[child] The Child and her friend write a restaurant review
Last Thursday, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
the_child and her friend I— asked me to look over an article they’d written for the sixth grade’s newspaper project. I was so impressed I got their permission to reproduce it here
Casa de Tamales
by I. Jarvis and B. Lake
Casa de Tamales is a small Mexican restaurant in downtown Milwaukie located on the corner of Scott and Main street.
We were fortunate enough to talk to Eileen Winters, co-owner of the restaurant. She gladly answered our questions when we asked, “How long has the restaurant been open?” She answered, “It’s been around for about 2-1/2 years now.” They serve a mix of Mexican and New Mexican cuisine and almost all of their vegetables are from their farm.
We asked why they decided to open a restaurant, she answered, “Because we thought it would be fun”. “Why here in Milwaukie,” we asked? “We like the area, community, rent, and the people, also we had worked in the Milwaukie Farmers Market and loved it.” They named it Casa de Tamales, which means “house of tamales,” because of their 40 different types of tamales.
Their most popular tamale is either the Chicken Asparagus Tamale or the Nacatamal which is a Nicaraguan style tamale. The most popular dish is the Grilled Asparagus with Butterfly Shrimp, it’s their award-winning dish.
In Casa de Tamales while you are waiting for your food, your eyes will never get bored. There is an amazing array of decorations from paintings and masks to a suit of armor. They got their decorations from all over their house, attics, customers, and garage sales. “Before the restaurant,” she explained, “we just did farmers markets and made tamales because it was fast and easy to make ,eat and sell.”
The food is amazing and we can personally vouch on that point. They love the customers, they are very friendly and have a goal to provide good food and service all at a good price.
Tags: Child, Food, Portland, Writing
Posted: 8:01 am Sat March 13 2010 | Comments(3) |
[books] My one and only public appearance between now and September
I will be reading and signing Pinion immediately after its March 30th release date at Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing on Thursday, April 1st, at 7 pm. Thanks to chemo and its discontents, this is my sole promotional event for the book. It’s a one-stop book tour!
This will also be my one and only public appearance this year until calendula_witch and I go to Au Contraire in New Zealand and AussieCon 4 in Australia at the end of the summer. My next public appearance here in the US will be the Seattle-area convention Foolscap in the fall.
So if you’d like to get my latest novel hot off the press, listen to me read, or have anything signed, mark your calendars now for April 1st. If you just want to show up and support me in my cancer battle, that would be a delight, too. It would please me to no end to fill the place. I look forward to seeing some, all or none of you there.
Tags: Australia, Books, Calendula, Conventions, Foolscap, New Zealand, Pinion, Portland, Seattle, Writing
Posted: 4:03 pm Mon March 01 2010 | Comments(0) |
[cancer] Chemo dreams, redux
My dreams from Saturday night, summarized.
The first dream
Driving a cream colored rented Cadillac along a freeway through a deep, curving road cut. The sky is that strange mix of stormy and bright. Traffic is moderate but moving very fast. I am suddenly struck blind by something I realize is a stroke. The Child is in the passenger seat, and very calmy begins telling me where to steer. I can find neither the brake nor the accelerator, but I can feel the car swaying and swerving as my 12-year-old daughter guides me. I feel utterly out of control, and deeply panicked.
The second dream
I am in a Portland hipster squat, some 3/1 rental house in NE with about six tenants. I am me: middle-aged, sick, on chemo, and I have no idea what I’m doing with a bunch of 23-year-old cool kids. The place is grungy and moldy and hung with Indian print linen and old tye-dye. A cute young woman with maroon hair and piercings is very interested in me, so we go into her room and start making out. After we get naked she realizes how old and sick I am. It all goes sideways.
The third dream
Now it’s a hotel, somewhere downtown. An old railroad hotel, one of those transient places, like a giant version of the hipster squat except occupied by middle aged men too far down on their luck. The street outside is crazy wide, like one of those Communist boulevards with no cars where they parade the missiles every May Day. I find my way to my grungy little room, and there’s another hipster chick. She wants to make out, I tell her no, and begin cleaning my medical equipment. Needles, tubes, ampoules, all of it bloody.
I have a little zebra fish in a bowl. The girl persists in trying to get me to go somewhere with her. I finally relent, and realize if I do no one will be home to feed my zebra fish. To spare it slow starvation, I kill my fish with one of my chemo needles. Crying, I leave with the girl.
