P I C N I C

I bought some keffir limes on a whim to see what I could do with them. For lunch today I did a stir fry with broccoli, red bell pepper and blood oranges. The salad had zested keffir and some keffir juice in a milk and honey vinaigrette; with apples, arugula, and endive.

The milk vinaigrette made me in the mood for more things along this line. After dinner I made a cocktail of milk, whiskey, a few dashes of bitters, and some white sugar. I thought it was very tasty.

At the Stumptown on Divison, where I got a macchiato this evening, there was a new show hanging, called La Tourista by Jill Raymundo.

I think this is Coeur d’Alene lake, in Idaho.

On approach to Portland.

Somewhere in flyover country.

I love looking out the window on airplane flights. Partly it’s to reassure myself that the plane isn’t falling into an unrecoverable spin, an event which I have frequent nightmares about. But also I feel that this is such an extraordinary experience, cruising along 6 miles into the atmosphere.

Louis CK has a joke about airplanes. He was on one of the first flights with wi-fi a few years ago. He signed up and was quickly watching youtube and surfing the web. Suddenly their was a hiccup in the service and the stewardess announced that there would be no more internet. The guy next to him said, “oh that’s bullshit.” He thought to himself, since when do we feel entitled to things that didn’t even exist until recently? “You are in a chair flying through the sky!” I guess that’s how I feel on a plane. Everyone is watching TV on their iPads, or reading on their kindles. Of course I’m acting nonchalant myself. But really this feels like such an extraordinary thing, something previously reserved exclusively for the gods.

I took these photos on the two flights from Portland to Minneapolis for Christmas.

The box frame is made of salvaged 4×4′s. The cuts, even with a miter saw, are never straight and so some slight alignment was needed. If I ever make a list of essential iPhone apps a knot reference manual will be there. One can never know too many knots.

The cuts were made both into the bit and across the bit.