Primroses -- Happy Spring!

So a bit of sad news, at least it makes me sad. I had nine little terra cotta pots with primroses in them on the front porch in this sort of built-in grid structure and it was maybe a little extra-cute but I love them in the springtime. A few days ago three of them disappeared and I was talking to one of my neighbors and she had had three pots of pansies disappear from her porch. Today I noticed the other six primroses were gone... I mean, who steals potted plants from your front stoop? It significantly decreases my faith in humanity.

To the point

I mentioned in an email I had a new truck ornament I was going to post on here. No explanation needed.


Well, maybe a bit of explanation. When we went to see the White Stripes last summer there was a truck near our tent with this sticker on it, and I should've asked where it came from but didn't. I looked and looked for it on the net but couldn't find it in sticker form. I eventually found it as an image and printed it out and laminated it. I'm thinking I should make it into a sticker though... And Lindsey wants to make it into a tshirt. Surprisingly I've only had positive reactions so far, even out in the burbs. I'm expecting to get the finger at some point but it hasn't happened yet.

Myspace

Oh yeah, so part of why I've been not blogging is my fascination with myspace. My page is here : http://www.myspace.com/pdxtimmis

I'm so inconsistent

So yeah, I'm apparently having a hard time getting to the basement now. Work is really picking up so I'm busy with that. Not really an excuse, but whatever. Who really reads this anymore? It's more an exercise in self-indulgence. Lots of stuff has gone one lately but I'm tired and not so into it so I'll just do a cute boy. Johnny Knoxville. Need I say more?

One more thing

I just read Amy's blog and she mentioned V-day, so I realized I should mention we watched The Aristocrats (not planned, it came from Netflix) and it's hilarious but unbelievably filthy. Not all that romantic (kinda anti-romantic actually) but I made all finger food so I think it counteracted the filth. (Artichokes, cheese fondue, chocolate fondue)

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr.........

Okay, so I haven't been so good with the blog lately. It seems like I've been so busy but I'm not sure what I've been doing really. Working and being sick I suppose.

So I don't have a lot to report. It's cold and getting colder and clients are calling me worried their plants are going to die. I don't think it's going to be all that bad. Of course, it was 20 degrees when I woke up this morning.

One of my friends (Hi Melissa!) got me into myspace.com so now I have yet another reason to hang out in the basement and type. As if this and friendster and the internet in general weren't enough. I'll post a link to the myspace thing when I get it together. It's still in its infancy at this point.

Oh, and my boy Jeremy Bloom apparently didn't do so well at the Olympics unfortunately. Maybe the NFL draft will go better? (Any excuse for a photo :) Especially a wet one. I guess it's an ad for something. Who cares really?)

Half paying attention....

So I figured I'd check in but Invasion (link here) is on so you only have half my attention at best. I think I originally started watching because of Eddie Cibrian: but now I'm fully addicted. It's much more sci-fi than what I usually watch but I'm sooooo hooked. Check out the link; one of the characters has a fake blog on the official site that's kind of fun.

Other than all that, my good story of late is house o' death related as usual. Sunday was some sort of Asian New Year's celebration we all had to go to drum up business from that segment of the population. There were several hundred people there and we (the house o' death employees) were the the only non-Vietnamese save two. They sat us down directly in front of some very large speakers so we spent three hours having speeches and songs in Vietnamese blasted at us at a volume that would make your ears bleed. The high point was the food was pretty good and all vegetarian so I didn't have to worry about what I was eating.

The other news (again, for those of you elsewhere) is that the rain has stopped and we're actually getting some sun. It kinda hurts your eyes, but I'm not complaining. And business is looking better finally. And no more house o' death as of the end of the month. Yay!

Put a TV in the basement and look what a good blogger am I!

Okay, so I moved our extra TV to the basement (where the computer is) and now I'm getting better about email and blogging because I can watch the news or whatever while I do stuff on the puter. Brilliant!

So I went to work at the house of death today and there was this random story cut out of a local paper about this. It's a kitten born with just one eye and no nose. Completely bizarre.


