UPDATE and I went outside while a load of clothes was in the washing machine

UPDATE: I slept well again, woke up at 5:45 a.m. At 10 a.m., I decided to wash a load of clothes and go outside for the 30 minutes they'd be in the washer. I'm doing OK, thank goodness.



While outside, I thought I'd take a photo of where I sit in my chair. This is from across the street on the sidewalk in front of Albertina Kerr. To get to my sitting and observing spot, I come through that barely visible wooden gate in the shade, open the chair, then put it beside the low, gray-painted wall and the sidewalk that comes from the gate--it is blocked from view by the green car parked at the curb.



This is the evergreen that I photographed and posted yesterday, well, one bit of it anyway. I'm not certain if it's a tree or a shrub, and I have no idea if it will grow any taller. The part that I photographed points towards the low, gray-painted wall where I rest my feet when sitting in my folding aluminum law chair, there in the shade.



Since I didn't bring my chair outside today, I rested for a few minutes leaning on the low, gray-painted wall. I twisted around and decided to take this photo, just to get an idea of how the camera would do. If you're at my blog often, you'll recognize the banana plants at the entrance sidewalk.

Around 6:25 a.m. this morning, the view from the building's front door.

I wanted to put some mail in the outgoing basket downstairs, around the corner from the laundry room where the building's mailboxes are attached to the wall. Since the sun had already come up, I decided to walk out the front door and around the corner on the sidewalk so that I could go inside that door and put the mail in the basket. I need to enjoy the outdoors several times today because it's supposed to be rainy tomorrow.

According to KGW Channel 8, the local NBC affiliate, it will be 70 today--maybe an evening shower--then 60 tomorrow with heavy showers. Pretty much the same forecast for Wednesday, too. I'll be taking advantage of the wide hallways and the stairs inside my building until Thursday, when the weather's predicted to be better.

Sight I saw while out and about yesterday, enjoying a few moments of sunshine, plus an UPDATE

With Lamont here to help, we took a load of clothes down the 10 steps to the basement laundry room. After we returned there to put the clothes in the dryer, I decided to walk out the building's side door and around to the front door to get back to my apartment which is near the front door. While taking a photo of the sunshine in these banana tree leaves, I caught the guy who had just rattled by on the sidewalk. See him just to the right of the leaves.



He's got a plastic tub stuffed to the gills with something, topped by a black drum, all balanced on top of a skateboard.

Skillfully he pushed his cargo from the sidewalk, through the intersection, and continued south on the street.

Ah, the joys of being out and about in Portland.

UPDATE:  I have  low grade uterine cancer. Friday morning at 8 a.m., I have an appointment with a surgeon who deals with what the scheduler called "cancer from the belly button down," in other words, her specialty is cancer in a woman's reproductive tract. We will discuss the pathology report thoroughly as well as a plan for what's next, which the scheduler labeled a plan for care/cure. I will leave the appointment with a complete understanding of the pathology and the plan.

THANK YOU for your continued prayers, love and concern.

Oh, so good. Mama memories.

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



Back story: Mama and I lived from October, 2006, until January, 2011, on the 4th floor, actually the top floor, of the Presidential Court apartment building on the corner of NW 22nd Avenue and NW Everett. We loved our apartment and many good days there, with each other and with family and friends, and our dearly departed miniature dachshund Duncan. From our kitchen window, we could see this much of a nearby multi-story, multi-family building. We always wondered what it would be like to see any of the views available from the top floor of that building, but most of all, we wondered what it would like to stand in that space we called the window room that you see in this photo. Mama died in our apartment on January 7, 2011, and getting the chance to go inside that building, much less to stand in that little room, never entered my mind again. Until I got an e-mail from the Architectural Heritage Center announcing a tour of the building, originally apartments, now condos. I immediately went online and signed up for the fundraiser. As I rode the bus in the rain last Sunday, most of what was on my mind was the renewed hope to able to stand in the window room, to look toward our kitchen window and see it from an entirely different perspective. To remember the good times with my Mama. I took this photo of the window room from our kitchen window on May 3, 2009.
 

So imagine my joy when I realized as I was directed to the last of seven condos on the tour and figured out that, based on where I was at that time in the building and putting it together with its views, my last stop would be the condo with the window room. I walked through the rest of the huge, single-story condo before stepping up onto the window room's raised floor. All I really cared about was finding out if I could see any of our windows, if the trees that had grown enough to block a view of the windows. Here's a cropped closeup of those windows. Our kitchen window is the only one still visible, the first one you can see on the right in the olive green painted wall--we lived in the corner of the building on the southwest side of the intersection. The tree hides the two living room windows on that eastward-facing wall.
 

