The Tale of the Whale

Home Improvement projects are not my forte. Both in skill required and being too lazy to overcome my natural inclination towards sloth.

First up, the laziness. I've had an empty $2 frame from IKEA hanging out in my apartments designated black hole, in this case an arm chair stuffed under my desk, for over a year. I've been meaning to put something in and hang in the bathroom, in the hopes that it would make it a little less creepy. I've even had an image saved that I keep meaning to print out and put in the frame which will then be hung in the bathroom for about that long. It's very etsy chic, with a whale assuring me that everything is okay. Andy by etsy chic, I mean its a print being sold on etsy that I somewhat unethically saved a copy of and mean to duplicate using my color printer. I know, I'm not a good person. I also watch pirated tv. Moving on.

Well after a year of meaning to do it latter, latter finally came and I finally decided that there was no reason why I couldn't hit print, take the printed paper, put it in a frame and get that frame onto a wall. Ha. Remember the no skill part?

Putting the paper in the frame was easy enough. Hanging it? Not so much. The frame came with this really long wire and two hooks. I turned that frame around every witch way, trying to find where to put the hooks to attach the wire too before concluding that there were no obvious or unobvious holes to screw the hooks into. So, I improvised and just kind of stuffed the wire into the frame back, popped it on and hoped for the best.

I wasn't sure how long the wire would hold, but I assumed it would probably at least be ok for a few days. If not, hey that's future Genavee's problem. Who cares about her? So, I grabbed our hammer and a few nails left over from assembling various pieces of IKEA furniture and headed in to get this thing hung.

Figuring that anything that is going to be seen primarily by naked people coming in and out of a shower who presumably had better things on their mind than picture placement, I just kind of looked at the wall, choose a spot, held the nail and hit it with the hammer. To my surprise it actually went into the wall fairly easily for a little while. About half way through it had apparently had enough with being cooperative and just felt like hanging out no matter how hard I walloped it. It was fairly clear after a few strokes that the nail was going to win, so I decided to give hanging the picture a try. Unsurprisingly, with the nail poking out so far, the picture stuck out at a very odd and obvious angle. And then fell down.

But I'm a creative girl, and I could solve that problem. If the nail wouldn't go in any farther, I'd just beat the nail until it bent to a more agreeable angle. And so I did. And then I hung the picture again. It looked ok, until I let go, and it swung around for a whil until it settled into an awkward position where it was not only crooked, but also had a corner awkwardly and stubbornly swung away from the wall.

 I fought with that thing for minutes, trying everything I could to get it straight. I readjusted the wire, hit the nail some more, placed it softly, tried making it stick with some scotch tape, everything. No matter what I did, the whale was always crooked and mocking me with it's optimism. I finally had enough and shouted as I stormed out":


"Everything is NOT ok, you're crooked, you stupid WHALE."

 And then Zach came home, tried very hard to not laugh at my irateness over the whale, figured out that the screws screw directly into the wood, and generally fixed everything. So now our bathroom has a reassuring rather that mocking whale.

One corner still sticks out kind of funny, but in a very subtle, okay kind of way. Hey, the whale just said things would be okay, not perfect. 

The law of the bikes

I was job hunting/exploring online today (read: I googled various variations of "Oregon" "Law" "Job" etc). Did you know that there are firms that specialize in bike law? The law of bicycles? Possibly even unicycles? There are people who spend there days on bicycle related legal matters? For a living? (I've probably over-made my point. But bike law?)

I now want to specialize in something that is certainly legitimate, but just doesn't quite feel that way. Cupcake law, for example. Manatee law. Ironic mustache tattoo and other hipster paraphernalia law (Oh, I could make a killing in Oregon). Of course, I'm open to suggestions.

The Not so Sane Rally

My question; Is it worth going to something solely for the purpose of being able to say "I was there"? Because that's where I am with the rally to restore sanity, and will probably will be with many other events.

In theory, it was a really cool event. An enormous crowd, mostly full of people that don't go to those types of things, fun and intelligent speakers, amusing signs, historic, etc. And I suppose all of that was technically still true, but to me it pretty much felt like being squeezed like a sardine amidst a horde of people, and being physically propelled from one side of the mall to the other by the sheer force of people movement and a strong desire to not be trampled.

I wasn't really expecting anything all that huge. Silly of me, I know. My first clue that I was very, very wrong was when we went to the bus stop Saturday morning. The bus, only about 1/3 of the way through its route was already packed to the gills. We ended up taking another bus to a metro station across town, having two trains come by that could not fit in another human being, and trust me people tried, taking a train the other direction to try to get a jump on things and finally barely squeezing in. All in all, it took almost two hours to make a trip that should have taken half an hour. I've never seen crowds like that on the metro, and it was even crazier once we got above ground. We managed to get in around 7th street, but we could never find a constant place to just stand, people kept moving in an exercise of futility. We couldn't see a thing, and could only make out a few words of what was said. Did I mention the crazy? I'm talking people climbing up and falling of off trees, lightposts and pretty much anything that could possibly be scaled. It wasn't just on the mall, the crowds extended out for a few blocks. Needless to say, getting home was also an adventure, only with the added bonus of our good will and patience having been spent.

Also, my cell phone is gone. It seems melodramatic to say that it was pickpocketed...but everything else was still in my purse, including little things that would have been much more likely to fall out, I never set my bag down, or meant over in a way thing could have fallen out, I've called all the businesses I was in that day, and well it's gone. So that kind of sours my experience a bit. I hate spending money on things that should just be.

Don't get me wrong, people were fairly polite for how crowded it was, there was a cool atmosphere and some fun signs. But, uh, the point is that while I can say I went to the rally, my experience was pretty much just being pushed and pulled and stuffed into small spaces with a crowd of decent people and their amusing signs and losing my phone. Ordinarily not a recipe for a good time. I'm not convinced that calling it something cool and historic really takes away from the fact that objectively it was kind of miserable. 

But, I can say I was there.

Towards the beginning of the rally, when we were still relatively optimistic. Also the only picture that isn't just the tops of heads of random people, because that's pretty much all we saw.

Ok, I lied. There's also a picture of Obama loving Jesus on a street light.

And a Viking party boat. I don't understand either.

POOF November

When I was a kid, I somewhat secretly believed that I had special powers. You know, ESP*, ability to bend the universe to my will, the usual. I pretty much just used my powers to stare at traffic lights and make them turn green. Sure, it was bound to happen eventually, but you can't prove that I didn't make it happen sooner.

Sometimes I really wish I still had that kind of faith in my control the universe power (It's only real if you believe!). Because then I would squint my eyes up all tight and make November go POOF! Because I am so not ready for this month. So much to do! Just like every November since I've been a student! And still get surprised by every year! POOF November, I said POOF!



*I sort of think I still have some kind of predict the future ability. As in, I usually feel like I can predict major events in the lives of friends, like pregnancy or getting engaged before they're officially announced. Now, I also think things will happen that never do. And it's entirely possible that I'm right through a combination of the twice a day stopped clock principle, and the ability to pick up on somewhat subtle clues. But that's not nearly as cool.