#91: Can't ... Let ... Blog ... Die

I've killed too many blogs.  Not this time. But I'm really busy right now. Work, family, life ... and right now my writing time is devoted to Step 4. You can Google that if you want, reader.  (Readers?)

In the interim, let this stand as a symbol both of what work I feel I have left I have ahead of me in this project, and of what else I have on my plate:

(Neighbors had an ash tree quit on them.  We reaped the woodchips. Hot diggity.)

#90: Henry's Seventh Birthday

One of these days I'll crank out a lengthy post about Henry. For now, let's leave it at we love him dearly, we're glad he's here, and he had hisself a disco party.

#89: Not Andrew Zimmern

I am an ardent fan of the long-running, dark, inexplicable, hilarious comic strip Achewood.

There are some fellow fans on Facebook and today somebody started a little thing where we draw a sketch of something without looking at it first.  This was inspired by this thing where a guy from Europe (of course) had people sketch a bicycle without looking, and then he did realistic renderings of bicycles based on the sketches.

The assignments today were a trumpet

and the 5-year-old otter character from Achewood, Philippe (on the right above)

He looks like Andrew Zimmern, ok?

#88: All These Things On One Plate Does Not Make It A Legitimate Meal

Yet here we are. This was part of the spread for a surprise office party at which I was presented with a nationwide award for client service. Yay me! There was also a lot of beer and wine. Yay everyone else! And a 2-liter of Diet Coke which I monopolized. Yay me again!

#87: A House Centipede!

Pete was less thrilled about this critter than about the racer.

Pete's been spitting out his toothbrush water, or just pouring his cup, down the overflow drain in the bathroom sink lately. I've been wanting him to cut it out because he typically misses and makes a little mess.

Well, problem solved last night. When he did it this time, this fellow came skittering out of the drain. Much hopping and screaming followed, but fortunately no nightmares.

#86: A Racer!

This is a guy you don't see very often in western Oregon.  But there's a 3 or 4 footer living at my mother-in-law's house.

Pete thought he was cool, because Pete's my kinda guy.

#85: Eight Things

Here are Eight Things From the Internet I couldn't bring myself to share on Facebook.  Now they are here, together, for the first time ever.

1.

"not sure why i rewrote the copy on the men’s clothing section of the uniqlo website, but i did it. the words are different now."

2.

3.


4.

5.

6.


7.

8.

Life is beautiful.

#84: Guitar Man

Here's a new thing: I went to an AA meeting last night and the guy chairing the meeting opened with a 5-minute instrumental performance of a Jefferson Airplane song.

Turns out he has a Grammy on the mantle.  Just another dude from the meetings...

Aside from being an awesome performance, the point was that it was a very difficult arrangement that, ten years ago before he got sober, he couldn't play.  Quite a poignant reminder of how you can either squander or redeem your gifts.

(I would go into more detail and even post a link, but, you know, anonymity.)

#83: I hurt my foot, man

Serious times, dogg.  (I've always wanted to do that.)

No, but seriously - I did. Completely stupidly, as if to prove to myself and all the world that sobriety does not mean I am free of the bondage of being a klutz.

It's like this: one of my habits for getting in walks and steps is to park a ways away from wherever I'm going and make a trek out of it. Last Tuesday I was going to a meeting and parked up in the hills of Northwest Portland a bit. Walking back to the car, I had my nose in my phone and I rolled my ankle off the edge of the sidewalk. I went down hard, skuffing my left knee and left pinkie finger and more or less breaking my fall with my phone - and breaking my phone with my fall.

And my ankle hurt a bit, like a little sprain.

Next day, I got the phone replaced but didn't attend to myself. My foot was a lot worse; it swole up like a little grapefruit and hurt like the dickens. So by Thursday I decided I ought to have the doctor look at it. Especially because by Thursday it was popping out some nasty bruises all over.

My doctor looked at it and was like, "I think that's broken." Then he saw the X-ray and decided it wasn't, just a torn tendon. But then yesterday he called back and said the radiologist found a fracture. Just a little guy, a chip off the very end of my fibula. One way or the other, I have to lay up for the next four weeks or so. Lame!

Yesterday, after about a week of strain from my ankle brace and double socks, my dear old brown loafers gave up the ghost while I was at work. So I took two MAX trains from my office to Nordstrom Rack, about eight blocks away, to minimize my walking. No kidding, you right one line four blocks up to Pioneer Square, then another line three blocks down towards the river. This was probably the silliest train commute ever, but hey. I found a nice deal on some sharp new stompers.