Here's photo that I took of Mama waving at me from that kitchen window, on December 21, 2008. That was a Sunday. I must have been out walking the dog or coming back from walking to the Fred Meyer--I cannot remember. But I remember calling her on the cell phone and asking her to go open the kitchen window and wave at me so that I could take a photo. It took me quite a bit of looking through my photos until I managed to find this one--I didn't have it tagged as Mama, doofus me. Notice the snow? We Portlanders were in the midst of days and days and days of lots and lots and lots of snow. Fascinating to the two of us Mississippians-turned-Portlanders!
 

And here's the wide shot that I took of our building when I stood in the window room. Mission accomplished!

About the AHC Event - Centennial Celebration Tour!
Historic 705 NW Davis Apartments Sunday, September 29, 2013 Timed entries between 1:00 and 4:30 pm Members and Friends Admission: $ 25.00

A benefit for the Architectural Heritage Center, generously presented by the residents of the 705 Davis Condominiums Celebrate the centennial of one of Portland's "grande dame" apartment buildings designed by Whitehouse and Fouilhoux at a special benefit for the Architectural Heritage Center. 

Timed-entry tours begin in the courtyard with an overview by Edward Teague, head of the Architecture and Allied Arts Library at the University of Oregon. Visitors will learn about the noted building's history, architect, and architecture, and then be toured through seven one- or two-story units, and an original servant's room, along with an opportunity to learn about ongoing preservation, see historic photographs, and enjoy light refreshments.

Batchelder tiles, Honduran mahogany, and elegant moldings grace the interior, once inhabited by Julia Hoffman, a founder of what is now the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the chief investor in the building. Other early residents included Max Hirsch, a founder of White Stag, Isabelle Gauld, Oregon chair for Bundles for Britain, Eric Ladd, "before his time" local preservationist, and Fanny and Edgar Lazarus - the latter the architect for Vista House.

Framed for Christmas, No. 3

Here we've got the lower part of mine and Mama's Christmas tree in a photo that I took on December 11, 2007. After the multitude of needles which fell all over the apartment from our cut fir tree in 2006, we opted for this aluminum one and enjoyed it very much. Hope you like the photo. Do you see the ornament outline of Mississippi? I am especially happy that it's in the photo because that's where I was born, 65 years ago yesterday. Yes, my birthday was 12/12/12. Cool.

Snow, before bedtime Tuesday night.

I went to the building's front door and side door to take a few photos. There's the possibility that the snow won't be this pretty in the morning because it could turn to rain around 3 a.m., maybe later. Let me tell you what. It's cold out there!


A collage I made at Picnik.


Here's one of the photos which is in the collage. I like how the headlights and the snow work together.

I'm off to bed now!

5:45 AM Wednesday Update - Rain began during the night at my elevation. It's still raining. At higher elevations, snow continues to fall. Trees have fallen onto power lines all around the metropolitan area, TV news is reporting. I should leave for work in a little over an hour. Wonder what I'll see? Lots of standing water is my guess.

Two Hansons, Lamont and I, took a trip to Ikea on Presidents' Day in his big ol' Volvo wagon, but we didn't eat Swedish meatballs for lunch.

Daunting task. Those two words fit shopping at Ikea. Not that I wasn't prepared. On Sunday I photographed the spaces where I felt I needed additional storage in my kitchen. I measured those spaces, then printed the photos and wrote the measurements on each one. Then I went to Ikea online to check out what was available. Having done so allowed me to relax a little bit about looking throughout the gargantuan 280,000 square foot building. I took this photo right after Lamont pulled into one of the 1,200 parking spaces! Thanks to getting almost all of mine and Mama's deposit back from our previous apartment (due to the great cleaning help of our friend Sarah and the length of occupancy--over four years), I had a decent budget for this shopping trip.


I figured shelves could go on the wall over the sink. Please note where the dish drainer is sitting. That is the only counter-top-like surface that came with the apartment, and it's so low that if it were really a counter top that I had to use, my back would soon be bothering me on a regular basis. In fact, that's why you see the pink dish pan sitting on top of a plastic covered wire shelf--I can wash dishes without bending over thanks to my creative problem solving skills! By the way, the two blue squares stuck on the back wall of the sink are some sort of plastic pieces that one of Mama's physical therapists gave her to use when opening jars and/or bottles. They stick to the porcelain sink very well and work like a charm.