The fourth dream
I am in the giant boulevard, walking along, deeply regretting that I killed my fish. The girl who tempted me out has vanished. An enormous traveling crane comes up the street, the kind they have at railyards to unload the intermodal trailers, except bigger. Some madman has hijacked it and is hunting me. His threats blare across the city on loudspeakers. I run from one building to the next, looking for shelter, but no one will help me because of the trail of death and destruction that follows me.
It’s all there — anxieties about medicine, parenting, sexuality, competency; the sense of displacement and threat. My subconscious can be astonishingly transparent.
Tags: Cancer, Child, dreams, Personal, Portland
Posted: 5:42 am Mon March 01 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad is buried like a mole in a fox hole
Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro — The biblioburro. Admirable work. (Snurched from shsilver.)
MTA Rip Off — An excellently cranky letter about a ticket. Apropos of that, the somewhat amusing story of my long-ago parking ticket, with extensive ramifications and legal idiocy. I won, but it definitely was not worth the cost.
Brewster Rockit on the threshold for outrage — 386, anyone?
Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ — This makes me laugh. I don’t believe it, but it does make me laugh. PZ Myers explains why the study is bs.
Afflicting the Afflicted — Paul Krugman on the Healthcare Reform summit, and the Republican ideas. While some people would gain insurance, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most. Under the Republican plan, the American health care system would become even more brutal than it is now. And yet ordinary people still vote for them.
The End of the Tea Party — Right-wing populist fads catch our attention — but they burn out quickly. Money shot: “the idea that there is a “conservatism” that is measured, responsible, decent, and worthy of the word is a bit of a myth.” In a word, yes. Hell, in their own words, yes. And no, I really don’t think the Tea Party is going away any time soon. Not til the economy and unemployment get sorted out. I just wish their outrage were based on actual factual information instead of the drumbeat of conservative rhetoric. It would be nice for a start if the Tea Party recognized that the ballooning deficits, the bank bailouts and the foreign wars originated with Bush — a noted Republican and decidedly not a Socialist — and not Obama.
Can We Have Our Electricity Back, Please? — Anti-Chinese pogroms in 19th century Tacoma. I’m particularly struck by The New York Times report on the end, about the utter lack of agency to be found among Tacoma white after the fact.
It’s George Wallace’s GOP Now — Like Wallace and his supporters 40 years ago, today’s conservative populists are long on anger and short on coherence. Money shot: “The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won.” A lot of interesting stuff in this one.
Hand Me Down World — Specific examples of the sociopathic lack of empathy in conservative America. Are you proud of your Republican Party?
Rep. Trent Franks: Blacks Better Off Under Slavery — Speaking of sociopathic lack of empathy, guess what party he belongs to? The stupid, it burns. Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it, saying: “This is what happens when your knowledge is capped, and your ignorance is boundless.” Which is not a bad description of the current conservative movement as a whole, especially the Tea Party and the Palinite wing.
Two posts about denialism, climate change and otherwise — Bad Astronmy with links to discussion of denialism. I was struck by this observation. …when faced with overwhelming evidence, Simpson’s lawyers attacked the court process instead of the actual case. That’s exactly how the GOP has opposed HCR, by attacking the process rather than the merits of the question.
?otD: Who is the master of fox hounds?
2/27/2010
Writing time yesterday: 60 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (slept decently)
This morning’s weigh-in: 224.4
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Books, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Portland
Posted: 8:34 am Sat February 27 2010 | Comments(2) |
[cancer] Chemotherapy, day one of session three
The chemo infusion number three was harder today than the first two. Not sure if this is cumulative effect, or a ripple from the massive sleepfails earlier this week. I am feeling rough and ragged tonight, and have made rather an ass of myself once or twice, including to calendula_witch.
Dad, Mom and shelly_rae took me over there. tillyjane was there a while. lillypond likewise. H— dropped by with some goodies. ( We watched a barge being launched from the shipward next to the clinic. )
Mother of the Child’s extended family is (mostly) in town (for the first time EVAR) to celebrate her n0th birthday. It was officially last Tuesday. She has a huge shindig tomorrow night which I will likely not make it to, much to mutual sadness. If I have the energy, I’ll put in an appearance, but it’s a 45-minute round trip to the ballroom she rented, and starts at 7 pm. Which is pretty much a deal killer for me given my energy levels these days, especially while I’m still on the chemo pump.