More about it here... It's actually kind of sad.

So we watched the jackass on the TV for the State of the Union after Matthew got home. Frightening. Then I heard today that Cindy Sheehan got arrested and yanked out of the House of Representatives for wearing a shirt protesting the war. (Story here.) A woman who was the wife of a Republican congressman was also removed for wearing a shirt that said "Support the Troops". (Clearly an anti-Bush message since he doesn't support them with anything other than lip service.) Someone needs to give King George a reality check.

Now I feel a little better

So after my last post I checked on Amy and Daniel's blogs (they inspired me to start mine) and they last posted in November and October respectively. So I'm not the worst blogger ever :)

And... my boy JT has a couple movies in the works. One is Alpha Dog (coming out Feb 24) and the other is Edison (coming out sometime later?). They've both been talked about forever so I'm excited to see if he can act. Of course, if he can't, that won't stop me from seeing the films.

Speaking of movies, I've seen Capote, Walk the Line, and Brokeback Mountain in the last month and they're all good. I think Phillip Seymour Hoffman should undoubtedly win the best actor Oscar but I liked Brokeback Mountain better overall so that's my vote for best picture. I think I'm gonna go with Reese for best actress. I thought she was amazing and I kept forgetting it was her as I watched the movie. We also finally saw March of the Penguins and it was almost unbearably cute but I loved it.

Good god, does anyone still check in?

I know I've been the most horrible blogger ever.... I've been busy with a variety of things and beaten down by the winter blahs. For those of you not in Portland, I think it has rained on 39 of the last 42 days. Absolutely miserable.

Matthew is in Nebraska; his grandfather died this week and he flew back Saturday and will be back tomorrow. It's so weird to not have him around -- the house seems very empty somehow. I'll be happy to pick him up tomorrow night.

I finally got my new street trees Saturday, and they're much bigger than I had hoped for. Quick summary... The trees we had were not only ugly but also not functioning as street trees should; i.e. shading the street and catching and/or filtering rainwater. Here they are....


And the new trees:


I know they're kinda hard to see in the photo but they're about 12' tall Katsura trees. No one knows what they are, so here's a link about the trees. The reason they're my favorite tree is because in autumn just as the leaves are falling they smell like burnt sugar or cotton candy.

Okay, I know the cute boys are the draw for a good portion of you and I have a good one this time. It's Jeremy Bloom. He's an Olympic mogul skier slash college football player slash model.... His website is here.... And here's why you should be interested :)



That's about what I have for now. Looking forward to seeing what the jackass has to say in his State of the Union speech tomorrow, which I'm taping cuz I have to go get Matthew at 7 pm. (I just assume everything I do is being monitored at this point so I'm not scared anymore :))

So it's been a while....

I knew it had been some time since I last posted but didn't realize it had been so long. On top of that I just did some sort of jackass thing that erased all of my bookmarks and I apparently can't get them back :(

So here's my life lately:

Saturday I spent the day mostly hauling cow manure around and dumping it places.

Sunday I went to my other job for the winter, the house of death. (AKA the funeral home my friend Jen manages, Sunnyside Little Chapel of the Chimes/National Cremation Service/various other names owned by the evil corporate conglomerate funeral service company SCI) There I served lunch and punch to Buddhist monks.

Today it was back to the house of death to work on accounts receivable. There was a service in the chapel all day so people in and out and a body on display in a casket.

Tomorrow and Wednesday it's back to gardening.

My life even fascinates me :)

I meant to do more but I'm tired and my new Netscape is giving me a headache.

Monitors, creepy dolls, etc...

Oh, what a week. Today is my first day off in almost two weeks. I started back part-time at the house of death this week. The drive is a bit on the long side normally, but tolerable. Thursday is was really rainy (surprise!) and it took me an hour and a half to get home (for you locals, from Sunnyside). Wednesday it took me nearly as long to get home from Lake Oswego. I hate sitting in traffic more than almost anything.

So our monitor has been acting up forever. It's got to be 10 years old or something close to it, and for the last year or so it has been getting all... well... rolly or something that makes it unviewable and then it shuts off. Annoying, certainly, but if you smacked it real hard it would behave. The last couple weeks it degenerated into working for five or so minutes, then rolling, then shutting off. No amount of smacking seemed to help. (I have the sore hand to prove it.) Thus my lack of blogging lately. I can't get far in 5 minutes and my patience is about nil at this point. Since we're still poverty-stricken, a new monitor isn't really in the budget so I got on craigslist to see if I could find a free one. I did, but the guy flaked so no dice :( I was gonna head to the Goodwill up the street but I found a brand new, in the box one for $30. No smacking required.

Sooo... The creepy doll. This ad has been sitting on my computer desk for a while waiting to find its way here.

I don't think the text is going to be readable, so I'll give you some highlights.

"Look at his face. Doesn't he look like a real baby? Go ahead and pick him up. Fully as large as a newborn and artfully jointed to sleep blissfully or snuggle in your arms, 'William' captures forever that magical day your own little boy came into the world. "

"'William' is lovingly handcrafted from our trademarked Gentle Touch (TM) vinyl that exactly captures the look of a newborn. From his closed eyes and chubby cheeks to his wee hands and creased knees, every detail is a joy to discover." (I had to get the "wee" in there for Lottie. And that Gentle Touch vinyl... Imported!)

"If you are not delighted with 'William', we will gladly buy him back for the purchase price any time within 100 days..." (Buying a "him" isn't legal anymore, is it? Maybe it's okay with babies. I dunno.)

Anyway, they have a website. Many of their dolls are even more frightening. You must go look. It's www.paradisegalleries.com

Ummm... I think that's about it. Oh, wait, cute boy. I'm going with James Marsden, because we just saw The 24th Day, which he was in.

Also, with the dark hair and blue eyes, he reminds me of someone who lives in my house who would be a cute boy of the week if he didn't have some irrational fear of his picture being on the internet.

Netflix

Today I spent the day working in the rain and wind moving manure around. Humbling, but you have to pay the bills somehow.

So this is why I love the Netflix... A couple weeks ago I got an email survey from them and for some reason I filled it out and sent it back. All very positive, I've had no complaints. Then they asked me to take part in a focus group. By participating I'd get 6 months of free Netflix, and it would only take half an hour. I jumped on that one. Now I'm gold for half a year. Next thing was to go to an interview to be in a commercial, which I did today. I don't even know if it pays anything, but it sounds like fun. And I'm guessing this is how I get discovered, and become America's next top (male) supermodel :)

If you don't already have Netflix, by all means look into it. www.netflix.com And if you choose to sign up for it, say I sent you. I think I get a free month or something.

I'll let you know if I end up being famous...

Rain rain rain rain....

For those of you not in the Pacific Northwest, it's been raining a LOT here this last week. Like inches per day. I know we have a rep as being rainy, but it's usually more drizzle and clouds and mist, which I have no problem working out in. Downpours and 30 mph winds are a different story. It sucks.

On a happier note, it stopped raining for like 5 hours in the evening on Halloween so we got a reasonable number of trick-or-treaters. It's always fun to see all the kids in their costumes, and the surly teenagers. We carved a couple pumpkins...

Mine:

Matthew's:

We also dressed the dogs up as usual. These are recycled costumes from a couple years ago so some of you may have seen them, but they're so appropriate if you know the boys.

Diablo: I have no idea what prompted this face but it seemed to fit the costume.
Jackson: Hard to tell, but that's a halo, some wings, and a very unhappy dog.

I considered trying to get a costume on the fat angry kitty but I have this strange aversion to being bitten and/or scratched. That's about all I have to report for now, as dinner is about ready. More soon, including how much I love Netflix...

The seed thief

When we moved in here and I started rearranging the backyard there was a volunteer sunflower (well, a lot of volunteer sunflowers) that came up. I let one grow and grow and grow until it had a gigantic head on it. I figured it'd feed the birds come fall or winter. As soon as the seeds ripened they seemed to be going pretty fast, and in rows from the top like a person would eat corn on the cob. I never saw a single bird eating them though. Then, one day I look out the kitchen window and see this....
He (or she) ate every seed on there within a week.

Other goings-on

Since my life doesn't revolve exclusively around looking at internet sites about cute boys, here are some other things I've been paying attention to lately. We just found out a few days ago that we now have Logo, one of the cable channels that cater to the gays. It's real fun... Here's their website:
http://www.logoonline.com/

In other news, I'm watching with growing pleasure the seeming downfall of the Republicans in general. They've found themselves in a heap of trouble lately, and I think it's about time. All this time listening to Air America wondering if ANYONE was ever going to be held accountable. It's very gratifying. I'd love to see the lot of them in prison somewhere.

Other than that, just a lot of working. I'll get some stuff about that up on the other blog soon.

Crawling out from under my rock

So yeah... I've been a bad bad blogger. The truck fiasco sent me into a tailspin that I'm just now working my way out of. It's fixed. I got a "real" mechanic to take it on and I'm so so so happy to be driving again. Two months is a long time to not really be making any money. I don't want to dwell on it though.

Sooooo... Cute boys of the week (or whatever time period is appropriate at this point). Since I was spending a lot of time at home and watching a lot of CNN during the hurricanes, Rob Marciano.
He used to be the weatherman on channel 2 here in Portland, and no pictures I could find really do him justice. Given I'm a weather and news junkie, present me with a weather/news guy who looks like that.... *sigh*

So my other cute boy of the whatever is Josh Duhamel. You may know him from "Las Vegas" or Gap ads or "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton".

If you google his name and go to images you can see his butt :) Anyway, I'll be better about posting now. I promise.

Dragonfly plus a truck update

So the other day I walked outside and found this amazing dragonfly on the fence by the garage:

It doesn't even look real, huh? A friend (Leslie) told me once that dragonflies are a symbol of eternal youth or something like that so I figure it's a good sign. This guy (or gal) was hanging out on the fence for a few hours and then took off.

The truck is STILL not fixed. I don't have much to say about it anymore, except here's a link to what other people have said about Ryan (my mechanic).

http://portland.craigslist.org/aos/

You have to look for the posts specific to Ryan's Automotive and they seem to be pretty fairly split between positive and negative. I actually posted a positive after he fixed my brakes... I think the big jobs are just more than he can handle. Regardless, I'm now about to lose new clients in the deal, and I'm pissed. This repair that was supposed to take a week or so started in July.

Finally, I know I've mentioned it before, but I implore people to do anything they can to help the people whose lives have been ruined by Hurricane Katrina. I'm a news junkie and what I see on CNN and everywhere else is sickening. I'll try to keep my feelings about W out of it, but I think the response of our government is embarassing at best. We're not so good at helping brown people, especially when they're our own brown people.

The Dog Whisperer

So I went to a wedding at the coast this weekend, Cannon Beach specifically. My friends Michelle and Aaron were getting married, and their dog Tara

was the ring bearer. I was assigned to manage the ringbearer and gave myself the title of "dog whisperer". We've dog-sat Tara a couple times before, and god knows I love me some dogs... The weather and the coast were perfect and beautiful, as usual. I love the Oregon coast more than I can tell you.

Here's part of the wedding party (bridemaids... Jen and Karie)...


And the bride and my charge for the event.

Yay! Food!

Our brand new local New Seasons opened today! For those of you not in Portland, it's a locally owned chain of grocery stores with lots of local and organic food. Here's their website: http://www.newseasonsmarket.com/ Ours is the Arbor Lodge location. As an added bonus, having one in your hood seems to be help to increase property values, especially when your hood was as deprived of grocery stores as our is. Anyway, very exciting...

Less exciting is the truck situation. Yesterday was a month without driving it. The mysterious Ryan didn't show up today at all, or call. Again.