The Mother of all Updates

So I haven't much felt like writing lately - and by lately, I mean the last four months. Unfortunately, there's been a ton of crap going on, so I'm going to attempt to update you here in no particular order. Ready?

I swapped my iPhone for a Blackberry Bold about a month ago. I loved the iPhone, but really missed having a full qwerty keyboard and missed having a Blackberry in general. I was able to sell the iPhone for just about what the Bold cost me, so no harm there. Unfortunately, this morning while brushing my teeth I heard a loud plop sound in the kitchen. I thought nothing of it and jumped in the shower. When I got out of the shower I went to investigate just what exactly Pants had knocked off the kitchen counter this time and found my shiny new Blackberry Bold lying face down in the water bowl. Yeah, completely submerged. To my amazement, it was still on, but there were a few very ominous signs. I dried it out as best I could and placed it in front of the heater to hopefully continue to dry out for the rest of the day. I won't truly know the full extent of the damage until I get back home tonight, but it doesn't look good.

Last weekend we had what was supposed to be a peaceful protest at a local mall that houses a notoriously bad pet store called Scamps. My co-worker, Matt, and I were to accompany the "Radical Cheerleaders". They were going to do a few "cheers" in front of Scamps and when we were asked by security to leave, we'd do so. Well, things didn't exactly go as planned.



Read more here.

I saw this great idea for turning an old iMac into a cat bed and thought I'd give it a shot. Turns out it works great! Here's a short clip of Bonnie sleeping in her new "iBed" and Pants wishing he had one.



There's more, but this is all I have time for at the moment. I'll type more later - like over the weekend, not May.

Mister

He has mixed feelings about his bed, but he's cute as shit when he's in it.

Snow in PDX

Snow for the second time this week. This one made for a long and slippery commute.

Spaghetti with Tater Tots and a Momma Dog

We've eaten Mexican food for dinner the last couple of nights in Grenada and since we were in Winona tonight we stopped by the Pizza Inn for a little Italian fare. Yum, yum. Obviously there wasn't any pizza that didn't have cheese or squirrel on it, but they did have a marinara sauce for pasta and tater tots. So that's what I had, spaghetti and tater tots. It was like I was 9 again.

We picked up a momma dog today running up a highway. We ran her in to the vet to see if he thought she was still nursing - unfortunately he thought she was, so we grabbed some dog treats and ran her back to where we grabbed her to hopefully try and follow her back to the puppies. With me on foot and Doll following a few hundred feet back in the pick-up, we set out. At first it went pretty slow - momma dog just sat there looking at me wondering why I smelled like bacon and if I was gonna share that bacon with her. Then for no real reason, she set off with me following as close as my out of shape legs would allow me to follow. Through a couple of barbed wire fences, a flooded field, then back out onto another road, I followed her for about two miles. The whole way along she was checking the garbage at the side of the road for food and looking back at me to make sure I was still in to, then she just stopped and didn't seem to want to go in any one direction. It was at that point we decided to take her back to the sanctuary for some food and we'd try again later.

Tonight we set back out with her to see if she was now more desperate to get to her pups. Same routine as earlier, me on foot and Doll in the truck, we followed her for about a half mile. Then she ran up to a house and sat on the porch. I went up and knocked on the door. This guy came to the door and said that she was his dog. We asked where she slept, if she had a dog house and he said that she didn't, she just slept where ever. He confirmed she had puppies, but he didn't know where they were. He seemed pretty annoyed actually that we had taken interest in her. So we left her to his 'care' since there was nothing we could really do.

It was really sad driving away from her standing there in the driveway with nowhere to go since her 'guardian' had now closed the door and returned to his warm couch.

Jet Plane

I haven't updated here in about a month, so I'm not even sure anyone will read this, but I figured I'd make the effort to try to get back into the writing mood. I can't say there hasn't been anything going on, there has, I've just been too lazy and unmotivated to write about it. So here's a synopsis of my last month.

Tomorrow I leave for two weeks for IDA's animal sanctuary, Project Hope, in rural Mississippi. When I offered to go over a month ago, I felt like the day to actually leave would never come - now that day is tomorrow. I'm not thrilled about the trip. I'm happy to go and help, especially over Christmas, but Mississippi sucks and the prospect of spending two weeks there seems like a death sentence.

