Goals!

I don't feel like I've done a very good job with this blog.  Posts are infrequent and random.  Now, I'm thinking it's time to use it for its intended purpose.

I'm out of practice and I've become pretty lazy.  Diary posts are easy things to bust out.  I need to write more essays, poems and stories.  So, that's what I will be doing.

Sure, I'll still write diary posts.  I'm hoping for one or two drafts of a fiction piece or essay a week.  I'll be starting an essay tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Portland Saturday Market:

Pretty flowers...

The man in pink.  He dances around and hopes you pay him for it.  Ian said he ended up in front of Oasis one day.

The little owl that I got for my purse.  I haven't named him yet, but he was hand made!

Alright.  I'll have either a draft of some sort tomorrow.

Good night!

벚꽃

That's "cherry blossom" in Korean.  It's a tough one to say ('beojkkoch').

Ian and I took a walk downtown today after the meeting with Craig, the current owner of Oasis Pizza.  Things are moving forward pretty quickly.  We may be proprietors here very soon.  Ian had Steve, his boss at Villa (and a former restaurant owner) take a look at the numbers.  From the looks of things, it's pulling in about $5,000 /week.  That's with no management or oversight ...and 11 folks on crew.  Craig only goes in for about an hour a day, five days a week.  He's ready to be done with the place.  There's room for improvement and a whole lot of potential here.  The place just needs somebody to care.

We have a second meeting with Craig tomorrow at Oasis and Ian called the landlord (a Thai fellow named Na) today to discuss the future of the lease, as there isn't one right now.  That's something we'll need to nail down.  We need a written guarantee from Na.

This is all a little bizarre to me.  I never really imagined myself as a business owner, but I always saw it in Ian.  I'm stoked to see him so excited.

I Just Might

I've decided that becoming a teacher may not be my calling. Don't get me wrong, it has nothing to do with a lack of desire or passion for education. It comes from the very simple and real threat of government decimation of of the education budget. Hell, even the term decimation doesn't do the damage down to students and teacher justice. Decimation comes from a Roman form of extreme discipline. The leader of phalanx would walk down the lines and kill every tenth man, but that's only a mere 10% slaughter. That's nothing compared to what we are seeing today.

Not only is education being cut, but the rights of teachers unions to even fight for their rights is being cut too. Thank you Mark Dayton, you son of a bitch. So with this clear and present danger to education, and the already putty filled heads of adolescents that think Snooky and "The Situation" aren't possibly retarded, I say "Ne" to teaching, for now. I'm not giving up, just giving in.

However, I have decided that I want to own my own Pizzeria. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time, but simply have had no money to do so. I may have just been given a break. On, the almighty and all knowing, Craigslist, or the "left hand of doom" depending on your viewpoint, I found an 25 years established Pizzeria for sale for $20,000. And I just might, assuming he says "yes," I can get the money, the place isn't a rat hole, I can make a profit, et cetera. Really what I'm saying is that an opportunity has presented itself and I might take it. We will have to see. The name of the restaurant was never divulged, but through carefully deciphering the age of the ria and location I believe it to be....

This means little to anyone else, but this place is a stones throw from PGE Park and a slight walk from Powell's books. I can get both drunk sports fans AND overeducated self important "readers." Really how can we lose. I finally pull out we, because Casey has pulled up no objections as of yet. This isn't her dream, but I think she knows that it's mine. So she is, at the very least, letting me pursue it.

What do you think?

Home, Woefully Under-furnished, Home!

Welcome to The Urban Agrarians!  We're home!

After a couple of months squatting with generous family, we are finally getting settled in Portland.  It's pretty exciting.

We have a couple of projects in the cannon, but it's still slow going as our minimalist lifestyle is less by choice and more by circumstance right now.

Too cool for bookshelves.

Couches are for ninnies.

But, our radio is rad.

And our kitchen is stocked.

Coffee is crucial to my 5am mornings.

We won't have internet until the beginning of December, so there will be some dead air after Thanksgiving.  But, stay tuned for explorations of Portland and the beginnings of our DIY projects.

It's good to be back.