Lamont is closely observing a Grundtal Wall Shelf and several attachments.

We got two of the shelves, which are stainless steel and measure 47 1/4" wide by 10 5/8" deep by 7 7/8" high.

We also got the Grundtal Dish Drainer, 16 1/8" wide by 10 1/4" deep by 13 3/8' high. You can see it on the right side of the photo with a couple of plates and a bowl in it. There is plenty of room to hang it so that it will drip into the sink or onto the drainboard.

Lamont's looking at the Grundtal Wall Rack/Dish Drainer. It doesn't slant like the larger dish drainer, but I know that I can find several ways to use it to my advantage. I got two of them.

I got two packages of S hooks to use on these shelves, plus two Grundtal Cutlery Caddies which are a flower pot sort of shape made of polypropylene which hangs in a stainless steel frame and hook. I got two of them.

This is a stainless steel Cutlery Caddy. It will either hang from a Grundtal or sit somewhere.


This is a stainless steel Kitchen Utensil Rack. I got one of these for taller utensils. I figure that I will wish I had a couple of them before I'm done.


Here's the white wooden cabinet with the enameled metal top. Today when we got home from Ikea, I cleaned it out and cleaned off the top except for the microwave and the toaster oven as you can see. I knew that I needed to get it ready for whenever they show up to take it out of here.


This is a photo I took at the store of the splendid free-standing cabinet that I got to take the place of the white wooden cabinet. It's called Varde Drawer Unit and measures 41 3/4" wide by 25 5/8" deep by 35 3/8" high. I can't wait for the maintenance man or men to move their piece out of here so that Lamont can put this one together and set it up in the kitchen. I will have a countertop at the correct height! The wood is birch, the drawer fronts are covered in stainless steel.

Above the Varde Drawer Unit, Lamont will hang two of these Broder stainless and galvanized metal shelves and the suspension rail, wall uprights and brackets necessary to attach the shelves to the wall. The shelves are 31' wide by 14 1/4" deep. We got the wall uprights that will hold two shelves spaced just right for whatever use. This photo is one that I cropped from a four-shelf set-up. Lamont will not arrange my shelves exactly like this, but it gives you the idea.


At first I thought I wanted a shelf over the stove, one to which we could attach an under-the-cabinet fluorescent light that I already have. But as we walked along I thought better of it, realizing how disgusting a wooden shelf would soon be over the top of a stove. And since I moved in, that light fixture has been sitting on top of the frig with its light shining up into the ceiling, providing a great amount of overall light. I decided to leave it there.

I got a Grundtal Rail which is 31 1/2" wide. Lamont will hang it over the stove and then hang one of the Grundtal Wall Rack/Dish Drainers on it and/or some S hooks to support some of my smaller sauce pans. We'll see.

Naturally today Ikea was packed with entire families, walking from one display to another taking in--and I quote their Web site --the 9,500 unique Ikea products set up in the 48 inspirational room settings and three complete model homes. While those homes ranged from not much over 700 square feet to not much over 200 square feet, I have to admit what can be done with all of this stuff amazed me.

We'd been there about an hour and a half, looking at my photos and at things I had found online and things I hadn't found online which might work here or there, when all of sudden I told Lamont I really needed to eat something. We made our way through the rest of the maze in another 30 minutes and came to the Ikea Restaurant which seats 250! The line snaked and snaked, populated with entire families and an amazing amount of noise. I looked up at Lamont and declared that I would happily soldier on.

We found somewhere to sit down in an inspirational room--a dining and kitchen combo--and looked through our notes, then he went back downstairs to the entrance to get a shopping cart so that we could pick up all of the pieces and boxes that we figured would work in the apartment. The Varde had to be picked up at the nearby Ikea Furniture buildong which we had passed on our way there. By the time we got to Killer Burger so that we could eat an exceptional American hamburger and French fries, we had been gone for four hours! We needed nourishment in the worst way, and Killer Burger supplied it successfully.


