Just a bit over two weeks until the Aurora Chorus concert! We've been working very hard on this and as of tomorrow all the music should be memorized. We have a retreat this weekend--a whole weekend of rehearsals.

I was a bit disappointed when I found out the concert attire, because I have a black dress that I thought would be just perfect, but it's short sleeved and we're required to wear at least 3/4 length sleeves. In trying to figure out what to wear with it I finally decided to drop by my favorite little sewing shop and see if it was doable to whip something up quickly. And indeed, Ruthie (the store owner) is invaluable in helping me figure out what I can do and how to do it. I came home with black fabric and a pattern for a great little swingy jacket. That was yesterday; today, after a day of working on it, plus cutting it out last night, I have a wonderful jacket to wear with my dress! I don't think I've ever made anything that turned out so well. This picture doesn't do it justice; I guess I'll have to take a picture of it while wearing something else lighter in color under so the detail will show up.

The Burning Question

A conversation had a month ago that I'm still chuckling over...

My in-laws were visiting and we took them to Forest Park for a hike. Forest Park is the largest city park in the US, and except for the sounds of traffic, you could forget that you're within a city. It looks like a mountain hideaway.

We brought a lunch along and when we'd gone as far into the woods as we wanted to go, we found a nice little grassy knoll and sat down to eat. We had garlic cheese bread from Di Prima Dolce--to die for! Get yourself some--they make it on Fridays; apples we'd just picked from Hood River, and a soft cheese with an ash layer. Have you had cheese with an ash layer? It's really good. My mother-in-law was wondering aloud, who thought of putting ash in cheese? Who thought, hey, maybe ash would taste good in cheese! We wondered about that for awhile and had many jokes about eating ash. And then my dear mother-in-law reminded us that they want to be cremated when they die.

You can see where this conversation went from there!

Local Internet Provider?

When we first moved to Portland, we decided to go with Ecosky for our internet provider. It was a local ISP that used solar and wind power to run the business, which we thought was pretty cool. Plus we got cool @ecosky.com email addresses. :-) Then, after just a year, they went out of business. We decided, the heck with small local businesses--let's go back to Earthlink, a business that's huge and global and not going out of business anytime soon. But they have real customer service issues, and we haven't liked talking to someone in who-knows-where when we call, who doesn't know what we're talking about. We never received the modem they said they'd send, either.

I'm hoping to find a stable AND local ISP. One with a social conscience and provides good internet service. Can any of you local Portland area folks help me out with that?

Girls and Boys

What my children are doing right at this moment:

Hibi has her book, The Daring Book for Girls, and Zac has his book, The Dangerous Book for Boys, and they are comparing what's in what. "Does yours tell how to skip stones?" "Does yours show how to make a campfire?" "Does yours tell how to play Marco Polo?" "Does it have Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure?"

Ah, the gender wars continue. :-)

Goodreads

'bout time I posted, hey? We've been in Tucson for Thanksgiving. Zac was there for over three weeks, as he went home with his grandparents when they came to visit, early in November. He enjoyed it--he did very different things from what he usually does. Went to two basketball games with his granddad. Went to a park that has bumper boats and arcade games with his great uncle. Played Pollyanna with his great grandmother. He had a great time but he's glad to be back in Portland! We made it home in two days, in part due to his pushing to get back. Over half of that drive time I was the only driver, as we dropped Paul off at LAX so he could get back in time for church on Sunday.

Anyway, now we're back in Portland and very content to be back. I realized as we were leaving Portland this time that I so miss Portland when we leave it! I used to just love travel, and I still do like it, but I think that our fair city is just about perfect for us. Rain and all. And even though yesterday I just about froze my you-know-what off while cleaning out the car. (Originally I was thinking to wash it too, but it was in the 30s--no way was I going to turn on water out there!) This, just after having soaked in all that Tucson sun and warmth.

I put up a Goodreads button on my blog a while ago and I just wanted to draw attention to it, because it's a fun way of sharing books. I think it could work nicely for people who don't have blogs, because you don't *have* to write anything if you don't want to. So, go check out out my Goodreads and start one for yourself. Leave me the link to yours, so I can find you there!

Filled Up

From the same three-year-old little guy who wrote on his piece of paper as a question to the Archbishop the word "Will", leaving the Archbishop wondering if he was asking about God's will, free will, what? No, it was just his name!

Paul asked little Will, "Are you going to take communion?" (I'd assume, but am not sure, that this was in the context of coming up in line for communion.)
Will, holding up a hand: "No, I'm good."

Hibi the rock star!

And here's what you missed if you didn't come to the fundraiser! My amazing daughter. :-) Both videos are clips of the same song--I can't figure out why I didn't just record the whole thing.

Pies!

Homemade pies. (Yes, of course we sampled the chocolate cream pie--we had to make sure they were okay!) Music, fun times. Need I say more? Oh, yeah--Hibi playing electric guitar. That girl *rocks!*

See ya there!

Dorothy Day House Fundraiser--it's almost here!

One last shout-out for the Dorothy Day House fundraiser, which is this Friday evening! It's going to be a lot of fun, with lots of music, a silent auction, and of course, pie. 7 pm to around 9:30.

If anyone local would like to help make pies, I'd love to have you over on Thursday to help. Email me and let me know, and I'll send you the specifics. Or if anyone would like to bake a pie (or more) at home for the fundraiser, that'd be great too!

By the way, as always you can find my email address in my profile--just click on "View My Complete Profile" on the top and then click on "email." Ooops, I just looked at it and somehow it was gone. Not sure how that happened! Anyway, it's back now. It's better to put it there because then the 'bots can't automatically harvest it....because I really don't need to know more about pharmaceuticals or how to enlarge any part of my body. Ahem. (Wow, from Catholic Worker fundraiser to spam in three paragraphs! And I wasn't even trying!)

Did you vote?

Paul says he needs a sticker now, that says "My Wife Made Me Vote." :-) Sheesh, you wouldn't think it'd be so difficult to get that man to vote!

Even though I have misgivings about making a portion of the population foot the bill for children's health care, I went ahead and voted "yes" for the cigarette tax and Oregon Measure 50. I hate to again tax smokers, and yet just looking at how hard the cigarette industry is fighting this one makes me wish I had a million votes to vote for it. And I voted yes and yes on the other two obvious (in my opinion) ones. Did you vote yet? Election day is tomorrow!

And one thing I don't like about all-mail voting in Oregon is that we don't get a sticker that says "I Voted."