Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

It's no secret that Christine and I are poor. So much so that even if we wanted to, there's no way we could even think of owning a car, even a rusty old bomb. And that's okay most of the time: our trusty bikes and good ol' MAX get us most of the places we need to go.

However, sometimes you just need a car. What else can you do when you're moving large objects from one place to the other, or have too much shopping to carry home on our bikes or public transport (and believe me, we've tried on the bikes and have almost broken our backs!)? That's when the truly brilliant Flexcar comes to the rescue. Cars are left in dedicated parking spots all over Portland (and many other cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, LA, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Fran and Seattle) and members simply reserve them for the hours they need them.

From there, it's just a matter of walking up to the car (our nearest one is two blocks away), swiping a security card over a reader mounted inside the windshield to unlock the car, getting the key and driving away! Gas is included in the hourly rate, which can be as low as $6/hour, although $10 is more usual. All you have to do is fill the car up if it's 3/4 empty (using the supplied fleet card) and maybe wash the car if it's dirty, then return the car to its original parking space before your time expires. It's a brilliantly simple idea, and one which is growing in popularity, especially in progressive cities like Portland.

It's nor meant to replace traditional rental cars: you can't keep the car out of its spot overnight, and driving it more than 150 miles incurs additional fees, but it is fantastic for people who only need a car rarely... people like us!

Posted in: chaosboy, portland, united states on November 15, 2007 at at 4:49:00 PM 1 comments    

Portland is home to many, many awesome bands... all of which I hope to see live at some point. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we can share the work of some of these bands with you. First up is The Shins, whose concert in early December is unfortunately sold out (so sad!)... this track is obliquely entitled "Australia" (yay!), apparently because they wrote it while on tour down under. Enjoy! (It's a terribly cute clip, by the way)

Posted in: chaosboy, music, portland on November 13, 2007 at at 5:36:00 PM 0 comments    

I've been looking forward to the upcoming Australian election for a long, long time: at last we seem to have a half-decent chance of ridding ourselves of Little Johnny and his cronies. So I've been meticulously organised and have got all my forms in to the Australian Electoral Commission to make sure I can have my say. My ballots arrived today, including the by-now traditional table cloth-sized Senate form (anyone feel like numbering from 1 to 79 below the line?). They're all filled out now, ready to head back home and help vote the Libs out. My only regret is that I didn't change my registered voting address back to my parents' house before I left: that way I could have personally voted against the garden gnome myself in Bennelong... go Maxine!

Posted in: australia, chaosboy, politics on at at 4:43:00 PM 1 comments    

Hey!

It's me and Cam isn't pulling a one man show over here. We are still happily living in our little blissful bubble. However, you don't realize how long you've been in one place until you go somewhere else. Just driving out of town a few hours and you suddenly feel like you are in a new country. Even going to Seattle for the second time, there were always things to point out that are so different than what we have grown accustomed.

We had a blast though and were very near the Space Needle and the EMP so walking anywhere was made possible. The weather held up great and we tried a bunch of new places to eat at.

One in particular was Kevin's suggestion for breakfast, the Five Point Cafe. Just walking up to it, you get an uneasy feeling that this kinda place would not serve a good latte and pancakes. We walk in and the atmosphere is so dark that finding a table is difficult. We sit down and the waitress gives us some menus and we are short of conversation as the speakers blast explicit music right above our heads. We are sitting next to the bar where the patrons appear to have been there for days and the kids in the booth next to us are sipping whiskey and beer. Its 10 on a Saturday morning. The walls are plastered with posters, bumper stickers, ol beer ads and Cam wouldn't even tell me what the boy's loo had set up in there.

We waited nearly an hour for our food to finally show up and I was getting a bit ansy but it made it all worth it. It was absolutely delicious. We finally busted out into the sunshine, laughing how the Five Point is a great way to start your day.

