This Space for Rent

Trolley picture of the day

A northbound train made up of two SD-600s in the new blue with a traction orange stripe paint scheme crosses the viaduct south of downtown Milwaukie late this afternoon.

—orc Mon Sep 1 01:58:05 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

—orc Fri Aug 29 23:51:41 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

—orc Fri Aug 22 23:58:20 2025

Turkee

—orc Thu Aug 21 23:56:19 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

The only picture of dust mite I managed to get after a long time fighting with the camera & upload process. This is pie #14 – another cherry pie from an abnormally long pie cherry season. Not that I’m going to complain, oh no, but the freezer is starting to get filled with frozen pie cherries :-)

—orc Fri Aug 15 23:58:12 2025

“decaf” shepherd’s pie

Pie #11 is a crustless shepherd’s pie with mushrooms, soybeans, and (fresh farmer’s market) carrots. Crusts are delicious, but they triple the calories in the pie and it’s all fat and starches, which have been helping me maintain my pleasing pear shape, which I don’t want because I’ve outgrown too many of my skirts (I, selfishly, don’t want a muffin top or having the wasteband of the skirt digging into my waist.)

Fortunately, a crustless pie is perfectly cromulent, and if I lose my mind and eat the entire pie it’s only about 900 kcal.

This makes a really simple recipe; dump 3 cups of chopped mushrooms into a greased (w/ spray oil) pan, layer with 12 oz of soybeans, then a cup or so of thinly sliced carrots, and top with mashed potatos (I use Bob’s potato flakes to make them; 2 2/3 cup of potato flakes, 3 cups of water, 1 cup of oatmilk, and a teaspoon of salt – going the potato flake route means I can pour the potatoes onto the pie before they fully congeal) and then bake at 350 for 70 minutes.

—orc Mon Aug 11 21:36:23 2025

Two more pies (from last week)

Pie #9 was a shepherd’s pie, and it was half gone before pie #10 (a cherry/peach pie) came out of the oven, but pie #10 was gone before pie #9 was.

—orc Mon Aug 11 01:12:10 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite came with us when we went to Maryhill this week. And, yes, it was pretty windy there, particularly around Sam Hill’s formstonehenge, which is an absolutely ridiculous brutalist replica of the stonehenge on Terf Island.

—orc Fri Aug 8 20:34:53 2025

Number eight in a series – one more shepherd’s pie

Another shepherd’s pie, this one with mushrooms, peas, and carrots instead of vegan meat & peas. The crust is pretty hard (I made a ball of crust last monday, didn’t get around to cooking with it until wednesday, and then we were first down at Silver Falls, then there was a birthday pie & the mekons) but still tasty, and man the filling is so much tastier than the vegan meat I’d used in the last one.

—orc Sun Aug 3 23:14:00 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

—orc Fri Aug 1 19:46:16 2025

A birthday trip to Silver Falls State Park

My partner & I went on an overnight trip to Silver Falls State park to celebrate my [redacted] birthday, managed to hike out to see all 10 of the named waterfalls (in summertime it’s more 9 named waterfalls and one named streak of damp moss :-) and made it back home in time for a birthday cherry pie & north carolina BBQ (I am vegan, but my moral purity doesn’t survive actual NC BBQ. Sorry not sorry.)

We did ~10 miles of walking spread over a couple of days, and I am very glad I went to Foot Traffic on Wednesday morning to get a new pair of trail shoes, because I think that doing those hikes in my Doc Martins would have been fatal!

—orc Thu Jul 31 20:05:04 2025

pie seven!

A full sized shepherd’s pie (impossible™ beef, peas, mashed potatos, pie crust) to snack on for the next few days.

—orc Mon Jul 28 03:24:47 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Pie week continues into the third week, with a sour cherry pie on the left (with a fancy lattice crust – this one is for a brunch on Sunday, so I want to give it a day to properly congeal) and a (already half eaten) peach pie on the right. Dust Mite for scale.

—orc Fri Jul 25 23:36:12 2025

What this song needs is more pie

—orc Tue Jul 22 13:58:18 2025

(Approximately) Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

—orc Sun Jul 20 01:48:46 2025

Friday(ish) Dust Mite Blogging™

I was distracted by a book & Dust Mite was distracted by the peaches, but it’s still Friday somewhere so it’s all good.

—orc Sat Jul 12 00:45:52 2025

At the airport

I was coming back from dropping SWITCTBN at the airport, so why not plunk myself down by the glidepath and try to take pictures of incoming traffic?

—orc Wed Jul 9 18:32:44 2025

First cherry pie of the year

On Sunday, we (SWITCTBN & I) went down to the Milwaukie farmer’s market and discovered that the pie cherries had come in. When we got home, I pithed all of them (except for one or two I had to do quality control on), and SWITCTBN made a pie.

The pie was ready to eat at 11pm, and I took a tiny slice out of it because I’m trying to step on my overeating. But when I woke up the this morning were only two slices left, and I made sure they went to a good home.

I think the pie lasted 10 hours, and I’m going to have to back down to the Milwaukie farmer’s market next weekend and get a bigger pile of pie cherries.

—orc Mon Jul 7 21:00:21 2025

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Some people online were talking about Malört’s bizarre flavo(u)r profile, so I just had to have half a shot of it. Dust Mite does not partake, but was willing to pose with it.

In case you’ve never tried Malört, but have heard the horror stories, this is what it tastes like to me: very bitter, a little sour, which a somewhat sweet mouth feel and a loooooong bitter finish, fading to a sour metallic residue at the back of my mouth.

I don’t think it would work well with many other flavors and is best drunk neat or maybe iced. You do need to have a taste for sour and/or bitter, I think.

—orc Fri Jul 4 17:43:49 2025

A slow climb up a steep ramp

I have anemia, and it’s really obvious that I have it when I climb a steep ramp. LaView Drive is only about a third of a mile long, but it has an average grade of 5-6% and a ruling grade that’s at least 10%. It took me almost half an hour to make that climb.

Ugh.

—orc Wed Jul 2 21:38:28 2025