Where's George? At the Dollar Tree!

I took Max to the Dollar store ("Dad, the real name is "the Dollar TREE.") to get some goodies for a sleepover. He'd gotten a zip-style motorcycle which instantly broke but was still fun, and we figured we'd get some more of those. The rider's legs had broken horribly, but not in a crash, they just broke, and the seat came right off but you could still run the plastic zip strip through the wheel and make it go. The zipper degraded visibly right before your eyes; I figure it's got about a hundred runs in it.
Anyway, caveat crap, and I have a hate/hate relationship with cheap-ass Chinese crap, but I is unteachable, and we went anyway.

We got some really cool flip-over cars in similar packaging to Evel Parapelegic, and some glow bracelets for everyone to have fun with after dark. So, six bucks. Everything's a dollar at the dollar store.
When I went to put back the "Two Three-Color Glow Necklaces!" in favor of the pick-up-sticks-sized-tube of 15 various glow things, there were three hispanic kids playing in the aisle, and a dollar bill lying on top of the toys in a bin.
It brought me up short. "Is that yours?" The kids were running around, paying no attention to me or the dollar. Weird. The back of the dollar was up, and in the middle I recognized the "where's George" stamp.
One aisle over, there was a loitering teen with pinkish hair and a trenchcoat. I think he had a friend wandering around, as well.

That was cool. What wasn't cool was just now finding out how lame the Where's George site is. I expected I'd be able to search for McMinnville, or 97128 and try to figure out which bill I'd seen. Nope. Nada.

Plus, I know I entered a bill once, but they had no record of my email address. Any of them.
Sucky. Plus there are idiotic banners for things much less cool than I'd expect from such a conceptually cool concept like tracking currency collaboratively with rubber stamps and internet connections.

BUT! By using Google to search ONLY wheresgeorge.com (Advanced Search), I found several McMinnville dollars, the most recent of which was found on July 2nd. I wonder if the pinkish-haired kid was the one who made the note about the small tier (sic) in the bill.
Note, though, the idiotic map showing Alaska in Baja, with a red-rocket-line of the bill shooting up to Washington from the south. Edward Tufte would not approve.

The one that had two entries two years apart in McMinnville made me wonder, too. Did it just knock around here for a couple years, was it in someone's piggy bank the whole time? Did the same person enter it both times?
I wonder.

Pronunciation update

I called the last post "pronounciation" to make you pronounce it wrong, but I'm over that.

I talked to my neighbor in the Courtyard, who'd just gotten back from 18 days hunting elk in the backcountry. He hadn't gotten his elk this year, but had come pretty close and had a good time. Seven inches of snow had fallen and crushed his tent.
I was sporting, I said "that sounds okay, though, you and your horse and your gun out there in the mountains," and he said actually he was a bow hunter, and was very scrupulous about taking a shot that might only injure the animal. He said, "not to say anything bad about anyone," (which always means you're in for some dirt) there was a guy in Grande Ronde who always got his buck, but might have to track it for a couple of days before it died with his arrow in it, "finding it by smell or something sometimes."
We both agreed that wasn't right.

He pronounced Grand Ronde "Grand ROUnd", which makes me think of ground round, which is kind of funny.

Riding Bikes

Riding bike is really cool. Last night Rex called up to ask if we could all ride bikes today, so we did. Mark, Rex, Max and I rode around the neighborhoods between NW 19th and downtown, played in Dragon Park ("Rarrhh! I'm a lava monster!"), ate and drank at the Hotel Oregon, and had ice cream at Serendipity, the best smelling place in the world.
It smells like being 7 years old, in the candy store on 4th St. in San Rafael, where I once got 5 soft serves because the guy filling in for the owner (who was at a funeral) couldn't get the machine to work right. Total bliss. I was replete. There was melting ice cream everywhere. I had one in each hand, my dad had two, and my mom had one, walking down the sparkling sidewalk.

We rode back through the NW neighborhood to about 12th Street, and came home. We looked at the 1920s bungalows, kept the kids from getting run over, and enjoyed the town.

In the evening I went for a ride out Hill Road, which turns to gravel where the yellow line in the road ends. There are two more hills behind that one. Not too steep, but it was a lot easier to come back in the 54" gear than it was going out in the 70" one. It's cool to ride on gravel with fat tires, but there are still cars (well, pickups) that use it as a real road. I had to put my shirt in my mouth on one downhill to filter the billowing clouds of dust after an F150 with a trailer of ATVs passed.I'm surprised at the number of dirt roads in Oregon that actually GO somewhere. Even in Portland, there are neighborhoods where you're driving along and "whoops!" there's no pavement. It's cool. It reminds me of Australia. Which reminded me of 1970s California. Which reminds me I have yet to write the post called "Why DO so many Californians move here?"

