Oh......right......


....there's that blog thing that I have.


Greetings from the Hills of Cedar......


View from my balcony which happens to overlook an abandoned mental hospital. Interesting......twice in a two-year time span, I've resided in very close proximity to an abandoned mental hospital....take from that whatever you will....

Whilst I'd been traveling way too much, and wasted time being deathly sick.....still, no excuse for not posting on this thing.....

Went to Albuquerque for a four-day Veteran's Day weekend to visit my best friends. Saw two Haliburton vehicles on two separate occasions and, during one afternoon outing, saw a guy walking his dog....this guy wearing a T-Shirt that said "Blackwater Defense Contractors" on it (knew it was the real deal, 'cause I saw this logo on it):

Emmmmm-Kay......Toto, we ain't in Oregon anymore......

Still, though.....had a fun time. Went Geocaching (private land and barbed wire made that an interesting experience I'd not seen before whilst Geocaching in Portlandia) in a few places, including the New Mexico version of a National Forest. Something really weird about vegetation in the High Desert.....everything is sharp to the touch....EVERY fucking piece or strand of vegetation!!! No canopy whatsoever in these forests......just really bizarre compared to what I'm used to......

Apparently, New Mexico birds don't mind the sharp thingies....






My friends reside in a little bumblefuk town way out in the Eastern high desert of Albuquerque. Or, at least what used to be a little bumblefuk town (it's now rapidly becoming an Albuquerque ex-urb, and my friends refer to it as "....our own little slice of Texas....." [insert bone-dry sarcasm here]). I remember when I first visited them in this town about seven years ago....wasn't quite Mayberry....but it was a simpler place in a simpler time......the main drag leading into and out of town was a simple two-lane road......

.....the developer profiteers saw no reason to set up shop there....

.....and the townsfolk didn't feel a need for Mega-Lo-Mart to come in and build a monstrosity.....even if the folks from Arkansas thought members of the community might cotton to the idea of a Hypermarket in their backyard if they planted a fucking hitching post at the front door to the store (which is actually part of this store's design)!!

Not like they're gonna hafta face any infrastructure issues in a few years or anything like that....especially in the desert......naw.....still, though, it's a beautiful place.

Twilight viewed from my friend's back yard.....

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Now, possessing the unfortunate combination.......

.....of the traits "poe" and "cheap", me is a big fan of the word free. Almost not giving a fuck as to what it is, exactly, that I'm receiving that is indeed free.

In this case, my friend's sister couldn't make a concert....thus, I was nominated to take her place. Now, read the above disclaimer again about my perception of the term "free." "Free" and "concert ticket"? Fuck, I didn't care! I have a rather dubious track record when it comes to this sort of thing, having accepted free tickets to see (on separate occasions, obviously), Lionel Ritchie as well as Ratt!!

OK...OK.....so there was ONE exception: About three weeks ago, a co-worker of mine was trying to git rid of one ticket to Hannah Montana at The Rose Garden that he offered to me gratis!

Errrmmm...............

.......no!

Well, in this instance, it was some bird from London via Sri Lanka who calls herself M.I.A. (which are her initials, Mathangi Arulpragasam). Suffered through the opening act which was some absolutely horseshite two-boy hip-hop rapper group called cool kids that was about as pleasant as watching a duet performed by Ratt and Lionel Ritchie while undergoing a frontal lobe lobotomy with a Black and Decker cordless drill!

This idea was rapidly beginning to have "SUCK!" written alllll over it.......still, though, at the Roseland Theatre, there is the basement room, where anyone over twenty-one could hop down to enjoy a beer and a cigarette, and watch the University of Oregon Ducks football team (complete with Ryan Leaf's brother at Quarterback) piss away their National Championship hopes to the University of Aridzona. Proceeded to do just that and, a few pints later, went back upstairs to join my friend and see this M.I.A. person before planning to duck out early due to having to urgently re-arrange my sock drawer......

.......honestly??

Shocking.

Music didn't suck.....stage presence was great.....not a bad show, actually! Stayed for the whole thing! Pretty much the first free concert I got invited to that DIDN'T suck!

I is off to bed....today, I realised the upside to living on a hilltop in that as I look out down from my bedroom window out over downtown Beaverton, I realise that I'm not going to have any flooding issues unlike the poor souls in the Tualatin Valley.

This makes up for the downside realised last December, when a freak snowstorm dropped two inches of snow in the valleys of Portland and Beaverton and FOUR inches here in the Hills of Cedar (Yeah....big deal!!! Until you realise that Portlandia does NOT possess a fleet of snow removal vehicles....actually, I don't even think it possesses one!). This made life a LOT of fun for me as I tried to get my car with tyres so bald they were showing steel cables on the surface to go up the 12% grade from my garage to my apartment. Needless to say, it didn't make it, and I left it where it lay.

New post in a couple days.....Central Oregon trip, Thanxgiving trip and I'll post a newly recorded song (no video for this one) on here if I can figure out how......

-E-