Month: November 2017

Three sentence movie reviews: Victoria and Abdul

This starts as an amusing cross-cultural romp, but makes an abrupt and harrowing turn halfway through, making for an uneven (and unpleasant) film.  The performances by Dench and Fazal were quite good, and the costumes nice.  Overall, the uneven nature made for a very disjointed movie experience.

Cost: free due to Regal Gift Cards
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12, with mom.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/victoria_and_abdul.html

Tiny House Expo

For my birthday, Matt bought me a ticket to the Tiny House Expo.  This was a very good present, as I love tiny houses. At the expo, people had a chance to tour several tiny houses as well as visit vendors.

I went early, which was a very good move. Tiny houses don’t hold very many people, which meant even at 9:30 in the morning, there were lines to get into each tiny house.

I loved the curved roof on this model.

Apologies for the blurry picture.  This model had just sold.  It cost $150,000.  (Yeesh!)

This person apologized because he forgot to bring his step.  This was fine by me, as I could easily take the big step up into the house.

Inside the step-less house.  I loved how the kitchen was not skimpy.

I liked the shed roof design of this house.  Plus, this company, Tiny Smart House, has a very fun Build-it-Yourself Program where you can build your tiny house on-site and take advantage of workshops, discounted group material buying.  So smart!

Here’s a tiny house camp trailer, which you can follow on Instagram @tinyhousecamptrailer.  They had a lot packed into a small space.

Here is a tiny house made out of a shipping container. It was very sleek.

I really liked how open and airy these big windows made this house feel.

Here’s the floor plan

A lot of houses were using this water system.

The teardrop camper people were there too.  I love me a good teardrop camper, especially one as nice as this one.

Hiddenbed of Oregon had a very good design.  During the day: desk.
At night: bed.  Nicely done. The desk stays flat, so you don’t have to disassemble and reassemble every night. Cost for a double bed? $2100.

You could also have your own geodesic dome.  I have affection for domes, as they were not uncommon in the landscape of my 80s childhood.

Overall, I had a great time.  Thanks Matt.

Also! The square lights at the Convention Center! So fun!  And my mind boggles at how all those things got into this building.  Convention center logistics must be no joke.

Different ways to park your bike

Let’s talk bike parking.  Here, we have two examples of bike racks you would see in Portland, Oregon: the wavy line and the staple.  You will notice that nearly every bike is parked perpendicular to the bike rack.
The reason that one should park perpendicular to the bike rack:  other people.  If we lived in a vast world with few people in it, then it would be fine to lock your bike parallel to the bike rack.  But we do not.  Bike racks get a lot of use, so you need to leave room for others.

This e-bike riders has not gotten the memo. By choosing to park their bike in this manner, they have denied another biker a spot on the rack.  Because these bike racks are full, this is a particularly egregious gaffe.
If one wants to lock up both wheels, this can still be done.  After my expensive back wheel was stolen (back in 1996) I started locking both wheels.  I lock the expensive back wheel to the rack and lock the less expensive front wheel to my bike frame. I figure two locks are better than one, especially with my economical bicycle.

New Building coming on NW 5th & NW Glisan

I spent some time staring at the photo accompanying this pubic hearing notice.  It didn’t seem to fit with the neighborhood.  After a time, I realized that it was an old notice–they had glued the new notice on top of it, and the rain had loosened the current notice which had slid and stuck.

So here’s what’s coming. And I found a great site: Next Portland: Architecture and Development in PDX.  Here’s what they have to say about this project. (Includes multiple renderings of the site with the new building.)

Here’s the site itself.  The green wall is a 1954-era building that would be removed. There is no mention of the removal of the Three Points Oil building, but that would disappear too.

Overall, it seems like a good use for this corner.  All other surrounding buildings would be preserved. Chinatown could use more residential units, so I’m calling this a win.

It will affect my walking route over the Steel Bridge during construction, though.  That will be annoying.