#82: My Son's First Bike

Pete turned 4 over the weekend. Holy crap. And we got him his first bicycle. This comes a month after his first fishing pole - kid's on a roll! Here he is on his inaugural ride, across grandma's garage.

#81: Schnitzel and Mushroom Nachos!

I continue to paw nervously at the back door of the House Of What It Means To Be A Nacho.

This was delicious, or as my wife described it when she saw what I was doing, "you made them disgusting." One man's this is another's that, and so on...

#80: Double Rainbow

I'm not concerned about what it means. It means raindrops and sunlight were gettin busy in the sky. But what was it doing over an Apple Store?

#79: Oops, went quiet for a couple weeks there...

It happens to any blog.  But it isn't supposed to happen here! But it's ok.

Several quick catchup posts coming.

#78: Fa Schnitzel, My Nitzel

Oh man, so then Sunday night my wife decided to make some schnitzel for dinner.  First time for her making it, and the first time I've had home-made schnitzel.

She set to work.

And I had to think back, when was the last time I actually just had a schnitzel and fries?  It had been a surprisingly long time.  It was in Berchtesgaden, Germany, in 2004.  Oh, here's a picture of it!

Yeah, that was a good schnitzel.  Good fuel for a cockamamie plan my brother and I had to go backpacking up into the Alps to camp out for the night. Except, I guess they don't really do that in Germany, they go to little huts instead? And, we got started really late, so we missed the last gondola up. So instead of setting out into the high country, we just hiked up this trail from the parking lot, trying our best to find something resembling a campsite. We failed. We ended up just slugging a bunch of Jaegermeister when the trail petered out at a nice viewpoint....

...and then hiking back out, riding some Go-Karts and getting a hotel room.  

ANYWAY, that's the last schnitzel I had. So how did our home-schnitzel stack up?

Look at that! Pretty goddamned well, I say.  I hold to tradition and eat it up with loads of lemon juice and ketchup, but her recipe included a little anchovy-garlic vinaigrette which soaked into the schnitzel and did in fact kick it up a notch.

Now, for our next trick, I would like to try and recreate this other extremely memorably meal from the Bavarian Alps:

MEAT, WITH MEAT, ON MEAT, WITH A SIDE OF MEAT.

AND DON'T SKIMP ON THE KRAEUTERBUTTER!

#77: Sunday Morning Pastry Hike

Maybe it's shameful that this is a "new thing" for me, but I've always driven to get the pastries.

NOT THIS TIME.  Make a 2 mile walk out of it and you just feel better about putting butter all over all the things.

Pete's hands were all over that croissant.

#76: Reflections On Letting It All Hang Out

Since launching this little blog and then announcing it on Facebook, I gradually went about outing myself as a boozehound on the path to recovery. After some oblique references to AA meetings, I went head-first in this post.

So now, if you are one of my 188 friends on Facebook, you can at least find out I'm an alcoholic if you click over here. And if you don't know me but just found this blog, you know that some guy in Oregon named Dan is an alcoholic. Maybe you know more than that; I'm no fool about how the internet works.

I'm cool with it, or I wouldn't have done it. It led to some welcome words of direct support from friends, some of whom piped up that they, too, are recovering alcoholics. And I hear "I like your blog" a lot. I take this, at least some of the time, as a polite way of acknowledging the elephant on the blog and giving me encouragement.

It was a "fuck it" moment, although I thought it over for days before fucking it. A counselor I've seen told me about his choice, one year, to put his alcoholism in the annual family Christmas letter to 150 friends and relations. I guess I've done the 21st century equivalent. The purpose is to add a layer of accountability - a WHOLE MESS of new people who are watching - and also to live up to one of the root tenets of AA, a commitment to rigorous honesty.

Hiding my problem wasn't helping me. So, might as well do the opposite.

But there is another root tenet of AA, right in the damned name: "Anonymous". The idea is that if you don't want to let it all hang out as I have done, you can still be completely honest within the "tribe" and have some expectation of confidentiality and privacy. Your anonymity is only yours to give away, as I've done.

If only it was that simple. Since committing more heavily to AA after my last relapse just before Christmas, I've had a couple of experiences that suggest otherwise. First, I chose a sponsor who, we quickly learned, is an old family friend of my current boss. Fine, cool beans, whatever: my alcoholism is no secret at all from my boss, to put it mildly. (And that's a whole 'nother story about the fragility of alcoholic anonymity. If you've got it bad enough, soon you're the only fool who still thinks nobody knows.) So I went and shared this info with my boss, with my sponsor's blessing, and now everybody knows that everybody knows that everybody knows. A connection made, a circuit completed, another tendril of accountability.

