Mambo
There’s nothing like the swinging Cuban rhythms of the mambo to cheer oneself up on the evening commute and prepare oneself psychologically for the first martini of the night. I tap out the beat on the steering wheel as I roll along highway 26 at approximately 10 miles-per-hour, narrow my eyes and smile sanguinely as the big-band sounds take me forward in time to the glass of vino in the hot-tub, the steam rising across the cool lakeside air.
Happy days indeed - and hard to believe one is having quite so much fun whilst simultaneously never quite relieving oneself of the feeling that one is a bit-player in a film set in some kind of dystopic futureworld.
Mr R Kitch asked whether or not I was becoming a hippy. Of course the answer is no as I enjoy regular baths and am not averse to a slab of red meat. However, if you would like to read something frightening enough to have you exchange all your modern consumer durables for the complete boxed set of The Good Life on DVD, a pen and some notepaper – well, come closer, friend, and read about life after the oil crash…
In the meantime…
Vanilla: nice. Cherry: nice. Mint: nice. Cherry & mint, however: revolting. Yet surprisingly common for cold medicines (it’s the American “cherry menthol”, if you will, only you can’t hold it down without gagging). Vanilla & mint: they wouldn’t, would they? Oh yes they would: Rachel has some vanilla and mint flavoured toothpaste. Out of morbid curiousity I tried it, once. It’s the combination that should not be. In hell, all food will taste like this.
The house-hunting is getting somewhere. We’ve had an offer accepted on a house in the Hawthorne neighbourhood, keepin’ it real on the East-side of town. It’s a really lovely 3-bedroom 1907 house complete with front porch and hot-tub. Thanks to the ridiculous exchange rate it is also hardly any more expensive than Green Wall - which, with any luck, should exchange this week.
We spent Saturday at Portland zoo, admiring polar bears, giraffes, tigers, eagles, beavers, elephants, crocodiles and so forth. An impressive collection for a small city and the animals all seemed quite happy considering. Winter has arrived and there was a nip in the air, which I, as usual, completely failed to prepare for. Therefore I have caught a cold. The mild accompanying melancholy associated with same has caused me to reflect that myself, Conker and Peanut are all overweight through lack of exercise – a situation only likely to be rectified when we move, hopefully at the end of the month.
On Sunday we took a trip out to wine country to sample the local plonk; this time to the less-expensive, northern end of the Willamette valley. Fortunately I was not driving and managed to try pretty much every offering of the four vineyards en route. The countryside is so colourful right now, the leaves green, brown, yellow, red and orange.
Happy days indeed - and hard to believe one is having quite so much fun whilst simultaneously never quite relieving oneself of the feeling that one is a bit-player in a film set in some kind of dystopic futureworld.
Mr R Kitch asked whether or not I was becoming a hippy. Of course the answer is no as I enjoy regular baths and am not averse to a slab of red meat. However, if you would like to read something frightening enough to have you exchange all your modern consumer durables for the complete boxed set of The Good Life on DVD, a pen and some notepaper – well, come closer, friend, and read about life after the oil crash…
In the meantime…
Vanilla: nice. Cherry: nice. Mint: nice. Cherry & mint, however: revolting. Yet surprisingly common for cold medicines (it’s the American “cherry menthol”, if you will, only you can’t hold it down without gagging). Vanilla & mint: they wouldn’t, would they? Oh yes they would: Rachel has some vanilla and mint flavoured toothpaste. Out of morbid curiousity I tried it, once. It’s the combination that should not be. In hell, all food will taste like this.
The house-hunting is getting somewhere. We’ve had an offer accepted on a house in the Hawthorne neighbourhood, keepin’ it real on the East-side of town. It’s a really lovely 3-bedroom 1907 house complete with front porch and hot-tub. Thanks to the ridiculous exchange rate it is also hardly any more expensive than Green Wall - which, with any luck, should exchange this week.
We spent Saturday at Portland zoo, admiring polar bears, giraffes, tigers, eagles, beavers, elephants, crocodiles and so forth. An impressive collection for a small city and the animals all seemed quite happy considering. Winter has arrived and there was a nip in the air, which I, as usual, completely failed to prepare for. Therefore I have caught a cold. The mild accompanying melancholy associated with same has caused me to reflect that myself, Conker and Peanut are all overweight through lack of exercise – a situation only likely to be rectified when we move, hopefully at the end of the month.
On Sunday we took a trip out to wine country to sample the local plonk; this time to the less-expensive, northern end of the Willamette valley. Fortunately I was not driving and managed to try pretty much every offering of the four vineyards en route. The countryside is so colourful right now, the leaves green, brown, yellow, red and orange.
posted by Richard Tammar at 1:40 PM
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