Month: February 2013

Fuller’s Coffee Shop


Fuller’s is a coffee shop located near where I work.  They make their own bread and jam and probably a lot of other things.  The waitresses are of the “hon” variety.  Everyone sits at the counter, because there are no booths.  They don’t take credit cards, their menus are laminated standard diner fare and you can buy rolls of mints and candy bars at the counter.  They open at six AM, god love ’em.  They are old-school all the way, the Pearl District before it was the Pearl District.  Fuller’s is a restaurant that delights me.

Somewhere along the way, someone created an iconic drawing of people sitting at the counter.  The original hangs on the wall of the restaurant, and the drawing has migrated to shirts, including the shirts the staff wears.  Today, walking by after they had closed, I caught one of the employees sitting at the counter, wearing the shirt picturing people sitting at the counter.  Beautiful.

More fun from the Parade Magazine

If you don’t want to make any chair a cozy one, perhaps instead you need a magic pancake pan?
I think my favorite part of the ad says “You can make: French Toast, Grilled Cheese, Eggs Over Easy, Crepes and more!”

Then, there was a short article on a new film about the Bible.  Read this excerpt and guess what my favorite part is:


Did you guess this:  “Adds Roma Downey, 52, who plays Mary, ‘We wanted the audience to think, ‘I know these people.'”
Well, Roma Downey, I can’t say I knew Mary, but I can say that she sure as hell wasn’t FIFTY-TWO YEARS OLD when she gave birth to Jesus.

Seriously, is anyone in Hollywood sane?

Where were these nine years ago?

When I wanted to start keeping a five-year diary (one page per day, four lines per year, five years on each page) I looked everywhere for one, including Powell’s and the Internet.  Nothing really worked, so I made my own.  What does Powell’s have today on their shelves? More than five different kinds.
 
This one looked promising.
 
I know someone who would like this one.

I’ve still got the rest of 2013 and all of 2014 to finish my current diary, but I’m tempted to buy one of these and hold it in reserve, just in case the drought returns at the end of 2014.

House and lot.


I’ve had my eye on this house since I moved to the neighborhood because it’s right by downtown Kenton, plus it’s a tiny house on a huge lot.  It looked like old people lived there and I worried they would die or move before I could buy it from them.  I could do a lot with a lot that size, even with that big tree plopped in an inauspicious place.

Sadly, the house went on the market in September and sold pretty quickly.  And there are suspicious signs that the huge lot will soon be no more and there will be a tiny house on a tiny lot and a huge new infill house on what was once the rest of the lot.

Phooey.

Postcard from Germany

I had planned to write an essay about why postcrossing.com is so incredibly cool.  Then I would post this essay before I got my first postcard.  But life intervened and my first postcard has arrived.  So here is the short version of why postcrossing.com is so incredibly cool.

You go to postcrossing.com and you register by picking a username, giving the site your address and perhaps uploading a picture.  Then you tell the site that you want to send a postcard. The site kicks out an address from somewhere in the world and also gives you a code to put on your postcard.  You read the profile, pick out a postcard you think the person would like, write, address, stamp and add the code.  Then you mail it and wait.  Because the waiting is the hardest part, Postcrossing lets you send up to five postcards at a time.  When the person receives your postcard, they will upload your code and add a quick message to you via the site.  This will be delivered by a cheery email that says “Hurray!  Your postcard has been received.” Then, the site puts you next on the list to receive a postcard from a random person somewhere on the globe.

It’s the best combination of  postal service mail and email/website I’ve ever seen.

Here’s my first card, from the Black Forest region of Germany.

The best part was getting it.  The second best part was that Matt read it aloud to me in German-accented English.

Should you want to participate in this wonderful invention, just go to postcrossing.com.  And then eagerly await as your mail becomes so much more exiting.