rain, rain, go away

It's Friday, so it's time for photos. I guess. I used to do photo Fridays all the time, but there's a serious lack of material this time of year and I've gotten out of the habit.





Flowers in planters on NW Couch, in the Pearl. Not much to say about these pics, other than that I got really wet trying to take them. I really go to the mat for you guys, and I don't make a single freakin' cent doing it. Just remember that next time I make a typo, or alternate present and past tense in a sentence, or something.

I usually turn up my nose at flowers in planters, but I figured I could get some good(ish) Raindrops On Flowers shots out of 'em, and here they are.




Discarded cigar on the sidewalk, near Rusting Chunks No. 5. The brand, "La Aroma de Cuba", seems to be well thought of, but it looks like someone didn't agree.

Back in his heyday, Dave Barry once said that cigars smell like someone set fire to an armpit. And expensive cigars smell like someone set fire to a very expensive armpit. Just try to convince me he was wrong. Just try.




A city work crew messing around with vegetation in Ankeny Park. This is why I'm glad I have an indoor job.

BTW, the latest rev of the "Three Urban Parks" plan envisions no changes to Ankeny Park. Which is sort of what I figured. They insist it's because of the proposed Burnside/Couch couplet stuff, but they never had any cash allocated for the project anyway. But then, even if there wasn't any cash, architects are usually quite happy to produce paper designs of what they'd like to do if cost was no object. So I figure they just didn't know what to do with the place, and neither Starbucks or McMenamins took an interest in the park's vintage public toilet buildings.

Some people just have no imagination at all. Sheesh.




Bare tree in the Pearl. This shot basically embodies all the reasons the month of March is teh sux0r: It's raining, everything's grey, the tree's bare (and it's budding out, which seems to take forever), and nobody's taken the Christmas lights off of it yet.

Also, the area's populated with silly Pearlie twits, people who own a tiny $1M condo and a huge $100K SUV. Ok, that's not quite true. I called the condo "tiny" and the SUV "huge", but in reality the two are exactly the same size. So much for that sterotype, I guess, huh?




A historical marker next to the freeway ramps at NW 14th & Couch. Seems that OHSU started here, many moons ago. But really this one's mostly here for the grimness and drabness and mud. Blech.