Lifestyle Adjustment
There's no such thing as how things should be—there's just how thing's are.
I read that recently. It's true.
This morning I was thinking ... it's cool how when you have a dog, you're forced into securing a life that has plentiful helpings of outdoors and physical activity, of simplicity, of kinda semi regular schedules involving not staying out til 4 a.m. (and then sleeping through the fresh morning when dog walks are best due to the cool air and clouds of just-open blossom scent).
In other words, Lefty—who's both my dog and my dawg—makes me live a good life. Oddly, it's not something I might do (or have done in the past) for myself. It's easier to do something for someone else ...
Stretching our hammies.
Look, I don't want to go to the river every weekend ... but I HAVE to. Because of THIS FACE.
Camping trips, wilderness meanderings, and pondering the void with my bud.
July 31st
In regards to July, it happened.
I did work. I did skate. I did swim. I did spend the night sleeping under a dome of stars. Well, inside a tent, under the stars. But that night we took off the rainfly because of the heat, you could peer straight out into the black above.
I wasn't very sad very often, and I didn't think too seriously about too much.
Mainly, I tried to water my garden enough and apply enough sunscreen.
Favorites 7.21.14
Zoo-bombing on a summer's eve: For non-Portlanders, this means bombing the hill by the Portland zoo on a skateboard. An adventure—train rides; steep, turny roads; peering in the lit windows of mansions; feet numb from rattling over pavement; salmon-pink sunset skies off in the distance. You end with, like, 1000-times more energy than you start with.
No cell service: Without service, your telephone becomes a dead object lodged in the car cup holder. Leave it there. Do non-phone related living. Enjoy how enjoyable this is.
Smoked paprika: Maybe someday I'll tell you all about a newfangled food allergy that has me consulting with witch doctors and terrified to eat anything delicious (as part of an elimination thingy, I'm currently off Cholula and other red-pepper-related deliciousness :( ) ... But for now, I'll just say this: Smoked paprika! On everything! Believe.
In Sunlight and in Shadow, by Mark Helprin: Long have I waited to recommend a 700-page work of contemporary fiction to you. The wait is over. Check it—a war story and a love story set in 1940s New York City; all about honor, passion, the magic of the city, and the inherent brutality that binds us humans together. Wow, right?
My (Short) Life As A Skate Coach
As mentioned elsewhere, I helped coach a session of Commonwealth skate camp. This was the week after the 4th of July, AKA last week, AKA the "hot week." I was on the fence about doing it. I'm no skate coach—never claimed to be! But this was special, an all-girls camp week, and those little ladies needed me.
Young girls are mysterious. Fun and funny. Their theories on the world, what they deem to be cool, and the strange hierarchies they develop within hours of meeting each other. I hope I hyped some of them up. Made some sort of impact—even if miniscule. Probs not, but one can hope.
Anyway, I was ruggedly sore and tired by the end of the week—leathered, if you will. But it felt great to come home dead tired at the end of the night, to have been out sweating and doing in the deepness of summer, rather than peering into my computer in the midst of air conditioning.
Plus, it made me fall in love with skating all-damn day again, a love affair that can get you into trouble when you're a freelancer with a procrastination streak but one that nevertheless shouldn't be neglected.
Sorry About Your Beer
Oh hi. I've been busy this week coaching Commonwealth Summer Skate Camp, breaking in my bottle of sunscreen, sweating my way through my ankle sock collection, and wearing myself out so well that I'm asleep almost before the light falls.
Now, it's deep summer, as you know, and I thought I'd tell you that I've had a kind of epiphany about beer recently after reading this article about insidious ingredients in stuff like Coors Light and Pabst. We're talking high-fructose corn syrup and genetically modified corn and—get this—fish bladder. Among other things. In the cold beer. That's in my fridge. Right now. Waiting for me. On this hot evening. After I've sweated all day........
I'm scandalized! I think we've all been pretending beer is something it isn't—something pristine and genuine and crisp; something full of good taste and good will. But I don't think we'd love it as deeply if we thought much about what goes into it (at least these big-name brands). We may realize that the aforementioned beers are just okay, maybe even worse than okay (fucking gross, even!) and that in fact we don't need them at all on a hot evening like this one. Just a thought. I dunno. Happy summer!
Coors/Molson statement on GMOs: "Our suppliers cannot guarantee that the corn (maize) products that we also use in brewing are GMO free. A wide variety of foods and beverages in North America contain these same corn (maize) ingredients."
The Huffington Post description of the fish bladder called isinglass that Guinness uses as a clarifying agent: "A form of collagen culled from a dried swim bladder, an internal fish organ that helps regulate buoyancy in water."
Nice!