The four kittens I trapped at my apartment building are all being fostered at an IDA vounteer's house. I went and visited them yesterday and they're coming along, but still skittish (and downright terrified at times.) The foster parent, Eileen, is a former vet tech, so she knows a thing or two about handling animals and she's doing a fantastic job. She has an appointment to take the kittens (cats now, really) to Oregon Humane on the 26th of this month. After seeing the cats yesterday, I have serious doubts about their ability to make it in a loud, strange animal shelter environment. They are all so sweet, I want them to make it and get a good home. We'll monitor their progress at OHS and if they aren't doing well, we'll pull them out.

For Thanksgiving we had a huge potluck at the new IDA office. We guessed there were probably 50 people that showed up. It was a huge success and provided a lot of folks who didn't have somewhere to go (like yours truly) with a place. We also had a huge turnout for Fur Free Friday. There were at least 150 people who came out.

I'm now working out of the new office space. I miss my cats during the day, but it's nice to have all of my work stuff out of my tiny apartment and be in a larger space where I can spread out. I've only been working from the office for a week and biked in one day - it's a long ride in, like 7 miles with lots of hills, but I'm going to try to ride in a few times per week.

There've been other things, but that's all I have time for right now. I'm headed off to a puppy mill protest at Scamp's Pet Store downtown. Next time I write will be from Mississippi - assuming I have time to write. Bye for now.

Happy Weekend

I laughed about this all day and thought I'd share. Have a great weekend.

Fear of a Black Planet

I still cannot believe we did it - good job NC, VA, OH and FL. I am so psyched about the next (hopefully) 8 years. I really think this guy is going to be great - like better than Bill Clinton great.

There are a bunch of reports coming out now from McCain aides, no less, about just what a dipshit Palin truly is. How the hell can you know that and continue to hide it from the American voters? How wreckless. This is from Fox News and it explains Palin's problems - Fox News! This clip is fucking amazing - listen to the WHOLE segment.

Gator Eats Beagle

Best. Halloween costume. Ever.

Well, I'm all done with trapping - at least for now. I did infact have a whole family - mom, dad and 4 kittens (one male, three female.) All have been spayed or neutered and the mom and dad have already been released back to where they were trapped. The kittens have been released into a large room at our new IDA NW office. They're pretty feral and are going to need a lot of coaxing to get them to come around. The male, who was caught first, is close to coming out of his shell, but the females are all really wild.

Fingers-crossed, I've hopefully jumped through my last hoop on my pending litigation against the toolbag who hit me back in February. This has dragged on and on and has been a super pain in the ass. Worst part, my hand is jacked up and won't ever be the same. I should know in 4-6 weeks what sort of settlement to expect.

Trappin'

Trying to make her as comfortable as possible in my tiny laundry room.

I'm working late tonight trapping some feral cats that are around my building. I started last night and was surprised to find more than I had initially suspected - there are at least 6 and I had only seen 3-4. Looks like a mama, daddy and 4 kittens around the age of 12-14 weeks I'd guess. There's also a really sweet long-haired gray cat as well who won't stop following me and eating the canned food I put out to draw the ferals over. Tonight the gray cat tripped one of the traps, so hopefully I've seen the last of her - at least while I'm trapping.

Unfortunately, Portland is really no better than any other part of the country and there are limited resources to pay for the spays and neuters these cats are about to undergo. Connie, my co-worker, has been a real help in finding resources. It's still going to cost us around $30 per cat for the surgeries.

The kitten I trapped last night was of course terrified. She was however, very gentle and didn't take the many opportunities I gave her to tear me a new one, so I have hope that we can work with her and the rest of the kittens to make them adoptable. We are in the process of moving the office here to a much larger space, so we should be able to keep them there while we work on them - which is good because I really got an awakening last night as to just how small my apartment is in trying to keep this one kitten sequestered from my cats. Lot to love about my apartment, but size aint one of those things.

Hopefully I can fill the 3 traps I've got set and get these cats in to surgery tomorrow. And hopefully I won't be up to 3 a.m. making that happen.

The Donkey

My father, who was more of a Democrat that he would like to admit, used to say that my grandfather's side of the family was so strongly Democrat they'd vote for the donkey if he/she ran.

