I passed this truck delivering sweetbread to a Mexican tienda today.

Along the lovely Terwilliger Parkway (sat map / topo map) in SW Portland, a 3.5 mile walk along a bluff above the Willamette River, one passes the Casey Eye Institute, a charitable eyecare provider for children which has been sponsored by the Oregon chapter of the Elks Club since 1949. It’s right next door to the Portland Shriner’s Hospital for Children.

Out front there is this great bronze statue of an elk in brief repose. (Click for larger version.)

Tegan and Sara are twin sisters from Canada that write and perform some amazing songs. Here are some of them:

Hell (live, acoustic)

Walking With A Ghost (live, acoustic)

The Cure (live, acoustic)

You Wouldn’t Like Me & Walking With a Ghost (live, in-store promo)

Back in Your Head (live, acoustic)

I Won’t Be Left

A series of coincidences led me today to search the Internets for one of my favorite bands of the 1980s: The Producers, of Atlanta, GA. (Wiki entry.) I spun their albums endlessly and still have a couple of them on the original vinyl from nigh on 30 years ago. I understand they occasionally still tour the South and I would check them out again in a minute if I have a chance. Here are some of their videos I was able to find on YouTube:

Certain Kinda Girl

She Sheila

What’s He Got

Breakaway (Live on MTV’s New Years Eve Rock and Rock Ball, 1982/1983

Lucy (Fan video)

Because I have been fighting a nasty cold/flu this week and have had no energy, I drove to work when I normally would have taken a fifteen-minute ride on the 58 TriMet bus to downtown. When I peered out of a 20th floor window about 4pm and saw Salmon Street starting to turn white, I figured I might have just enough time to get home before trouble started. I knew within a couple of minutes of pulling out of the parking garage that I was not going to make it home in my car.

The first hint was the gridlocked traffic I was immediately stuck in. (Two, three red lights went by with little movement.) The second hint was the spinning front tires every time my foot came near the gas pedal, even on nearly level ground. I knew I had to stop driving within a few blocks before getting on Highway 26 and trying to go up and over the steepest hill in the city, so I pulled over and parked in a 1-hour parking space and set out on foot, figuring the parking ticket and the trip home would still be easier than the nightmare ahead if I kept driving.

I waited an hour for the bus to come by Goose Hollow. It never came. The snow kept falling. And getting deeper. I was coughing, wheezing, sneezing and hating and not paying much attention until I noticed that a BMW I helped a guy push out of a spin had not gone fifteen feet in fifteen minutes.

I walked over to the MAX line, the only thing that seemed to be moving, and took the next train to Beaverton Transit Center without even thinking about buying a ticket. After I had walked over for dinner at a nearby sushi joint I know that was empty because of the storm and waited for another hour, my bus came along and got me most of the way home.

I stayed home from work today with a horrendous all-day coughing fit and hitched a ride downtown to get my car after the snow melted this afternoon. I was happy to find no parking ticket on the windshield. I drove straight home and climbed back in bed to ride out this head funk I’ve got.

I went for dinner with my friend J.Po and came home with my first Christmas tree since I don’t know when. All I had to do was pull it out of the box and plug it in and straighten the branches a little. It’s fake and two feet tall but it’s perfect. J’s mom sent one and somehow she ended up with two so she offered the extra one to me.

The previous post mentioned the cafe in the Portland City Building. Many mornings I grab breakfast from another place in the Standard Insurance Building a couple of blocks away. I spend time in the line with this view of my weekday uniform.