So it is very cold, but I feel like it’s the harsh, bracing wind of progress.

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.

Here are a couple of shots of Yoshi watching his favorite film.

Here is the latest in a series that I like to call “What the Hell is Going On with My Head?”

I lived here two times, so did my sister.

Steve, the kindly & cranky manager, has a two times rule.  You can’t come back after that.  I understand it on principle, but it’s hard for me to imagine never living in The Rasmussen again.

This weekend J & I went for several walks, this was in Laurelhurst, at the teeny Oregon Park, another place that is full of memories.

We’ve been talking a lot about where we might live in the future; it’s so strange to imagine not being surrounded by remnants of earlier epochs (of my history as opposed to the world’s).  Discovery, instead of rediscovery.

(standoff fish?)

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

Here is Yoshi stepping on my face.

Agnes Martin, Homage to Greece

I am teaching painting in a much more focused way than I used to, and certainly doing a lot more of it than I used to, so it makes sense that I’ve been more excited about painting in general of late, especially mixed-media painting.   But I think what’s prompting my enthusiasm is actually a new understanding of movement, rhythm, balance, and tension that’s coming out of the ballet classes I’ve been taking. Basically, I am moving my body in a new way, and that is resulting in a different experience of the world, which is resulting in a new understanding of art.  That I did not predict, and it’s pretty exciting.

I don’t have a more recent photo, but this one of me with pretzel moustache in France does a good job, I think, of capturing my enthusiasm.