They do things a little differently here in Oregon than in Virginia. Here in Oregon, they mail you a ballot (mine arrived Friday) and a Voter's Pamphlet and you essentially vote from the privacy of your home. You then either mail back the ballot or drop it off. Pretty quick and easy and there's a paper trail, so it's tougher for Carl Rove and his cronies to tamper with. Not that I have to be concerned with that here in my blue state. I mailed mine off today, so I'm all done. It's up to the rest of you people to do the right thing now. (And by 'right thing' I of course mean vote for Obama - don't fuck this up!)

Little House on the Prairie

Hey Jebediah, flip it over to Ice Road Truckers, will ya?

A couple of weeks ago I turned in my digital cable box to Comcast. At the time, and in fact up until the very moment that I handed the box to the guy at the counter, I was still wrestling with just what I was going to do. I was waffling hard between just cutting off the digital cable or getting rid of cable entirely. I imagined living without cable to be not unlike what Laura Ingalls Wilder's life was like on the prairie. I had imagined myself reading books by candlelight, going to bed at 7:30 and waking at 4 to milk cows or work the fields. For whatever reason, I went this route rather than continue to pay for TV.

There are several reasons I chose to get rid of cable. First and foremost, I was watching too damn much TV. And I'll watch anything, seriously. Ever heard of Ice Road Truckers? I knew I had a problem when I started to really care about what misadventures Bear and the boys would find themselves in this week.

Secondly, I hate paying for TV. I have never enjoyed giving my money every month to Cox or Comcast. And cable is expensive. Hell, I was paying close to $50 a month and I was still under a discount plan I signed up for when I moved to Portland. In another month or two it was going to creep up to close to $80.

Lastly, all the best TV is free! OK, so this isn't exactly true. I mean, if that were true then I'd be able to receive Ice Road Truckers through my newly purchased Radio Shack antenna and clearly I cannot - and believe me I've tried. But for free I do get The Office, 30 Rock, SNL, OPB, etc. I can even get Hole in the Wall, which is like the Ice Road Truckers of Fox.

My biggest concern with going off the grid (or as close as I wanna get) was not being able to receive NFL football games on Sunday. As many of you probably know, I'm kind of a big football fan. It's my only vice. OK, that's a lie. But it's my biggest vice. Not true either. Anyway, I went pretty much without football all last season when I was working in Mississippi and it sucked. Fortunately, I can get most of the games (the exception being ESPN's Monday night game) and with relative clarity. At least clear enough that, for free, I can live with it.

So for now, I'm living the simple life. Spending more time with the kitties (well, Pants anyway), reading more, and watching a hell of a lot of crap on free TV. Have you seen Hole in the Wall? It's funny as hell.

Ugh, sick

I haven't been sick in FOREVER. Seriously, it's been years and I've been like a super-human, but last night it started - sore throat, stuffy head, the works. I'm not sure if I picked up a bug form the HSUS workshop or on the very cold bike ride last night to the Oregon Manifest Filmed by Bike movie showing. Either way, I'm screwed now.

The Filmed by Bike movie showing last night was awesome - almost worth getting the plague for. It was shown at a huge advertising agency in the Pearl District (Portland's swankiest area.) The advertising agency's space was incredible. It's a huge converted old warehouse. When I walked in it seemed like a pretty small space - crowded with hipster douchebags wearing all manner of bicycle related stuff - but when I walked upstairs to the viewing area - wow. It was a gigantic space. The viewing area was like a basketball court with two huge projectors and giant screens. The warehouse must be 8 stories tall at least. All their work spaces were in this area, too. It was just really an amazing space. Here's are a couple of photos from my iPhone of the movie viewing area.

This is a shot of the entrance.

This is the screen and some of the bleachers.

Workshop

I'll be in Everett, WA for the next few days attending a DART workshop with my coworker Connie. Connie comes from a huge family of something like ten brothers and sisters, so she has family all over the Pacific Northwest and we'll be staying at her cousin's house.

I'm looking forward to the training, but I will miss my cats like crazy. Working from home this past year I've gotten so attached to having them around and it's hard to leave for any length of time. Hopefully her cousin has a cat I can use as a stand-in while I'm there.

In the meantime, enjoy Jens Lekman. I love this guy, his music is corny, but awesome.

