Tag: general discussion

Can you guess the age of this container?

Did you guess 22 years? If so, you are correct. When I lived in Boston in the 90s, my friends Cindy and Sara came to see me from Idaho. It was a very fun trip. We did all the Boston things, gossiped, and had a ton of fun.

At one point, Sara went with me to Star Market (Stah Mahket) to pick up some more Lucky Charms (I had bought them special for their visit) and we spent long enough looking at the differences in food between Massachusetts and Idaho that when we returned Cindy wondered where we’d gone to.

One of the things not in that South Boston supermarket? Adams Peanut Butter. It was a hardship for me (the Smuckers natural brand just wasn’t as good) and Sara felt my pain. When she went home she sent me this five-pound jar from Costco.

It’s a good-sized container, and I’ve used it since that time.

And soon the container will be older than we were on that trip.

My first orders from Little Dear came in what we all probably think is standard packaging. A clear plastic bag with some paper stapled to the top. But Aimee Ray has been thinking about packaging and has upgraded to this situation.

Plain brown bag with stamp. Hole cut through the bag with a punch to let people see what’s inside.

Closed with a sticker.

Inside, all was neatly folded.

It was great to not have to throw out any plastic. I would like the retailers of the US (and those around the world) to follow her lead.

Look at all the paper things I shuffled through before I voted. This doesn’t include the online resources I used as I was doing my research. This is why voting by mail is a-mazing. When I used to have to go to a polling place, I scribbled notes on a piece of paper and hoped I covered all the right things.

This was a creative mailer. You’ll never guess what conclusion was.

My favorite question was “Who killed Packy?” Because while I think Packy died from old age and standard substandard zoo conditions for elephants, I know that point was brought up because Metro once promoted a bond measure that would build an off-site home for the elephants at the zoo. And then when it passed they never did! I’m still salty about that.

From the future, I can tell you that though I did vote for Metro’s Transportation Wage Tax (even despite being salty about the elephants) many people agreed with the sentiments of this flow chart and the measure didn’t pass.

Recently, Fred Meyer revamped their check stands in a way I find ridiculous. The checkers can no longer bag at their stations. Instead they must put everything on the conveyor belt to the end. This would be fine if 100% of the time there was a bagger, but in reality 95% of the time I’m in the store, there is no bagger.

In that case, the checker must walk around to the end and bag all the items. (I just bag my own, but not everyone does that.) Then they must walk back to their area. It’s a stupid, inefficient waste of time and clearly no one asked the people working what would make sense for them.

They also made it so the back half of the check stand is open, where once it was not. This also turns out to be dumb because: global pandemic. And so now we have these plexiglass structures.

Eight days ago, Concordia, a private college located in northeast Portland, announced that the school was closing. Everyone in the middle of their programs—preservice teachers, nursing students, students with one or two semesters left—would need to find a new college to attend. Not two years from now, not after a year, but after the completion of this semester.

The board knew this was coming, but they said nothing. Billboard space continued to be bought, prospective students still toured the school. Tuition payments were still expected.

The school is run by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. By withholding important information from tuition paying students, they stole their students’ money.

Concordia built a beautiful campus in Northeast Portland. But I’ve always had trouble with the organization that runs the school. With this move, they’ve showed their true colors and they aren’t looking very Christian.

Matt’s mother is in town to look for a condo.  I went along because I love looking at houses. Here are two pictures from the day.

From the fifth floor roof garden of a place in Goose Hollow. This deck looks over the Alliance Francaise, which is housed in a grand old building. 

In a complex in the Pearl, I found that Amazon delivery drivers are ignoring the stated rules, just like they do at my work. The bank of mailboxes in the stairwell is not “the mailroom” so stop treating it as if it is!

We viewed about 12 properties over two days and Linda found one to make an offer on.

Just when I think I’ve read the last obituary of someone born the same year as my grandmother, another one pops up. Hazel sounds like she had a lot of loss in her life, but met it forthrightly.  Good going, Hazel.

She also lived long enough to see her name go out of fashion and come back into fashion.  I know several Hazels among the under-10 set.

I was reminded by editor Graydon Carter that this was his last issue of Vanity Fair. It took me a long time to read this issue. It was so long that the new issue appeared on the racks at the checkstand before I had finished reading this one. “Whoa!” was my reaction. The new issue has a completely different look.

Let’s review the Graydon Carter era style.

This is the classic Oscar Issue, where the page folds out to show a variety of big Hollywood actors, some of which have not been nominated for Oscars, presumably because they shoot the spread earlier than the nominations are announced.

We’ve got full-body spreads, and floating type. A quick Google Image search of “vanity fair covers” shows that while there are some face-only covers, most of them are either from the navel up, or full body shots. There’s also a bold use of color and lighting that makes things crisp instead of arty.

I also love finding the tiny type quote on the front of every cover. This one says: “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.” –G.K. Chesterton. The quotes sometimes add extra illumination to the person on the cover, or a story listed on the cover.
Here’s the new cover, with editor Radhika Jones at the helm.
It’s so very different!  Even though (I’m pretty sure) it’s taken by the same photographer. We’ve got a very close-up picture of Lawrence’s face, a very soft focus and half in shadow. Our floating text has disappeared, herded over to the sides of the cover. Compare this picture with the last time Jennifer Lawrence was on the cover in 2016.

This new cover was simultaneously off-putting–it’s Vanity Fair, not an art magazine!–and also instantaneously made the old style of covers look really garish and out of date. I’ll probably settle into this new style, but I will miss hunting for the tiny quote on the cover.

Side note: it used to be that when I was subscribed to magazines, my subscriptions would arrive before the magazine appeared on the newsstands (or, since there aren’t really newsstands anymore the racks in the checkout line at the grocery store.) Now, I see the new issue on the stands sometimes two weeks before my copy arrives in the mail. I can’t tell if this is just a Vanity Fair thing, or if there’s some new magazine strategy wherein magazines are hoping subscribers will purchase the magazine forgetting it will be arriving in the mail. At any rate, I think subscribers should be rewarded by having the first crack at the magazine, not have to be the second-class citizens waiting.