Month: August 2009

My twentieth high school reunion is commencing in Bremerton, WA. While I seem to be wandering around …. London. England.

I really did intend to go. Oops.

The days have been a mad swirl of activity, with coffee dates at the Front Room, excursions to Highgate Cemetery, picnics at the Thames Barrier, tickets for Le Cirque Invisible, entire days devoted to the BFI…

One afternoon next to the river I said “tide out, table set” and my kid didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. This demonstrates a truly shocking lack of knowledge about Pacific Northwest history and…. chowder chains.

This morning I tried to grab a cup of coffee at Rough Trade but got caught in the middle of a fashion shoot. I did not consent! I do not like!

In fact, it is fair to say I loathe Shoreditch, and love Southbank.

Probably shouldn’t say such things as doing so will almost surely mean I end up moving to Hoxton Square (or something), no matter how absurd and improbable that seems right now.

Away to London to take my kid for his annual pre-grandma haircut. I can heartily recommend Chaps and Dames in Finsbury Park. Right next door to my favorite cafe in the city and also, where else can you find opera singing barbers?

It has now been thirteen years since my last haircut, and it strikes me that the tragedy at the center of my life is: so much hair, and so little hairstyle! Trying just makes my neck hurt.

Gabriel and Danielle have given notice they are moving out of my Portland house; the end of an era! That sweet little family has lived there longer than I ever did.

And note: despite long-distance pressure from real estate developers and lascivious locals, I will not be selling.

I bought a derelict but promising property in a crack corridor in 1996. I made it habitable, and then resisted touching the equity as the neighborhood gentrified to become what is arguably the niftiest on the west coast.

Passerby and even the occasional neighbor have tried to buy it off me at a deep discount because they think, as the only shabby holdover from olden times, the owner doesn’t understand the market. This is a category error. I might be far away but I’m not stupid.

The house is both beloved and my only strategic concession to saving for the future. I have no pension, but I also have no debt. My mortgage can’t go underwater; in this way and perhaps no other, I was quite a clever kitten. And regardless of the antics of the economy, I will always have a place to live if I want to go back.

I couldn’t otherwise afford to buy there now, for sure – the area is painfully perfect and priced to match.

Though I do admit the house needs work. I am going to paint it in tribute to the constructivism movement (because I can’t afford to cover it in mirrors), and I will be looking for new tenants soon. Friends only as per usual.

While running errands (as that appears to be my purpose in life) I developed a new and overwhelming goal: to live in a town tourists would never even consider visiting.

Oh, and my finger still hurts – updates will be brief by necessity.

Today is the twenty-first anniversary of the accident.

Congratulations to us all on… remaining alive, at least.