Permanent

Someone gave me a temporary tattoo last weekend, a book with wings with the phrase "Read or Die" written underneath it. I put it on my left bicep, and I've been feeling kind of badass. I'll miss it when it's gone, and I go back to being the only person it Portland without a tattoo.

Despite my lack of tattoos, I have managed to put my mark on a couple of people these past few months, and I didn't even do it on purpose. I was working on the reference desk, and wrote down a couple of titles of books for a patron. My shift ended, and I went back to my desk to take a break. A few minutes later, a coworker came back to tell me that the patron I had been helping needed to see me. I went out to find her, and she told me she was about to get a line of a poem tattooed on her arm. She really liked my handwriting, and wondered if I would write down the line of the poem so that the person doing her tattoo could copy my handwriting. I was so surprised that I don't remember what the line was, or even who the poet was.

Only a few weeks later, I was again working on the reference desk when a patron came up and asked me if I knew who Wimpy from Popeye was. I told him yes, and he asked me to find some pictures of him. I did a basic Google image search and showed him the results. The patron asked me to pick my favorite, and I wish I'd been a little more choosy, and taken his request more seriously. Instead, I choose arbitrarily and then he asked print out the image so that he could take with him to have it tattooed on his bicep later in the day.

The Magic Number

I'm intimidated by math, but I have a secret fondness for numbers and patterns.

In 1992, when I moved back to Seattle, I fell in love with my phone number. It took me a full month to realize why, that it was a palindrome: 860-6068

When I moved to a different neighborhood 7 years later, I tried to take my phone number with me. At the time, phone companies didn't provide this type of service. The woman working with me was really understanding of my desire to keep a palindrome number, and did her best to find me a new one. There wasn't one available, but she did find one with a nice rhythm, 721-3121. I wrote her supervisor a letter about the excellent customer service she provided.

Last August, when I was trying desperately to find an apartment in Portland and first saw my building, I took it as a good omen that the number of the building was 1111. A. drove Ray and I down to Portland a coupe of weeks later to get us settled in, and was really excited I was living in apartment #3. She told me it was her favorite number.

I can't believe that next week is my one year anniversary in Portland. It seems both longer and shorter, and I feel like I still have so far to go in terms of acclimating and restructuring my life, and even fully claiming the space in my own apartment. I still need to paint two more rooms.

Before my parents left for Italy last month, they asked me if I wanted them to pick up anything special for me while they were there. I asked for something for my apartment, hoping whatever they picked up would motivate me to put a little more thought and energy into my place.

My mother called the other night to let me know she and my father were back in Seattle, and that they had picked up a hand painted tile with the number four on it in Assisi. When I asked them why the number four, she told me it was for the door to my apartment. Since she is coming down to visit in a few days and will deliver the tile in person, there was no way I could shield her from the fact I live in apartment number three. She felt badly.

I have have no idea what I will do with the number four tile. If liked my neighbor who lives in number four better, maybe I'd give it to her. But I don't, and besides, it was chosen specifically with me in mind. Maybe I should just hang it up in a prominent place in my living room so that people will notice it and wonder about its significance. It will make a good story.

Vacation

The only vacation I took this summmer was one from writing, but apparently a patron in the library was much more active than me.

Found by a computer, on a large yellow post it note:


Gone out of country
Beaten someone up
Gotten beat up
Killed a animal
Swam in ocean
Broke the law

Did these events happen in the sequence they were listed in?