Tag: general discussion

Complementing staff

Below is an email I sent to the Dr. Martin’s store after successfully purchasing a pair of boots. In 2012 I am going to make an effort to use those handy web site comment forms to leave praise for employees who are doing a good job. As someone who worked for many years with the general public I know how hard it is, and how a few sentences of thanks can really lighten your day. Actually, I don’t really know that, seeing as people only complained about me, but I can imagine.
Maybe you want to start offering thanks for some of the service people in your life too? It doesn’t take long and like this man’s experience, can have good effect on you!
Dear Dr. Martin’s

I’ve been in the market for boots for some time and have had trouble finding a pair that fits my calves. Shopping for boots is an embarrassing and demoralizing situation, mostly because the sales people who bring me the boots are then witness to the zipper stopping short several inches from its intended target.

After a lackluster sales experience in another store, I stopped by your Portland, Oregon location. There I discovered the Phina boot which neatly bypassed the calf situation by utilizing pretty kick-ass buckles throughout the length. In addition, I had the great help of Callie, who was attentive, but did not hover and did not make me feel awkward. I thank both Callie for her sales technique and your company for making such an awesome boot.

Sincerely,
Patricia

Infill, is there another way?

I’m a fan of infill. As someone who was not born and raised in this great city, but happily live here, I support people who love Portland moving to Portland. Projections are that roughly one zillion people will be living her by 2050 and I want my compact urban environment to be maintained for all those newcomers. I’m not a fan of sprawl. I don’t really care that the infill houses don’t match the existing ones in the neighborhood or that infill houses look alike. After all, a lot of neighborhoods don’t have “matching” houses and most neighborhoods have banks of houses that were clearly built by some developer of the past as a row of them will be strikingly similar.

Infill in Portland mostly looks like variations of this:

Houses are 1500-2500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths with a garage and a tiny front and back yard. My problem with infill is that this standard 3 bedroom/2.5 bath doesn’t really make sense for a lot of Portlanders. For a family of four, 3 bedroom houses are great. But there are an awful lot of Portlanders who are not a family of four. There are also an awful lot of Portlanders who would rather have less house and more yard. I’m wondering if we can’t look to a different model of infill for them.

One of my favorite things about North Portland is that it has a lot of very small houses on big lots. What worries me is that these are not seen as being worth preserving. Often, when they go on the market, they are bought by someone who tears them down and replaces them with the standard infill house.

But what if the tiny house, large lot became an infill choice? Tiny houses are much easier to maintain, heat and cool. If placed on a standard sized lot, they leave room for a large garden. They are all about sustainable. And they are cute. Take a look of some of these:

The Sebastarosa is 750-847 square feet:
The Enesti is 746-843 square feet:
The B-53 is 777-874 square feet:
All of the above tiny houses can be found on the Tumbleweed Tiny House website, which is also where the pictures came from. Somewhere in Portland there must be an infill developer who wants to focus on tiny house infill for the rest of us.

Workaround for getting a google map into a blog post.

Sometimes I need something off the Internet that won’t let me copy and paste. In this example it’s a Google Map. There is probably a quicker way to do this or some program to buy that will do it for you, but here is my way:

Get the map centered the way you want it

Push the “print screen” key.

Open Paint (in Accessories)

Paste in the picture (I use the control-V keys)

Save As JPEG

Close

Find wherever you have saved it and right click

Choose open with Microsoft Office Picture Manager

Crop to proper size

Probably compress

Insert into document.

The end.

Sun in the morning.

Every day I catch the 7:08 at Kenton and for the past few months it has been dark when I got on the train. But we’ve reached that magical time of year when light returns to the morning. Here’s Paul at 7:00 on a clear winter morning. A month before, he would have only appeared dimly through the darkness. I’m trying not to get too attached to the morning sun, as daylight saving time is coming soon and will plunge me back into darkness again.

Yep, it’s Sunday night

Grumpy feeling that the math homework isn’t done? Check.

Annoyance that I still have to rummage up some food for at least the next two days? Check.

