Category: News

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Everybody’s goin’ off the deep end

A blow-by-blow account of my weekend:

  • Friday morning: arrive at work, unload bike bags, drop off bike at Bike Gallery for repairs next week
  • Friday: work, trip planning & preparation, Max ride to Gateway Transit Center (no bike)
  • Friday evening: Tina and boys pick me up at Gateway TC, dinner at El Sombrero, shopping at Costco, strained right calf walking to checkout line
  • Friday night: organized trip items at home, haircut, Tivo watching
  • Saturday morning: woke up early to finish organizing trip items, discovered that I didn’t have my travel papers, emailed office admin and a co-worker to help retrieve it
  • Saturday morning (continued): packing for camping (Tina had pre-organized) using our new roof rack, meet up with scouts for 9:30 am departure to Beacon Rock
  • Saturday morning (later): Arrive at Beacon Rock @ one hour later, setup camp as rain begins, twisted right ankle stepping in mole hole, helped John setup portable canopy near our tent
  • Saturday: huddled under canopy and cooked occasionally, skipped 1.5 mile hike up Beacon Rock because of rain, calf and ankle – Graham disappointed
  • Saturday evening: enjoyed Boy Scout Campfire including two flag retirements
  • Saturday night: retired early and muddily to bed, slept well despite the loud nearby campsites, awoke twice to urinate, wiped my muddy feet on my pants before getting back in bed
  • Sunday morning: awoke @ 7:00 am, struck camp and packed for home
  • Sunday morning (continued): Breakfast at Charbroil’s in Cascade Locks, drove home
  • Sunday morning (continued): Arrived home, checked email and received missing travel info, showered (while Tina unpacked the car), packed my bags (using this list), cleaned cat box, put out recycling, drove to airport
  • Sunday afternoon: waited at airport and started writing this
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Getting Old Sucks

Yesterday morning I injured my right wrist in the shower. You might think that there was some sort of freak accident which involved slipping or falling or maybe both, but it was not nearly that dramatic. The sad truth is that I was simply washing my hair when it happened. The act of rubbing shampoo onto my scalp with my hand caused the injury to my wrist. I wasn’t rubbing particularly vigorously or pressing very hard. It just started hurting and has hurt since.

Since I turned 40 I have been noticing more and more that my body has become much more fragile. Injuries that used to take a day or two to heal now takes weeks or even months. Last year, on a trip to the coast, I made the mistake of hefting too many laptops in my shoulder bag. Result: a popping sensation in my left shoulder that has only recently gone away.

It wasn’t like this when I was 20 or even 30. When I was in college, I used to do crazy things so people would think I was crazy. One of the crazy things I did was to jump out of a second story window once when I was drunk. Because I came away from that experience completely uninjured, I concluded that I would never be injured jumping out that window and demonstrated my theory a few days later. Even though I “rolled” with the impact, I injured my right ankle enough that I rolled around on the ground in pain for several minutes before limping off for a beer.

It probably took only a week for that injury to heal, but it has come back numerous times to haunt me in recent years. In the last year especially, that ankle has gone from normal to painful in a matter of minutes. And the transition doesn’t even have to involve movement. I can be sitting with my feet off the ground for a long period of time but when I stand I’m suddenly in excruciating pain. The extreme pain fades but a dull pain lingers for days after. I plan to speak with my doctor about it next time I see him.

Sometime between jumping out that window and now my body decided it could no longer put up with my shit anymore. Or perhaps it was no longer able to put up with my shit. Whatever the correct shit-putting-up-with verb, my actions now have consequences on my fragile body. That fragility has not only created a greater awareness of physical consquences but has also led to increased caution and hesitancy. Straining to move that bookshelf a few inches further while the body is twisted awkwardly is no longer an option. Greater planning and frequent plan re-evaluations are the order of the decade now.

And when the body says, “Pain!” – it’s time to finally listen.

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Starlight Parade

Last night we decided to skip the fireworks because the boys were tired from Graham’s birthday celebration, but there was no way to keep them (or me) away from the Starlight Parade tonight. We arrived and got a parking spot just before they closed the streets downtown. After hiking down to Blueplate and finding it closed, we settle on pad see ew (boys) and burritos (Tina and I) for dinner, which we purchased from a couple of food carts and toted back to the office. Everyone wolfed down their dinner and the boys and I adjourned into the Rec Room for a little Wii action while waiting for the parade to begin.

