Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

I had the best BBQ tonight at a place called Russell’s in North Portland. They had pimento cheese and sauce called ‘North Carolina’-style, as opposed to the ubiquitous ‘Carolina’-style, which is usally a tip off that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Over the last week, we’ve been stripping all the woodwork in the front of the house. It’s been pretty exhausting and dirty work that has entailed hours spent on top of a ladder prying paint off ceiling beams. The first thing I use, a water based chemical called Back to Nature Ultra, turns the top layers of paint into snot that needs to be scraped off and then scrubbed with steel wool. Then you have to use Jasco, a super toxic chemical that burns your eyes and nose and you don’t want any of this stuff touching your flesh. There is so much woodwork in the front of the house and we’ve made such a miserable mess, getting it all over ourselves and everything in the vicinity. But it’s already more than half way done. There’s still sanding and staining and varnishing and painting that needs to happen in there, but the paint stripping is the absolute worst step. And it’s kind of nice having the horrible part done at the beginning. There’s less dread. One of my clients once told me she thought I liked to do the hard parts of a job first because I was Catholic (well, raised). I’m not sure what the hell she was talking about.
Once again, we have no plans for New Year’s Eve, which I think is kind of an annoying holiday. Maybe I’ll finish watching Morven Caller or Bigger Than Life, two movies I’ve started watching and desarately wanted to see for years and now can barely concentrate on.

I hope everyone who looks at this blog has taken a second to sign the petition from Onward Oregon to stop the building a crummy Home Depot in the NE foot of the Burnside Bridge. Here’s a response I received from Matt Hennessee, chair of the Portland Development Commission.

I’m going to try to respond to all of the e-mails I’ve received on this issue in the last ten days or so. Evidently the e-mails began pouring
in while I was out of the country and I didn’t get a chance to get back
to people in a timely manner. However, I’m back now and want you to
know I’ve read and appreciate your comments.

My colleagues, Commissioners Doug Blomgren, Janice Wilson, and Eric
Parsons, our Executive Director, Don Mazziotti and his staff, and our
Mayor-elect Tom Potter and his administration and I are committed to make
sure our process is open, fair, and inclusive of all thoughts and
comments.

To that end while we will have a briefing at the work session on
January 12th (the meeting is scheduled to start at 3:00PM and end at 5:00PM
which you’re more than welcome to attend, but is not a meeting designed
to take public testimony) we envision having at least two, if not three
additional meetings in the neighborhood for members of the community to
publicly weigh in with their thoughts ahead of our (I believe)
February 9th vote. In fact each PDC Commissioner will do everything we can to
make one of the community meetings as it’s great with projects like
this to hear your testimony far before the day of the vote.

We’re grateful to each of you who have written as it’s a reminder of
why we all love this City so much–you can get involved and getting
involved does make a difference.

We care, we’re listening, and look forward to working with you directly
or through our PDC Staff to come to a resolution in the best interests
of community and our City at-large.

Should you have any questions or need any additional information please
feel free to contact our PDC offices and speak with Ms. Christina Cain,
Executive Assistant to the PDC Board of Commissioners.

Thank you.

Matt
__________

Matt Hennessee, Chair
Portland Development Commission

Did everybody get what they wanted for xmas? I took this picture at a grocery store I found a month ago that really freaked me out because it was so creepy on every level. Usually when you find a creepy grocery store, it’s a little mom and pop that can’t afford to remodel, but this place was massive.
Xmas was pretty fun. We just hung around the house and cooked and sat in front of the fire and watched Nightmare on Elm street for the ten millionth time. But this weird sense of well being came over me that I was just sitting around my living room and cooking and talking and not thinking about remodeling. And I was not scrutinizing every wall or generally looking at the place as I imagine it will look after more remodeling.

