sjamesho.v3

one thing i didn’t mention on my Oregon trip was that there is no “self-service” when it comes to filling your gas. i was told by an attendant that its illegal to pump your own gas. Christina told me that it is Oregon’s way to increase and secure jobs. well, i guess full-service is nice. however, what i absolutely don’t like about it, is that the attendants that filled my tank didn’t round up to the nearest dollar. i supposed that i could have asked them to do that (at least to the nearest 50 cents) but it should go without saying. its an irk that i’ll have to let go for this particular billing period. grrr.

that irk was easily overseen as i was doing paperwork on sunday. in collecting all my receipts of the trip and entering their amounts in my computer, i did some simple math to find out what my mileage was during my road trip. my car is not a hybrid, so i’m not expecting those kinds of numbers. but i’m kind of hoping that i’ll at least get near the rated 38 mpg for my car. well, it exceeded my expectations with 39.7 mpg and 41.1 mpg. if i’m making you jealous, then its working. bwhahahaha!

i should have blogged this at the time, but it was late and one thing led to another and by the time it occurred to me to make an entry several things happened along the way that would put me behind. so i’ll just resort to keeping it short and chronological.

a while back i found this neat tutorial on How to Get that Sin City Look In Your Image and thought that i’d use this technique for my new profile image on MySpace. so last friday, i took a picture of myself to try out said technique.

and here is the result. pretty cool, eh? well, to say its a “Sin City”-look is like saying “Mona Lisa”-look because its really the artist behind the artwork that gives it the signature style. so here’s a nod to Frank Miller for the style he used in his classic comic series Sin City.

then on saturday night, my church had its first outdoor vespers/movie night social event that went with much success.

how does a church “do” a movie night with so much worldliness in movies nowadays? i hadn’t seen the movie Eight Below before, but found it rather “acceptable”, clean, and decent as a family film. it was “inspired” by true stories of guides and their dogs in Antartica. the theme found in the line “You gotta take chances for those things that you most care about” is something to definitely ponder over and apply to one’s life.

since my visits to Ashland, i’ve always had one meal at Munchies. so that’s where i grabbed my dinner. and no, this restaurant has nothing to do with the aftereffects of the cannabis variety. after eating i stopped by Starbucks for a caffeine aid to be used later on. obviously it won’t be open by the time the play finishes so i put the venti-sized cup in my car before heading to the theater.

remember how cloudy and rainy it was on sunday? well, not yesterday. although it was still pretty warm at 7:39p, at least it wasn’t as humid.

between the two gentlemen of Verona, i truly believe that it was the dog that stole the show. since photography (flash or otherwise) is not permitted i’m unable to show you the cool canine. you’ll just have to see this play and hope that the dog that is cast for that production is as awesome as this one.

11:00p. as soon as the play let out, i immediately made a beeline to my car to begin my exodus. i love night driving. its so much cooler… temperature-wise. however the biggest difference between day and night driving is that all the beautiful scenery is gone. the stealthiness of the scenery is compounded by the fact that there is no light pollution save for the road reflectors and occasional signs. but i think that the effect is cool.

4:30a. i rolled into my garage this morning and freaked myself out because i couldn’t find my housekeys. serves me right for putting it in a different compartment of my bag the night before. you’d think that i’d be so tired that i’d just quickly shower off the travel grime and sleep. i was tired, but it still took me awhile to wind down. after finding unconsciousness at 6:15a, i was awake by 8:00a to leave the house by 8:30a to go to work. its going to be a zombie-like day which will most likely end with deep deep sleep.

i’m going to work on the photo gallery of this trip and hopefully you’ll be able to see all my pictures by the end of this week… or sooner.

last sunday the weather was overcast and even rained for a short while. well not today! i arrived in Ashland around 2:30p and took the opportunity to walk around town and take some pictures.

there are plenty of flowers around the box office courtyard and you’ll be able to see them when i post the entire gallery of my trip. i also found some interesting sculptures around town. since i’m going to be leaving after the show tonight, i attempted to sleep in my car a little bit after my photo session in the lower level of the public parking structure. i think i barely went out of consciousness when the heat woke me up. although it wasn’t that hot, there wasn’t any breeze going through the garage so i opted to leave and find shaded parking in the open. shortly after driving around i found a nice quiet place next to a cementary, screened down my windows and opened up the moonroof.

after i laid the seat down this was the view i saw through the roof and thought it was picture worthy.

so was the view through the passenger-side window. i just love the texture. anyways, try as i might to catch some sleep it was unattainable. so i went to the next obvious choice to get out of heat… the public library. they have wireless internet here so i found a compfy chair facing a floor-to-ceiling window with a beautiful view of the hills on the opposite side of the valley and blogged this entry. its about 5:44p right now so before i leave i think i’ll watch a downloaded video from DLTV and then grab something to eat before the play The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

monday is an off-day for the Shakespeare festival so i took the opportunity to take in more of the state of Oregon by heading up to Big Lake Youth Camp and hang out with Christina on her day off.

i have friends that have attended Big Lake back in the day so i was kind of neat to actually go there and see it for myself.

this moment was captured as this was day that my car first went “off-pavement”. its definitely a slower and bumpier ride experience… one that i’m definitely not used to. please don’t misunderstand me. the insanity of current gas prices and the economics of my new car has reinvented my past driving habits. i’m not the lead-foot that i used to be.

after lunch at Big Lake, we went to the town of Bend to do some store browsing and then caught a flick. after that we hung out at the local library for some internet action where Christina schooled my computer-geekness in opening multiple browser. their system protects the operating system from idiots by providing a menu of applications to launch instead of displaying the desktop. CTRL+N wasn’t working for me so i had to minimize the browser and launch another instance of the app. anyways, after that she took me to this Thai drive-thru for some eats. when i drove up to the place it was like the size of Caffino stand. very interesting. we took our food to Drake Park and then headed to Starbucks for some Tangerine Frappacinos. mmmmm! i dropped her back at Big Lake but before i left she showed me pictures of some of her girls as well as other varied pictures of her adventures.

it was a long day, but it was fun and kicked back. tomorrow i have one more play to attend and then i’m heading back to California. laters.