photo friday strikes again

Top photo: Sudden warm weather always inspires this sort of thing. Sometime next week she'll snap out of it and wonder where she left her shoes. They were still at the 1st & Oak MAX stop when I saw them. But you probably ought to hurry if you think you'll ever want them back. Or I suppose you could just buy a new pair instead. These may be last year's shoes, for all I know. It's not my area of expertise, I'm afraid.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, this is yet another photo post. Yep, another one, and even bigger than usual, I'm afraid. It's not all photos of flowers this time though. See, I really am flexible, a little, sort of.



The weathervane on top of the old Henry Weinhard brewery, now part of the Brewery Blocks development. I'd never really looked at it before, but it's pretty great: A stalk of barley, and a brewer's grain shovel (I think).

Did I mention that Portland's Spring Beer & Wine Festival is on this weekend? I think I know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Feel free to attend as well -- just so long as you're not in line ahead of me, I mean.



The photo I promised in the previous post: An order of "Mexi-Fries Grande" from Taco Time. Tater tots and bacon. Oh, and cheese, etc. Pure greasy, starchy, fatty ambrosia.

I probably shouldn't have eaten this. Until my toe feels better I can't go to the gym and run and generally be good like I'm supposed to. But at the time it was oh, so tasty.

I understand that the Oaks Bottom Pub over in Sellwood offers a similar delicacy, which they refer to as tot-chos. And the Kells Irish pub downtown has long offered a related item they call "Irish Nachos". Regular potatoes sliced and fried, instead of tater tots, but still entirely adequate for my purposes. And they go surprisingly well with a Guinness or two.



Another shot of our old friend Rusting Chunks No. 5. The glory of springtime doesn't really improve the damn thing very much, does it?



More rusting chunks, this time viewed through the fountain of a nearby condo tower. (They (the chunks, I mean (of course)) are just to the right of the pillar, in the background.) You could probably do this in Photoshop just as easily if you knew how, but I don't. I could probably find out if I wanted to, but I'm lazy and it's not important enough. And really it's more fun (IMHO) to see what you can do with a middle-of-the-road vanilla consumer camera rather than invest in an expensive "prosumer" hardware & sofware combo. And besides, "prosumer" is a truly stupid word. If you're going to insist on coining neologisms, you can have the new word be whatever you like, so why pick something that sounds like a greasy part off a diesel engine? Sheesh.

Besides, if you're going to mess around with image manipulation, why waste your time with water effects, when you can insert a rampaging Gamera stomping on the rusting chunks. Now that would be worth seeing. But I don't know how to do that either.

There might be a setting in GIMP to do this stuff, but it beats me where they might've hidden it.



The Fremont Bridge and its reflection, in a still-undeveloped far corner of the Pearl District.



This is where fire hydrants come from. Sort of. This truck was downtown, and the hydrants are probably for the reconstructed transit mall, once they've put the new MAX tracks in.



Speaking of which, here's a shot of SW 5th Avenue with MAX tracks going in. In the unlikely event you're interested in seeing this for yourself, sorry, it's too late now. They've added the concrete, and now it just looks like normal light rail tracks. So nothing to see here. Move along.



An authentic commemorative shot glass from the real Southfork(tm), you know, from that TV show. Someone gave this to me, I hasten to add. I haven't been there. The text around the outside rattles off a few key points about the show, beginning with "Texas Oil Power Money Greed Millionaires". Oddly enough, if you buy a shot glass at the White House gift shop, the inscription on the outside says exactly the same thing. Go figure.

If my usual luck holds, the preceding brief comment will reel in a few Dubya-worshiping Bible-thumping Kool-Aid(tm)-drinking wingnuts, and they'll post illiterate, abusive rants in all capital letters, lecturing me all about the imminent Rapture and whatnot, and then I'll have to waste a minute or two deleting the rants, or possibly mocking them. It's always an adventure out here on the interwebs.



A couple of sunrise photos from last month.



Ok, that should about do it. Once again, sorry about all the big photos, dialup user(s)!