Three sentence movie reviews: Thor: Ragnorak

Chris Hemsworth is already quite stunning in the looks department,  is a fine actor, and thus, it seems unfair that he would also have great comedic timing.*  But he does, and this movie is delightful in a wacky way most Marvel movies aren’t.  Tessa Thompson is also fun to watch, as is the director as Korg.

Cost: free due to birthday gift cards
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12, with Matt

*I mean really, must he be good at everything?

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/thor_ragnarok.html

Payoff! November report

October was another stunning payoff month.  My total amount paid was $1148.49!  This includes my new regular monthly payment of $103.67 and an extra payment of $1044.82.

How much I paid toward the principal and how much toward the interest.  In October, I paid $12.59 to interest, the rest went to the principal. I still have not figured out how to have all the extra payment go only to the principal.

Where the money for my extra payments came from. I was able to make a $1000+ payment due to something called a “birthday.”  Though I did have a birthday list going in my head, no one asked me for it, so I got mostly cash, and some fun things like Junior Mints.  I used the cash to buy an awesome new clothes drying rack and the rest went to the Payoff! project. In addition, I had initially budgeted $297.61 in the Payoff! category.  Matt paid me $70.37 for food.  I cashed in my cash rewards balance on my credit card and got $103.67. I found a quarter. There was a leftover student loan allocation of $85.67.  I found an extra $1.50 matching my credit card amount to my credit card budget in YNAB, my budget program.  Due to my Thrifty Food Project, I had $98.97 left in my grocery account, and $5.81 leftover in dining out.  (It would have been more, but I got roped into overpaying for pizza by $19.)  I also had $35.27 leftover in my Random Fun Things To Do category, which is my miscellaneous spending.

A list of what I didn’t buy in order to put more money toward this project.  I had thought about buying some new slippers with my birthday money.  The slippers I currently have are cheap, and every time I put them on, I think fondly of the quality sheep’s wool  of my previous pair of slippers.  Those lasted three years.  These have already passed their prime after one year.  But I decided I could carry on.  In the spirit of the Payoff project, I can be happy that the $60-$70 I spent on my loan instead of new slippers, brings me that much closer to my Payoff! goal.

Any roadblocks I’m having toward this goal.  I haven’t had any roadblocks in October (no wonder!) but am, as usual, worried that I will grow bored with this project this month.

Three sentence movie reviews: Hell or High Water

When one spends several hours doing hard labor in service of a landscaping project, one does not have the gumption to do much else.  So it was that this film got a re-watch, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.  The casual “funny” racism of Jeff Bridges character still irked, but I still loved the layers of this story and how well it is told.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home with Matt, who really enjoyed it.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/hell_or_high_water_ver2.html
Fun fact:  Comancheria was the original title of this film. It seems that it worked better for the French people than the idiom Hell or High Water.

Side Yard Update

As the side yard project continues, the back yard becomes increasingly shabby-looking.  This will perhaps increase the motivation to complete the back yard (scheduled for April-June 2018) in a timely fashion.

We excavated four inches of dirt.  This became a dirt pile in the back of the back yard, though I did give away some to a neighbor on Next Door.  Excavating falls firmly into the manual labor category.  I found that I was quite efficient at the process, thanks to my years of double digging. When we were done:  a mostly even slick of muddy ground.

Here’s the view from the sidewalk.  It was exciting to finish the digging part of the project. But that lead to….

Four cubic yards of quarter-minus crushed rock, and 3.5 cubic yards of sand.  Our neighbor Leo was kind enough to let them deliver to his driveway, as we have none. This also meant we needed to move all this stuff in one weekend.

We got the crushed rock spread and found we had this much left.  I put it up as free on Craigslist, had someone contact me within 30 minutes and then she showed up at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning to take it away.  She was quick.  That just left 3.5 cubic yards of sand to move.

We put down landscape cloth and piled it into the side yard.  It was a lot of work.  Next up will be putting the sand in a layer, not a pile, and putting pavers into place.