Irritated that I didn’t have enough time to work on the blogs this weekend? Check.

Irked that my evenings this week will once again be more busy than I would like? Check.

Bothered by the fact that I can’t have as much time doing the things I want to do as I want, or the things I have to do will never get done? Check.

It’s no wonder I’m never excited for the end of the weekend.

A case for not having too many clothes

It was a very social weekend and unfortunately, I stayed home from work today to finish my homework. The boyfriend was also social and didn’t do his laundry, which is usually a weekend task for him. Instead, because I was home, I did it. I got points. I sorted the piles (there were many) and eventually washed ten loads of laundry. Our washer is small, but ten loads is a lot of laundry and that is one week of clothing.
Here we witness the tyranny of labor saving devices. Back when everything had to be hand cranked–or, god forbid, boiled–no one would have this much clothing. But now that washing is so “simple” we just buy more clothing. We then need more time to do our “simple” task and, whoosh, the purported free time is gone.

What’s the minimum amount of clothing you could get away with?

Servants!

I love the Parade Magazine which comes in our Sunday paper as a supplement. It’s so insubstantial in its coverage, even when it is trying to be a weekend magazine of record. Every Sunday morning I read it while eating breakfast.

In today’s edition, I was interested to discover this ad selling a cookbook.

Here’s what got me: “With hundreds of servants at her command…” I’m not a fan of the over/misuse of the dot, dot, dot, but what really got me like a kick in the stomach was the term “servants.” How could Martha Washington afford those hundreds of servants? Oh yes, because she didn’t have to pay them because they were SLAVES!
I don’t judge Washington, Jefferson or any other of our historical, quasi-mythical “founding fathers” for their ownership of other humans. At the time it was what was done throughout history, and all over the world. To expect them to act otherwise would not be in keeping with the realities of the time. Slavery was a horrible part of our country’s history and we are still living with the ramifications today. But let’s not just gloss over it by referring to humans held in bondage as servants. I find it disrespectful and disturbing.

Middle of the night story

Sometimes when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night I tell myself stories. I sort of liked how this one started, but will never actually finish it, so if you would like to make a story out of it, you may.

There once was an Amazon warrior. The woman in question didn’t realize she was an Amazon, there not being a huge demand for warriors, much less female warriors in modern American life, but she had in inkling. Though she was short (those old myths always exaggerate everything) she was strong and fierce and while not stunningly beautiful she had a nice smile and breasts small enough that they wouldn’t get in the way of a bowstring….

Letter in response to article “Miserly Manor”

Since I’m not really making time to write for this blog, you can read this response I wrote to the article “Miserly Manor” by Dylan Rivera, published on 11/27/09

The original article is here (for a time, I would imagine.)

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/11/misery_manor_offers_super_effi.html

Dear Mr. Rivera,

Two phrases stuck out in your article about the so-called “green” house built by Scott Lewis.The first:“The current house has a dining room and living room separated from the kitchen and family room—extra space that isn’t necessary.”However, earlier in the article the house’s size is given at “nearly 4,000 square feet” which sounds to me like a tremendous amount of extra space not really necessary for a family of five.

The second phrase: “Lewis demolished a small mid century house from the site.” Both of these statements gloss over the troublesome American obsession with destroying (instead of retrofitting, or remodeling) what is already there and putting a much larger home in its place. I would argue that building a house that gives each person in the family 800 square feet (a size that, once upon a time, was not an unusual size for a home for a whole family, not one individual in the family) is not a green practice. Small houses are easier to heat, take fewer resources to furnish and probably strengthen family ties by increasing proximity. Could Lewis have retrofitted the existing house in such a manner? We will never know.

The vast majority of your readers will not have an opportunity to build a 4,000 square foot house, green or no. Scott Lewis felt his previous house was a source of “inner turmoil” because it didn’t use materials that are local or energy efficient. I believe that His uber-expensive, super efficient house is just a super efficient McMansion, and doesn’t really fit his green aesthetic.

Sincerely,
Patricia Collins