shoes, houses, shirts

ok, let's see. i'm falling behind in my little daily diary here. the new boy (let's call him "S") and i are spending every available minute together, which doesn't allow much time for blogging. so here's some catch-up:

one of the gifts S gave me for my birthday was a book of hikes at the oregon coast. (you may recall this was what we did on one of our first dates.) the problem here is that i didn't own any hiking boots. well, in my continuing quest to become a True Portlander, i have now rectified that:


first chacos, now timberland boots. i am being assimilated.

i have been continuing to look for a house. my realtor is probably getting frustrated with me. he's shown me nearly a dozen homes, only one of which really knocked my socks off. (i made an offer on that one, but quickly got outbid.) i told S the other night that i'm looking to be thunderstruck by a house, much in the same way i've been thunderstruck by him. i'm looking for the S of houses.

this one i looked at yesterday:


it was in a great location, less than a mile from where i live now. it was totally in my price range, and in fact had been on the market long enough that i think i could have probably made a low-ball offer and had the sellers accept it. but it was a quirky old house which had been updated oddly. it would have required refinishing the floors and adding interior access to the basement. i would have wanted to tear down this wall between the kitchen and the living room, too.


long story short, i just don't think i'm wanting to spend my time, money or energy on renovations. i was ready for it when i lived in durham, but i'm not in the same mindset here. so despite the fact that this house had so many items in the "pro" column (location, lot size, double-driveway, replacement windows, new copper plumbing, new electrical panel) the cons, as few as they were, were too big and expensive.

this is the obstacle i face with most houses here in my price range. there aren't a whole lot of houses in my price range to begin with. the ones that i can afford either require too much work, or don't require work at all and i get outbid quickly.

anyway. the search continues. i'm not desperate to be a homeowner, but conditions are certainly favorable to be doing it right now. we'll see what happens.

i went to a book reading at powells the other night. the author was dan kennedy, and he wrote a book called "rock on", about his stint working at a record label. he's also a contributor at mcsweeney's. his book is funny, the reading was funny, and i just had a hoot. (it's probably worth mentioning that my friend lessie and i hit two different happy hours before the reading. and at one of the happy hours i had home-made bacon tater tots. so i was already primed for a good time.)


at the end of the reading, dan said he had a t-shirt to give away. "this isn't a problem in, say, cleveland, where only one person shows up for the reading... i just hand the guy the shirt and say 'thanks for coming'. but there's, like, 80 of you here tonight." so he decided he'd have a trivia contest and the winner would get the shirt.

he thought for a minute, wanting to come up with a difficult question. he finally said, "ok, none of you are going to get this, but i'm going to ask it anyway: the band 'the dBs' were formed by peter holsapple and who else?"

ha! i shouted "chris stamey!" -- at the same time that another guy in the front row shouted the same thing. dan was blown away that someone --*two* someones-- knew the answer, and his jaw dropped. he decided he'd have to ask a tie-breaking question, but neither myself or the other guy knew anything about the bass player from Big Country.

so he asked a third question: "what was the title of the arcade fire's first album?" at first i said "arcade fire!" but everyone laughed. (this is the correct answer, by the way.) then i quickly shouted "funeral!" the other guy didn't know the answer at all, so i was the winner:


oh, and did i mention that we're in the middle of pledge drive here?