The snow started on February 13, and 15 days later, it’s still in evidence.
I have a soft spot for parking lot snow piles, even as gritty and gross as they are. My parents used to let me scale them when I was little. To a five-year-old, they were huge mountains.
In the normal world, I don’t go to the movies on Christmas, because I wouldn’t want to go to work in Christmas Day and I don’t think my actions should support other people having to go to work on that day. But this is a pandemic, all the theaters are closed, and Wonder Woman 1984 is opening on HBO Max on Christmas Day!
So we bought our selves a one-month subscription to the channel, and prepped for a Christmas Day treat.
I made a cheesy pizza roll appetizer I’d had my eye on for years, Matt broke out the cheese from the gift basket his uncle sent, I mixed up a colorful cocktail, and we settled in for the next Wonder Woman installment! Here’s my review.
Since we are quarantining this year, Matt and I will not be doing the usual, which is going to Aunt Carol’s house for dinner and stockings. Instead, we went to find the Bakelite Santas that Chris Willis (@ChrisWillis) has been installing in various Portland locales for 10 years. We pondered the clue he gave us and set out for Westmoreland where we wandered about until we saw a faint pink glow coming from an empty building.
The Santas were marvelous!
This was our first time seeing them. They don’t usually wear masks, but this year is a special year. We got to find six mask variations.
This was a very fun break from our routine. Here’s more about the project.
Mom wanted to give her neighbors some cookies and, when searching the internet, found someone’s great idea to turn a heart-shaped cookie upside down and make a Santa. Using just the star tip, some frosting, and jimmies, red hots, and chocolate chips, we made these darling little creatures.
These are also historic cookies because while we were making them, I got a call offering me a job as a full-time copy editor.
Jude Deveraux was one of the romance novelists I cut my teeth on in the 80s. I suspect I haven’t read this book (it was published in 2002) but I enjoyed how finding this book in a Little Free Library reminded me of that time in my life.
Also, I looked up Deveraux on Wikipedia and discovered that her eight-year-old son was killed in 2005 and that a psychic stole all her money. That’s not a happy ending for a romance writer.
The Filmspotting podcast had fun events planned at different locations around the country this year. Alas, pandemic. But they’ve started a new monthly event, an online movie trivia game.
For $20, I got to log into the game, was put in a group (We named ourselves Adam’s Manimals) and then we did our best to answer the two rounds of trivia questions. There was a lightening round too, where we had to pick one person from our team to answer quick questions. The topic was Marvel heroes/actors. The person was given the name of the superhero and had to name the actor. We got out in the second lightening round with Vision. I couldn’t think of Paul Bettany’s last name, and neither could our point person.
We did great in the first round, and then not so great in the second round. Still, it was a fun time and I enjoyed working with my team to answer the trivia questions.
Here’s a screen shot of one point in the trivia. Can you find me?
I’m looking down because I was embroidering.
I needed an afternoon off, so I rode my bike to the Grotto, where I passed a very peaceful couple of hours. Some things I saw:
This statue, which I only took a picture of because Matt’s brother is named Thad.
This great brass casting.
The difference between the stones in the labyrinth. The lighter ones are the path, the darker ones are the lines.
Because Filmspotting decided to do an Ouevre-view of Christopher Nolan’s work before Tenet was released, I was well set up to discuss all of Christopher Nolan’s non-Batman films for the LAMBcast. Here’s a sheet of my talking points.
This was a fun episode to record and is a very long episode to listen to.
If memory serves, I was headed to Walgreens to return a Redbox DVD.
I like the look of this house, though the appearance of a backhoe has me worried that soon this house will not be. Hopefully they are doing some renovation.
This is a fun message.
Here’s a two-part window display. The girl blows hearts that form a rainbow.
To a boy on the other side of the door.
I love a good random art find.
As mentioned, I found a heap of postcards in a Little Free Library during our Irvington walk earlier this month.
Two of them had been written, sent, and received. I enjoyed reading old correspondence, and thought the internet would too. Here’s the first one.
I love that this was sent to what I assume are coworkers, and that those coworkers work at the Central Library.
V. had no idea when they wrote this, but in a mere 34 years this postcard would find a new reader.
First of all, this is a damn well written postcard. I can tell that Judy has probably been to France and talked of how fashionable people were. I hope she wasn’t too disappointed to learn of the decline. And I know that Paul likes French wine. Perhaps V. brought home a bottle to share.
And in so few sentences, so many interesting details! V. knows how to pick the best of traveling to report on.
Here is the second card:
I love that Sinclair Lewis stamp. He looks so much like an author.
I looked up the address and you can see it here. I checked Portland Maps to see if possibly MC Lamb might still live there, and found that the property is owned by Reach Community Development. I can’t tell if they owned the house in 1987 or not.
Reading this, I feel Paul’s pain. I hate when I want to send a certain image, or even certain genre of image to someone in postcard form and the museum doesn’t oblige.
It sounds like Paul spent his time well, though I can’t tell if Paul himself liked the Getty. He was excited about Benny Carter. Who, if I’ve got the right one, died in 2014. Actually, I don’t think that’s the right one. He started painting in 1991. It might be this Benny Carter. Paul could have gotten off topic and switched to musicians. Postcards can do that to you.
It’s also occured to me that this Paul might be the same Paul who liked wine on the previous postcard. But how did he get a postcard he sent?
That was a fun trip down other people’s memory lane! Thanks anonymous postcard donor. I wonder if you even know you gave away those cards.
