pedestrian saga

Leapin’ Labradors! It’s the Year of the Dog!

[Hollers at Maddy to get off the sofa]

Thanks, chenb, for your thousand-plus words.

I managed not to cry yesterday, despite heavy doses of Lucinda Williams and Kris Kristofferson, nor did I wash my hair, so I guess I’m in pretty good shape luck-wise. Definitely could have done with some fireworks and dumplings though!

Now, go enjoy more “aw”-inspiring photos and ponder the irresistible allure of Aardman dogs and conversational British English. That’s a good dog…

Tonight Scott held my hand as I made my first edit in that ubiquitous behemoth of a wiki, correcting a misspelling in the entry for The Name of the Rose. (Much, much more on TNOTR soon.) How thrilling and satisfying! And yet the potential for dangerous copyediction…

Man, the Clash are absolutely, bloody brilliant. Where have I been all these years?

Day Two of pacing around the house, tense and seemingly incapable of focusing long enough to accomplish anything productive. Meanwhile, the shining sun beckoned, and so I took the dogs out to the OSU farm for a very long walk. Maddy is such a scaredy-dog! Passing by the mellow cattle and the curious alpacas, she stood frozen and wide-eyed and held her fluff-tail low. The sheep were grazing too far from our path to test her shepherd cred. A magnificent raptor hovered above the grass between us, strutting its acrobatics before swooping down for a field snack. A hawk, maybe, with a striking white brow like an owl’s. I didn’t find a picture of the species, but the attendant distractions of the search led me to the happy discovery that this big book is online. I really enjoyed seeing the “double-elephant folio edition” at the Huntington Library.

Did I mention I’m not concentrating well these days?

Back home, I gathered the post and added another job rejection letter to my growing collection. But it’ll be okay, because it turns out Saint Matthew’s Churches out of Tulsa, OK, are poised to pray for me and my job search. In fact, they say in their letter they “FEEL THAT SOMETHING VERY WONDERFUL IS TRYING TO COME TO [ME].” Apparently, the next 24 hours are crucial, because “timing is important to God.” Bad news for a procrastinator like me! As I consider their list of prayer needs, I wonder if I’m supposed to check all that apply. I certainly wouldn’t want them to pray for “confusion in my home”! The Brat Pack can manage that on our own, thank you. They offer to pray for “a money blessing” and even provide a space for me to specify an amount. No blank to indicate the exact make and model of “new car” I might want, however, and could I substitute a bicycle anyway? As for the mystical paper prayer rug I’m to mail back with my needs checklist and my seed gift, I’m with this guy: I’m keepin’ it. Unless maybe Paul Turner would be interested in hanging it with his velvet Jesus at the Darkside.

Bicycled to Philomath for the second day in a row. Thirteen miles each outing. Yesterday, pouring rain and hills - reluctant and a tad crabby. Today, sunshine (shy at first, then bursting) and Sunrise Sourdough Bakery (scroll a little) - mellow and a little more confident. My companion, Scott, cyclist catalyst, velo hero. Someday, I’ll cycle strong as his stoker.

I’m going to make more of an effort to post my happy little discoveries here, those things that have me going all, “Man, why didn’t I think of that?” Lately I’ve just let MWDITOTs pile up in my Bloglines and annoy me. Very bad. Regular MWDITOTs on pedestriansaga? Very good. (Well, I don’t know. You tell me, dear reader.) If I could have a theme song to introduce my MWDITOTs, it would be something like “Mwuh-diddy-tot” to the tune of “Mahna Mahna.” (Thank you, Scott, for getting that song into regular rotation on my mental playlist!)

So when I moved to Oregon in November, I finally let go of my cassette tapes. Just gave ‘em away. So long, lovely, lovely Loco Live! Bloodletting and Bleach, be well! Farewell, The Wallflowers! (And those are just the ones I’ll fess up to having. With alliterative names.) But man, oh, man, why didn’t I think to knit ‘em into this? (Via The Grist List and Wired News.)

I don’t know how to knit, actually. But if I did, I’d dream of running off to join the Knitta gang of taggers. (Via wonderful Wooster Collective.) What an artistic, healthy release of those nagging unfinished projects! Or I’d totally wish I’d thought of these sick and twisted little beauties! (Via friend of Knitta.)

[Update 1/23/2006, for sake of thoroughness, following middle-of-the-night recollection]
Knitta’s tagging is so assertive. Times of introversion, when I feel like retreating inside my shell or sticking my head in the sand or spinning a cocoon or otherwise expressing angst with an animalistic metaphor… Those times call for a knitting performance like this!

File this under Easily Amused. I’ve started reading The Oregonian (OregonLive.com) regularly. Yesterday I wandered over to their Tails of the City to peruse the photo albums of cute canines. Next thing I know, I was following some weird late-night Internet show-and-tell impulse, and now, check it out! My dogs, Oregonians. (Never mind that those particular photos date to our previous move.)

As they say over at Salon’s Video Dog, all together now, Aw!

For the first time in my personal history, and inverse to tradition, I actually lost a few pounds over the winter holidays. Perplexing ’cause I was often to be found bustling around one kitchen or another trying my hand at creating some new treat or another (and compulsively dipping it in the batter…) To review: (more…)

Stepping out into the crisp night air for after-dinner walkies, I gasped with delight at the glittering sky. After a week of proper Northwest winter precipitation, I’d gotten used to greeting the rain’s gentle pattering on the porch roof (which usually sounds so much wetter than it actually is), and after years of megalopolitan living, I’d gotten used to greeting the stars through a blanket of light and air pollution. Now when the sky clears over my new Home, the stars cluster so densely and dangle so close to the horizon! (Hmm, it might be because Scott’s workmates are so adept at rolling huge katamari to please the King of All Cosmos.)

I’m so happy to be in Corvallis, and I’m quickly getting used to it. That means I’ll have to remember to keep forgetting all the details I admire, as the narrator of True Stories suggests, in order to continue to truly see this place: the moss in the cracks of tree bark and sidewalk concrete, the exquisite carpet of fallen ginkgo leaves, the evergreens on Witham Hill coated in frost, the words wrapped around the courthouse clock tower (Hooray! I’d already forgotten them!), the traffic light sensors in the bicycle lanes, the filbert vendor at the Saturday market cranking his shelling device, the Grass Car that parks across from the front-porch mobile of bicycle parts, the sofas of the Darkside Cinema…

Happy New Year, dear reader, with love from Corvallis!