Jon’s Corner of the Whirled

I thought it might be a bit of a difficult morning today because of the adjustment in time for Daylight Saving Time. It wasn’t terribly hard to get out of bed. The thing that made the morning slightly unpleasant was the dog. He vomited right in front of the bathroom door while Lisa was in the shower. I noticed it right after my breakfast, which in my mind was better than before breakfast. It wasn’t too bad to clean up, and I went on about my morning. Later, while letting the cats out, I found the other pile of it. Well, found isn’t quite the right word. Maybe I should say my shoe found the other pile of it, right in front of the door. I wasn’t terribly pleased. I cleaned that up too. After that, the morning seemed to move right along. I took Morgan to school and headed out to work. I hope the dog isn’t getting sick.

In other news, my tomatoes are finally growing. As usual, I started the seeds in late February. The first batch didn’t grow well at all. I tried a different approach this year, which I won’t do again. Normally, I put one seed in each peat pot. I put these peat pots in a plastic “green house” over a heating pad. This year, I tried using the square peat pots, and put the seeds in starter mix. This didn’t work very well, as I had a hard time watering the pots. The soil would tend to roil about in the pot, and I think the seeds had difficulty with that. After two weeks, I didn’t have any real sprouts. I started again, using my old method. So far, I have a pretty healthy crop of starters. Hopefully they will grow quickly so I can get them out in the garden in a couple of weeks. Lisa and I bought have a bunch of interesting sounding varieties that we hadn’t tried before, so I am hopeful we will get some good tomatoes. I don’t have the list of them in front of me right now, but maybe I can find it tonight.

I haven’t been posting recently. I just haven’t had time. Between crunch time at work, baseball, Easter, and everything else that has been going on, there just isn’t time in the day. I’m hoping to find time to do it regularly.

One thing I did want to mention is that I had the opportunity to see our new CEO, Mike Hurd, speak via video conference. I was impressed by his sense of humor, as well as his casual style to the presentation. It was a pretty stark contrast to Carly. I hope he will have a positive impact on this company. It certainly needs something.

Two weekends ago I had a little issue with people around our house again. I was busy in our bedroom putting away clean laundry. Our bedroom faces the street, and the blinds were open because it was a sunny day. I noticed there were four people sitting on our neighbor’s retaining wall. I hadn’t seen them before. One of them was pouring the contents of a two liter bottle of Pepsi on the lawn in the right of way. I thought that odd. I kept watching him. He stopped pouring when the bottle was half empty. He then took a bottle of whiskey and poured it into the 2 liter bottle. “Great.”, I thought, “They are going to sit there and get drunk.” I called the Portland non-emergency police number. While I was on the phone with the operator describing the people, the only female of the group climbed into my yard. I told this to the operator. She then dropped her pants. I told this to the operator too. She urinated on my lawn. I told this to the operator too. The operator was disgusted. The operator asked if an officer could contact me about the incident. I agreed, assuming that this infraction would be at least cited. About 10 minutes later, a car showed up with two officers. One officer examined the 2 liter bottle, which was nearly empty now. They talked to the group, and got identification information from them. Then the officers got back in their car. The group started wandering down the street. When the group was a distance away, I went out and talked to the officers. One officer said they had asked them to leave. I mentioned that the female had urinated in my yard. He mentioned again that they asked them to leave. I thanked them for their time.

Frankly I was surprised that the officers didn’t bother citing the guy with the open container, nor the woman for urination in public (much less on my lawn). I wrote an email to Mayor Tom Potter. In previous conversations I have had with officers, they felt that Vera Katz had taken tools away from them in dealing with the transients. They were told, according to the officers, to “be nice” to the homeless. I mentioned this in my email to Tom Potter, as well as my frustration with dealing with drunken people littering and loitering around my house.

Surprisingly enough, I got a personal reply from the Mayor. He said, among other things, that Vera Katz wasn’t responsible for taking away tools from the officers, that in fact it was the result of several court decisions. He also said that he forwarded my email to someone and that I would be hearing from an officer. While I was impressed by the personal reply, and his attitude, I’m still waiting for that officer to get in touch with me.

I ran across this cool Portland website that can tell you a bit about the history of your home in terms of permits, and assessed value. In addition, it has crime, census and development projects that are happening near your home as well. For example, I learned that there are around 11,000 people in the Richmond neighborhood, and that we had an oil tank installed in our yard in 1952. It is run by the City of Portland. Check it out! www.portlandmaps.com

As you can see by this picture I took recently, we seem to have ghosts in the neighborhood…

There was yet another adventure in the Hawthorne neighborhood this morning. At 3:30 AM, the dog started barking, this is nothing new. As usual I got up and looked out the window. Unlike most of the times when the dog barking in the middle of the night, there was something to bark at. Sitting next to the driveway at the house across the street, a guy was doing something. I couldn’t tell immediately what he was doing. He had a backpack at his feet, and seemed to be prying at things. It seemed odd that someone would be sitting in front of a home at 3:30 AM going through a backpack. I watched him for a couple of minutes and then called the police non-emergency number. After a brief description of the individual and his behavior, I was off the phone. I continued to watch him. That’s when things became amusing. He took, what looked to be a digital camera out of the backpack, and flashed the camera right in his face. It was pretty obvious that he hadn’t used the camera before. Then he pulled a laser pointer out and shined it around. He kept mucking around in the bag, pulling out different things, but in the dark it was difficult to see what he was doing. He stuffed some things from the backpack into his pockets, or fanny pack. I couldn’t tell which. I then called the police again to let them know that I was pretty sure the guy was playing with stuff he had stolen. I got out our digital camera and took some nightshot pictures, of the guy while I watched him. He stood up, and started taking pictures with the camera.

About that time, the first police officer drove up. The officer asked the guy for ID, which he said he didn’t have. I could hear most of the conversation across the street through our open window. He claimed that someone had given him the stuff. While the officer was going through the guys backpack, he found a laptop, and other expensive things. I realized that the officer might be interested in the fact that he had taken things out of the backpack and put them in his pocket. I didn’t want this guy to see me, or where I lived, so I called the non-emergency number again, and gave the additional information. Another officer arrived. Then a third appeared. A few minutes later, the officer started checking the guy more carefully. They found a wallet, and soon after had him in handcuffs. Once they put him in a car, I went out to talk to one of the officers. It turns out that the guy had a gun, and was wanted in connection with a couple of burglaries, as well as a high speed chase in Lake Oswego. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep any more. Hooray for our crime fighting poodle: