#1 Most Adorablest Crime

Awhile back, I posted about about the ghost bikes that are set up to memorialize bikers killed in Portland. Well, apparently someone stole one of them last week! BUT HOLD ON! In a twist ending that could only happen in Portland (or the Care Bears cloud castle), the thief was seized with such guilt over the theft that he returned the bike to its rightful place, along with a handwritten note of apology.

You can find the (highly recommended) story here.

This makes me miss home.

Yes, even Lincoln Square Mall! (home of Tim Johnson)

(EDIT: This was filmed in Champaign-Urbana, for you out-of-towners. And the band is Headlights!)

I swam and walked and read and ate sparingly.

I'm back!

Apologies for not updating, but it's been a busy (and lovely!) 2008 so far -- Shadie moved in, so we've been busy running around the city, finding the best happy hours, and hosting visitors galore. Our internet has also been quite spotty, and for the past week I've had a terrible case of the flu (unfortunately I still had to work, which made for some pathetically hilarious situations). But here I am, look!

Jacob, Me, Mitch, Shadie

Here's a poem I discovered the other day. You might like it:

The Origin of Myth

That summer I was drinking
apple cider vinegar because I read
in an obscure book it was good

for my health. A tablespoon or two
in a glass of spring water, with a bit
of honey or raw sugar. Controls weight,
the book said, flushes harmful toxins
from joints, tissues and organs.
"Doctor George Blodgett drank it
every day, and remained vigorous
until his death at age 94."

One reads
and perhaps believes almost anything
when one has lived alone for a while.
I felt good, doing it, though perhaps
that was because I walked on the beach
every day, swam, then walked again,
collected beach glass smoothed by the waves.
Pale blue and green, like solidified air,
dark green like emeralds, very rarely
sapphire blue and once a tiny piece
of red round as the pupil of an eye.
No one was on the beach because it was
September, and I had a white cabin
to myself. I swam and walked and read
and ate sparingly. I had come there
to be alone, and to think things through.
Every morning I drank my vinegar.
I read that the soldier who gave Jesus
vinegar on a sponge did so not in mockery
but in pity, to offer a restorative.
After a week I set the "red eye" on my desk
so we could watch one another. At dusk
the mist far out over the water looked like
distant hills, and I understood how
an earlier inhabitant might have though
these were mountains that rose at nightfall
and disappeared with the dawn.

-Ed Ochester

I'm feeling good about where this year is headed, how about you? Here's hoping that 2008 is filled with simple happiness for all of us!