing chainsaws for some time and got up from my desk to investigate. I was horrified to see the walnut tree as only a stump, and caught this picture about five minutes before I heard the loud “thunk” of the trunk coming down.
I’m not one to be sentimental over trees. I celebrated when the huge oak in my mom’s back yard laid itself down in an ice storm. But this had been such a big part of my life at the Orange Door, both indoors and out. It provided a nice green blotch on the southeast part of the property, and I’ve watched from my desk as squirrels run from the fir tree in Leo’s yard along the fence to the walnut tree and back.
What are all those squirrels going to eat now that their walnut source is gone?
I almost wrote the title as “51st Birthday Cake” but I don’t think I’ve had 51 birthday cakes. It’s probably something close to that number, probably. But there were the college and post-college years where I didn’t have a cake for every birthday.
But here it is!
It’s what Vintage Cakes calls “the Classic”: Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.
Given that the cake is such a classic, I assumed I’d made the Vintage Cakes version. But I had not. The recipe had me whip cream into the batter, so the finished cake was very moist.
I used the classic confectioners sugar/butter “buttercream” recipe for the frosting, because that’s my favorite kind of frosting.
It was delicious!
Aside from cake, we had a nice lunch from Pollo Bravo which is my favorite good food/not fancy restaurant.
No pictures of the meal, but people present: me, Matt, mom, Aunt Pat, Linda, and Rick.
I don’t go to protests. I don’t think they help. So while I’m happy to have all the protesters who want to protest go to protests, I’m not one to go.
However, things are so bad that I felt like I might as well do the thing I don’t think works, because nothing else seems to be working right now. The October 2025 No Kings Protest was my first official protest.
Matt came with two signs, one for his backpack and one to hold in his hands. Rick also attended, and here’s our picture before we headed over to the assembly space.
In the assembly space, I saw my favorite shirt: Be patient with me, my mom took Tylenol.
The assembly space by the convention center gradually filled up, and it was time to walk to the main starting point across the river in Waterfront park.
Here are two people who neglected to make a sign for the back of their protest signs. They also use very fancy toilet paper. I never did see the front.
The approach to the Steel Bridge. We were in the middle, with a ton of people in front and in back. And people came from two other assembly areas. It was a huge crowd.
Waiting for the protest to start took a goodly amount of time, but allowed me to capture many signs include my favorite sign that day: It’s the cruelty that bothers me the most.
The inflated animals were out in full force. This was a fun development that came from the Portland Frog Brigade, but whimsical protest has a long history as explained here.
I loved this person’s jacket, and wondered if they made it. Later, I saw they were embroidering (while standing!) so my guess is yes.
I enjoyed the wide variety of signs, from collage, to perfectly laid out, to scrawled quickly in Sharpie.
Matt was glad to see that Jesus was endorsing AOC in 2028. (There were many Jesuses walking around.)
Vaccines cause adults was another of my favorite signs.
We really laughed at this one, and saw a few on the theme.
Portland Frog Brigade crocheted head covering!
When looking at other people’s protest pictures on Instagram, many of them saw this very big frog too.
It was overall, an impressive turnout and a very long day. I think next time, I will volunteer to support the protest.
Sara sent this from Scotland and it’s dated 8/29/25. I can’t read the postmark, but let’s assume it’s from early September at the latest.
So this postcard has been hanging out in that Postcard Void that the readers of this blog are all so familiar with.
Sara writes that she enjoyed these pieces and thought I would like it too because it’s all embroidery. They are by Phoebe Anna Traquair and the pieces are (I assume) a collected work called The Progress of a Soul, with each individual piece named the Entrance, the Stress, Despair, and the Victory.
I especially enjoy Despair.
Here’s the stamp.
Sara wrote part of the postcard on a bus to Stirling Castle. Apparently the whole wedding crew were traveling together on a coach and a van. It’s about 75 guests, so a big crowd.
Back in October 2016, I got a new driver license (pictured below on the right) because it had been eight years, and my current license was going to expire. A few months later in 2017, I was told I needed to get another new driver license and soon, because the Real ID was going to be needed for travel.
“Pah to that!” I said, and got a passport so I could use my not-Real ID license for its full time period.
Well, the deadline to travel with a Real ID was extended and extended, and if I’d been a May birthday instead of an October, I could have used that license for the full eight years because May 2025 was the real, true, final deadline (although I read that they would let people through if they didn’t have a Real ID after May…).
I didn’t do any flying between the real, true, actual deadline in May and today, and so I met my goal of getting the full eight years out of my license.
Here’s to the new one on the left. So very shiny and Real ID.
Matt is headed off for a Honk and Wave with Indivisible’s D3 unit.
He was able to reuse one of his signs.
New Seasons sends me a sheet of coupons now and again. Unlike most coupons, which are for things I don’t buy, these ones are actually good deals for things I like.
So I put them prominently on the refrigerator.
And then, as the weeks tick by, I cut them off one by one because I have not gone to New Seasons, because I have gone to New Seasons and forgotten the coupon, or because I have gone to New Seasons and brought the coupon but forgot to use it.
And eventually, there are no coupons on the refrigerator.
And then the cycle begins again.
We took our traditional timer photo before leaving our yurt at South Beach State Park. This was a great location, nicely situated for all sorts of vacation fun.
On our way home, we stopped at a lookout, and a fellow traveler pointed out a seal hanging out by himself.
So we got to see one more seal.
