I went jogging (really)

 I did some stretching , threw on some sweat pants, planned a route and taped my bike light under my chin. It could have been miserable in the freezing cold rain but after rounding the first corner a friend spotted me and gave me a ride.

From Annie's photo album.

Some of the very best photos and most comprehensive collections of Storytime with Olive Rootbeer and Dingo come from  Annie Bosworth Foley. 

We are very grateful that she captures it every time we get mobbed. :)

Wanna pitch in? Here is our virtual tip jar! Click here!

Ha! I just saw a guy with a bird head(on his head) ride a bike passed me and crash into a pole.

"Word, bird." I said as I passed. When i turned the corner he was still standing there like his batteries went dead. I'll rescue if he's still there by the time I eat my popcycle.

I adopted a dog from the pound today!!!

The whole experience felt so good I let it go downtown and went and adopted another one! Before I was done i had adopted 6 dogs let them all go! It was so easy... I don't know why everyone doesn't adopt animals!

Troglodyte in a stinky truck yells "U look gay" !

What if I do? Why would he care?  I thought of the queer folks i know.They are friendly,driven, most are in shape and I'm seeing all good roll models here so I took it better than he meant it, Then, 30 min later i hear another anonymous voice from a passing car, in the Gayest accent., I hear "I Loooovvve YYoouurr shiiiiirrrttt!" maybe i do look gay today. I respect the guy dropping positive bombs way better than the hater.

A fifth grader asked me "Why you always wear a hat?" I told him "I want folks to think I'm hiding a bald spot."

I was riding Olive's tall bike on the sidewalk next to a line of cars waiting for a light.

 A man rolls his window down and said "Do you look cool enough to merit the danger of riding like that?"I looked at him and thought the same thing about him...all 4 folks in his car were smoking.

Yesterday with the mailman i pretended to be a dog.

 He played along but as a frightened burglar rather than happy pet owner. I went nuts! i'm sorry but he should know you can't show fear to even imaginary animals. Today the mail didn't come I hope I didn't offend him!!!!

(Fun game for couples to play)

Both change F.B. status to "Is Single" then count how many of one's friends decide to "hit on" the other (starts with a poke) and vice-versa. The fun begins when you invite all involved to a dinner party and enjoy hours of uncomfortable silence. Couples need fun things to do.

I can hear again...kinda.

I lost my hearing last week and just now I'm getting it back. I still hear the sound of white noise in one ear but for the most part my audio is back online. I think I got an infection from an experiment I did. I usually don't eat junk food but before "the unpleasantness" I had eaten an entire box of Lucky Charms cereal. I was timing my G.I. tract and thought this old comfort junk from my childhood would be a great measuring dye when it came out the other end. Is it possible to get an infection from unfamiliar food? It was a real challenge doing a weeks worth of shows, navigating traffic on the tall bike and playing music when the volume on my ears was set at about 3 or less. It was like having my ears covered in gauze and then also wearing a crash helmet. I had to read her lips to know what part of the song we would be doing and you can bet my kids and woman had a blast moving their lips at me like they were saying something just to mess with my head. Real funny! It wasn't all bad. When it started I had no hearing and as coincidence would have it, my partner was just getting her monthly visit from "Aunt Flow". She gets grouchy, chatty and irritable during those times but this round I just nodded,rubbed her back a lot, told her i love her and smiled (or business as usual). It wasn't just a buffer for my menstrual maiden, I became real introspective for a bit there. I was able to identify the song that has been looping in my head for 20 years(interstellar overdrive)and i wrote good stuff and had good ideas that only appear in a vacuum of other sensory input. We did a show where the only kid there was a little girl with no hearing at all. She has a device in her ear that connects to her brain. That day she had a better idea of how the show went then I did. How surreal! There was another part of this experience that I will never forget. We were in bed, I was almost asleep and didn't hear 1. three huge flies buzzing overhead. 2. Olive getting more and more annoyed by them dive bombing her. I was suddenly jostled awake by my woman (the hottest girl I know) leaping up, buck naked, angrily flinging herself at the ceiling bull frog style. With a piece of towel in her hand like a giant bingo marker; three times she jumped up and every time she took out a fly. In my head it went from serine drifting into slumber to attack mode with three confirmed kills in three surgical strikes. I was so impressed! She then went back into quiet mode like nothing happened. The only thing I heard the whole time was her swearing like a sailor then her coo-ing lovingly and kissing me goodnight. The next day it got painful. The silence turned to the sound of aircraft afterburners. It felt like i was wearing heavy ear-rings in my brain. One night I got so introverted that I lost track of reality entirely. As happy activities of the clown cave went on, I sat in a chair in the dark. I saw myself pinned on the side of a mountain under a sickly orange sky held down by powerful heat mirages that gave me motion sickness. I tried to play it off like I'm fine but everyone knew I was in a bad way. I wanted to feel better but I didn't under any circumstances want my malady to become part of a pharmaceutical companies windfall. I also wasn't hip to helping the ear candle hoax or any other fake remedy. Of course the first thing I did was look online. It said that a mix of alcohol and vinegar is great for breaking down wax. We tried it and guess what? All the severe burning you would imagine and none of the relief. Olive thinks we should have used Balsamic vinegar instead of the white kind. Then we went to Walgreens. I looked but most of the remedies had the red flag word "homeopathic" I'm not cool with that. I got what I thought was a more science based product but when I got home discovered it had the "H" word cleverly hidden in a tiny red stripe. Internet tells me that the ingredients within actually do chemically break down hardened ear grease so the H word is a moot point in this case. Peroxide, heat and massage helped a lot. I also broke down and took some acetaminophen. I hate pills. It still sounds like faint white noise but it's getting a lot better. I know that sugar makes it worse so I'm keeping away from humming bird foods. I'm very glad that we didn't seek antibiotics. I think everyone should take a vacation from the roar of civilization from time to time.

