proteanme

5:32pm at kennilowrth park

Originally uploaded by proteanme

It’s just gonna get darker – from now until winter solstice. Days will be getting shorter and there may be a cold spell. For sure there will be more rain. Hunker down Portland, here comes winter.

Dorencbecher in mist

Originally uploaded by proteanme

This is what it looked like last Tuesday up where I work. No matter what window I looked out, it was thick with mist every where, like a loose fitting cloud bank had draped itself over the campus. I wouldn’t call it magical, but it was a little other worldly. I had a hard time concentrating on getting my work done; I wanted to check out the ghost world from as many vantage points as I could. I guess it’s a result of the micro climate of the West Hills where OHSU sits at about 500 feet elevation – twice the height of good old Paoli Peaks. By the way, did anyone ever go there? If I remember right, there was a ski club at IU and they planned trips to Paoli Peaks, but even then, before I moved to Portland, skiing in Indiana seemed kinda silly. But I’m digressing. The mist gave way to sun shine in the afternoon and I got to ride home in an unusual blast of warm fall air. I’m getting more settled in at my new job, but I hope I never get so accustomed to it that I don’t notice the amazing stuff outside my window.

tram at top deck

Originally uploaded by proteanme

This is how I get to work at my new job. Trippy, huh? But seriously, I’ll be riding my bike to the south water front and taking the tram up to and down from the OHSU campus everyday.Or at least that’s the plan, It’s like the Jetsons or something.

A real summer adventure. Left the house at 9am and didn’t come back until 9pm. Spent a couple hours at the Oregon Country Fair. It’s one of the queerest non-queer events I’ve been to. I suspect I’d say the same thing if I went  to Burning Man. But I digress. RU and I took the longest way home, riding all these back roads, passing farmlands and vineyards and clumps of trees and cows and sheep eating up the grass in their pastures. We took a ferry across the Willamette, stopped at a roadside fruit stand and got organic blueberries, and had dinner at a taco truck in Woodburn where they make their tortillas by hand. I’m happy to be sun burnt and tired.

Real summer has finally showed up and we’re slated to get some pretty hot days here. Already, people are complaining about it, which I just don’t get. C’mon man, you can’t have summer without sweating, flip flops, bare skin, sticking to to your chair, sitting in front of a window fan and sleeping under only a single sheet, if that. I say bring it on, heat wave and all. For me these days are like a cute girl who comes late to a party, saddles up beside me and flirts shamelessly even though the host is about ready to kick us all out. I’m a fan of those kind of girls. They just make the world a whole lot more pleasant. So flirt with me all you want summer. Hell, tease me, even. I’m your guy. I fall for you every time.

“If you look at a national temperature map, it’s almost like we have become a separate continent,” said Hill, “because literally everybody else in the lower United States is in a different season than we are. I mean, it really is just absolutely nuts!”

Today is the longest day of the year and it’s also the longest grey day of the year. I would like to kick the weather in its teeth, if I could. The amazingly overcast, chilly and rainy days appear to be marching on, oblivious to our hopes and dreams of summer. Today I saw a women wearing a wool coat and a neck scarf. Sometimes I really hate this place.

Still life

Originally uploaded by proteanme

If you sat at my desk and turned your head to the left, this is what you’d see, unless you were wearing the headphones and then of course they’d be out of the picture.

I kinda like the way the camera phone shoots. The light gets blown out a little and there’s no getting a close up. Reminds me of the Kodak Instamatic I had as a kid.

Sunshine lights the kitchen

Originally uploaded by proteanme

Our house faces west and we have these two giant windows in the front. The sun fills up the house like you wouldn’t believe.

RU pointed out that my Ides of June title made no sense so I looked it up and apparently I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. I knew the Ides was the 15th of March and that Caesar was assassinated on that date and before he bit it, the soothsayer had warned him to beware of the Ides of March, but don’t ask me where I got the analogy to stormy weather. I must have pulled that right out of butt. That’s what you try too hard to be clever and the rain is turning your brain into mush.

Here are some jokes about rain in Portland.

• A newcomer to Portland arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it’s raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, “Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?” The kid says, “How do I know? I’m only 12.” “I can’t believe it,” said the tourist.  “I’ve been here in Portland an entire week and it’s done nothing but rain.  When do you have summer here?””Well, that’s hard to say,” replied the local.  “Last year, it was on a Wednesday.”
• It only rains twice a year in Portland: August through April and May through July.
  
• What do you call two straight days of rain in Portland? A weekend.