Once upon a time I used to write here frequently.  Things like I Went On A Bike Ride, or I Did Some Soil Science.   I reckon the novelty of these have worn off now.  I’d occasionally write some real winners of entries: the Class A Cake, the Naked Bicycling, the Church Organ Easter Mistake.  But hilarious happenings are not always frequent ( Read more... )

It all started one day when I’d brought my soil science mentors some chocolate zucchini muffins.  I’d made them with wheat I’d milled myself, from grain that had been a research response variable.  Grain they had grown using biosolids.  Which are treated human feces used for fertilizer ( Read more... )

I didn’t know the couple; I’d never been to the church; I responded rather whimfully because I needed to remind myself that I am more than a struggling-with-statistics graduate student ( Read more... )

BirthdayYesterday was my birthday.  I wanted to do what I loved to do, alone, as simple as these things were.   I asked for the afternoon off and got chocolate cookie dough across myself, bicycled blissfully, stretched out in the sun among the goose poops at a lake, and enjoyed a fancy-glassed Manhattan on the house.  But making chocolate cookies ( Read more... )

It has been far too long since I have typed out anything; often I have a perfectly packaged succinct little story (like breaking and entering, or bicycling naked, or riding a ferry with my bicycle) and they please me so much that I almost feel anything else is not worthy.

But here is a few little nubs from the various pockets of my life.

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I had a rare and phenomenal moment of time travel.  That sort when you can sit in one place in time and be in two places actually.

I was playing organ, the second time on Sunday after the coffee hour, in both loud empowerment and sublime romance.  I played a simple old favorite hymn and suddenly I was back in Puerto Rico.  Once upon a time there ( Read more... )

Do you ever have one of those I Don’t Want To Be Lugging This Bag Days?  Usually they happen when you are visiting a city and you want to explore and shop and move about, weightless and free.  But you are carting your worldly goods around because you are traveling ( Read more... )

It was my last breakfast in Portland, both happy to have had a good time and sad to be leaving; I was lovingly frying eggs.  Mr. and Mrs. House had flown to a funeral in MN so it was just me and the cats in their big beautiful place.  I covered the eggs and turned them down, skipping outside to gather garden herbs.  Upon return, clutching my little ( Read more... )

I write this entry under my host's fig tree and a half-moon.
Two more days of Portlandosity have been doing me well.
Yesterday I biked myself off the city map along the Springwater Trail.  This trail bordered the Willamette River and marshes and also cut through industrial-land.  It passed a butte, which I decided was a retrospective destination and ( Read more... )

Portland: I feel like I've died and gone to heaven.  In truth: the 200 miles here was Life, basically, a lot of hard work.  Then the last 10 miles was Death, basically, discomfort and doubt.  And now Portland is a kind of Sandra-specific heaven: alphabetized street names, bike lanes everywhere, beautiful old trees, endless good food and coffee.   ( Read more... )