be a voice

John Green data

cafe show lineup for fall 2013

Do you like what we do? If you would like to help keep Olive and Dingo "Large and in Charge" through this season please (CLICK ABOVE IMAGE) and drop us some love in the virtual tip jar! We are looking forward to many more great happenings all over our leafy Puddle -town Portland.

I hope I'm as relentlessly tough when I'm old as Olive's grand Dad Ed.

 He rolled his car last night. After beating a stroke, and now recovering from beating cancer, he flipped his car on a dark mountain road (pea gravel) and then walked home battered and bloody. Weak as he was from the cancer ordeal he had to jump a fence and walk an hour and a half. After the paramedics left his house he told his wife "now I'm finally hungry" and they went to a 24 hr. greasy spoon for some 4am vittles. Mad props to Ed.

Mpre than a little credit goes to his wonderful wife and family. Everyone pulls together.:)

  Funny, there are three cannabis clubs within blocks of my crib. The closest one is as busy as the convenience store next to it. I't almost like a plant does cheaply and effectively what the pill companies charge an arm and a leg for. So my whole hoods gone to pot..another feature of our neighborhood is a sewer opening nearby that really stinks all the time. As I came home today I couldn't believe what i was thinking "it finally smells like good shit". So in my neighborhood, remember that if an elderly lady bribes you cookies to move furniture...make sure you don't have anything else to do for the rest of the day.

Wednesday and Thursday Storytimes!!!

sunshine!

fave photos from the net

I'm not down with fossil fuels so much.

Olive n Dingo recent fun

like what we do?

http://oliveanddingo.blogspot.com/

I'm thinking of getting a job at the airport.

Everything is so expensive ther why shouldn't I be too? I would work the fast food and charge them $30 an hour. It's spendy fer Wendy's but I'm willing to kill in the line of duty should terrorists try and thwart my curly fries. Then again serving deep fried is a threat to the country.

It's interesting riding a normal sized bike in normal clothing. Not used to "Anonymous, fast as car travel".

 It feels great to move so fast but dangerous because I can't see as much, so i feel half blind.

 Also I keep "parade-waving" to folks like I'm on a tall bike and they are looking at me like "Who is this douche?".

I just gotta remember to wave like a Dad and not like a crazy man who has an invisible parade in his head.

Another bit that's hard to get used to is how fragile this bike is. A collision with another bike would be a hospital trip. My nephew rode it once or twice and ruined the back wheel. Potholes and curbs taco the rims. My tall bike is like a Hum-V, it EATS other bikes and makes potholes bigger so I had to learn a mellower form of riding.

I inherited this road bike when a neighbor called "Edwin" painted the devil on the steel bridge one night with a pistol. I hear he liked me. When Chris gave me his bike, the batteries in the light were still good. That freaked me out to hold the very last bit of Edwin's potential energy on this flat Earff. I made sure to ride in the dark rather than kick the lights on for anything less than an epic mission. Now the batteries are long dead and quietly corroding in my tackle box. I have no idea how to store memorial artifacts that contain cadmium, lead and mercury.

(an hour after the above was written...)

I just almost got hit by a car. I was in front of our cave on a little bike when I hear the distinctive horn of a squad car. I froze and looked back to see a speeding gold car right about to cream me. I was precariously in the business end of a wild chase! They had been tailing him for a while and apparently he had made a long series of dangerous turns to evade the police. I jumped back and managed to avoid getting T-boned. I was about  seconds and inches that mattered.Before that my mind was on Olive and peaches...nowhere near this train wreck. 

The whole mess came to a stop blocking my front door. The guy fled in the first place because he had no licence or insurance, expired tags.. but once in our parking lot, his options narrowed to none. 

