Category: Structures

A Walk to Vancouver

A sunny day and an afternoon movie date in Vancouver. How best to get there? I could drive, but the traffic will be awful. I could ride, but then would have to get the bike back somehow and post-movie plans complicate this. Or! I could walk! Friend Kelly agreed to drive me back (we had another event to go to after our movie) and so I walked.

One of my favorite signs. How many miles of Interstate 5 are in Oregon? Why 308.

I could see all three mountains. Here, a shining Mount Hood.

A tiny view of Mount St. Helens peeking over Vancouver.

Mt. Adams was somewhere there, it just wouldn’t show up for its picture.
Thanks to Kelly for making my nice walk possible.

New Loo Ceremony.

The school took part in the First Flush ceremony for the newest Portland Loo. As usual, adding children to the mix was delightful.

Listening to the speeches.

Waiting to sing our songs

Tara is ready to lead the 4/5 chorus.

After singing, (“New Loo” performed by the 4/5 chorus to the tune of “Blue Moon.” Also, “Skip to my Loo” by the entire school) we did the first flush by doing a massive “all school” push that began in the K/1 grade blend and traveled up through the grades. Each student carefully–for the most part–pushed the arm of the student next to them all the way to the end of the line…

…where Julie passed off the flush to Tara and she ran inside and pushed the button. This resulted in a great photo that was in the Saturday Community Section of the Oregonian. Sadly, the photo is not included with the web site article.

The Oregonian’s video (which sadly includes an ad) has a slide show and the Skip to My Loo song.

Our Loo!

Have you heard of the Portland Loo? It’s a public toilet designed to avoid all the usual problems of public toilets. They’ve been pretty successful here, enough so that Portland is starting to sell them to other cities. Recently, the city has decided to install one in the North Park Blocks, directly across from the school at which I work. We are very excited about this because we are hoping it ends the practice of people using the playground or our parking lot as their bathroom. And today the loo is being installed!

There was a lot of preliminary work setting things up, but after that is done the loo itself is dropped into position. Here it is on the truck.

Hovering

Moving into position.

Almost there:

And, crack blogger that I am, I forgot to take a final picture. But you will see it when I show you the pictures from the First Flush ceremony, which will happen next week. In the meantime, look at the awesome design for the door on the loo. Apparently, each Loo’s door reflects the character of the area the Loo is located. The city asked the school children to create the design. We picked out a quote by Emerson and all the kids drew flowers. A selection of them were chosen and sent to the city and a woman came up with this fabulous design incorporating our flowers. We even got our own copy of the door to hang in our school, which is what you see here.

Do you want to read more about the Loo? Here’s an article from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/01/why-portlands-public-toilets-succeeded-where-others-failed/1020/

Two Hour Delay

Snow was forecast, but I didn’t get excited. We had some Tuesday, but it wasn’t sticking. Going to bed Wednesday night there were two scenarios: the temperature would stay low and a bunch of snow would drop on the Portland area. Or, the temperature would increase and we would get a bunch of rain. I woke up Wednesday morning, hearing the rain and I assumed that we had missed the snow entirely. But no! We got a couple of inches before the rains came!

And those couple of inches were enough to delay school for two hours. We started at 10:30 instead of 8:30. Of course, Wednesdays are also our early release day. We are done at 1:00. So school started at 10:30, the kids had ninety minutes of learning followed by 30 minutes of lunch and 30 minutes of recess. Then everyone went home. It was kind of a lame day. 31 (of 142) students were absent and I don’t blame them one bit.

Still, I did get some things done and had a nice nap before going to school. That was nice.

Why I can’t currently live in a tiny house.

The coat closet rod is full of MY coats. Matt’s are on the door.

From left to right:
  • Red rain slicker, for when it’s really pouring.
  • Bright yellow flagger coat I wear when bicycling
  • Tan mid-weight jacket and matching fetching cap
  • Cute jean jacket
  • Tan vintage car coat whose button fell off and I need to replace
  • Red vintage dressy coat with fabulous button
  • Vintage red wool coat for when the temperature is below 40 degrees (also includes fabulous black hat with built in scarf and matching thick suede gloves)
  • Cream cashmere blend winter coat for when the temperature is above 40 degrees (also includes cute checked cloth cap and leather gloves)

Ideally, I would have one coat that could go on the bike, dress up, dress down and become warmer and cooler as the temperature allowed. I’m sure such a coat exists, but I have yet to come across it, especially at my store of choice, Goodwill. But if I found such a coat, I would have to give up all the other ones, most of which I like a lot, for one reason or another.

Big ship

Man, what a gorgeous autumn day. I hope I appreciated it.

Often I see these big ships tied up (parked?) and wondered how they work. In town, near the bridges and the silos, they seem huge, but I bet on the ocean they seem very small. I wonder what it’s like to be on one, how many people work on them and what their work is like. I also see the comparatively tiny lifeboats on the side and can’t imagine ever needing to get into one. How does one find out what life on these ships is like?

Building Gone

When we last checked in with the site of the former club Satyricon, it was in the process of being torn down. I’m midway through a three week vacation, so I haven’t followed the daily progress, but I happened to be in the neighborhood today and so stopped by to update.

The building is completely gone, debris moved away and there begins to be a hole dug.

If you squint at the above picture you can barely see the little graffito in the middle of nowhere. Below is a closeup. My theory as to how it got painted in the middle of the wall? I think there was a window that was still operable when the building went up and someone opened it and muralized.

Demo of Satyricon

I knew that the Macdonald Center bought the building that housed the club Satyricon and were going to use it to house what used to be Outreach Ministry, before Outreach was absorbed into the Macdonald Center. I know all of this because Matt did a Jesuit Volunteer Year with Outreach and our friend Laurie works there still. What I didn’t realize was that the existing building would be torn down. This is because Outreach has existed in what I refer to as “the unfortunately painted building” in Old Town for quite some time. It’s a bit rough around the edges, so I just assumed that they would perhaps repaint the black facade and move everyone in. So it was quite a surprise to encounter this as I walked from the Max to work:

Even though I’m a great supporter of re-using and re-purposing existing structures, something about demolition of buildings nearly always is exciting to watch. Here we can see the last few hours in the life of the doorway.

And here a view of the back side of the building. I hadn’t realized it was as big as it was.

I’m unsure of how this graffito came to be on this wall, but now it is exposed for all to see.

To read more about Satyricon and the new building click here for an Oregonian article. (Demolition begins on building that once housed Satyricon Nightclub. July 27, 2011.)

And here is a link about the final concert at Satyricon. (Portland Nightclub Satyricon says farewell with series of reunion shows. October 16, 2010)

New plan for old comforter

Readers with long memories and ample room in the brains for the smallest detail of my exciting life will recall that I bought the blue duvet cover to put on the much loved, though wearing out Holly Hobbie comforter from my childhood. Well, as time went on, it became more apparent that the full-sized duvet cover was too much duvet cover for my not-really-full-sized Holly Hobbie comforter. But I had paid all this money–actually spent a gift card, so not really– and I didn’t want the blue duvet cover to go to waste, so what to do?

Eventually, the solution came to me. For years I’ve had a full-sized duvet that I never got around to buying a cover for. In fact, said naked duvet has been on my bed all along. Eventually, I had the “Eurika!” moment wherein I realized I could put the blue, full-sized duvet cover on the naked full-sized duvet! Then, I would be free to buy a (much cheaper) twin sized duvet cover for Holly Hobbie and continue on with my placid life.

All of this came to pass, as you can see: naked duvet, covered, Holly Hobbie ensconced in a new solid square print twin-sized duvet cover, which fits much better.

Phew!