Tag: friends

Patton Oswalt at the Newmark.

Kelly got us tickets for Patton Oswalt for my brithday.  Today we go.  Thank Kelly!  (Also, I’m just now noticing that service charge!  Preposterous!)

I greatly enjoy the architecture of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts (PCPA) and the Newmark Theater is my favorite among the complex’s theaters. Its small and intimate and has simulated boxes as well as stars on the ceiling.

We were closer than the first row! We were actually sitting in rows of removable chairs where the orchestra pit usually is.  We were very close!  This is a non-zoomed picture.

And here’s a zoomed one.  Patton Oswalt is telling us he’s relieved to be in Portland.

I was quite transfixed by his belt buckle. 

This was a great show.  He chatted about all manner of topics, my favorite of which was his opining on the day where he had to visit the Post Office and the D.M.V. on the same day.  He told us it wasn’t the employees who were the problem, they were on it.  It was the customers who were all crazy.  Patton Oswalt feels my customer service pain!

Zoolights

Deborah and I visited Zoolights to see the choir she is usually a member of perform.  They sang Christmas songs and songs from their repertoire.

Then we walked around and took in the lights.  (And the animals.  We saw the baby elephant! He was, predictably, quite cute.)

This is a river with alligators and hippopotamus and other animals.

I grabbed a photo of this kid because he looked too young to have a Letterman jacket.  He struck me as maybe a freshman, maybe.  I looked a little closer and guessed from the early 1990’s dates on the patches on the jacket that it was perhaps first his father’s jacket.
(Letterman jacket side note.  I was checking the spelling and found this Portland Oregon store that made me want to get my own Letterman jacket. I want the all-wool with the sailor collar.)

Self portrait with Deborah. (And lights)

We sat and people watched and chatted under this great dragon.
It was a fun night.

Photo from October 1990, poem by Gary Soto

Another good one taken by Cindy.  That’s me on the left and H on the right in Pleasanton, California where we traveled with the marching band for competition during the autumn of our sophomore year.   I’m wearing fishnet stockings with zebra striped glow-in-the-dark Converse high tops. My friends and I were prone to wearing the fishnet/Converse combo from time to time.  That was the band trip that H arranged for all the boys in the band to sing “16 Candles” to me on my 16th birthday.

Also in the same photo album a poem/snippit of a poem by Gary Soto that I really liked when it was handed to me by Mrs. Brown, my awesome ninth grade English teacher.  Thank goodness I kept it, because I can’t find it anywhere online.

LOTR Extended Editions

“If I were going to watch all the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in one day, would anyone be up to watching them with me?”  So the query was posted and so people replied in the affirmative and so the Lord of the Rings Butt-Numb-A-Thon came to be.
Laurie and Burt provided us with three meals which was good, because we were watching movies from 9:00am to 10:00pm.  Here was the spread for Breakfast.  We also had sandwiches for lunch and tacos for dinner.

And we begin.

And we continue.  And some of us discover that sitting on the top part of the couch is preferable to the couch.

And so it ends, and I take a picture of the liquids that got me through my day.  Tea in the morning, water through the day, hot chocolate to get me through the last two-hour stretch.

I confess, I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, and it was rough going in the middle*, but I’m proud to say I did it.  There were nine of us (if you count Lily the dog) who watched all three movies.  We should get tattoos.

*I actually left to feed the cats simply so I could get up and walk around.  I even did lunges, my legs were feeling so dead.  Since I stand at work now, I really never sit down for long stretches any more.