For the rest of the day we toured the EMP (Experience Music Project) and the Sci-Fi Museum which I surprisingly really enjoyed. The music part of the museum was packed full of information on artists whom I was not too familiar but everyone could relate to the Sci-Fi museum somehow without knowing or caring about Star Trek. They had life size replicas and models of robots and monsters from movies, guns, philosophies, masks, space ships. It was all laid out through a series of tunnels and rooms which made it somewhat more interactive. Most of the artifacts in both museums, was noticed, belonged to one guy, Paul Allen, who owns much of Microsoft. Just being rich can't make you that intense of a collector. That's a state of madness.

Cam and I also visited the Seattle Art Museum for a taste of culture. It had dab of this and that ranging from Contemporary to Italian porcelain to a fun exhibit on how the Japanese envisioned America back from the 16th century and onward. At one point a security woman advised me that I was not allowed to carry an umbrella in the exhibit and generally was suppose to check it in downstairs. We nodded our heads and went upstairs if not to just have a quick look. We managed to get through the whole museum with me carrying my umbrella. We were just ready to leave when I was approached again and told that umbrellas were against policy. The guy was terribly polite and seemed to only be letting me know this. We let him know that we had had no idea and then we left the museum. We found it amusing that although umbrellas were not allowed in the museum it certainly was not enforced. And we certainly never found exactly why umbrellas, closed and hanging on my bag, were not allowed.

Seattle held itself together until the last minute until we had to leave and let the rain loose. Getting home took half the time getting there with the little traffic and being in Portland again already makes the weekend seem like a distant memory. But it was super fun hanging out with family and experiencing new bars. I'm a bit sad that I won't be able to go have a good Thanksgiving with the fam this year as getting time off work will be impossible, but Kevin will be lending us his which should make for some good times and give Cam a chance to see what the holiday is all about (gluttony!).

Posted in: chaosgurl, travel on November 12, 2007 at at 5:19:00 PM 0 comments    

As part of the paperwork required for our I-485 residency interview, I had to get an I-693A (don't you love the way all forms are known by their filing number?) Vaccination Supplement completed and signed by a USCIS-approved physician. Fortunately, I didn't have to have another entire medical done as I had one done within the last year for my K-1 Fiance Visa... although only just!

I found a doctor over near NW 23rd Avenue who would do the job for a mere $10, so Christine and I headed off there yesterday morning on our bikes. His tiny office specialises in travel and immigration cases (I'm guessing he goes through a lot of syringes!) and seemed to be doing a roaring trade; there were some Mexicans and Uzbekistanis amongst the people in the waiting room. I overheard someone say that the doctor speaks fluent Spanish and Russian, which would come in handy in his line of work.

The efficient receptionist filled out the form quickly and the doctor signed and sealed it into an official envelope that I have to give to the immigration official at our interview. I asked the doctor for a copy and he smiled and told me it was just an exact transcription of my vaccination record from my original medical exam! The only difference is that it was now on an Official American Piece Of Paper with "I-693A" in the top left corner. Ah, bureaucracy! The doctor then wished me the best of luck, told me to be patient and opined that immigration officials "aren't very nice people". I left with a smile on my face.

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on November 7, 2007 at at 5:19:00 PM 0 comments    

... you hear an ad for a family law firm on the radio and their phone number is 1-800-DIVORCE.

Posted in: chaosboy, united states, weirdness on at at 8:49:00 AM 0 comments    

Riding home from having lunch with Christine today, the odometer on my bike ticked over to 1,000 miles ridden, or just over 1,600km. I feel tired just thinking about it!

