We spent the rest of Friday and all of Saturday in Portland. We are now on the train back to Seattle (free Wi-Fi on the Cascades train!).
Yesterday our only child got married. It was a small, private ceremony with about a dozen people and our friend Glen presiding. It was just about perfect for the young couple who were coming together in this way. They have a devoted coterie of close friends in Portland who are their support and their anchor and I am so happy for them that they have this and that these folks could be at the wedding. They are truly a lovely group; I feel very fortunate that my son has found them and among them someone with whom he can spend his life. Since this blog is not really a personal blog, I have little else to say about that. But it was wonderful.
Friday I heard a tour guide say that Seattle is like the big brother who went to town and got the high-paying job while Portland was like the little brother who still works in a coffee shop. A great description. And whereas I have become more like the big brother, I always wanted to be the other one....
My eating over this weekend was neither out of control nor particularly abstinent, more along the lines of moderate consumption. I did, I will admit, have several pieces of the blueberry-lemon buckle, though. Yum!
We had a long discussion of that yesterday, actually, the question of what makes a buckle a buckle as opposed to, say, a cake? This brought up all those other strange dessert names like shandy, slump, grunt, Betty, pandowdy, crumble, and crisp. Where did all those come from and what's the distinction? Interesting stuff, I thought. The best explanation I could find was here. (That's an apricot-cherry pandowdy down there, by the way. Wow!)
Though for the most part all of this traveling and such has been glorious in its own way and most of what happened when I was doing it very gratifying, I am very glad that for the rest of the year we have very little planned. I am tired. Tomorrow I will return to my usual topics and will in particular try to tie karma into this whole topic of our relationship to food. Meanwhile, may your shandy not slump, your Betty ne'er grunt, and your pan not ever be dowdy.
Yesterday our only child got married. It was a small, private ceremony with about a dozen people and our friend Glen presiding. It was just about perfect for the young couple who were coming together in this way. They have a devoted coterie of close friends in Portland who are their support and their anchor and I am so happy for them that they have this and that these folks could be at the wedding. They are truly a lovely group; I feel very fortunate that my son has found them and among them someone with whom he can spend his life. Since this blog is not really a personal blog, I have little else to say about that. But it was wonderful.
Friday I heard a tour guide say that Seattle is like the big brother who went to town and got the high-paying job while Portland was like the little brother who still works in a coffee shop. A great description. And whereas I have become more like the big brother, I always wanted to be the other one....
My eating over this weekend was neither out of control nor particularly abstinent, more along the lines of moderate consumption. I did, I will admit, have several pieces of the blueberry-lemon buckle, though. Yum!
Though for the most part all of this traveling and such has been glorious in its own way and most of what happened when I was doing it very gratifying, I am very glad that for the rest of the year we have very little planned. I am tired. Tomorrow I will return to my usual topics and will in particular try to tie karma into this whole topic of our relationship to food. Meanwhile, may your shandy not slump, your Betty ne'er grunt, and your pan not ever be dowdy.
Yeah, I like that quote about Portland. But I like this one from the TV show Portlandia better: "Portland is where young people go to retire."
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