So I went next door for a little while to visit with various in-laws and cousins. the_child still has a bad cold, so she stayed well away from me. It was the right thing to do, but it made us both sad.
I have been told that my various blood counts are holding up remarkably well. But the leading indicator for white blood cells is down as expected, so in a few more weeks, the flatlining of my immune system will be far more serious. I have to treat it now as-if, even though we aren’t quite there yet.
Also, ironically, I got the first billing letter on my chemo sessions today. $16,900 for pharmaceutical and lab costs, exclusive of billing doctor costs, facility costs and nursing care (none of which I’ve seen yet). Call it $18,000 per session for twelve sessions. There’s $216,000 spent this winter and spring. Thank Ghu I have good health insurance, but my direct and indirect out of pocket is hitting me to the tune of $12,000 per year these past two years, and I don’t expect it to be any easier this year. That’s a sucking huge hole in my cash flow. Frankly, I supported healthcare reform years before I got sick. But now with lifetime coverage caps and pre-existing conditions, and my out of pocket expenses, it’s personal. Deadly personal.
Oi. So much to deal with. Stoopid cancer.
Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Child, family, health, Personal, Photos, Portland, shellyrae
Posted: 7:26 pm Fri February 05 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad wonders if it would like to be a DJ
Clarkesworld 41 is up — With stories by me and Lavie Tidhar. My piece “Torquing Vacuum” is in the Sunspin continuity.
I have made four slots on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009 — Green, Madness of Flowers, Other Earths and “On the Human Plan“.
Blue whales are singing in a lower key — Scientists don’t know why, but some think the baritone voices reflect the security of their greater numbers.
Detailed updates on the shift in space priorities — Per Tobias Buckell, who has politely and correctly chided me for my simplistic approach to yesterday’s report about the changes in the NASA budget.
Is The US Afraid To Admit That China Declared War On It? — Not sure I agree with the premise of this article, but it’s interesting. (Via lillypond, a/k/a my sister.)
In Portland, Growing Vertical — A project to literally green a Federal building here in Portland. Ok, this is cool for a bunch of reasons. Naturally, Republican senators are opposed. (Thanks to my Dad.)
Trees grow at fastest rate for 200 years — The actual headline on this story is misleading, but the story is still interesting. Another one of those liberally biased facts too embarassing for the GOP. Confidential to the Republican party: consider aligning your policies with reality instead of wishing away reality to align with your policies.
Paul Cornell on Christians and civil rights — I wish more prominent Christians would speak up as he does. He’s opposing Christianism, and that special, privileged bigotry in the name of Jesus that is so prevalent here in the US, and apparently in the UK as well.
The Golden Girls: How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals — And people wonder why I think conservatives are basically nuts. (Via Eschaton)
The Illuminati — Speaking of conservative idiocy, Slacktivist on Christianist worldviews, specifically with respect to the Satanist panics of the past decades. I can understand enduring the strain and the dissonance it requires to pretend to believe a comforting lie, one that offered some illusory solace that might seem worth the price of self-deception. But what on earth motivates millions of people to prefer a horrifying lie that makes the world out to be even worse that it is? Why do millions of people respond to such tales of satanic conspiracies and bloody rituals as though they were reassuring?
tongodeon with Prop 8 Lawyers Have No Idea How Same-Sex Marriage Could Harm Anything — Uh, yeah. Hard to demonstrate that bigotry is a compelling state interest, isn’t it? Nice try, conservative America. You might yet win this one on points, but you’re still irredeemably and immorally wrong.
?otD: What are the politics of dancing?
2/2/2010
Writing time yesterday: 75 minutes
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 6.5
This morning’s weigh-in: 228.0
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Links, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Religion, science cool, stories
Posted: 4:22 am Tue February 02 2010 | Comments(0) |
[personal] Deranging Nuevo Rancho Lake
Yesterday was the Big Move here inside Nuevo Rancho Lake. Essentially, two rooms got swapped. This is part of a longer term plan to make the place less utterly bachelor and more friendly to houseguest, visitors and caregivers, most especially calendula_witch and shelly_rae. Other than my early morning exercise and bloggery, I spent the entire day with people, from 7 am to 6:30 pm.
