walk in a fog

I hate sleeping during the day. I feel ruined to anything productive for the rest of the day, even if I wake up early. Today I slept five hours, woke around 2, and washed my dishes. Then I ate leftover pizza from last night. Then I walked to The Fuel Cafe on Alberta.

The Black Cat is my old standby, on 12th and Alberta, but the last time I went in there it was crowded and loud and more annoying than usual. I like a nice balance of dykes, hipsters and nerds. I like the dog to child ratio to be very, very high. Like, 100 dogs for every one child. And I like to be able to get some decaf coffee from the press-pot now that I am old and decrepit and can hardly tolerate caffeine.

So, on all of those counts, the Black Cat is starting to fail me. Sure, there are plenty of dykes, but they're the painfully hip kind and that cancels them out in my mind. And despite the presence of a dog-grooming salon two doors down, the dog to child ratio is way out of whack. There are tons more of these hipsters with mohawked toddlers coming in than hipsters with, say, pugs in sweaters. And I'll take the pug in a sweater any day over a screaming toddler, mohawk notwithstanding.

Anyway, what the hell am I talking about? I have nothing valueable to contribute today.

What about this picture I took on my walk? This is a house just a few blocks away from my hovel. It has palm trees and little, concrete faces all over the columns in it's massive wall. I like it and I don't like it, all at the same time. Isn't that amazing? I love palm trees because they remind me of the summer road trips we used to make to Florida when I was young. We'd first start seeing palm trees scattered here and there in South Carolina, then more in South Georgia, then tons right after we crossed the state line into Florida. That's when the vacation really started. When we were covered up in palm trees.

Palms seem out of place in Portland, but they're around. They always look a little anemic and, well, like they could use a heatlamp, or euthanasia. They still sort of make me happy though.