This Space for Rent

Mar 14, 2026

It turns out I’m a homeopathic Powhatan

I’m grinding through my family tree trying to find someone who was born in Canada (1, maybe, so far) and oh boy the wonders I’ve found:

  1. My great9 grandmother is a Powhaten (aaand if the computer is not lying to me, descended from You Know Who) and by repeated dilution that makes me approximately 0.025% Powhatan.
  2. Another great9 grandmother is a (grr!) unnamed Rapahannock woman, so also 0.025%
  3. My father’s side of the family were such homebodies that after 7(!) of them arrived on the Mayflower, the braiding of my family tree has – so far that I’ve found! – 13(!) lines running back to them.
  4. One of my grandbignum grandfathers came over in 1632, but died while the ship was in harbor at Plymouth!

I’m trying to find another Loyalist thread of my family (my grandmother mentioned to us, around the same time she made up a genealogy tree showing a line back to the thug that came along for the ride, that some of the family lived in New Brunswick, so I’m pretty confident the one I’ve found is okay) just as an emergency spare for getting Canadian citizenship, and the less documented branches of my father’s family are sure to contain m a n y surprises.

Mar 13, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

The Tide Is High
Dust Mite is helping me bail out the basement.

Mar 06, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

tortoiseshell glasses & dust mite
Self portrait with Dust Mite & new eyeglasses

Feb 27, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite & the date
Dust Mite sits with my father’s mechanical calendar.

Feb 20, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite, a wool blanket, and a whole lot of cat hair
Dust Mite tries to get cozy on a cold February evening.

Feb 14, 2026

Friday Saturday Dust Mite Blogging

Still life with Mite & (Terry) Butterfly

I was going to post this last night, but with one thing or another I went to bed early (I went out on a slow 80k loop today and wanted to at least pretend I would get enough sleep beforehand) and forgot to do dust mite blogging.

Consider this to be a very long friday :-)

Feb 10, 2026

domestic vermin picture of the day

Ozy on the comfy chair
Ozymandias makes himself cozy on the back of the comfy chair.

Feb 06, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

A mite-sized pallet
Dust Mite has a pallet!

Jan 30, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

RARE STEMS

New (shorter) stems for my bikes; a 90mm & 100mm mutant to pull the handlebars back enough to compensate for shrinking 40mm after correcting my hormone balance. Dust Mite is doing quality control before I start fitting these stems to my bicycles.

Jan 23, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Burrito Mite
A late dinner for Dust Mite

Jan 21, 2026

Trolley picture of the day

#122
The Type 1 deathwatch continues :-(

Jan 17, 2026

Trolley picture of the day

Type 1 #122 leads a southbound train

Some of the Type 1 cars are still running, and I spotted 122 leading an Oak Grove-bound train just as the sun was starting to go down this afternoon.

Still need to win the lottery so I can buy Tri-Met’s remaining stock of Type 1 cars and build a carbarn for them (I wonder of the ORHF – or whoever owns Portland Traction these days – would allow me to underwrite electrifying the remaining line?)

Jan 16, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Candy cane Mite
Dust Mite takes advantage of the holiday candy clearance sales

Jan 09, 2026

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite @ New Seasons

Dust Mite & I went out – for the first time in 3 months and a day – on the bicycle, and stopped by the Big Big Store on the way back.

Jan 02, 2026

Trolley picture of the day

A pair of SD660s pull into Gateway Transit Center
An eastbound train pulls into Gateway Transit Center earlier this afternoon.


Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite & the vase
Dust Mite poses with a Lego vase of flowers

Dec 31, 2025

The last train

The motive power for the sushi train at the (long gone) Sushi Takahashi 2

The motive power for the sushi train at the (long-vanished, and missed) Sushi Takahashi 2, on display at Kashiwagi, which just closed tonight. The owners retired, so it’s not likely they’ll be setting up a new sushi train ever again.

Dec 26, 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Ornaments
Hanging around the christmas tree

Dec 25, 2025

Christmas, Tree

Christmas, Tree
Decorated just in the (saint) nick of time

Dec 24, 2025

Tree

Tree
It’s the holiday season again, so it’s time to Weekend At Bernie’s another evergreen :-)

Dec 20, 2025

A new friend

Noodlecat

The local cat fud store had a special event where you could make friends with a small collection of reptiles (a boa constrictor, giant tortoise, very small crocodile, and this albino cornsnake) so I ended up spending a bunch of time playing with the cornsnake.

(The snek attacked one of the yellow patches on my jacket about 30 seconds after this picture was taken :-)

—30—

SILENCE=DEATH orc@pell.portland.or.us