It was nice having a mental day off, cause I’ve fallen into this obsessive tunnel vision vortex as the result of the last three months spent remodeling. I’ve seen this behaviour in other people’s journals online, so at least it’s not just me.
The other night when Jeremy and I went out to dinner we talked about our house the whole time, which isn’t that rare or annoying in the least, but I think I’m going to start talking about my remodeling more on this site… driving away the last three readers with boredom. I’m at a loss for just about anything else to talk about.
I’m also working on creating a massive ongoing before/after book with all the work we’ve done. You could divide the interior of this place into thirds or fourths and about a third of it is a few weeks away from being pretty completely remodeled, which is kind of psychotic. But maybe not, since it’s only two bedrooms and a hallway and not something scary and monumental like the kitchen.
The front third of this house is the living room/dining room, which needs a lot of different things, but the most accessible/do-able thing is to strip the woodwork. Jeremy did a whole panel on one of the beams the other night and now this seems like something we could get done sooner rather than later. Evil people painted over all the stained woodwork in the front of the house at some point. And maybe I’m crazy, but it seemed like the paint came off the stained wood easier than it did in the back on the wood that was probably painted from the get go. Little discoveries like this turn out to be a rallying cry, but today was kind of a disaster. The two gallons of paint for the back bedroom walls were severely different shades of green, which shut down a whole day’s worth of work since the store was closed.
Here’s what else went wrong:
The love seat that would have fit in our living room perfectly that we saw last week at a thrift store had been sold.
Fred Meyer’s 50% off xmas decorations had been looted by the time we got there, so we couldn’t add more strings of blue lights to our collection. The six boxes I bought last year barely seemed to cover the porch. I guess next November, I’ll have to spend 100% to get lights to cover the front peak of the house.
And then we drove out to Portland Nursery to make a first stab at landscaping, but they were closed as well. This town is full of great locally owned stores, but they like to close whenever they get the chance.

Despite that, take a second now to sign this petition from the excellent people at Onward Oregon who are trying to organize people to stop the building of a huge Home Depot at the foot of the Burnside Bridge. I used to like HD when I lived in LA and it was open 24 hours a day and you could go down there and buy something at four in the morning. When I was a kid, twenty four hour retail seemed like the height of glamorous big city living and I was so disappointed to find it pretty non-existant when I lived in NYC. But Home Depot sucks on every level. They’re exactly the same as Walmart in their business practices, sell crappy stuff and are eye-sores.

Otherwise, we made contact with the former owner of this house on xmas eve. We got a big package for her from UPS, which was a good excuse to call her up. Jeremy was the one that actually chatted with her and didn’t get much of a chance to speak. If I’d been on the phone, I would have asked what she was thinking when she did all that bad stenciling work in the back of the house.

For xmas, this year, I’ve sunk to new cheapo levels. Basically, I’m offering a new mix cd. The deal is, hop on AOL IM and I’ll just send it to you… electronically. My alias is ’scottysouling’.

I got this in an email my parents sent today. And while this is not their sign, I’m still impressed that they’re always willing to photograph a good sign.

I found this roll of film in one of my retired Holgas when I decided a few months back that I wouldn’t shoot medium format until I had a real medium format camera. Sigh. I wasn’t sure who Jenny was dancing with in the double exposure print. I’ve come to the conclusion that she was dancing with herself.

Simply the best person on the internet. I feel so outclassed and outgunned. This woman’s whole site is worth systematically checking out. I made my way through a big chunk of it tonight, but I’m saving the rest for a rainy day.

So we bought paint for the bedroom today and it was a grueling decision, but in the end, I think we went with the best classic bungalow style NW-ern color. I just hope it’s dark enough that I won’t have to prime my walls. Though I gotta say, right now I’m more excited by all food talk that’s going on for xmas day. I need a good recipe for spicy mac, no fooling.

Seems like all I’ve been able to think about all day is the 1912 Bungalow site and my desire for subway tile. We’re tying to figure out what color to paint the bedroom and it’s driving me nuts.

And is Drew Carey gay? Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I may have reached one of those remodeling final insults yesterday when I got a wood splinter stuck in the tip of my right index finger. The surprise is always worse than the pain in this type of situation and now I can barely double click my mouse.

Last week I read Alex Kotlowitz’ Never A City So Real, a book of essays about Chicago. I was surprised how much it made me want to go visit again right away and at the same time brought back all the rage and frustration of that place. The publishers have put out a whole series of books on America’s second-string stepchild cities (they did D.C. already and Austin and New Orleans are forthcoming). The Portland one by Chuck Palahniuk was pretty helpful when I got out here and I just got the one about Oakland today. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s miserable, so I’m dying to go.

I need to go here this summer, though I can’t decide between The Serendipitree and the Treezeebo. Actually, Jeremy had a brilliant idea, which is to have everybody meet there in the summer for a big reunion, sorta like Patrick and Kelly’s wedding in Fredonia was. Anyone interested?

Check out SNL this weekend and hopefully you’ll see something I worked on last week (if it gets finished in time).

And speaking the media, congrats to Nick for getting into Sundance.