The first day we were there, the sis and I noticed a couple trying to push this thing back into the ocean. It was beautifully futile. The next day, I went and took pictures of it.

Before we left, we decided that we needed to pose with it.

Here we are, getting our pre-funk on (in the background: Jonathan Richman’s “I’m Straight”).  Notice how svelte Joaquin has become!

We have a somewhat longstanding tradition of going to our closest friends’ house and ringing it in with them, but illness intervened.  So we asked the internet, “Hey, internet, what should we do?” And the answer was to go to Dot’s Cafe.

Dot’s is a wonderful place. I’ve been going there since I was in my early teens, just a year or so after they opened. It’s also the last place I took Joaquin while he was still living in New York, before he moved here.  So there’s history, you know.

Along with New Year’s Eve, they were celebrating their 20th anniversary. It was very festive and romantic.

2012 is the year of the dragon, which is Joaquin’s year.  I think it’s really going to be something.

Here is the locker we kept our stuff in whilst being overcome by insouciance.

(Man, that is so insouciant!)

Here are the beskated feet of me and C.

(Man, those are so beskated!)

We also went to the Portland Art Museum to check out the rather remarkable The Artist’s Touch and the Craftsman’s Hand exhibit. Unfortunately, everything in that exhibit was (understandably) behind glass, so my photos from it are crap. Instead, check out these pictures of “special” babies from the Renaissance.

Now we’re at Ocean Haven again, and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about that soon.

(standoff fish?)

Pictures from that cool little park at the end of Skidmore.

Here is Yoshi stepping on my face.

On Saturday we went to a Halloween party. Hazel dressed as Rosemary form Rosemary’s Baby. It was widely conceded that her costume was the most frightening.

I went as Frank Bullit, but there were no good pictures.

Both of these are of my first bout. Between them, the guy had to sort of sit and recover from the rib kick that he would have avoided if people had only noticed that I had already knocked him in the head with my fist.

This was my loss. I was trying to circle out and punch him, when I should have been circling in and away and kicking him. Sad emoticon.

This was the 3rd/4th bout, which I also won.

On Sunday I engaged in another incredibly manly activity: plumbing! I have been putting off fixing the pipes under my kitchen sink and flush with, umm, defeat that wasn’t as sound as it could have been I finally convinced myself to get around to it.

Just to round things out, here’s Yoshi demonstrating his civic pride by posing as the Jantzen girl.

It was pretty great.

I realize now that I never got a picture of the boat, but here is where it was:

Here is Hazel looking furtive after eating spaghetti.

Here are some views off of the boat:

I was able to fulfill a long-standing fantasy of mine by getting photographed in front of this hilarious mural.

Because we were going to a boat and wanted to save time we bought bloody mary mix. It was. . . not as bad as it could have been.

Here’s a little something that I had to say about man’s inhumanity to man:

We stopped here after we checked out and ate this:

We came home and Yoshi seemed largely unchanged.

The other exciting (?) innovation was at the coffee cart, where we picked up strong french press — the stir sticks were buckwheat linguini (ahem, uncooked). Oh, Portland.

While we ate (and tried to avoid getting mauled by toddlers and their SUV strollers), we admired the building across the street, and daydreamed about buying it and living on the top floor, with a second apartment converted to an office studio. I would manage it and teach ceramic workshops and write articles for magazines, and J would do something brilliant and computery.

Then we decided to walk over a bridge; we picked the Hawthorne. It’s a good thing we like it, because we were on it for longer than expected — it went up to accommodate a (presumably) very important sailboat.

It was hot.

Sunday, today, we almost didn’t leave the house, but hunger and peanut butter toast fatigue set in, so we went to a second cart, um, grouping or whatever, and had fried fish. Fine cuisine it was not, but satisfying, yes.

P.S. Sadly, I have no pictures to represent the other notable part of our weekend, which was spent spacing out to the Eluvium album over and over and over again.

(Those cookies were SO terrible.)

Here are some dudes in old-timey diving suits attending a crypt:

Here’s some stuff around Belleville:

Here is some delicious food that we ate:

Here are some pictures from out second trip to the Marche au Puce:

Here’s me looking maudlin:

And all you can hear is a radio somewhere, playing a pig of a song:

Then you can wander around looking for shadowy corners in which to exchange kisses, since cemeteries are sort of sexy. In an admittedly weird way.

The crumbly stone! The rusty metal! The fonts! The dead!

Unlike Notre Dame and The Centre de Pompidou, I didn’t cry at Pere Lachaise, but I think I still managed to have a religious experience.

Note: Yes, I realize the video is sideways. Shrug.