Class starts in 3 minutes, next door May 23, 2008
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, Pacific NW, Rain, Weather, What?!, school.add a comment
I don’t want to go. I have to walk through the disgusting rain. Why does Oregon mean 98 and humid or cold and rainy???
One gaurentee… there will be water included.
Finding a Purpose March 6, 2008
Posted by smartblondece in Missing England, Oregon, Pacific NW, writing.1 comment so far
For a new blog. I have plenty of fun with this. It is filled with my random rantings and whining. And works quite well as a public journal (and occasionally private, you don’t know my passwords!) . But I want to start a second blog. A blog with a purpose. Here’s the problem: I have no purpose. As anyone can tell from my tag cloud I have quite a … cloud… a blurry yet puffy cloud of tags and interests. These are my current ideas:
Coffee (could get expensive, and being stuck in Corvallis limits variation)
Oregon
College
Pacific Northwest
Study Abroad (although would have been much more effective while I was on study abroad… if you are interested check out my early posts)
Books (Time to read books… v. little)
Something utterly fictional (because fiction is fun… )
Trying to figure out what I want to write about. There are plenty of things that I enjoy, but would never write about. So going to think about this in the next few days, and I am open for suggestions.
Missing England February 27, 2008
Posted by smartblondece in Animals, Friends, Missing England, Oregon, family.add a comment
In fact I miss it so much right now that it is actually painful. I miss everything there. I had a great group of friends (don’t get me wrong I love my friends here to death), I loved the land, the culture, and I think I loved the freedom I had living in Brighton. If I wanted to do something public transport was easy, or I could get into any club or bar without having to worry about being of age. I miss walking through the South Lanes just staring at old jewelery, clothes I couldn’t afford, and just people watching. I miss sitting on the beach listening to the waves, as pitifully small as they were, running over the rocks. I miss having London, easily one of the worlds coolest cities, so near, and so accessible. I miss the feeling that everything has been so well established. Here something is old if it was around during WWII. I miss how WWII was just The War. I miss the accents, their great variety and color. I miss the sense of humour, and the spelling, and the television (Oh, Doctor Who how I miss thee). I miss the trains. I would sit on a train, on my way somewhere new and I would stare out the windows at this absolutely beautiful country going by, inspiring me. I miss the creativity I felt there. I was inspired, and for what I write the land, the travel and the culture just continued to constantly feed me with ideas. And strangely enough, and my flatmates would agree this is strange, I even miss the tweeting midnight birds. At night in Oregon it is quiet. You open you window and you hear no tweeting birds. But in the South Downs they chirp back and forth to each other all night long. Like teenage girls gossiping at a sleep over. I miss jogging in the country, over bridle paths where I am all alone, and simply with me, nature, and God. That was pretty awesome. Here my town I am pretty much limited to the town itself. It’s not far out to remote places, but I have no car, and it is hard to get there with public transportation or a bike that really isn’t meant for anymore than city riding.
I’m not saying life in England was perfect. I missed my friends and family, I missed Oregon. I missed the remoteness you could get so easily, the ability to feel you were in an area so natural, very little is natural in England, sure there is the Peak District or the Lake District, but here in Oregon you can get amazing natural beauty that has been so unaltered, undeveloped, so readily. I missed big waves pounding into real stone (not chalk, as cool as those are) cliffs. And I missed the fog and clouds lingering in fir trees.
But I’m not sure I ached as much for Oregon as I do for Sussex. Maybe it was because I saw a definite end to my self imposed exile, or maybe Sussex will always be special to me. All I know is I miss it terribly.
The South Laines
Politics. January 31, 2008
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, What?!.1 comment so far
Oregon doesn’t matter. Now I know this is a very non-Oregonian, non-Pacific NW, non-Cascadian (long live Cascadia!) thing to say. But what other message are we to get from our Primary date? May 20. That is correct people, May 20. A full three months and fifteen days after Super-Tuesday. So do we get any say in who our next president is? Very little. We sit here quietly being ignored until we are told who our presidential candidates will be. Because at this point everyone but one have withdrawn. With the increasingly early, increasingly fast campaigns a vice-presidential candidate has often been chosen before we get a say on our chosen parties candidate. So we get a choice of 2. It is the rest of the country that gets a say on if it will be between anyone that is actually a decent candidate. For heaven’s sake Iowa went first! Iowa!
