The links are much more interesting than the entry.

Silly language joke, from mactavish. :-D (bigbrain61 especially might want to check this out.)

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From littlebuhnee: Cool Ebay listing of the day, for all you comic book geeks.

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Well, plans postponed until next weekend because of vague summer cold I'm still managing to fight off.
Seaners went to sleep at 9:30, woke up around quarter to seven. Not bad at all. More nice cool grey weather. Also not bad at all.

East Meets West

Ever since the beginning of the expansion of the continent people have been moving west to conquer new territory. For some reason I was thinking about that today.

Back before the beyond when things weren't so great I always thought about picking up and taking a bus or a train to Vancouver (that's the Real Vancouver, not that part of essentially suburban Portland that calls itself Vancouver) and starting fresh and new and shiny on the left coast, like somehow the journey west through the prairies would cleanse my soul and I'd emerge on the other side a new person.

Just under a year ago (almost exactly thirteen months and one week) I did journey west, and left a lot behind in the process, undergoing some kind of spiritual rebirth (not to sound hokey, but that's what it was).

So ... why do people do it? What's the westward pull that so many people have?

Douglas Coupland said that Vancouver was a city with no past, no history. Portland is close to being the same. You go from say, Buffalo to Toronto, and there's a distinct difference. You go from Portland to Vancouver and the border between the countries is more malleable and fluid. More Japanese maples and tarps (read City of Glass by Coupland for a great Vancouver snapshot, better than I can give you.) but it's similar, like a different shade of red rather than red vs. green.

I can feel the difference between east and west. I know the pull between east and west. Home versus homeseeking, for me. But there's more to it - I can't speak it, it's just beyond the tip of my tongue.

Do you know?

Ding dong the witch is dead

Pasta puttanesca tonight, to commemorate my mother in law turning one year older.

Put some pasta on to boil.

Saute 3 roma tomatoes (coarsely chopped) and 2-5 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil. Saute gently for about 5 minutes. Add some roughly chopped kalamata olives, some capers, and a few cut up sundried tomatoes. Saute for another few minutes. Drain pasta; toss with sauce; add a little pesto if you have it (I did) and some parmesan cheese.

Well worth it.

Musings of an expat, part (n+1)

Confession time: I miss hockey.

I never really watched it when I was at home, but it was always on. My brothers-in-law watched it. I picked up a lot by osmosis.
I may have to start watching it seriously again. Although I am somehow deeply offended by the fact that there are hockey teams in parts of the country that don't cope with snow. The fact that Nashville and Atlanta and Anaheim have hockey teams really ... does weird things to my consiousness. (Vancouver for some reason is exempt from this, probably because it's Canadian.)
I don't know. The game is played on ice. It just feels weird to hear about games in the South. And then there's the damn blue dot. Do they still do that?