Hezekiah has died of dysentery

4 am lullaby

2012-01-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

Resplendent in his Romulan hair stylings

In the grip of my aunty guilt for living 3 thousand miles away I volunteered to ~~be the sacrificial lamb~~ let my sister sleep through the night, whilst I took over middle of the night baby duty. ~~MISTAKE~~ Ahh precious moments with baby. And now that I smell like baby puke and the once again cute baby is asleep may I present my contribution to the American lullaby:

(set to Brahms's Lullaby. Also force the rhymes like you mean it)

Go to sleep little douche,

shut your big stupid eyes,

if you don't I just might kill

the very next guy.

Oh good now you puked

How lucky am I

I think tonight was just payback for giving him a Romulan Hairdo earlier today.

We're all out to get you Mr. Green

2011-09-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

It's Matt's birthday today! He can usually be rather morose and un-stylishly contemplative on his birthday so I decided to try and fill it with little surprises. May I tell you, I think it was a great success particularly as along the way I picked up many conspirators!

Conspirator #1: Karin- Step-mom extraordinaire

I contacted the devious Ms. Karin a few days prior in order to obtain the secret Swedish recipe for Kalas Kaka. This recipe is so secret that it's even written in some sort of unbreakable code full of umlauts and what not. Alas the transcription was incomplete and measurements were in these things called "deciliters" and "grams". Luckily I was able to decipher using my knowledge of sugary fizzy drinks and my one year of Latin. So "deci" I know is derived from the Latin decimus meaning ten. So I concluded that 1 deciliter of sugar should be roughly equal to the volume of ten bottles of soda. All I know about grams is that they weigh roughly the same as a paperclip. Unfortunately I don't have any paperclips in the house so I got the nearest amalgam a single staple. Having gathered 75 loose staples I placed them in one hand and picked up some butter in my other hand until I felt that they weighed about the same. A few eggs and injuries later I had managed to put this together:

Conspirator #2: Quiz Master Polly

Conspirator #3: Rachel Queen of all geek waitresses

Conspirator #4: The Indefatigable waitress Lacey

Wednesday night is our usual night to head on down to the Sellwood Public House for Trivia. Near the end of Trivia I managed to tweet a secret message (well secret to anyone not on twitter) to Polly that Matt's birthday was the following day. After subtle hand gestures waved across the room Polly understood to check her twitter and quickly got up and ran to the kitchen. Matt, meanwhile, was still trying to figure out question number 8: What is the 4th most popular strip club in Portland? A moment later one of our lovely waitresses Lacey and asks Matt if it's his birthday. Suspicious Matt says "No, why?" "Oh, well I wonder who's birthday it is then" she responds and looks at me confused. Unbeknownst to Matt I'm frantically hitting Lacey under the table. Just in time Rachel comes out with a slice of apple pie a la mode and the whole bar sings "Happy Birthday dear Bow-tie!" (as Matt is lovingly known in said crowd for his choice in neckwear and knowledge of Portland City councilmen) See below for proof of success!

Conspirator #5: Groupon

AWESOME today's Groupon was for one of Matt's favorite restaurants: Habibi! He received his groupon for $16 worth of fare half way through the actual birthday day!

Conspirator #6: Cat lover and frequent tormentor of my boyfriend via text: Crystal

At work today the lovely Ms Crystal took time out of her day to take me to Fred Meyers to obtain a certain cat shaped balloon that we had spied weeks ago.You see our apartment has a very strict "no pets, not even for visiting" clause on the lease. Try as I might to get Matt to see reason that rental agreements are merely suggestions of good behavior and honestly who does a landlord think he is outlining moral codes for inhabitants anyway. We should get a kitty in protest to this Fascism. On my way home I texted Matt that I had found and abandoned kitten in a box and I was bringing it home. I was hoping to get him annoyed at me but apparently I just broke his kitty loving heart. Good news though no real kitties were harmed in the making of this balloon...I think.

Conspirator #7: Sue- Brilliant Deductress of Amazing Presents aka MOM
I received a very excited message on Tuesday from Matt's mom. She wanted to run a present idea by me and asked me to call her back when Matt was not around. I called her back a few moments later. She has found a place in Rhode Island that will overnight a New England Clambake! HOW COOL IS THAT??!!. Real lobsters are hard to get here on the West Coast and proper steamers are nonexistent. Matt LOVES both those things and a clambake is always such a nice reminder of home. We arranged a good day to have the feast delivered and both waited anxiously. I promised to video him getting his present. On Thursday we received the tracking number from fedex and spent a good portion of the day refreshing their webpage to see if the package had been delivered. At last the package was delivered and our good friend and neighbor Rachel (Mini conspirator #8) picked the package up off the front step so as to make sure it wasn't stolen or seen by Matt when he got home. Well here's the result:

Untitled from dulcenea T on Vimeo.

Now belly's full and kitchen a crustaceans encrusted mess we sleep. Good birthday people. Good birthday.