And once we got everything inside the apartment except for the Varde because right now there is no where to put it until the other cabinet is removed, Lamont put together a nightstand on casters which I had found online; it's perfect for my printer because it fits just right beneath my computer table and can be rolled out for scanning and or copying. Oh, the name of the series for the nightstand is Odda. Fits me to a T with that name, doesn't it?

Lamont also put together the Grundtal stainless steel shelves and held them to the walls, eyeballing where to put them so that I can reach things; he did the same with the Broders, too. Tomorrow he plans a trip to a hardware store to search out the proper hanging-the-shelves-on-the-wall items.

Before you know it, I'll have a kitchen fit for a queen, all organized.

Beautiful exterior ... makes me wonder about the interior

Please scroll down to see today's dahlia, Lavender Ruffles, from Swan Island Dahlias.

An apartment house on NW 23rd Avenue, or maybe it's condos. I took this photo on March 12 with the Nikon CoolPix L12. I vividly remember when I first saw the building. Lamont, Leland and I had walked and walked and walked throughout the Pearl and the Northwest Hills one afternoon in 2004--when Mama and I were here on our first visit. The building was undergoing renovation. I wondered then how it would turn out, little knowing that in a little over two years we'd be living within walking distance. I love Portland!


Here's another one that I took with the Nikon D50 on May 9.


Today's dahlia, Lavender Ruffles. Facts from Swan Island Dahlias--Bloom: 12" Lavender, Bush: 3'

Sunrise

To paraphrase, "Yes, Virginia, there is life after Red Bull Flugtag." Let's get it on, starting with a shot of sunrise from the apartment's kitchen window.

Circumstantial Series

Last Thursday night when I took this photo while standing in front of our building, I had no plans for a series. Circumstances dictated that I stay indoors after I returned from the dentist Saturday afternoon, and you now see below the only two photos I've taken in three days. That's some sort of sad-sounding milestone, let me tell you.

The first photo (above) is the Manhattan Apartments, across from our front door. Below, in the second photo, you see the Rose Plaza Apartments, which are diagonally opposite our building. The third photo is of the Elizabeth Apartments which we see from either the kitchen or living room windows. I don't think they're too bad, do you? The little CoolPix L12 saves my sanity once again!





I never, ever dreamed I'd be living on a four-apartment intersection, with fantastic sidewalks and nearby mass transist. At the risk of boring you with my repetitiveness, I love Portland!

So, my gums are healing from having two teeth pulled; the infection in my jaw is so much better that my face is returning to its regular shape. Therefore, I'll be out and about, headed for work on Tuesday, my camera in a Zip-loc bag because real rain is forecast. Perhaps I'll get a great shot of it falling, just for y'all.

For you, a part of what I see walking to work

Friday morning as I walked part way to work, this view particularly appealed to me. It's about 7:05 AM, PDT, and we're looking east down West Burnside on the left and southeast down SW Morrison on the right. Some mornings when I walk down Everett to Third, I'm walking at the same downward slope you see on Burnside. If I decide to walk on Morrison instead, then go due south to take Salmon down to Third, I walk slightly uphill before it levels off and then slopes down towards the Willamette River. Either way I walk, I make good time, take a few photos, and catch the bus that takes me over the river to work. I love to walk in Portland, and I'm curious to see how I can work it out to walk as much as possible during the wet winter.

The pale peach-colored building in the intersection is one of two triangular-shaped buildings that I've noticed in the sharp-angled intersections on the south side of Burnside. At its closest end, it houses a pizza place; at the opposite end, there's a bar and grill. I believe the upper floors are apartments. The tall, many-windowed building behind it is the Civic, a brand-new condo building. In between it is the rust-colored shorter building, the Morrison. They represent an interesting concept, new to Portland, as reported recently in the Portland Tribune. You can read about it at http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118945870998628300.

Here's a bit from Wikitravel about how Burnside and the Willamette River work to delineate parts of the city: Portland is divided into five sections. Burnside Street is the north/south split. The Willamette (pronounced will-LAM-et) splits Southeast and Southwest, but the river takes a turn north of Burnside. Since Mother Nature doesn't care much about straight lines, the city decided to split what would be the Northwest quadrant into Northwest (West of the river) and North (East of the River), then divide North and Northeast at Williams Avenue. All Portland addresses contain their designating sector inserted between house number and street name (i.e. 3719 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) This will make it easier to figure out where things are. If you hear Portlanders talking about Southwest or Northeast, they're probably talking about the section of the town rather than Arizona or Massachusetts.