Desert Botanical Garden, Arizona

One hour is just enough time for a quick wander through Phoenix's Desert Botanical Garden minus the sunburn.

Papago Park, Arizona

In September I got to spend a half-day in a place I'd always wanted to visit- the southwestern US! There's a magnetic draw to the heat, desert landscapes, mystical power vortexes, and massive sandstorms of that region. We didn't encounter any vortexes or sandstorms on this visit, but there was plenty of heat and desert to go around.

A farewell to Ukrainian street art

Even though there have been a ton of posts about Ukraine's street art on this blog, I still have more pictures left over.

Seeing as how it's been 1.5 years since we left Kharkiv, it's probably time to dust these guys off and make space on the computer for new photos. (There are also a few repeats in here that I just really liked.)

Hope you enjoy! :)

Weekend visit

My mother-in-law came to visit this weekend, bringing along a gigantic bag of candy...

... and an even more gigantic reservoir of "Where's your house/car/child?" comments. As no house/car/child magically appeared, we were forced to show her other things, mainly things that (to her disappointment) we do not personally own.

We took her up the hill to OHSU-

3 Ukrainian empties

Three old favorites that we just used up-

1. Here's what the lady at the аптека presented when I asked for sleeping pills. Turns out that yes, they make you sleepy, but more than that- they make you SNACKY. It's probably a good thing that they're all gone.

2. In the US, spices tend to come in glass, plastic, or metal containers, but the packet reigns supreme in Ukraine. You buy dehydrated soup in packets, sour cream and milk in plastic packets, and any imaginable spice- dill, pepper, "for shish kebab", "for Korean carrot salad"- in a packet as well. The whole spice aisle was 100% packets and this was perhaps the best packet of all: the borsch packet!

Sad to see it go but D does make a mean borsch ;)

Snapshots of early fall

September weekends

Honestly, to this day I continue plotting on how to escape Portland. (The whole bloom where you're planted thing has not taken root.) But nope, still here, meaning Fall #2 in this apartment. We even made it all the way to the opening of the newest downtown bridge, something I thought we'd miss by thousands of miles. The new bridge is pretty cool, though. It's the city's 9th bridge downtown and said to be the sole public-transit-and-pedestrian-only bridge in the United States. No cars!

Even walking towards the bridge (see photo above) felt really 2025. Not a single person asked me for money to buy pot or dog food. Bikers sped by with a smile. There was no garbage and no fast food. Everything was clean, shiny, new.

In a move of (mainly-unrecognized) act of genius, one guy lobbied to have the name of the bridge changed to The Jean-Luc Picard Wonder Crossing. He spent $5,000 on Star Trek billboards to advertise the idea and put up a Kickstarter page. I didn't want to look back and say I never hung billboards of Jean-Luc Picard when I get old, he said. Also, all of the lawyers we contacted thought unofficially that Jean-Luc Picard would definitely want a bridge named after him and advised me to put up the billboards.

Awesomeness.

Another name that didn't make the cut - The Stephen Colbert Bridge of Destiny.

As for the final name, take a look at what is now called Tilikum Crossing:

Those other bridges- covered in cars! ;)

This sunny afternoon wasn't just a random walk, though; I was fulfilling that annual deal-breaking wifely duty known as...

.... Attending The Science Fair.

I swear we just did this 365 days ago.