Then, the other night...well, back up. One day last week, one of my sons was going on a field trip. So that night, I'm at one of my favorite meetings, and after we stand to do the closing prayer, the person to my left squeezes my hand one last time and says "we had a great time today."

Wait, what?

"We had a great time on the field trip today....You know who I am, right?"

Uh...

Well, I do now! One of the folks who works with one of my sons at school is a recovering alcoholic, and now I know about this person and this person knows about me, outside of AA.  And that's great! Another connection is made, a circuit completed, another tendril of accountability. In this case, maybe for both of us.

We all have worlds and compartments in our lives. Sometimes we may have to, but I'm learning maybe not. When I "came out" on social media, I was voluntarily inviting several of my worlds to collide. But at the same time, those worlds are colliding on their own, and it seems they would have even if I resisted.

Guess I won't, then.

#75: Balmy Dawn Walk

Ah, it was nice to be out this morning at 5:15 and have it be over 60 degrees. Hoping this is just the first of many.

#74: Keller Fountain, Day & Night

I remember playing in this fountain on hot days as a kid. Now they have big signs up telling everyone not to do so, because the water's not treated and those cliffs are crazy dangerous, and it's no longer acceptable to have any risk in a kid's life.

Anyway, rant over.

I have a new Tuesday night meeting right by there, so I have occasion to walk by on my way to the meeting, and swing by while killing time waiting for my bus after the meeting. Here's what it looked like today and tonight. Still thrilling if you ask me. What an amazing work of art to get to play in. I hope the kids still get to, signs be damned.

#73: ANUSTART

End of March, start of April: time to turn over a new leaf and fill 'er up.

What is this? Kind of a little daily logbook with a few significant dates like birthdays and holidays outlined.

I do two basic things with it: First, I circle each date for another day of sobriety. Second, I log whether or not I met my daily walking goal and enter the steps I took. (From January through March I had a daily goal of 10,000. Starting in April it's 12,000. With my giant steps that works out to about 7 miles a day.) Reaching this goal requires not only that I consciously try to walk as much as I can throughout the day, including walks to and from bus stops, but also have at least one dedicated walk of 20-45 minutes at the start or end of the day. Every damned day.

I was slow to get in a rhythm--met my goal about half the time in January and February, then 25 out of 31 days in March. It's April 5 now, and even though that picture up there shows a blank slate, I've gone well over 12,000 on each of the first 5 days of April.

Oh, also, still counting off the sober days. I hit 90 on March 24, my mom's birthday. Today marks 102.

Onward!

(Arrested Development? Anyone?)

#72: Betta Living

We decided to get a betta fish! Never had one of these cats before. 

I am learning so much, such as that they like to have a hammock (that green thing in the upper left of the tank) and a hidey-hole (that brown thing in the upper right).  Also, apparently, they can be trained to do tricks?

His name was supposed to be Mick (for Jagger) but Pete named him Chase (for some dang cartoon dog). Oh well.

Anyway, Henry absolutely loves him. Gazes at him constantly at meal times and bangs on the tank all the time.

#71: On the Waterfront

Thanks to DST, it's lighter out this time.

#70: Easter Candy Moods

#69: You Lead

Have you ever gone down to the beach and just let a 3 year old decide what happens next for a couple hours?  Well, now I have.

#68: Dock Crabbing With Henry

This was another effort to make fishing more of a family activity and engage Henry in it. We tossed a couple rings off the dock down in Brighton, Oregon, and mostly got skunked.  One giant keeper. Then I set about gathering my daily limit of 72 mussels from the sides of the dock to get my money's worth. It all came together in an excellent seafood pasta.

I could tell Henry was happy just taking in the milieu -- the rocking of the dock, the lap of the waves, the chatter of the gulls, the breeze and the sun and the boats chugging to and fro.

#67: Damn Right This Is a New Thing

Seeing Oregon beat Duke in the NCAA tourney:

How sweet it was. Fun while it lasted.

#66: Fishing with the Family

We returned two days later to Hebo Lake after getting in some practice.

I used to fish a lot as a kid. Somehow I stopped doing it. I was thinking recently about when and why. I decided it really came to a halt when I went off to college to live in the dorms. There's something about being packed off from childhood to live in a small cube. You can only take and fit so much stuff in that cube, and, if you're like me, you are suddenly without wheels and space after spending high school having wheels and space. A gear-intensive and car-requiring hobby like fishing gets hard to maintain.