Posted in: chaosboy, sport on November 5, 2007 at at 2:54:00 PM 0 comments    

So Halloween has now been and gone... and we had a blast! As you can see from the picture above, our night of pumpkin carving was a great success. Christine and I bought a cheap book of templates and carving tools from Fred Meyer to aid us in our endeavours - a great investment! This is my Scary Tree, which would certainly terrify me if I was five years old. Christine did a Black Cat, but in her inimitable way, added some sweet wings to personalise it more. However, once we brought our jack-o-lanterns home, they rapidly disintegrated into disgusting piles of goo and mould as Portland's humidity and our warm house took their effect. Kim reckons that the big chain stores freeze their pumpkins and, because of that, they have a very high water content. Whatever the reason, they didn't live to see Halloween.

Our next seasonal activity was heading out to Suavie Island to the northwest of Portland to experience the Corn Maize (geddit?). Every year, a new maze is cut into a large corn field and people come from miles around to get lost in it. However, in mid-October, the ground has been rained on and trodden on so many times that it has turned into thick, gooey, icky mud that gets almost ankle-deep in parts. We slurped and sucked our way through the maze dutifully before signing up for the real attraction: a ride in the Cow Train! Wheeee!!!!!

Finally, it was onto the main events: costume parties! Christine spent ages on her costume: Tank Girl, one of her favourite cult comic book characters. For the first party, I decided to repurpose my astronaut outfit, paint my face a horrid shade of green and call myself a Space Zombie. Why not?

The Saturday night party was great fun, although the Witches' Brew was 90% vodka and incredibly potent. There were lots of amazing costumes, so I decided to lift my game for the Wednesday Night Actual Halloween party. A quick trip to a thrift store and Fred Meyer's gave me everything I needed to create my Australian masterpiece costume: Dead Steve Irwin, complete with stingray tail piercing my heart. Here's Steve and Tank Girl together:

The blonde wig was cut down from Christine's Tammy Faye Bakker costume from last year and felt every bit as hideous as it looks. The party was down at the White Eagle pub and they had an impromptu costume show. At Christine's insistence, I got up on stage. The compere asked me who I was and I explained: "Crikey! I'm the Croc Hunter and this is me mate, Stingy!" As I said this, at least half a dozen people in the audience were visibly shocked, which I just find hilarious. Is more than a year after his death still too soon? Anna Nicole Smith was already fair game for some people, but the Croc Hunter seems to be revered in these parts! Still, great fun was had by all!

And for the record, we tried Burgerville's Pumpkin Milkshakes. Blame Gene... he insisted that we did. They're actually very good, although they're sweetened with spices and whipped cream, so it's actually pretty hard to detect any real "pumpkin-ness" in them.

Posted in: chaosboy, party time, portland, united states on at at 11:16:00 AM 0 comments    

Will be on December 18th. Christine and I both have to go to this as this is where we "prove" that we're really married and this is not some green card scam. There's a lot of paperwork to prepare for it, but we have a little while so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Progress on residency, hurrah!

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on October 25, 2007 at at 10:45:00 PM 1 comments    

Yesterday was the first sunny day Portland has seen for many a week, so I took advantage of it by heading out to ride the Springwater Trail. This is an old train line through south-east Portland that has been converted into a multi-use path. My eventual goal was Powell Butte, another of the extinct volcanic plugs that are dotted around the area. The view from the top is spectacular, possibly even more so that Rocky Butte, where we had our wedding.

The climb up to the top is along rough dirt paths through beautiful forest, but the relatively flat summit is meadow and old orchards, both remnants of pioneer times in the area.

Here's another QuickTime VR panorama for you... the view starts off looking towards Mount Hood in the ESE and rotates anti-clockwise past the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Adams (which can just be seen peeking over the top of the closer hills) to Mount St Helens to the north.



Click and hold inside the movie to scroll from one end of the view to the other. You can also zoom in (Shift key) and out (Control key or the PC equivalent!).

Of course, I got a flat tyre on my bike at the very furtherest point of my trip and had to stop every couple of miles on the 20 mile return journey to pump it up enough to continue! I was certainly sore and tired when I got home!

Posted in: chaosboy, photography, portland, sport on October 23, 2007 at at 11:04:00 AM 0 comments