White Christmas December 25, 2007
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, Weather, snow.add a comment
Snow on Christmas Day is rare in Portland. It snowed Christmas Eve in 1998, but melted before Christmas Day got too far in. In 1990 there was a dusting. And the last measurable snow was in 1938. Today’s snow is a “dusting” but let me put it this way. It was enough to make the deck very white and put a good coat of snow on the roofs. For Portlanders, this brief spell of snow, this dusting is snowfall. We will either celebrate, or groan, as we watch the large wet flakes fall upon our city. Commenting on how they blow about or if they are sticking to certain surfaces. We marvel in the novelty of snow. What seems mundane across much of the North American Continent is a fleeting wonder in this city. We know that snow falls in the mountains. We will ski year round upon Mt Hood. We are familiar with and generally love snow. It allows us to live in this lush green climate that Oregonians adore. But to receive it in the Willamette Valley only comes a few times each winter. And as it only ever lasts a few hours, a morning, or as we had today, an afternoon, we stop and appreciate the beauty of those white flakes, coating everything, as though to hide the world under a fine dusting of powdered sugar.
Chinese Water Torture December 18, 2007
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, Rain, Weather, What?!.add a comment
So the drain outside my window at my moms house never worked. Thankfully as it turns out now. Because it now works. This September my mom and step-dad added onto our garage and redid the entire roof. Oh, and fixed that flipping gutter! But, you say, this must be a good thing. The water can now properly drain off of the roof. You tell that to my lack of sleep. When it is pouring this is fine. It sounds a bit like a water feature outside my window. But when you get drizzle, which if you’ve never been to Pacific NW in the winter is the dominant weather, you hear “Drip… Drip… Drip… Drip…” I would never complain as much if this were a regular dripping, but it’s not. There may be a very short silence between two drips then a very long pause, in all irregular. Now try to lay in a silent room, have a hard time falling asleep in the first place and try to deal with it. Even when I’ve managed to fall asleep it is not very good quality. I love the rain. I hate my mother’s rain gutters!
Update at 1:32. Didn’t think it could get much worse. It did. The rain is now pouring. SIDEWAYS. Into the sides of the aluminum gutters. F*#%ing noise!
We WON & Rain! December 1, 2007
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, Rain, Weather, snow.1 comment so far
WE BEAT UofO!!! AT EUGENE!!! In double overtime! It was cool. I called Kristin and apparently demanded a ride (Thank you, Kristin! I love my favorite sister. “Your only sister!” she cries at me) . We did not watch the game. Well ok we turned it on and off and watched Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren and Nanny McPhee. Oh and the end of Bend it Like Beckham.
It is POURING. Tonight is supposed to be a big storm. 100 mph winds and all. My parking lot has flooded now. My apartment is flooded. On the way home the rain was half snow. It’s like 37, and there is a snow advisory for the coast range.
*Shaking head* November 6, 2007
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, What?!.add a comment
If you are going to bother doing a localized commercial for a national company, please, PLEASE, check how to pronounce the names of the towns. I was watching TV just now and there was a State Farm commercial. They say: “For Gresham call Joe Blow. For Alo-HA call Kiss my Ass.” Geez, how hard is it to check the pronunciation of the town. I know it is spelled Aloha but in Oregon (because we have a zillion names that we are 1) impossible to pronounce correctly by looking at the word in the first place or 2) pronounced in a way you would NEVER expect.) we pronounce Aloha the town with a silent H. So, it’s ah-LOW-ah. How hard is it…
On another note. When cows fly: One did in Washington. Granted it was a brief glorious downward bound flight that resulted in her landing on the hood of a car.
Because Phillip Morris hates kids… And apparently Oregon does too. November 6, 2007
Posted by smartblondece in Oregon, What?!, blah.add a comment
Disclaimer: I am a hypocrite by most measures. I didn’t vote this time. I moved in August and I forgot to re-register… until 1 day after registration closed. In my credit I did vote while I was abroad. I did the whole absentee thing.
It is an Oregon mark of the fall. Kids go back to school. High School football games. And the election time advertising starts… This year was a record year for advertising spending, apparently. And I have to say it reached a new low. when you actually have Phillip Morris paying for advertisements you know it’ll be bad. What more, apparently we listen to them.
So, Measure 50. It was an amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would have created a new tobacco tax. This tobacco tax would have helped fund health insurance for uninsured kids. Granted the measure was kinda flawed but we would have worked out the kinks… it’s kinda what we do. Make a measure, implement it then pass 4 more measures over the next 10 years to amend it because the original was kinda flawed. Of course Phillip Morris didn’t want to pay for it in lost sales so they spend 20 million on advertising in Oregon (And we’ve had to watch it… Just for that I hate them) against this measure. And as I write this 60%-ish of the votes are counted and Measure 50 is failing by 60%. OK. I get some of the objections but does anyone actually think about who is paying for the advertisement???
