Peeing in Portland

Posted by random olio

Over the weekend, I dragged Chris to a few holiday artisan markets. I usually do not buy much, but find I gain inspiration from seeing other artists share and sell their work. One of the markets is called: ADX Gifted. ADX is a design and prototyping facility in Portland that allows for metal, wood, industrial sewing machines, and 3D printing. My kind of place! I have for a long time wanted to do small woodworking projects using a lathe and sander. I have memories of my middle school wood shop class, and while I secretly loved to cook and sew, I also secretly loved playing with wood.

I digress. The reason for this blog has nothing to do with sand paper or wood. I found a book at the ADX Gifted market that I wanted to share. It is called: “The Best Places to Pee.” Yes, I did. It is a book about the best bathrooms in Portland. A fun idea, eh? There are pictures of each bathroom from the author’s list of 51 places to pee. Let me explain further.

I have an app on my iPhone called: Sit or Squat. I have it so that anytime I am out or traveling I can at any time look up where there might be a bathroom. Sit or Squat asks its users to add new bathrooms to the map using crowd sourcing for all of us that often have “gotta go.” I was the child on a road trip (my family’s version of a road trip was an hour away) who would ask if we could stop to go to the bathroom a zillion times. I am sure my father cringed every time I asked, knowing it was going to take five times longer to get there. Eventually he just told me I had to hold it. Sometimes that was successful, other times we had a mess on our hands.

So it is definitely appropriate for me to have a book on the best bathrooms in Portland. It shows a little snapshot of the quirkiness, adventure, and colorful life of Portlanders. You can view a few images of Portland bathrooms from the author’s website. I think you will find Portland is keeping it weird!

#lovemycity

Suck the life out of your day

Posted by random olio

It is a good thing. Yes, when you can crawl into bed at the end of your day, and know that you have truly sucked every moment out of your day. You have been present.

I like to think of it as absorbing every molecule of life. The good, the beautiful, the ugly, the stinky. Absorb. What an interesting word. It makes me think of a sponge and how when it attracts water to it, it expands and becomes absorbent. When it does not have liquid, it contracts and dries up. A sponge is such a great analogy to sucking the life out of your day. If you do not fill your day with items of interest and engagement you start to wither and dry up.

Think about all the things in your day that you are passionate about, the things that inspire and give you energy. Did you come up with what that is for you? Is it helping people, pushing them to see life differently? Or is it designing the best new innovative product? What energizes you? Whatever it is, when you feel that passion and energy, that means your sponge is filled. It has absorbed the energy, and there is an urgency within you.

Urgency. Now that is another topic of interest. When you feel passion for what you are doing, when you are engaged, you feel a sense of urgency. You want to make things happen. You want to move people to look at their life differently. You want to launch that new technology that will change lives. You absorb and suck the life out of your day. You live and breathe all that you stand for, and you make things happen.

Suck the life out of your day.

Scrooge + Piano Guys transform

Posted by random olio

The holidays are really not my thing. Maybe it is a by-product of growing up so quickly. From the age of twelve, holidays only just sort of happened in my family. My parents were divorced, and my mom was sick, so whatever happened, happened.

Due to the fact that most years Thanksgiving and Christmas either barely happened or did not happen at all, I have a bit of a Scrooge mentality about the holidays. Yet. Yes, there is a yet. Every once in a while I will hear a song and it will hit me hard. Tears will pool in my eyes and I will be infected by the music, the emotion, and the moment. So when I found this video by “The Piano Guys” I was impressed, and had to share it with you.

Hopefully for any of you that feel Scrooge come out at any point in the next few weeks, you will come back to this video. I think you will be impressed, it will calm the Scrooge in you, and for those of you that love Christmas, you will just smile and get in the groove.

Which doors to open…

Posted by random olio

It has been a while since I have written about a book I have read. Two reasons: I have not had the time to read as many books lately, and I have not read as many books that have inspired me. However, over Thanksgiving I read a novel that I could not put down. It is called: “The Time Between” by Karen White. I am not even sure where to start in explaining this complex storyline.

It is about two sisters (Eve and Eleanor), their stories of loss, anger, longing, and forgiveness. One is in a wheelchair, and the other does everything she can to take care of her sister. She works long hours in an investment banking firm, plays the piano at night to bring in more money. The other sister sews gowns in her wheelchair. Such pieces she herself would have worn in past beauty pageants. Music is weaved throughout the story, second chances, and the beauty of an island. Of course there is so, so, so much more to the story, but I do not want to ruin it for you. There is one line near the end of the book that I had to share with you:

“There is how we were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing which doors to open, and which to close.” page 319

I thought this was the perfect morsel of insight from the book. White discusses this in different ways throughout the book. She is right. So often we are stuck in how we were before, that we cannot be okay with where we are now. As White alludes to throughout the book, there are many doors to which we can open or close and the choice is 99% ours to make. Do we forgive someone and move on, or do we stay stuck in what they have done to us? Can we get over the one that did not choose to love us, so that we can be present and ready for the one that we will love so deeply? Such good ideas for really anyone. Even with the sisterhood theme, it did not feel like chick lit to me. Just a great novel, and really I can see it made into a movie.

Open a new door. Take a few hours to read “The Time Between.” It is worth it.

Vancouver parking meter = Brilliance!

Posted by random olio

Vancouver has inspired me. The first one hit not even thirty minutes after we set foot on Canadian soil. We were starving, and so stopped off for some brunch before embarking on our list of adventures. We parallel park the car (well Chris does) and get out to pay the meter before looking at each other and realizing we do not have any Canadian change. Crap, what are we going to do? I say maybe we can ask the restaurant to give us some change and they can then charge it to our bill. We stand there for a bit and wonder if that is going to work.

Then we realize that the meter says pay by phone. Huh. How does that work? I have to pee though, so I leave Chris to get us a table and relieve myself of hours of sips of sparkling water. I find us a table, and wait for Chris to join me. When he comes in to meet me he states that all you have to do is create an account over the phone, give them your credit card and the number of the meter, and enter the amount of time you want to charge to your card.

Brilliant. Really, why do more cities not handle parking in this way? We find out later that once you have set up your account, then subsequent times you park, you just call the number and enter the meter number. It will recognize you by your phone number. I think of how many times I have stood in the pouring rain in Portland and would have gladly gone to the meter taken note of the meter number and then found my way to a dry spot to feed my meter.

The plot thickens and only gets better.

Yes. After ingesting eggs and coffee, Chris received a text message alerting him that his meter was about to expire and he could call or go to their website to add more time to his meter. That is service! To know that I would not have to go back to my car to put more time on the meter. I could stay at the salon, show, store, wherever I was and pull out my phone to pay for more time. I wonder what I have to do to get Portland on board with this clever way to pay for parking.