Fasting

I woke up Tuesday and for some unknown reason decided I would not eat for the entire day. I didn't include coffee nor did I include the smoothie I had around 2 o'clock. I figured if I drink the bananas, mango and strawberries it wasn't cheating. I was hungry sure, but felt really good. I damn near made it, too, but with mere hours to go, I remembered the chips and salsa in the kitchen and threw in the towel. I sort of felt bad afterward, but not really. What can I say, I'd make a shitty muslim.

Tomorrow I'll take what I learned from my first failed attempt and try again. I'm hoping to make this a weekly thing. No idea why. Perhaps in preparation of the leaner times to come in the economy - better to practice now, right?

On a completely unrelated topic, I was working on a short edit for work which included a video my predecessor, Gabe, put together shortly after Hurricane Katrina. It was three years ago today that I arrive in Waveland, MS to help. Crazy how time flies - enjoy the video.

Portland Public Access TV

I just finished watching "Farrakhan Teach!", Minister Louis Farrakhan's program recorded in Chicago and rebroadcast here in Portland on public access TV. Immediately following Minister Farrakhan? Sister Paula. Sister Paula is a 70 year old transgendered 'woman' who reads from the bible and sing hymns. Now, I hate religion, but for some reason I'm absolutely enthralled by Louis Farrakhan and can watch him for hours, even when he calls me devil. I feel the same way about Sister Paula, I hate religion, but I can watch Sister Paula and for whatever reason I have more respect for her than for any other preacher I've ever seen.

Community Organizer

Some of you may have seen Rudy Giuliani dismiss Obama as a 'community organizer' with no experience at the Republican National Convention. Smug little toadie that Guiliani is, he even snickered at the comment, no doubt so proud of himself for thinking it up. I think the image above should serve as an adequate enough response.

This whole Sarah Palin thing makes me want to jump off in the deep end of the liberal pool. If you aren't outraged that this person is on the ticket, you aren't paying attention. I guess I'm just all riled up because I'm sick of these fucking neocons. Of course it aint helping that I'm reading, Deer Hunting With Jesus right now.

Bonnie, Beer for Soda, Vegan Pesto and other Musings

The weather has been really nice, so I've been leaving open the sliding glass door so the cats can enjoy the balcony. They really like going out and on the few occasions it's gotten too chilly to keep it open, Pants walks the apartment crying about not being able to go outside. Unfortunately, Bonnie has gotten so used to it being open that on 3 different occasions she has run full speed and slammed into the closed door face first. It makes a loud, hollow sound, not unlike that of a cat hitting a glass door at full gallop. In an effort to try and reduce the number of collisions, I've posted the sign above on the door to let her know when it's closed. So far it seems to be working.

I pretty much gave up drinking diet colas for the month of July in hopes of being able to beat my 3-5 can a day habit. The good news, I've pretty much done it. The bad news is, now I'm drinking a lot more beer. Is that bad?

Today at New Seasons, I spent $180 on groceries. That's a new high and one I hope never to eclipse. I was shocked and a little sad when I saw the total. On my list was to try and get something for some noodles I bought like a month ago. In the refrigerated section I thought pesto might be nice, but of course pesto has cheese in it. Well, not in Portland, at least not all the pesto in Portland. There on the shelf was a pesto labeled as Vegan Pesto. I couldn't believe it. I bought it and tried it for dinner and it aint bad. Unfortunately, it aint cheap either.

I had a really boring three day weekend. I really didn't do much of anything. Yesterday I poured through Last.fm looking for new music and shows coming to Portland. I'm a huge Neko Case fan and never really paid much attention to her work with the New Pornographers, but that all changed yesterday. They're really good. Below is a video from their latest album.

I'm also very into Taken by Trees and their video is also below. Enjoy.

Crime

I found my apartment on Craigslist before I had ever even so much as set foot in Portland. It seemed like a nice place, a late model condo, secure building, secure, covered parking which is perfect for my motorcycle. And after I arrived in Portland and found the building, it seemed like a pretty quiet area for the most part. It's kind of an industrial area and a little on the scummy side, but nothing like the 'bad' parts of town back in Virginia. Not my ideal place to live, but it'll do for now.

Well, I started to get more concerned about the location once I started telling people where it was. They'd say things like, 'oh, I never go up there' and 'oh yeah, there are a lot of meth addicts in that area.' So I began jokingly referring to it as the Meth District whenever I'd tell anyone where I lived.

