Notes from Portland

- There seems to be some strange fad where guys wear scarfs tied around their necks with the knot at the back of their neck. I saw this on a couple of guys at the John Vanderslice show I went to, and then later around downtown. It might be something borrowed from street kids?

- On the train back from Seattle, we were actually mooned by some guys on boats near the train tracks. I don't know if I've ever been mooned before.

- Cloth reusable bags, like the ones I saw in Australia, are becoming common, which is great. Apparently stores want to start charging you if you use plastic bags. I'd like to know when the cloth bags are going to start showing up here. They are much more durable and more comfortable to carry than the large plastic bags you get from the supermarkets.

- I finally had a rental car with a direct line-in for an mp3 player, which made things so much easier. However, the dashboard layout was really lame and there was nowhere to lay the mp3 player while it was plugged in. Usually I stuck it in the extra cup holder, but when both cup holders were being used, the only place I could find to put it was under the emergency brake handle. Actually, aside from the mp3 port and the sunroof that the car had, I was not too thrilled with my Chevy Cobalt (oh, I also had heated seats, but I didn't have much use for that). Plus the car had Florida plates, which just felt weird. I imagined that when I was driving around on country backroads the people behind me were wondering what the hell I was doing out there. But it does help if you screw up, you think then that people are just rolling their eyes at an ignorant out-of-stater.

- There is an awesome Jewish deli now on Stark St that I should have made more of an effort to eat at, so it'll have to be an absolute to-do for the next time. I did grab a bagel to-go there on my last day and I saw they had Bundaberg ginger beer, but then they have a soda menu to rival most bars' beer lists. As I waited to order my bagel, a girl who was slicing Swiss cheese came over to show the holes that were showing in the cheese which she thought were really cool. She said she wanted to frame it.

- I brought back the remaining CDs I had at my parents' house, which was quite a pile. Mysteriously, there are 3 REM CD cases which are missing the CDs and the liner notes. I don't know why it's only REM CDs that are missing and I have absolutely no idea where they've gone. I bought used replacements for 2 of them, but I'm still scratching my head over where the CDs are. I also wasn't able to find my videos, which I wanted to bring back, and that worries me.

- When I got back from Seattle, I was waiting in line for the toilets at Union Station in Portland. There were two older women behind me and one was remembering when she once, long ago, had to pay a dime to use a toilet in a station. She said "Imagine! Paying to use a public restroom!" I smiled to myself and thought about telling them how much we have to pay all the time to use toilets here. (And I officially hate the word restroom and refuse to use it, which then left me unsure of what to call them when asking for them in a restaurant or whatever, since "toilet" is a bit rude-sounding to Americans.)

- Regarding the books I bought, there is one, The Girl Who Owned a City, which was read to my class in grade school, but the year ended before we could finish it. The story of a world without adults and of kids having to survive on their own stuck with me and I finally bought it to reread. Only after I bought it did I find out that the copy I have is a 1995 "updated" version of the original published in 1975. Flipping through the book, I found a passage that refers to more modern things that didn't exist in the 70's. I find this incredibly lame, like kids can't understand it if it's referring to outdated things? It's something like the use of American terms in the US copies of the Harry Potter books. Let them learn about another culture or another era. Christ. I'm very annoyed now about not having the original version...