Morning Discourse on Medieval History

2011-09-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

From: Gabriela
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:28 AM
To: Matthew A.
Subject:

Woah in 1120 there were entirely too many people named Matilda. Also Henry.

From: Matthew
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:31 AM
To: Gabriela
Subject: RE:

What are you talking about [he asks, intrigued]?

From: Gabriela
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:34 AM
To: Matthew

Subject: RE:

Just listening to a podcast about Whiteship and how it sank because there were too many Matildas. At least that’s I’m choosing to learn from it.

From: Matthew
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:35 AM
To: Gabriela
Subject: RE:

As usual, you are taking exactly the right lesson from history.

From: Gabriela
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:36 AM
To: Matthew

Subject: RE:

It’s what I do best.

From: Gabriela
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 8:40 AM
To: Matthew

Subject: RE:

It's the little things that make me most happy

2011-09-14T06:59:00.001-07:00

Usually a Wilsonville short bus starts off my nightly odyssey home (my 90 minute commute goes like this: bus, train, bus, bus, bus) but last night I was amazed at what showed up:

The open air trolley was amazing and only slightly dangerous as my bag threatened to fly out the side each time we made a turn. I sat in the back grinning and bouncing along like an idiot the entire ride.

(disclaimer: big things also make me most happy)

First Thought

2011-07-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

I recently came back home from a wonderful beach vacation. The following Sunday morning Matt and I left the house early in search of breakfast at the fabulous Bertie Lou's Cafe. As we walked out of the parking lot, past the dumpster, a flash of sparkle caught my eye. I looked and saw a clear plastic stiletto heel in the style of "working girl". I looked at Matt, eyebrow raised, and asked if he had seen this earlier in the week. He stated that it is not his custom to look under dumpsters. I hadn't noticed it the night before either and assumed that it must have made its appearance overnight. I hesitantly approached the dumpster, thought better of it, and instead asked Matt to look inside the said dumpster. "What exactly am I supposed to be looking for" Matt asked. "Clearly," I responded, "a dead hooker." You see, perhaps I have read too many murder mysteries or perhaps I'm an incurably untrusting, cynical East-coaster; either way, my first thought on seeing this shoe was not "Oh, some drunk coed got tired of her spiky shoes last night on her walk home and disposed of them" but instead "Aagh, an angry pimp availed himself of our unlocked dumpster to dispose of inconveniently dead girl".

Luckily no dead girl was found in our dumpster and we continued on our merry way to breakfast. Matt thinks that my line of reasoning is just another clue that I am actually a psychopath. I still think that evidence was on my side. After all, what coed gets tired of just one shoe?

Watering Hole

2011-06-11T23:25:00.001-07:00

Lotus Card Room and Cafe, a photo by dulcenea on Flickr.

I think the decorators of the Lotus Card Room and Cafe went a bit too literal with the notion of "bar as watering hole".

Also note that the white screen in the background was showing Devo's Whip it video while this shot was taken.

To Better See the Horror

2011-05-20T07:44:00.001-07:00

Gasp! We've had three days of sunshine! According to the all knowing twitter it's the first time it had happened in over 279 days. All this sunny weather and the impending DOOM of rapture© day got me into a little bit of post apocalyptic mood. I wandered about the neighborhood and went to the scariest places I could find, so as to note them as places to avoid when we're running away from the zombie hordes.

Also, a few weeks ago i made an emergency preparedness plan.

Redesign

2011-05-19T08:25:00.001-07:00

Are you reading this on facebook or perhaps your rss reader? Then you haven't yet seen the fabulous new redesign of my blog! Countless hour went into it and I can't decide if I like it. Trying to strike a balance between nice to look at and not overly girly/manly is more difficult than I anticipated.
I dislike that making something look cool has to mean that it sould be grey, shiny and covered in penises. Alright the penises are figurative but the sentiment stands: just because I'm a girl and appreciate asthetic doesn't mean I want my page to look like a scrapbook.
Sooo...combine templates with my limited knowledge of html (obtained at minority science camp in '95!) and it's difficult to avoid a generic mush of webpage. Go take a look. Did I do ok? Are the waves too much? Are you saying to yourself "Yes Gaby we all understand you're half Japanese no need to remind us"? What do you think of my header? I made it using Paint. What do you think of my header now? Comment!

http://youroxenhavedrowned.blogspot.com/

A Foggy Weekday Morn

2011-05-18T22:18:00.001-07:00

Pea Soup Morn (sld 1)
Originally uploaded by dulcenea

I've never seen fog like the fogs we get here in Oregon. Describing it as "Pea Soup" doesn't do it justice. It's more accurately described as "Solid Wall of Non-existence". It can be particularly unnerving around bridges when you have to just trust that there is another end (that doesn't end in the maw of some hideous beast). This past morning it was just a light regular fog.

The Industrial Complex has a human face after all

2011-05-06T07:22:00.001-07:00

Though apparently it's terrified by what it sees.

The John Hurt moment

2011-05-05T14:52:00.001-07:00

Dedicated to my sister who is in the John Hurt way at the moment.