Bend

The name Bend, Oregon always sounds a little like a dirty joke to me. But this photo of downtown Bend proves it’s a wholesome little town.

Harvest Celebration

Thanksgiving is essentially a harvest celebration. This year, the hot weather threw me off and I didn’t really have a harvest in my home garden. But this picture proves 2013 was a much better year.

New Old World

 I don’t remember where I first read about New Old World by Pallavi Aiyar, but I do remember that I stopped reading and immediately put a hold on the book at the library. And I’m so glad I did because it might be the best book I’ve read all year. New Old World was eye opening in the same way that the novel The Life of Octavian Nothing was for me – it changed my perspective on something I thought I already knew, and I will never look at it the same way again.

Snow Day

We didn’t see a lot of this last winter, but signs are promising for this year.

What Have I Done Lately?

Here’s a quick recap of not-on-this-blog things I wrote in October.

Free Books in My Mail

In the two months since my last Mailbag post, I’ve received a lot of new ARCs, and as usual, I haven’t deserved them. Although there were a couple of books that could have been thoughtful gifts from people who know me well, most of them were merely tangential to my interests, and a couple were completely random. Since I’m not going to read them all and do them justice with a thoughtful review, the least I can do to is shine a light on their existence in the hopes that one of you will find something interesting to read this month.

Bicycle Parking

Reykjavik has so many clever bike racks. I wish I had thought to take a whole series of photos.

A New Low

By MarkBuckawicki (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

I spent most of October with a cold, and as the days stretched into weeks, in a low grade panic that it would turn into pneumonia again this year. Then I found this little bit o’ fiction that I wrote when I was sick with pneumonia a year ago. I had forgotten all about it. 

Harshmellow: Seattle Traffic

I exited McCaw Hall with my arm around my daughter’s shoulders. It was one of those gorgeous, golden autumn days that make you forget the grey of winter is even possible. We had just watched the first rep of the season at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and it was a good one. The three pieces artfully danced back and forth across the line between abstract and narrative ballet. My daughter made some observations that justified dragging her to fine art performances at a young age and made me glow with pride.

Driving over Queen Anne hill I glanced in the rearview mirror and was almost blinded by the sunlight dancing on the water of Puget Sound. Dahlias bloomed in the yards we drove past, red and yellow leaves dropping from the trees above onto their brightly colored petals.

I pulled up to the light at Nickerson. The digital sign above the intersection read

I remembered how I used to love waiting for drawbridges. I lived in a city with drawbridges!

The light changed, but there was nowhere to go. Nickerson St. was backed up to the intersection. A cyclist shouted at me as he rode past my window, “It’s green!”

The shiny SUV behind me honked. One would think a driver that far off the ground would be able to see past me to the blocked traffic ahead. They honked again. I resisted the urge to shoot forward and block the intersection. Drivers on the other road had done nothing to me, so why should I inconvenience them instead of the jerk behind me. I flipped them off instead.

Nickerson cleared out as soon as the light turned red, and I spent a light cycle staring at an empty street, with a row of SUVs waiting behind me.

I’m not so sensitive that a biking beardo and a bitch in an SUV would ruin my day. But the mellow was harshed.

Before They Were Famous

Okay, they were famous in Iceland from the day their first album came out, but when I took this picture of Skalmold’s Airwaves set in Gamli Gaukurinn in 2012, few people outside of Iceland had heard of them.