It was exhausting. Well worth it, and the help of many kind and generous folks was amazing and invaluable, but woo. Everything I hoped for got done, and quite a bit more.
Trying to recapture everyone who had been here (why didn’t I take notes…), I will essay a thank you. If my addled brain has left people out, please tell me!
But, erm, many many thanks to maclark2005, H—, tanuki-green, copperwise, TE and her husband JE (LJ handles?), Meran and Mr. Meran, David Goldman, Rob Kowal, tillyjane (a/k/a my mom), joycemocha, newroticgirl and biomekanic, and janetl (she who recently made and gifted me the hilarious cross stitch). Other names shamefully omitted to be added when my chemo fogged brain produces them, or someone reminds me.
This patient, able group of people with no help from me whatsoever swapped my two rooms, moved unreasonably heavy objects, organized my stuff, cleaned my garage and much of the rest of my house, repaired some damaged furniture, transported a sofa across town, finagled my network architecture, brought food and drink with them, went out to the store several times for supplies, rubbed my head and feet, let me sleep when I was dozing, listened to me repeat myself with redundant instructions from time to time without ever getting grumpy, and generally left both Nuevo Rancho Lake and me in much better shape than they’d found us.
I cannot possibly thank everyone enough. The amazing generosity of my family, friends, fans and total strangers is overwhelming.
You guys are awesome.
As for today, I shall finish blogging, work on Endurance for an hour or two, and then otherwise Do Nothing. mikigarrison arrives this afternoon for a visit, and I sincerely hope she plans on joining me in Doing Nothing, because that’s what’s on offer.
Tags: Books, Endurance, family, Help, Personal, Portland, Writing
Posted: 7:58 am Sun January 31 2010 | Comments(3) |
[help] FINAL UPDATE: Call for Portland peeps on 1/30
I am looking to move some furniture between two rooms of my house, definitely on Saturday, January 30th. Due to chemotherapy, I’ll be pretty useless for this except as a traffic director, and the effort involves both some heavy lifting and some cleverness as most of my tech gear will be relocating in the process. Will take some hours, I expect, all told.
Anybody in for beer and pizza and maybe some free books? (Other foods as well for those not on a beer-and-pizza diet.) Let me know in comments, and I’ll track by email as the week goes on.
Current plan is for a “first shift” around 10 am to break down files, move small stuff, etc., and generally clear the way. “Second shift” around noon to deal with large, bulky furniture type issues. And we have one item, a sofa, that need to be moved across town if someone has a van or truck. Updat: The planned truck fell through, so this is definitely an open item.
I’ve got some RSVPs already, but feel free to renew/remind me, even if you’ve already replied.
Thank you.
Tags: Help, Personal, Portland
Posted: 4:26 pm Fri January 29 2010 | Comments(1) |
[help] UPDATED: Call for Portland peeps on 1/30
I am looking to move some furniture between two rooms of my house, definitely on Saturday, January 30th. Due to chemotherapy, I’ll be pretty useless for this except as a traffic director, and the effort involves both some heavy lifting and some cleverness as most of my tech gear will be relocating in the process. Will take some hours, I expect, all told.
Anybody in for beer and pizza and maybe some free books? (Other foods as well for those not on a beer-and-pizza diet.) Let me know in comments, and I’ll track by email as the week goes on.
Current plan is for a “first shift” around 10 am to break down files, move small stuff, etc., and generally clear the way. “Second shift” around noon to deal with large, bulky furniture type issues. And we have one item, a sofa, that need to be moved across town if someone has a van or truck.
I’ve got some RSVPs already, but feel free to renew/remind me, even if you’ve already replied.
Thank you.
Tags: Help, Personal, Portland
Posted: 5:57 am Mon January 25 2010 | Comments(9) |
[cancer] Nobody told me I’d have teeth like this
Plaque? Dental plaque? A plague of plaque, of Biblical proportions, from the department of weird chemo side effects.
What is chemo doing to my arteries?
Oi.
In other news, back home to Portland this afternoon. calendula_witch arrives tomorrow morning.
Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Personal, Portland
Posted: 5:58 am Tue January 19 2010 | Comments(7) |
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