The colors in the evening on Poverty Bend Rd ("Poverty Bend Road" might be the best name for a road ever) were incredible. Very intense greens. Warm orange lambs. A field that could not be any greener. The Perkinje Effect, of course.

Named for Mr. Perkinje... of course, who noticed that in the evening, right before sunset, red things really popped, and green things looked really cool. He figured out that it was because the light from the Sun had to pass through more atmosphere in the evening, and some of the shorter wavelengths don't make it. So more green and red light gets through to reflect off green and red things, and hit our eyes and make us say "ahh, the Golden Hour!"

My friend Holden told me about the Perkinje Effect a long time ago, at sunset, which made me realize something important. If you notice something, and can give it a credible explanation of WHY it's happening, you can name it after yourself.
You want to be careful, though. If I figure out that the reason people are such wadweeds* on the road, or choose to put things up inside themselves, I might not want to call it "the Philip Effect". No.Besides, "the Philip Effect" is already taken. It's the effect where people notice something happening, and explain it, and get to name it after themselves. "The Philip Effect." Simple.

Riding out there made me glad to be an American. But this... made me proud.

*I was pleased to see that Ben Pappas' 1992 coinage, "wadweed", is completely absent from the internet. Until now.

Howard and Dave's Barbershop

Max got his first haircut in a long time today.
He's been wanting Jimmy Neutron hair, which sticks up about a foot, and what with one thing and another, it's been a long time. Pursuing the Neutron Style, we did find that the Plaid Pantry carries hair gel. The woman there was surprised, but it's true. Smells like grape.
Lisa did touch it up a little while ago, but his bangs have been in his eyes for weeks.

We went down to Howard and Dave's Barbershop on Cowls street, mostly because every morning when we ride our bikes to school, Max weaves in between them on the sidewalk as they're opening up their shop to start their day. They always smile and crack some comment.

The shop is great. Comfortable. Two old-fashioned chairs and some smart-ass regulars.

This was Max's first time in a grown-up barbershop, and he didn't like the idea of no video games. In practice, though, he looked through a car magazine and bantered with the guys. Got some gum from the machine. Pretty fun.

I liked it, too. I've never gotten a professional haircut in my whole life.
As a child, my mom cut my hair to much wailing and crying, which turned into mean comments as I got older, and finally culminated in No More Haircuts. I had a friend cut my hair in college, but she exactly cut off the part I told her to keep (the Bozo undergrowth that supported the straight hair on top). She was totally acting in my best interest ('get Philip laid'), but my hair was never designed to be long. Too lank. Next was midnight head-shavings at Nine Gables, with friends, housemates and mohawks. Finally, my friend Molly cut her own hair, and told me "you've GOT to cut your own hair! It's SO FUN!" It was fun, and I did a pretty good job of it, but how hard is a mohawk, really?

That reminds me of a story I heard in the barbershop. The subject of 'myths' came up, and one of them insisted that the "famous story" of some loggers from one of the local mills cutting a hippie's hair with a chainsaw was a true story, and cost the mill owner "a lot of money." A crew was coming back from work and passed a hippie on the road ("a real long hair"), and that was too good to pass up, so they buzzed him so close he had to jump in the ditch. He come up out the ditch and let fly with a one-fingered wave, "and those guys nearly turned that thing over backing up so fast". They jumped out, held him down and cut his hair off with a chainsaw.
Ow. About half of us thought that must've just pulled the hair out in chunks, but some thought it could've been done cleanly, if they held the hair on both sides. The noise and the terror, though, must've been awful.

Reminds me of the time me and my hippie friends were driving around and came across a logger alone in the woods. We almost ran him down, then jumped on him and superglued a big blonde wig to his head.

Nothing like that happened to Max, though. He got a great haircut, which took twice as long as anyone else's, but cost less. Go figure. Probably because just about the time Dave was finishing up with the cut, I said "don't be afraid to cut it short - we never comb it," so he went over the whole thing again, making it shorter. Two haircuts, but he only charged for one.

Really enjoyable experience.

Nice lunch from Red Fox bakery

I was on my way to Harvest Fresh to try out their sandwiches when I was distracted by the Red Fox bakery. The Red Fox lady and her kid came into Dustpan Alley the other day, and I figured I'd return the favor.

There was a disturbing sign in the window warning of coming price increases, since this has been the worst year for the MidWest since the Dustbowl years, and wheat crops are being lost.

The fella in front of me asked if their coffee was good, and the girl said "it's the best. We use Illy."
The guy said, "well, I warn you, I'm a coffee connoisseur!"and described the custom blend of six beans he likes to drink. Like a dick I chimed in with, "then I don't think you're going to be happy with Illycafe."
I got to chatting with the guy and his wife, and told the story of when I roasted a pound and a half of green Jamaican Blue Mountain beans in a cast-iron skillet. Best coffee I've ever had.
The guy's wife is like "oh, no! Now there's something else you've got to try!" :)

He said there's no good coffee in the South, "but maybe you disagree." I did disagree, but only second-hand. When I was growing up, my father had my Grandma mail regular 20 lb packages of coffee in red bags from Louisiana, since there was no decent coffee to be had in California at the time. The guy had to admit that Louisiana French Roast was good, and that before he got into his "bean-thing", he'd mix some Lausanne(?) coffee with chicory into his Maxwell House to give it a bit of a kick.

