Warm November rain

A recent conversation with Kitch Minimus presaged the forthcoming Rapture with the intelligence that, as foretold in the book of Revelations, the Lewes Arms is to stop serving Harvey’s bitter. This went lightly with my disposition as the tail of a tropical storm whipped its way along Main Street, Baby Fluffy, Conky Kitten and myself observing the rain drive in sideways from the vantage of the porch, our spirits buoyed by the tempest and the unseasonal warmth, seventy degrees by night. Then the earthquake: like a bowling ball dropped beside us: thunk. No warnings or aftershock, just an urgent shift in the plates beneath, a little 2.8er with the epicenter less than a mile away, below Laurelhurst Park.

Weather worth appreciating, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I’ve recently been developing a new company intranet, which among its many riches includes a little widget that appears on the side of the homepage and provides you with the local weather forecast for whichever corner of the corporate empire you happen to be situated. I mention this because when something similar was suggested at my old job, the Registrar remarked, “Why do they want the weather on the web when they can look out of the [expletive deleted] window?” As it turns out, however, there was a presupposition in this observation, the irony of which I now get to appreciate on a daily basis as I meander the eighty feet or so from the belly of the cube farm to the window of conference room 3C in order to estimate just how many layers of waterproofs I’d best don before cycling home.

So with Summer now a rapidly fading and vaguely unconvincing recollection, I bring you the last of my holiday photos from September.


I've noticed my American chums tend to regard the diner as the British might the Bernie Steakhouse; a not altogether pleasant reminder of an era in the nation's cuisine best left forgotten. This particular example, "Billy Heartbeats" would probably be considered particularly objectionable on the basis of its faux retro styling and its physical location in the Lloyd Center's Food Court. I however delight in the diner and all its myriad pleasures, from the cheeseburgers and thick malt shakes through to the French silk pies and smoking waitresses (called "servers" here by the way, which is allegedly less demeaning). You'll noticed baby fluffy plumped for milk again though. He's a creature of habit.

I had the oddest thought the other day whilst absorbed in the unparalleled beauty of my darling child. I thought - that baby is made of 100% milk. He has consumed nothing but milk for his entire life. As I recall, milk is but one of the food groups, and in the new-fangled pyramid arrangement it is somewhat closer to the apex than the base. This is the miracle of biochemistry in all its glory. Looking at him, you have to wonder what you couldn't make out of milk; suspension bridges, space elevators? Whatever the case, it seems we can only have skimmed the surface of this technology with cheese and yoghurt.


Here's a nice snap of Silverton falls, in its denuded late Summer mode. Compare to February.

Welcome to Mount Angel. Don't mention the war. Lederhosen on sale for the discerning Bavarian ex-pat.

Here's a snap of another popular waterfall, Multnomah Falls in the Columbia gorge.

And looking the other way, across the river valley to Washington state.


An old turbine thingy from the Bonneville Dam. One of those New Deal projects. And Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it. That probably means at least as much to you as it does to me.