Escaping Suburbia

There is this time of night — well, 1:30 in the morning to be exact — when the whole house is dark and the traffic on the highway has died down. I go into the kitchen where the windows aren’t covered and stare out at the hills and the silhouettes of all the trees that surround us. Goosebumps. Never fails.

I can’t say with certainty why we love Oregon so much but couldn’t handle Connecticut. They’re both green, with some beautiful scenery and a great emphasis on outdoor activities.  Maybe it was just the bad timing in our personal lives of when we chose to go to the east coast that soured the whole experience for us. Connecticut felt claustrophobic to me, the trees oppressive. Maybe it’s the open spaces in Oregon that let me appreciate the trees more.

I just really like standing in my kitchen at 1:30 in the morning and looking out into the darkness. Contentment, with goosebumps.

EE Wilson Wildlife Area (January, 2007)

Ugh. I’m trying to make both my blogs look nicer & it’s not going very well. I love all the free templates available from Wordpress, but my lack of coding ability is catching up with me. There’s something not quite right about each one I try.

I want MWV Local to look more professional – with more of a magazine or news-site feel. This one… I don’t know what the heck I want out of this one.

Grumble, grumble. Please bear with me if it looks stupid here for a while.

The other day I was at Costco and, as usual, made a run through the book section. What I saw there had me cracking up for the rest of the day:

Classics. Right on. Why so amused, then?

Because the books were all neatly displayed at the young-adult end of the table, next to the Twilight series. Sorry, “saga”:

I’m all for encouraging folks to read the classics, I just think it’s kind of… amusingly sad I guess?… that publishers are resorting to this sort of transparent pandering.

What really gets me rolling, though, is the idea of a sparkly Heathcliff.

Sparklecliff!

::giggle::snort::

I wonder how effective these covers will be in selling these books, and I wonder how the people who might never have given them a chance otherwise will feel about them. I fervently hope that at least a few 13-year-olds will have their reading horizons broadened in a way that will instill a love of books in them forever. Meanwhile, OMG, go to the store and get one of the classics in a cover that isn’t so horrifying to carry around.

Sparklecliff!

The Democrat Herald ran a story yesterday about a local apartment complex attempting to ban any kind of flag from being displayed on vehicles parked on the property. Somehow I doubt the apartment manager is going to win this one in the long run, but anyway, it’s the headline I have a problem with…

Apartment bans U.S. flags

Technically correct, though oddly specific, considering that the ban includes flags from other countries, sports teams flags… ALL FLAGS.

So, what is the DH trying to do here by calling attention to the U.S. flags in the headline? Are they being intentionally inflammatory in this relatively conservative city? Judging by the comments already left on the article, they succeeded. Liberals have been blamed. One commenter has “a feeling there is a nice group of veterans who will be visiting this place soon“, himself included. (Is that a threat? What does that mean?) Someone else thinks the manager should be fired for being unpatriotic.

Wait, I thought it was ALL FLAGS. An across the board policy. Can we get a little outrage for the Beavers and Ducks?

Anyway. Thanks, DH, for giving that wedge just another little tap.

P.S. For the record, I tweeted my dismay at the DH yesterday (where way fewer people would see it), but they didn’t reply and it’s still bugging me. So they get a blog post.

I love this item from the Gazette-Times crime watch section today:

OSU Department of Public Safety
Tuesday, May 26
ANNOYING FLIRT: 2 p.m., Valley Library. Library staff complained that a male student was flashing the laser light from a computer mouse at other patrons, annoying them, despite being asked to stop. The student said he did it to get the attention of a girl he liked. He was advised to try another tactic.

He was advised to try another tactic… oh, honey. Try chasing her around the playground at recess!

P.S. Crime watch section. NEWSPAPER. Yep.

Cute new comic strip over at comics.com…

Click on it to see a larger version, my wordpress template is really too narrow for almost everything. Think I will change it soon. Fixed!

“It’s spring fever…. You don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
-   Mark Twain

cooking

…  spinning

No… wait… spring cleaning

… the chickens

… going for a hike

Or… knitting

… I know… get a new cat

There is… this book I’m reading

… a project at work

… picnic with friends

… decorating the house

… work in the garden

… sit on the floor and listen to music for three hours

… organizing (Everything. My whole life.)

… go somewhere & take photos

… a little nap wouldn’t hurt

Or… sit in front of the television and ignore everything

… head out to the coast

But… there’s all this remodeling we need to start planning

… write for the other blog?

I could always… sit here and stare at this blank screen.

So, yeah, Mark Twain kind of summed it up.

Here’s my current spin project:

Corriedale from Dicentra.

Gotta fly!

We dropped our host and went with another company… I hope this will solve the problem of this site being frequently inaccessable.

Today I made a conscious and deliberate effort to avoid a human dressed as a giant droplet of blood. The Red Cross is having their blood drive on campus, and this costumed human was cavorting around outside the Memorial Union building, presumably drawing attention to the cause.

I was heading out the door, saw him or her there, and turned around and went another way.

It wasn’t that they were dressed up as blood, either, it was just the giant costume aspect. I also do my best to avoid people in metallic paint pretending to be statues.

What does this mean?