UPDATE with a video - Public art at Kaiser--I like it and what I believe it says about my current situation.

Today's video and a new hat! Lamont will be here in less than 30 minutes, ready to take me on this latest field trip, y'all! Thanks for the continued prayers, love and concern. I'll need them today since I've been awake since 2:30 a.m.--it's 6:40 a.m. as I typed. However, I did take all of my prescribed pre-chemo meds, including the Decadron which oughta rev me up like well-tuned muscle car engine! Hey, I've got lots of photos of those that I can share, not that I will know what sort they are, unless I took a photo of the windshield placard at the vintage vehicle event. I have a new goal as I search through my photos at Flickr. I love it!



The sign that explains the public art in the courtyard at Kaiser Interstate. I had to read the quotation twice to really get it, so I'm typing it here, just in case you're having the same difficulty - Anchored in the Future: I always have to dream up there against the stars. If I don't dream I'll make it, I won't even get close. Henry J. Kaiser. This interpretive historical sculpture commerates Henry Kaiser and his family, the physicians and countless others who have contributed to the health and growth of Portland and Vancouver.



The sculpture itself. The sign is on the leftmost rust-colored tip of what looks to be a ship aground. I prefer to think of it as a ship that has arrived for refurbishment, which is exactly what I'm doing at Kaiser Interstate, first at the Oncology Center and after that at the Radiation Center. I don't know if those are the official names of both, but you get my drift.

Getting ready for chemotherapy side effects.

I decided to go proactive and asked my hairdresser to cut my hair shorter than she's ever cut it so that I won't have clumps of hair coming out later on during the six rounds of chemo, one round every 21 days, as the schedule now stands. The first one is July 29.



Once she finished cutting and styling my hair, Rosa started to sweep up all that she'd cut from where it had fallen on the kitchen floor. I walked into the bathroom and got my first look in the mirror over the sink. Wow! I loved it!



I walked back into the kitchen, and we took this selfie, the first of two. The photo on the wall behind us is one of my favorites--I got it at a junk store in Portland. The caption, handwritten center bottom says: American Culinary Federation Incorporated. Fifth Annual National Convention Grand Ball. Los Angeles, California - 1958. It's a great big crowd of people all dressed up in their suits and ties, the ladies in their cocktail gowns, seated at giant round tables covered with white tablecloths and lots of glassware and plates and silverware and all that stuff waiting for their banquet to begin and then there's a giant dance floor in the background also. They must've had a lot of fun. I just loved the photo when I saw it, and it wasn't too expensive, so I bought it. It goes great in the kitchen.



The second selfie came about because I still had the phone camera on so that I could see myself as I was about to put it down on the desk. I noticed this shot and got Rosa to come stand by me so that we could take it. I like it a whole lot! I like both photos a whole lot! I'm going to get used to this short hair, and if I have to get it shorter because of the chemo, so be it. I'll like however that turns out, too.

Memories, seen from a new perspective, thanks to the AHC's tour of 705 Davis Condominiums

Click here for a trip to City Daily Photo, transporting you around the world every day.

I took these photos from different windows in other condos--looking at the views was just as much fun for me as looking at the condos themselves.
 

On the sidewalks of NW Everett, between NW 22nd and NW 23rd--I'd have a hard time counting how many times I walked these sidewalks, in all kinds of weather, before and after work, on weekends, to and from the Fred Meyer, by myself, with Mama and our little dachshund Duncan, with my two sons, with my brother when he visited, my our friends-so-great-that-they-are-family visited from Mississippi and California, with a sweetheart of a friend from Mississippi who also became a Portlander, and with a friend I met at the bus stop who had a pet skunk. Walked with those folks in all sorts of combinations over the years. Back when we had a car, the '96 Buick, I parallel parked on either side of this one-way street numerous times--on NW 22nd also--sometimes with the ease of a hot knife in butter, sometimes not.
 

I could almost type the exact same text beneath this view, too, except that it's looking at the dead-end intersection of NW King with NW Davis. I parked the car here a lot, too. Boy, am I happy not to own a car any more!
 

Here's more of NW Davis, just east of the intersection in the photo right above this one. Mama walked the sidewalk on the right back when she was healthy enough to go to the beauty shop which was on the corner hidden by all of the leaf-laden trees. I have to tell you that when I looked out the window and took this photo, I got choked up for a little while, remembering the day she asked me to find her a beauty shop that she could walk to from our apartment. I used Google Maps Search Nearby and found us a beauty shop. I'm getting choked up right now just typing this because over the years we knew what we'd really found was a sweetheart of a woman, our friend Rosa. This woman came to our apartment in later years and gave Mama her trims and perms there because Mama's mobility lessened as congestive heart failure took its toll. The last photo of us together Rosa took with her camera after she'd done our hair in our kitchen, on the Sunday before Mama died in her sleep on Friday afternoon, January 7, 2011. I count myself blessed to still have Rosa in my life.
 

Back in the day, when Mama was mobile, we walked together to Fred Meyer a few times. We never carried our groceries home in a bag (back then the stores in Portland were allowed to use plastic bags, but not now as you can see from this paper bag in the hands of that man). We used a rolling black bag. Another thing, back in the day, we could walk right into our Fred Meyer with our little dachshund Duncan on his leash. It was hard to tell you was more popular with other shoppers, Mama or Duncan.
 

One last memory. See the mustard-colored, multi-storied building, top left? It stands diagonally across the street from our building. We lived on the top floor of our four-story building, and I seem to remember that the building we're looking at had six stories. Our living room was on the corner of our building closest to the intersection, therefore not far at all from the building we're looking at. Our TV was in the corner, with two good-sized windows in each of the two walls that made up the corner. I could sit in my chair, placed diagonally in front of the TV, and easily see most of the top floors of the building, not the two walls you can see in the photo, but the wall just out of sight to the left. Mama could not see what I could see from her recliner. Anyway, one night I'm sitting there in my chair, watching TV with Mama. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion in one of the windows, a repetitive, rhythmic motion. Taking my attention from the TV, I focused on that window and realized that I was seeing a man and a woman having sex in what I figured must be the living room, without any curtains shut. Her legs were straight up in the air and he was very busy between them. "My gosh," I said, "there is someone having sex in an apartment over there!" Mama said, "What? Where?" Then we decided we'd turn out the light so that she might could catch a glimpse without us being noticeably voyeuristic, but by the time we did that, it was all over over there. Truth.