I can tell he was uninsured because the cop is telling the guy off loudly.

 "You almost hit that cyclist! I have three cars and I pay insurance on all of them, Am I missing something?".

They came to my crib and interviewed me. In their own special way they asked if i felt at all attempted murdered...I said no, I asked them to offer him clemency because i too was once a real dum dum (he was a black version of me) and he looks freaked out enough. So they all just left, he keeps his freedom,car but has a handful of tickets. He rightfully wouldn't let the law search his trunk so we will never know why he was so reckless. Emergency vehicles make different sounds from other vehicles for a reason. Today I was glad I was hip to that fact.

I'm thinking I should be an Urban Scout master!

Like what we do? Here is our virtual tip jar

post by Heather Goldberg, good stuff!

"At 9:52pm, I stepped foot in my house drenched in sweat because I randomly decided to hula hoop with an unevenly weighted, water filled hoop all the way home, in the dark, while carrying a 1 liter bottle of water at shoulder-height from 1.3 miles away (which became 1.5 miles after an unfortunate wrong turn.) It took over an hour and I had 8 drops, but I did it! On my way home, I learned many things which I’ll list right here:

1. I’m very fortunate to live in a place where I can walk alone at night practically humping the air and make it home alive.
2. Even so, SE Portland needs better street lighting.
3. SE Portland also needs more wheelchair ramps. @melissa, let’s make this happen!
4. If I ever do this again, I really need a Camelbak because that water bottle was cumbersome.
5. I also need an evenly weighted hoop.
5. If 2, 3, 4 and 5 happened, I feel pretty confident that I could have made it the entire way without dropping my hoop.
6. Feral cats seem to really like watching spinning things.
7. Hula hooping is addictive. My pelvis is in denial that the adventure is over.
8. I had no idea that I was pretty good at this. Now I do.
9. “If anyone doesn't believe it happened, call me!” would have been a really effective pickup line if my neighbor was cute.
10. I think I’m officially a Portlander now.

Thanks to all the pedestrians who walked around me, thanks to Olive and Dingo for being the queen and king of unorthodox transportation and last but not least, special thanks to Hayato and Lizz for letting me borrow their hula hoop in exchange for some alone time. ""

my spirit animal

Thanks kid. :)

I called my son to see how his first school days went. "We played a game called 2 truths and a lie. For my lie I told the class you were rich!..and it's totally provable because your totally poor HAHAHA! Cool huh?"

Street performing is a tough job

Street performing is a tough job but a good thing for a city to have. 

We see lots of buskers every day. 

The weather is turning and not all of them know how to do it well . 

Most get discouraged and thus the public lose a good thing.

It would be really interesting to get a fund together and have someone in say..a duck suit casually walk by a busker and drop $50 in dimes in the guitar case' then quietly

waddle off. 

I would love to do that.

Do that 10 times and at some point they would all gather on the street and wonder "Did a duck just change your day?" 

It would be good for them, good for the morale of the city and of course VERY entertaining!

I made a friend today!

This is Ian, he came to the show today without a kid but still got into the music hit up the tip jar and got himself a balloon. Nice to meetcha!

This is our virtual tip jar if you want to pitch in.

I was delivering paintings across town the other day.

 A man ran up to me yelling Blahblahblahaloolooloo! 
He was buggin his eyes out and flaring his nostrils. 
I was about to ask "Are you out of your mind?"but as i looked I noticed he really is out of his mind!
I played it cool,"Charming"I said smugly as i rode by.
He started laughing.

Zat seem silly?

Sometimes if seems like the people who are obsessed with "the afterlife" are turning the gears of "life".And subsequently the big "Life" fans are widely considered heretics. HAHAHAHA! zat seem silly?

Remember those kind but no B.S. older dudes in the neighborhood

Remember those older dudes in the hood that would move the very earth for you if you needed them but you really still have to have yourself together  and bring your "A game" when you go to see them?

If you didn't look and act sharp they would just look at you like you were a screeching chimp in a diaper. Well...I'm pretty sure I turned into one of those dudes a few years back. I'm eager to help but this fool doesn't suffer fools very well anymore. I get really irritated when someone isn't aware that they should be embarrassed for how they are acting.:) mostly because of the young dudes who are watching and learning. I don't want them to pick up the ideas that being stupid, lazy, disloyal, cruel short-sighted or helpless is an option to be desired. They all deserve better than that.

--

Olive's mermaid

Get it here!

watching a running event at the Laurelhurst cafe.

We do 10 am Monday Storytime at the Laurelhurst. Really great food and a community spirit over there on E. Burnside.

Big meeting!

On my birthday i almost slipped up and ate one of those forbidden brownies.

You know the ones...they have a certain plant ingredient that starts with "W" that can really change the course of your day. Yup I almost ate a brownie laced with Wheat. I can't do that I'm allergic.