Stop the presses

Doodling in-between things, using a pattern made of the cloud texture of this as the base.

Although I do love the voice of the MAX, I love the voice of the streetcar more. It is way more future-y. I’ll need to capture it sometime soon.

We drove down to Lebanon on Saturday to visit my mom and sister.

I spent eighteen years of my life there and pretty much didn’t look back after I left. But you spend that much time in a place, even in the boonies outside it, it’s part of you. There is so much missing, like middle school all the city kids had to attend, that was flanked by portables for most of my childhood and was condemned some time after I left.  It’s strange.

And I left my mark, more or less.  I took Chase to see Mural Park, which I was an apprentice painter for.

This is how I spent two summers, a decade ago, painting two 22 by 94 foot murals.  My name is on them and everything.

I’ve spent twenty five years in the Willamette Valley.  That’s a God-awful long time.  I’m glad that in two weeks (!) we’ll be travelling to Wyoming, which is like the geographical inverse of this place.  I’ve never been longer than a week outside of the Valley except for some time in northern California, visiting family.  It’ll be interesting.

Since Chase had to shoot it anyway for work, we went to the Washington county fair. We went last year and I freaking love it. There would be more enjoyment if it wasn’t a have-to-go for Chase. We spent an hour with a food inspector giving an inspection and despite getting to watch the $5 monster truck rides while that happened, it was kind of a super lame thing. Anyway. Fair!

We don’t go for the rides so much as the “Shopper’s Expo” (it’s like HCN, but in life, omigod), the floral exhibits that are saddness in action and the the FFA stuff—which is Future Farmers of America for you city folks who don’t know. You raise things or practice home crafts and then enter contests with it or get the things auctioned off at crazy high per-pound prices. I like the food displays the most, because they are weird.

Oh yes. And we also go for the livestock.

There was a new swine barn this year dedicated to the memory of this guy. I think that is kind of awesome, though the LED memorial pins could have gone without “Git-R-Done” on them.

I have a little Flickr set from it, wherein I kindly mock how a child writes and there is some five and ten second video of pigeons and a pissed sheep and things.

Since this one doesn’t have the kind of payoff the last one did, have some doppler.