can't get my head out of doors

Dan told me he spent his whole bonus nap yesterday (bonus nap = while I take a shower in the morning) feeling abruptly sad about leaving, looking around our spacious bedroom, remembering life without this sense of space. I was feelin him. Now that we only have ten days until we leave, we've stopped being homesick; instead, we're getting pre-emptively homesick for Indiana. Sheesh. "Travel broadens the mind / Till you can't get your head out of doors." (Hey that was my first Elvis quote yet on this thing).

But if my head must be stuck in doors, I'm glad the doors are as beautiful as these.
Pat just sent me this photo with the subject "Now that's an office." True dat, Pat. I'm in there as I type this, actually, and I'm very very aware of how much I'm going to miss this when I'm back in the office of the Masonic Ave house listening to Igby whine outside the door and looking out at the paint-peeling wall of the airshaft, and the descending column of fog, and the reusable feminine hygiene products laid out to dry on the hippie neighbors' windowsill.

Then again, friends. And family. And dancing. Dear god, dancing. Can we all go to Leisure or Soul Night or something really old and familiar that might not even exist anymore and get ridonculously sweaty and pull some muscles and sing along so loud to Ain't Too Proud to Beg or whatever that we can barely croak out our cross-streets to the cabbie? THX.

in defense of indy

When we told people the main destination of our trip would be Indianapolis, we got some intensely blank stares. It was even deemed, during one reaction, "the randomest place possible." This is fair enough, especially given that neither of us are from here in any sense; my grandparents moved out here with their youngest sons in the early 70s, after my dad had married my mom and moved from SF to Canada. In response, I would explain that my Grandma is amazing and lives in a big house by herself, and my uncles are loads of fun, and it's actually a really pretty city -- but the stares persisted. Here are some pictures so you can at least know we're not living with pro-lifers in the shade of a Wal-Mart.

The house:


Our bedroom overlooks a sundrenched backyard and is the most peaceful place to wake up.


As a kid I'd wear soft-bottom slippers and my uncle Pat would pull me around this marble entryway. Nothing since has ever been quite as fun.


Here's my workstation (Dan's is in a previous post). The best part about this room is that the wi-fi doesn't reach! Very good for concentration, even when all I'm writing are market research reports.


This painting announces the entry to my work-room. (My grandma is an artist). Portrait of the Market Researcher As a Young Girl.


When I do need internet, or just feel like slouchin', I hunker down on the livingroom couch with this nifty Levenger lap-desk that Dan got me for my birthday (excellent present for nerds, btw). (And yeah I pretty much wear this outfit every day).


As for the city itself, I don't have any pictures, but it's really pretty and laid-back. The sprawl is hard to get used to (stripmallstripmallstripmall) but the thing about sprawl is it allows people to have really huge lawns. Lawns are nice. Rachel sent us this article in the NY Times about how you can buy a 4-bedroom house in Indianapolis for $250K, and I bet it'd have a huge-ass lawn.

Despite the sprawl it's still, really, a city. There's a downtown with galleries and old brick buildings and lots of bars with graffiti'd bathrooms. Broad Ripple is the hip neighborhood (although naturally it gets kinda North Beachy by night), filled with vegan restaurants and vintage clothing stores and businesses run out of homes. Dan explored it while I was away on business and now he's the Broad Ripple expert. Sometimes we take our laptops to the Monon Coffee Shop, where all the juices are freshly made in a Vita-Mix and the baristas are all these very likeable people who've probably outgrown an extreme allegiance to some subculture (straightedge, I'm guessing, and the dapper variety of scenester goths) and now throw parties for their kittens. (Honest eavesdrop). There are hipsters everywhere, and my lord they're young, but we still can't figure out where the good danceparties are. All we've found is some flyers advertising "hipsterhouse" which is the most depressing compound I've ever heard in my life. The good dancing must be happening in a secret network of BOTH-style houses (RIP BOTH!).

In leiu of dancing we've been having fun seeing Tim play his wide variety of working-musician gigs. Last night he played a solo acoustic set downtown with a numbered setlist, so the audience could shout out the number of the song they wanted (a trick he stole from the Bobcats of Vancouver), and they were seriously hollering those requests. I had to yell "Fifty-eight" nearly fifty-eight times at the top of my lungs before he played me Man Out of Time. Here he is on Friday night, singing If I Only Had a Brain with a jazz trio at a restaurant.


So, you see, it really is a nice place to be for awhile. We really miss everybody, though; the homesickness is starting to hit. Lots of love and hugs and such.

the hope house

For the next three weeks in Hope, we are housesitting an epic treehouse, perched on the side of a mountain, with several small rooms all on different levels (going anywhere, even to the bathroom, requires a staircase). It's one of my favorite houses ever and I'm so grateful we get to stay here. The owner, Eva, is a Swedish documentarian and an old family friend.

Living room:


My workstation:


Dan's workstation:


Can't go anywhere without seeing something that makes you smile, like this random blue door in the wall:


Love this little guy in the kitchen!


The bathtub is heaven:


Can't really see but it says "Major M. McManus" above the door. (Not, however, "MacManus.")


Upstairs deck, pizza and Peeb, awkward let's-eat smile:


Peppers purchased direct from the farm. (You just drive up, take a bag from a hanging hook, and drop a toonie in a box. It took us forever to find the farm, which I only remembered vaguely from childhood, but asking the old ladies who work at the museum for directions was half the fun.)


K. Time to get to work for real now.

portland

Portland surprised us with its awesomeness. Heather devoted her entire Sunday to showing us around, which included: brunch at the Cricket Cafe, QT with the cutest (fattest) cats ever, a thorough Powell's tour, beer and pizza at one of the city's many $3 theaters, dinner at a Japanese restaurant, and a free show of exactly the kind of local indie-rock we wanted to hear. We caught the tail end of a heat wave, meaning that it felt insanely hot to us, but everyone else seemed to be greeting the slightest breeze with ecstatic relief.

We treated ourselves to a couple nights at a hipster hotel called The Ace. The paint-dripping text on the walls was kinda, um, No Doubt, but everything else about the place was great.


Especially the Leonard Cohen lyrics on the lobby wall.


Portland is filled with people on permanent concentration-vacations: they work a few days at a coffee shop, which earns them enough to pay their minuscule living expenses, and they spend the rest of their time making art. Heather pointed out that this aspect of the city has a few drawbacks, mainly the overwhelming amount of not-great art. But still, it made us a bit SF-resentful. Heather's gorgeous and spacious one-bedroom apartment is eight hundred flippin' dollars a month. Plus they get actual summers!