It's been pretty quiet, however about a month ago around midnight, I was awakened to loud talking - loud talking through a bullhorn - from a police car. It was directed at a neighboring apartment complex and they were pleading with the guy to please come out or pick up the phone and let them know he was alright. It didn't seem like he had hostages, but appeared to be a lone individual who had for whatever reason become holed up in his apartment. It must've ended peacefully because I got to sleep and wasn't awakened by the sound of gunshots.

Then a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday, I was headed out and just about a block away on the major bike path that parallels Interstate 205 there were a bunch of cops and a van marked 'Homicide'. There on the bike path, under a sheet lay some poor bastard, who either died on his own or was helped along during the wee hours by someone no doubt seeking his next fix.

Finally, tonight just as I arrived home on my motorcycle police cars started racing into the neighborhood and strategically placing themselves at various intersections. Looks like someone made a withdrawl from the Plaid Pantry convenience store up the block. It doesn't appear to be more than a robbery or robbery attempt because the police presence has dwindled and the familiar 'Homicide' van hasn't showed up.

Portland Century Post-Ride

I knew it was going to be a long day the night before the ride when I couldn't get to sleep. I finally managed to eek out about 4 1/2 hours before the alarm woke me a 5 a.m. I got up, showered, gathered my gear and off I rode to the start line downtown at Portland State University. It's about a 7 mile ride down so I got a pretty good warm-up before we set off on the hundred miles. There weren't nearly as many people riding as I thought there might be so I found Kirsten and Dr. Paul pretty quickly. I met Kirsten at the 11 Bridges Ride, she manages a large vet clinic and Dr. Paul is one of the managing partners of the practice. He was a super-nice guy, very down to earth and really funny - and as it turned out, very fast on a bike.

It's tough to ride with people and actually stick together and right out off the start I was moving and quickly lost my two companions. I slowed down and rejoined them a couple of times. That's how the first 20 miles or so went. The next 80 miles consisted of me riding alone while the two of them rode off ahead at what seemed like breakneck speed. I would manage to get to the rest stops just as they were ready to pull out for the next leg - so they got to rest for 20 minutes and I rested for like 5, then rode out with them only to watch them slowly disappear up the road from me. Each time asking myself why the hell I didn't just stay at the rest stop.

The ride itself was nice, but they weren't kidding about the extreme climbing. There were three or four hills that were damn near straight up and went on forever. I've never climbed something so steep for so long. I remember looking down at my bike computer several times on the climbs and was averaging 3.5 to 4 miles per hour. To give you some idea just how slow that is, 3 mph is really the point at which you can't ride a bike without falling over. Lots of folks were throwing in the towel and just walking. I didn't give up, but I sure as hell seriously considered it a few times.

The weather was perfect, hovering around 70 pretty much all day and cloudy with some sun. But what would a bike ride around Portland be without some rain? At the final rest stop about 11 miles from the finish, it started raining and the closer we got to the finish the harder it rained.

My knee bothered my pretty much throughout the entire ride and really ached on the climbs. I'm not near as sore as I was after the Seattle-to-Portland ride though. I think my long rides are done for the season, although Dr. Paul was trying to convince me to do another century to the coast in October. I'm not ready to commit, but I'm not ruling it out yet either.

Portland Century

Well, tomorrow's the big day, the Portland Century ride. One hundred miles of extreme climbing, or at least that's what they keep telling me by e-mail. I've received two e-mails from the organizers this week alerting me to the extreme climbing riders will face tomorrow. Of course, when I signed up for this mother-scratcher they made no mention of extreme climbing. In fact, they made this sound more like cozy picnic in the park than a trip up Alpe D'Huez.

To make things worse, I'm riding with a very pretty girl. I met her at the 11 Bridges Ride a couple of weekends ago. We've corresponded by e-mail, but I'm not sure she's interested yet. She surely won't be if she sees my body start to betray me by the mid-point. She doesn't seem like the kind of girl who might be attracted to guys who cry openly and beg for mercy on bike rides. Shame, because that's exactly how I roll.

So think of me tomorrow as I ride off in the dark at 5:45 a.m. toward the starting line. I'll post a few updates through twitter tomorrow, assuming I can still move my thumbs to type.