Plus, I was 18 and I wanted to meet new people and hopefully have sex with some of them and I wasn't sure that geeking around fishing was "cool" for college. (Whereas I was of the mind that drinking to oblivion on rotgut beer in dark smoky rooms was a way to the mountaintop. Go figure.) And then, like, none of my friends in college fished.

So: I quit fishing. Regret it to this day, but there you go.

So in recent years I've kinda started back up, at least with crabbing and crawdads, some clamming, mussels, and an occasional deep sea charter.

But that was all kind of just me. This year we decided to make it a thing that we would go fishing as a family, and turn the kids on to it.  We finally geared up and set out for our maiden voyage last week during Spring Break.

#65: A Walk in the Coastal Woods Part II: the Re-Coastening

There's gonna be a few posts here catching up on last week. Bear with me.

The main deal for this post is, I wanted to follow on from this bushwack and let you know how that mushroom grew in two days.  Because this stuff is important.

It went from this, as you'll recall:

To this:

So now you know.  Also I sawr a salamander.

#64: Happy Birthday to Pepper

"Squirrel!"

Pepper is only my second dog, and my first to reach the ripe old age of 13. So as King of this blog I consider a little tribute to him on his birthday to be in keeping with the theme here.

Pepper is special. Not necessarily "good" special or "bad" special. Lately we've taken to calling him the Best Worst Dog Ever, "B.W.D.E." which can be pronounced "Bowdy." One of his many nicknames. We spend more time than maybe is healthy waiting for him to die. Almost as much time as we spend cleaning up poop. He'll probably go on another six years, and toss in blind and deaf, just to spite us. And we'll love him for it. It's complicated, yeah?

He is a dog: take him for all in all, as a feller says.

#63: Fishing Practice

Yesterday we got the family geared up for fishing. This included Pete picking out his first fishing pole. Today he works on the fundamentals. Inside, in his underwear.

(I have some uncles who would fish outside in their underwear, but that's advanced studies. Like I said, starting with the fundamentals.)

#62: Hebo Lake

Tuesday we went and scoped out this fishing hole south of Tillamook, up in the woods above Hebo. It was built by the WPA in the Depression. More recently it was improved to include a wheelchair accessible path all the way around the lake, with a number of well-spaced and fully accessible fishing platforms.

#61: A Walk In The Coastal Woods

We're down at the coast for the week at my mom's house. Her neighborhood is basically surrounded on three sides by the wild back acres of Nehalem Bay State Park. It's great country to go tromping down elk trails for a small afternoon hike.

I set out today with my 13-year old dog. And then, after he pooped three times, he developed a bad limp and I ended up having to carry him home. All 80 pounds of him. I guess our days of bushwacking together are behind us.

Once he was safely home, I set out again. I ran across some seasonal ponds and one interesting mushroom.

#60: Peanut Butter Syrup?!!

This was an awesome thing a cousin laid on us at our several-times-a-year cousins brunch. Something I never woulda thought of, and fantastic.

And yes, from time to time, it might seem like this is just becoming a food blog. What can I say? Food is one of the most dependable sources of new experiences.

3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch salt

Warm for 30 seconds in the microwave and stir it up. Prepare to go to Flavor Village!

#59: St Patrick's Korean-Style Nachos

Yes, I did this.

Corned beef. Kim chi. Green olives.  Also chipotles and pickled jalepeno.

Don't try this at home on your dad's stereo.

#58: Bacon. Mayonnaise.

Inspired by a recipe in a cook book called Nom Nom Paleo. Read it and weep.

1/2 cup bacon fat
1/2 cup veggie oil
2 egg yolks
2 garlic cloves
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp dijon
salt and pepper

My spin?

First, not calling it aioli when it is mayonnaise.  (I thrill to the notion of making your own mayonnaise.  Why put on airs when you do so by calling it something else?) Second, using just plain old canola oil, whereas the paleo folks called for macadamia nut oil, which I can only assume costs $37 a liter.  (I read an article the other day that crapped on the Whole 30 and other paleo diets as basically ways to justify status spending on high-end meats and oils in the face of millennia of accumulated wisdom on the nutritional and economical value of grains and legumes. Seeing a recipe call for half a cup of macadamia nut oil? Yeah.) Third, when making mayo I've always found that 2 egg yolks is better than 1. Finally, their recipe called for sherry vinegar, but I used the wife's home-brewed tarragon-infused vinegar because it is awesome and I use it on everything.

Had some today in a grilled tuna sandwich.  Ho ho, hey hey.  This is the business.