Saturday, October 24, 2009

Greenie vs. the Black Dragon.

Linda is making one last (hopefully) trip to S.F. to settle all of Lois's estate issues. It's killing me that I can't go with her. If it was a two or even three day trip, I might put a sign in my window and be damned. But it's more likely a four or five day trip.

She's driving a friend's van down, so I dropped her off at the BookMark this morning, and had Greenie to drive around for another hour.

I'm always giving people grief over not knowing what's in their own town, so I decided to take an hour circuit of the north part of town.

I came up with all kinds of severe judgments....well, not really. I think I'm becoming much more mellow. I noticed several of the old Mountain View Mall neighbors spotted at different locations. None of the new locations, in my opinion, equal to the Mt.View locations -- at least before the Mall disintegrated.

I think a nice indoor mall wouldn't be such a horrible idea. Maybe an indoor/outdoor type.

The thing I've noticed about Cascade Village type malls is that they are all of a similar design. Which I suppose is the point. But the diversity and different timespans of more organic grown locations, like downtown, seem much more flexible. I think that overwhelming style could get old awfully quick. Get dated. Get boring.

The other conclusion I came to was: we'd better hope that Bend retains it's metro level of population 50K/100k, or we are so overwhelmingly overbuilt it'll be big trouble. I expect we will retain at least that many people, but the tipping point is closer than is comfortable.



That was yesterday.

Today, I got into my black Toyota, The Black Dragon, (it has pop up headlamps which make it look lizardy....) and realized I was in the wrong car. I apologized to the car for leaving it in the garage.

Does anyone else anthropomorphize their cars like that? Giving them names is the first sign of madness. We're thinking of turning the Dragon in for a new car, and I already feel guilty about abandoning it.

It feels kind of funny for this native Oregonian to be driving a car with Cali license plates. Especially a car with leather seats...

No comments: