Category: Life

Feeling festive? Had a hard day at the ol’ office? In the mood to abuse a substance?

Here are some things that I started mixing together in the past six months or so. I found that many of them taste surprisingly good, and thought I would share. Fair warning: all involve alcohol. Bottoms up, kids!

It’s been over a year in the making, and the most comprehensive Pencilhaven house project to date (and I happen to think we’ve done tons of house projects!). It all started last year when David started framing out the north section of our basement, a roughly half-octagonal space that had, until then, been used for storage of stuff and our tortoise, Chopper. We pull back the curtain on our new wine cellar!

Do you know what I am not?

Answer: Methodical.

Between 1997 and early 2009 I shot hundreds of rolls of reversal (slide) film. My usual culprit is Fuji Velvia 50, a super-lush film that has been snarkily labeled “Disneychrome” by its detractors for its almost unbelievable saturation.

Now I have to scan every slide photo I ever took in a mad dash against time.

I wrote this on Friday in Vancouver. – I am having a problem with displacement. To leave one city and arrive in the middle of another without preface or enough time lapsed for my softened mind to come to equilibrium–this is displacement. Like a hangover it stays with me longer than I would ever want; [...]

There are many, many ways to get dead here. The most obvious are gravity-assisted: sudden pits, false floors, collapsing beams. But there are also many serrated edges, rusty pointed pipes that reek of lockjaw and gangrene; ragged glass and naked edges of sheet metal. It is no wonder Baker County has stenciled DANGER PELIGRO on [...]

It’s harvest time at Pencilhaven. The air is full of excitement; our back deck a hive of industrious activity. For at least three to five minutes. This year we are going to make wine again! Our Pinot gris vine is in its third leaf (probably) and has matured its first crop. Our low-yield viticultural goals [...]

This is for anyone who is languishing on steroids and is puffy or greasy or bloated or sad or sleepless or hopeless or mad. This is what I felt like on steroids, one year ago: Granted, that is a particularly unflattering photo. This one was taken yesterday: So all of you on steroids: take hope. [...]

Where there’s not much Merlot anymore and the grapes often grow on trees. Thursday: My mobile phone rang and it was Cloud Four’s retirement-handling investment managers, again, calling to prompt me to continue on the apparently endless task of moving our company’s SimpleIRA plan away from the horror that is ADP. “Can’t talk,” I said, [...]

We are beginners. But keen to learn. This weekend, among a slew of interesting events, we distilled lavender in our house. Twice. On Saturday, David wrapped up a water skiing trip to Sauvie Island with a stop at the Sauvie Island Lavender Farm. He bought two bunches of “Gros Bleu” lavender, a month or so [...]

Right after I made a quiet pact with myself that I would be more attentive to correspondence (which encompasses not only my weird habit of written epistles, but also blogging and such tasks), I hit a patch in work and life of blackberry-vine-like density and sharpness. Anyone who grew up around here knows that you [...]