Outside the crowd had been massing since before our arrival. Once the police shut down the parade route to traffic, the streets turn into a giant playground for kids while the parents sit on the curb and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather. People began marking their spots with duct tape and chalk yesterday, but that’s nothing compared to next week’s parade for which many will “reserve” spots days in advance. The crowds spread out from the middle of the sidewalk until they reach the edges of the parking lane in the street and are pressed up against the buildings on the sidewalk. Although it looks festive, it’s too claustrophobic for me and we’re glad to have second story window seats above the fray.

The Starlight Parade is preceded by the Starlight Run which is a semi-competitive event that winds throught the parade route. Most runners dress up in costumes and the crowd cheers the best ones. Here’s a series of comments from Graham as the runners went by:

  • “tutu! jester! Fairy! Elf! Sunglasses!”
  • “Hawaiian Dude!”
  • A nurse and her patient (actually my observation)
  • “Cavemen… no togas. Supergirl. Soccer player. Some guy with colored hair right there. Who’s that?”
  • “Buzz Lightyear. Here’s Flash coming. Two Supergirls! A girl with pompoms. A hula girl. A marine. Togas! American man. American boy.”
  • “There’s jailbirds. Superman. Pacman! A leprachaun! A prom person. Chickens! A new hula girl. A green something and there’s another Wonder Woman”
  • “A viking! Or is that a devil? Banana! Hula persons! Canoing person. Cow! Another Flash.”
  • “Pirates! Somebody is moving it. I love Spiderman! So many green people!”

There was a bit of a break after the runners finished before the parade proper started but before we knew it, the firefighters arrived with their perennial feat of climbing 30 feet into the air and then jumping to the waiting rescue squad below. The crowd loves it! And not long after that, the One More Time Around Again Marching Band thundered to a halt in front of our building and played the hell out of “Louis Louis.” This is, by far, the highlight of the parade for me every year and the primary reason I come to see it. The power of the brass is overwhelming and I get chills each time. When the various high school bands march by after the OMTAAMB I can only feel sorry them. There’s simply no way to follow that act.

The streetlights are all dimmed or turned off and many of the parade participants wear flashing LEDs. Entries vary from regal to hilarious to annoying and it all will blend together eventually. I’ve retired to an office with a couch to watch the rest of it in comfort as I write these words. Eventually the PGE light bulb mascot will bring up the rear and remind everyone to pick up their garbage. Then the streets will slowly empty out and be re-opened. We’ll drive home and perhaps stop at Voodoo Donut for the boys. Life is good tonight.

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Rose Festival Starts Today

Portland’s annual Rose Festival starts today and continues for the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow night there will be fireworks on the waterfront and then Saturday night the Starlight Parade will march through downtown. The following Saturday features the Grand Floral Parade but we’re going to have to miss it this year because of a Scouting event. I’ve always preferred the more informal Starlight Parade anyway. CPS HQ is located right on the parade route so we get free front row seats every year. Everyone else marks their “reservations” with duck tape on the sidewalk and lawn chairs chained to roadside signs.

Every year the big ships come in and dock for a few days while their sailors roam the streets of Portland enjoying shore leave. There is also a week long Family Fun Center with carnival rides, but we hardly ever go there.

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Is that all you get for your money?

This blog and other websites on rynosoft.com have been up and down today because of the CPS office move. CPS SEO network infrastructure including the server hosting rynosoft.com was moved last night but the DNS changes did not propagate until this morning. Sometime later in the morning, power to our network was turned off by the electrical contractors in order to install the proper plugs for our UPS units. The network wasn’t restored for a couple of hours and then the server got unplugged from the network a couple of times. Evidently, this all lead the DNS to re-propagate incorrectly and I was unable to access rynosoft.com until just a few minutes ago. Hopefully, the interruptions are over.

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CPS is moving Friday

 

We are literally moving right across the street, SW Broadway to be specific. Our old address is 711 SW Alder and the new address is 621 SW Alder. Friday I’m putting the contents of my office on a book cart. The movers will transport it across the street over the weekend and I’ll probably be at the new office to unpack on Sunday. 

For those of you who have lived on a different world during the last 30 years, the photograph is a parody of this famous Beatles album cover. The street we are walking across in the photo is not actually Broadway.

Note that CPS isn’t the first to parody Abbey Road: you can find many examples here, but this is my favorite. The Wikipedia article also mentions several parodies.

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Inside Graham’s Mind

Awhile ago Graham asked if he could have a blog, too. I said that he could but that he would have to write stuff for it. He had previously written a poem that I thought would be appropriate, but he lost it or left it at school or something. I created the blog anyway and was ready when he asked if I wanted to hear a story that he had written. “Do you want to put it on your blog?” I asked. “Sure,” he replied.

And so it began.