Anyway, he had a cup of coffee (with milk) and when the girl asked him if it was good, proclaimed that it was "in the range of acceptable."

Anyway. The Red Fox has no debit machine, so I scaled back from the Turkey and Apple sandwich I wanted to an Egg Salad Sandwich ("egg-selent salad") so I'd have enough to leave a tip, because I thought I'd stay instead of take my sandwich to go. I thought I wanted a coffee, too, but not after it became such an issue.

The egg salad was really good. The bread was a little crumbly for the job, but I also got a beautiful little 'salad', which was either the worlds most compact salad, or the fanciest, tastiest garnish in the world. It was a leaf of baby romaine, with a cherry tomato, a baby carrot and something shredded maybe (I ate it in two bites and I forgot to dissect it, sorry), dressed with a nice vinaigrette.
And a macaroon. Oh, the macaroon was great. Even a bad macaroon is pretty yummy, but this one was crispy and chewy and very flavorful, and made me downgrade all other macaroons in my estimation. Now they all seem either too gummy or too burnt in comparison.
I could see eating one of those macaroons every day as part of my morning coffee ritual. I may even try it with the Illy Cafe coffee...

First fixie I've sighted in McMinnville

Young fella named Alex had a rebuilt Raleigh fixie in front of Tommy's Bikes! The only other fixed gear bike I've seen in Yamhill County was on top of a car at the skatepark in Newberg, and the owner had come down from Portland.

Alex's fixie was a nice medium dusty blue in the neo-classic style. Flipped and clipped homebrew bullhorns, a single interruptor brake, and a 42x16 gear. He says it's light enough to keep up with cars on Evans Street. I believe him, but this is semi-rural Oregon. Max can keep up with cars on Evans.

He's from here, but he might be moving to Portland soon. They've got tons of fixies. We need you here, dude!

Oregon food: Uwajimaya

I feel like I wrote this entry already, but I can't find it.

Clinton and I went to a monstrously large Asian food market in Beaverton called Uwajimaya. Clinton says it's about half the size of the one in Seattle, and doesn't have the non-MSG choices the Seattle one has.

I gotta say it's overwhelming.

Walking into the first aisle, floor to ceiling with alien colors, big Japanese text, and not a lick of English was an overload. I didn't know where to look. I walked down the aisle trying not to miss anything, but being visually pummelled and pushed from shelf to shelf. "What IS this?" It would be like an Estonian from 1953 walking unprepared into the detergent aisle at Safeway. Wearing 3-D glasses.
I've never been a mid-century Estonian, but I have worn 3D glasses in the detergent aisle.

Pretty frickin' cool. I bought a bunch of cheaper beverages to try. I didn't want to get anything I didn't think I'd drink, and I didn't want anything that cost FIVE DOLLARS. There were some mighty spendy beverages, mostly weird Hawaiian-flavored things with Japanese writing.
I got some Lichee drink, which was good, but ended with kind of a grainy texture, some Strawberry Milk Tea which was super-yummy, and Max wants me to get a lot more.

Also some "Hello Boss" canned coffee. I got that in memory of the canned coffee I bought Angelina at the "Happy Super" Chinese market on Clement Street in San Francisco. We had that can for YEARS. It said "drink on Feb 31", so, y'know, we could never drink it.
(We lived over the Happy Super for a couple months right after we got married, and I remember watching them deliver whole dead pigs right under our window. Years later, I went into the City to visit my friend Tara at The Other Place when she was a bartender there, and passed by the Happy Super, only to find all its stuff out on the street and Going Out of Business signs in the window. I took a 'frozen food' sign which graces our freezer to this day.)

Anyway... we didn't buy an entire roast pig, and we didn't get any steam-table Chinese... but we could have.

I did buy some chocolate-covered mushroom cookies and some milky popsicles, and Clinton and I each bought an indecipherable box of something that seemed really exciting. Like tiny somethings, but we couldn't tell what. The shelves we got them off had what may have been little boxes of plastic models of things like "Secretary coming through door", and "Spacy Housewife", but we couldn't tell.

Our spider-senses did not fail us. My box (which I got for Angelina, because she loves weird tiny shit) had a tiny plastic Meat Gift Box, where you put the stickers on the meat, constructed the box, and packaged it all up. Whoa. The whole thing is about an inch and a half long.

Clinton's had the goods, though. It was things you might stock a convenience store with. A roll of film, a film canister to put it in, and a tiny box you construct to put the canister inside of. Tiny candies. Salt? Gum?