Under a Red Roof

Point of View

January 17, 2014 in Eating, Exploring by Colleen | Permalink

Good Friday afternoon to you, dear reader! How are you? I’ve got a belly full of dried cherries and am thusly content. Have I ever told you that cherries are my favorite fruit? Well, here we are again if I have. Yup,yup.

This was yesterday, happily eating a late lunch at The Sudra, just me and the kind and lovely-eyed guy behind the counter, which is how I like it. The sun was bright, the music was right, and the food topped it all (the small Chickpea Cutlet plate, vegan AND delicious). I could have stayed all afternoon, but I had things to do, itches to scratch.

First of which was calling my dad to wish him happy birthday! We rambled and ambled over a myriad of topics (books. history. movies. space travel), and oddly enough, spoke 1:16! On 1.16! Insert weeeird sound effect here.

I then grabbed my latest book, Philip K. Dick’s collected stories, The King of the Elves, intending to spend time before I picked the hubster up for date night. I parked and locked the car, but only made it ten feet before a little voice said, “Take pictures instead.” So I started for the West Hills to chase the light. I made it twenty blocks and was enveloped by a swift moving fog. There went that idea!

And then, I thought, the Pittock Mansion!

I arrived in time for sunset and a cinematic sweeping of fog.

The city below

utterly

and completely

shrouded!

Magic!

Tags: Oregon, Portland, Restaurants

POV Dance 3×3

January 13, 2014 in Exploring, Watching by Colleen | Permalink

Hello, and happy Monday to you!

I’m gonna make this lickety-split quick because I need to exercise, specifically push-ups with Shiva Rea for my challenge.

If you are a local and like the arts, more specifically, modern dance, please do yourself a ginormous favor and buy tickets to POV Dance 3×3! I went last weekend and was dazzled, truly. It was unlike anything I have ever seen, beautiful and evocative, like a dream:

You converge with other people, small groups of them. It’s a modern space in an old building, exposed brick and beams. There is a film playing, of dancers using the very walls that surround you. Suddenly you realize the dancers are there, behind you, next to you, so close you can hear the slap of feet and sigh of exertion and movement. You share a moment, eye to eye. They use their bodies to climb walls and banisters. They tangle, fly, slither. It is glorious, exquisite. They beckon you to follow, down dimly lit hallways, up stairs, around corners. More dancers appear. They change partners, seamlessly, beautifully. The air is charged with wonder, music, and their ceaseless dance. It’s is a mystery and a delight.

Here’s a little preview, too.

I liked it so much that I am going back with the hubster. Maybe we will see you there!

Tags: Portland

Oh My Darlin’…

January 3, 2014 in Exploring, Friendship by Colleen | Permalink

Happy Friday, peeps! That’s my darlin’ Maren, in town for holiday festivities. We made a pilgrimage to the Portland Art Museum (as is our nature), walked, talked, ate, and gave satisfyingly big squeezy hugs. It is marvelous to have friends. She is conducting a Trimpin kinetic sculpture that made the most sensational sounds. It was the cause of many a smile, too, and rightly so.

detail of This Land is Our Land

Abbie Miller

She uses a single 100 foot zipper. Wowie!

detail of PMU #25

Roxy Paine

Follow this link to see how another work in the series was made.

Oh bother, I forgot to get the artist info on this sculpture, anyone know? The mobile, however, is a Calder.

I didn’t get the name of this one either, silly bones.

This beauty, however, I can say with 99.5% certainty is a Mercedes 300, circa the 1950s. Shiny!

Hello. We were happy, not only because we were together, but had just gorged on homemade biscuits and gravy, which were fab. I had food disappointment earlier, at what I thought was a promising new diner near our house. The biscuits were hard, and though the gravy was called mushroom, there were, no exaggeration, three tiny slivers of fungi in the whole mess of gravy. Sad face. So we made up for it, and how! The purdiest, flakiest, yummiest, mile high biscuits (a riff on this recipe) bathed in gravy swimming with mushrooms and country sausage. I took not one photo, just to prove that I don’t actually have a camera appendage. Honest.

Fall Road Trip: Bend

December 1, 2013 in Drinking, Eating, Exploring, Traveling by Colleen | Permalink

Off for a long weekend retreat, planned when I thought a lack of sun would be weighing down on us. Happy to be wrong, we left sunny Portland for sunny Bend.

Mount Hood

Three Fingered Jack

Mount Jefferson

Fishermen on the Deschutes

Warm Springs

Railroad Bridge over the Crooked River at Peter Skene Ogden Viewpoint

Juniper Country

Gotta love a palindrome!

In Bend now, at the Old Mill District

The Hubster’s favorite.

Margarita and super fabulous Relleno at Hola!

We stayed at Brasada Ranch. Lovely and picturesque, it was everything we could have asked for. This was the awe-inspiring view from our room, with me waking early to watch the sun light the Sisters each morning.

South

I have never seen so many Robins! They are VERY keen on juniper berries.

gnarled old juniper

Fake smile and, quite possibly, the best pimento cheese ever at Drake. They have pretty snazzy cocktails, tip-top service, and a bad-ass roasted trout, too.

Homeward bound through fog-laden Prineville.

Mount Hood, again – jiggity-jig!

Long Day

November 9, 2013 in Eating, Exploring, Friendship by Colleen | Permalink

Long day, as in the kind one wishes to s t r e t c h, the body on tip-toe, to see, do, and be more, more, more. My dear friend Rob was in town on business and we had three hours at lunch time, our first stop at Broder and then Roman Candle, two very Portland places, as per his request. The Swedish meatballs and lefse as fabulous as ever, and our adorable server, with his playful winks the cherry on top.

The beautiful pastry is the Kouign Amann (the first word pronounced like queen) and the very last in the case. An elderly woman stepped in front of me in line for a moment to eye it, and I wondered if I could go Seinfeld on her like that episode with the marbled rye. Friends, I love this pastry, and I am glad I didn’t have to find out. It is buttery with a delicate crisp to it, topped with a crunchy layer of sweet and fleur de sel, happiness!

We had just enough time to wander and take photos, as is our nature when together, and so very much fun, too.

I had an hour in between my time with Rob and picking up the hubster for date night, and decided to stop in at Lone Fir Cemetery to pass the time. It is Portland’s oldest, with its first burial dating to 1846.

Picturesque and precisely what I imagine when daydreaming about cemeteries, towering trees and a gentle undulation of the land, with nary a sound to be heard. Squirrels hopped and scurried, lucky to live in this wondrous place of eternal sleep. I shed a tear over more than one stone; the pastor and his missionary wife, ceramic portrait in their Sunday best; the long-time companions taken by AIDS in the nineties, lighthouse showing the way; too many children who failed to live to double-digits; and WHITE, surname of one of my nearest and dearest friends, may his remaining time be l o n g.

Happy Hour at Park Kitchen, the best salt cod fritters ever with a drink that tasted like chai, and more wandering in the Pearl. Then we headed to Powell’s to buy a book. The hubster made this face when I read a kind of creepy title to him. Of course I laughed until I nearly cried and made him do it again for the sake of the photo. That man is the B E S T.