Weekly Review
Week note - vi
Another late update. I took last week off of work to deal with my shingles. It turns out shingles last longer than I was expecting and I spent much of that week in pain and cranky about it. I’m hoping things start to take a turn for the better soon.
The week was spent mostly watching movies, playing video games and doing some light chores I’ve been putting off for ages.
Week note - v
This is a note about travel and illness. Two things I try hard to keep separate.
Last week was the first full week of our annual Sierras roadtrip. It did not go according to plan. At first it seemed like several nights on a sleeping pad had tweaked my back. By the time we finished up in Coos Bay, I was sore and a dull pain started throbbing beneath my right rib. When we arrived in Lassen Volcanic National Park the throb transformed into a sharp and rhythmic pain.
I spent my time in the Park working from my van perched in position that would rather upset my physical therapist. When I wasn’t working, I practiced convincing myself that this was, in fact, a very normal and every day sort of stabbing pain. Nothing a good ignoring couldn’t fix. I, gracefully, declined to do much hiking while in the Park to give my beleaguered body time to heal from a surely treacherous but only mundanely strained back.
Wednesday we began the next leg of the trip with a four hour drive down to Tahoe. I was not much fun as far a road-trip co-pilots go.[^1] I only survived through willpower drawn from knowing a real bed awaited me at its end. When we arrived I climbed in and allowed myself to feel optimistic. That night I took my partner out for dinner[^2], both as a thank you for all the extra effort she was taking on for us and to (hopefully) mark a change in the tenor of the currently strained vibes of our trip. The meal was fantastic. I was certain that a night sleeping on a real bed would set things right. We popped on a movie and I took a muscle relaxer. (Some things can be left to fate, others require pharmaceutical intervention.)
Shortly after the movie finished, I woke up in the (confusing) throws of pain. The dull throbbing I had attributed to the spasms of my unhappy back muscles had transformed into a ceaseless stabbing pain that drove me to tears. I woke my partner and explained we might need to make the drive back to Portland tomorrow. (I did not want to die in California.) She, the love of my life, held my hand gently, offered kind words, and then popped in her ear plugs. Before rolling over, she explained, “if I’ve got to do the drive, I need to sleep and I can’t sleep through all your sniffling and moaning without these.”
Week note - iv
This week was the lead up to and start of our road trip. I enjoy road trips a lot. Driving through Oregon and Northern California is a delight. It’s. been just about 7 years since I’e moved here from Connecticut and I will never stop being awed by the natural beauty it has: volcanic mountains, misty rainy forests, the powerful forces of coast, and the starkness of the high desert.
Our trip takes has taken us, first, to the southern Oregon coast. I love it’s small towns and long lonely stretches. I really enjoyed seeing In A Landscape once again.
Since I am working from the van this week, my note is a bit shorter. This counts as my last post for Blaugust.
Week note - iii
I love baked ziti. Growing up in Connecticut every event called for a baked ziti. It is the east coast equivalent of the midwestern hot dish. Your neighbors invited you to a backyard barbecue? You can count on a tinfoil tray of ziti next to the burgers. Going to a pot-luck with your coworkers? Phil from accounting got that zeet.[^1] Italian-American food is my comfort food and ziti is, among them, uniquely nostalgic for me. It is simple to make and beloved by almost everyone.
Over the past few weeks my partner has been making lasagnas for Lasagna Love, a program where folks volunteer to (as you might imagine) make a lasagna for a neighbor in need. Consequently, I’ve spent a lot of time hovering around the kitchen as she makes delicious found I can’t have. This sparked a conversation about our shared love for baked ziti. Meaghan grew up on Long Island immersed in the same cultural ziti-geist in her childhood.
Driven by nostalgia we decided to make each other a baked ziti, inspired by our experiences back home. She made hers last week and it was fantastic, just what I’d expect from a chef’s daughter. As I write this, my own ziti is baking in the oven. I tried to recreate it the way that my mom made her’s when I was growing up. She was a single parent with limited income and two boys who ate staggering amounts of food, so cheap and simple meals that made a large quantity were a staple in house.
My mom’s approach didn’t have a recipe from grandma or begin with hours prepping a sauce from scratch. Most of the time it started with a jarred sauce she’d zhuzh up with ground beef (or whatever was on sale), pinches of dried spices from the cabinet, and some sautéd garlic & onions. A typical Sunday meant cooking up a huge pot of sauce, and rolling meatballs, eventually assembling a baked ziti and a pile of spaghetti that my brother and I would eat for the rest of the week.[^2]
Sometimes it’s nice to have a taste of the past.
Next week my partner and I start our roadtrip. For the last three years now, at the end of the summer we pack up my old Japanese van and make our way south down to the Sierras. We camp, backpack and stop wherever calls to us and it’s one of my favorite trips each year.
Week note - ii
I flew to Minneapolis for a wedding this weekend and only got back home to Portland last night, so this post is a bit delayed.
This was my first time experiencing Minneapolis and we stayed just a few blocks away from the site of Alex Pretti’s murder. It’s hard to put into words how I feel about what was done to him and the terror that has been inflicted upon the community by the state.
Alex was a nurse whose life focused on helping others. Alex was murdered for doing something righteous. As the horrors continue to build up around us, threatening to extinguish in us the voice that compels us to do what we know to be righteous, it is important that we don’t give into the despair. We owe it to Alex and so many others to continue the work.
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." - Ursula K. Le Guin, National Book Awards speech, 2014
The wedding was beautiful.
Week note - i
This past weekend was my birthday. My partner and I celebrated by camping at Cape Lookout on the Oregon coast. We had dinner at Willy’s in Oceanside. Run by a husband and wife team they serve Japanese comfort food in a beach town nestled on a cliffside.
The Oregon coast is a special place for me. It feels otherworldly. It is one of my most unexpected pleasures I discovered since moving to the state. Wide, often empty beaches, shrouds of mists crawling over groves of pine. The chance at glimpses of sea lions or even whales.
My favorite moment was our sunset campfire on the beach. When the sun finally fell beneath the horizon the distant dots of other camp fires were the only indication you weren’t utterly alone in the emptiness.