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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Fourteen

I've had a couple of fun days lately.

For the New Year holiday, I started it off right by - for the 3rd year in a row - running a 5k called "First Run" with my baby brother. We are always 1/2 miserable, 1/2 excited to do it, and I like that it's become our special thing. This year the course was changed (in response to a train coming through the course last year and stopping the race for 20 minutes!) and it went over a couple of bridges over the Willamette River. That part was beautiful! I've never run (or walked, jeez) over any of our 10 or 11 bridges and that was a treat. We both ended up finishing without collapsing, and we both accomplished our goals of doing the entire 5k without stopping. (That might seem like a lame goal, but I am seriously out of shape right now. I was really proud of myself.) My brother always finishes way before me and then has time to chill out and come back to the finish line in time to cheer me in :)

For the rest of my day off, I just did relaxing things - I went to a movie (Saving Mr. Banks - whoa, very good), I spent some time reading (I'm currently reading The Wisdom of Psychopaths - great so far), I did some sewing for my Etsy shop (and filled a few orders I had in the past week), and I went to a video game arcade downtown that sells adult beverages and plays loud music. I'm not huge into video games, but most of the games are from the late '70's/early '80's (I'm vintage, yo) and I really love loud music - I went again this weekend and when I walked in they were playing Superstition by Stevie Wonder. That and some Asteroids or Q*bert? That's a good time. I find that I can't really think of anything else for a good 45 or 60 minutes while I'm playing games, so that is fun.

I've been out to eat a lot, pie is my newest thing. Or Portland's newest thing. We have a bunch of different pie places, and so far I like them all. I need to stop that, but it's been fun to grab a slice a la mode and read for a bit.

Today I went to the Oregon Historical Society to see an exhibit on origami and it was fantastic. Origami, of course, reminds me of my time in Japan, and I do a little paper folding every once in a while. The art on display today stunned me - there was a dress and high-heeled shoes (life size) made entirely of one large sheet of paper, folded. And there was an origami representation of a painting - that was beautiful. My favorite pieces were a simplified version of the crane, and a gorgeous work called Prayer by an artist named Giang Dinh. No photos were allowed (phooey), but here are a few links:

Giang Dihn's portfolio - Prayer and several others that were in the show are here
At the bottom of this page are photos of several pieces of origami art - all of these were in the show

Yay for good days. More in store, I'm sure of it. Now it's time to make some resolutions for the new year.

1 comment:

  1. Did my comment not post? Hmmm.

    I said something like- that all sounds like fun and I'm glad you're having some good days. I like loud music and retro video games. Maybe we should go there the next time I'm in town? xo

    ReplyDelete