Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

Friday, July 30, 2010

The Birthday Boy

First we had a breakfast at Dock Street Landing...now Rock the Dock. ...stupid name. Same dive with rearranged furniture. Ask for the veggie burger since it isn't listed on the menu.
We sat on the deck and had the most vegetarian things on the menu. Me, poppers, and Mark had a cocktail! Lucky him, since I volunteered to drive for the day I was sober until dinner time.

We watched the boats float by....someday that will be us sheeting and rigging....We saw 2 Oompa Loompas on one large sailboat.....so I figured it was the Willy Wonka cruise.

2 old folks sat on chairs at the stern, both wearing bright orange t-shirts while a dapper man pulled up the fenders and pointed out Thea Foss landmarks. I figured the dutiful son made Ma and Pa Midwestern wear the super-bright t-shirts in case they fell in they'd make good targets....I Jest!
The old folks were in life jackets. Bright Orange life jackets. Still.
Ooompa Loompa.
Just saying.....


Then we walked the docks and drooled on the boats. We walked to the tiny park and chatted up a guy with a canoe strapped to his 70s Volvo...and we thought "That Dude is Awesome!"
Canoe + old Volvo = Mark and Tressie ! therefore ...awesome! but that's Sunday.

Back home in the late afternoon to continue the party. We didn't have a party like in years past. Low volume right now. So, linen jacket and slacks, Brooks Brothers, as is the shirt. Vintage 50s bow tie....a real Bow tie. It's easy. Just tie a bow. Like in the movies!


Cocktails while dressing....and a tiny glimpse of the new living room...there will be some blogging about the new home and decor next week...

Plaid Sperry slip-ons...and a sweet shot of the most amazing mirror....

He decided to tuck the bow tie in his jacket pocket just before we took off for dinner at Harbor Lights...
We're often overdressed for Tacoma...we're ok with that...but it was a bit hot for the tie.

So off to Harbor Lights.....we love Harbor Lights....not just that they serve real alcohol in the drinks and that the food is good.....but we love it because it has a old-time warpiness there. It looks like time stopped in 1979. We like that.

The bar is "decorated" in Jim Beam bottles. Tacky boat and fish things. Lots of drunk lawyers and middle-aged ladies who still tease their hair in an updo and spray the crap outta it with AquaNet. They drive Cadillacs and wear high heels. They still smoke but not during dinner any more. 
The servers and bartenders are mostly professionals. There are some younger folks as wait staff and they still need to learn how to serve as a profession. We miss Joan who has retired, as has Rose, though Mary was still there to take our drink orders.
It does not escape my esteem that the wall in the foyer has framed and autographed pictures of the 2 greatest male actors of all time......
Bob Denver and Ray Walston!!



You may remember Ray Walston as this guy......


We arrived early and got a corner table right on the water! So beautiful...many sailboats gliding by and the parachute sail people were flying high!

We ordered clams and clams and drinks and clams and clams, and then some mussels.

Dinner done, I drove home and then we took off walking to 1022.  

 I love my multi-colored boat shoes!

One last pic before we head out the door.

Arrived, and waiting for the first cocktail of the evening. Mark drank copious amounts of brandy. It is wonderful to sit outside. I hope the fire pit comes back and we can sit outside come the rainy season.
We love it because we can bring our dog for a walk and have a drinkie and walk home. Isn't that what local is all about?



I had the basil vodka cocktail, the death cocktail, and finally, when Matt arrived it was dark and warm and the full moon was shining bright!
It was a glorious evening.......



Matt's sweet Volvo....and look!

He's got Double Rainbow decals on the back windows! All original OG 70s rainbows! He rules.


A few shots of the really big tree, the moon , the neighborhood.
Then we rode home with Matt in the Volvo since we only live about 7 blocks away from his house.
Dreamtime.
The next morn we loaded (the royal We) the canoe on top of the wagon and took off for its 2010 maiden voyage at Wapato park...

This park used to be so pretty....it looked like a resort of the 1920s back in the 80s when my kids were young. We used to go all the time to swim or just walk around. The City of Tacoma has allowed the lake to putrify into a toxic algae stew. No one can swim there anymore it is so toxic. Thanks Assholes!
But we launched anyway and paddled around for a bit. The patches held real well..yeah!



Since the day was getting real hot we headed for home and crashed. 
It was a low-key birthday, this one.

I think the song of the day was Bali Hai...That's the movie South Pacific where Ray Walston and Mitzi Gaynor are pictured in above.....(if you have never seen it...please do!)......our day was beautiful...another world...on the water....melancholy...but treasured all the same........


Thursday, October 8, 2009

Yo, It's almost 55 Day !




er, uh, and 35 day.
It's almost my birthday..and my son Shayne's birthday.

I love my kids...
I love my son...
and I realllllly like Sly and The Family Stone a lot...
Growing up in the Bay Area...well, they just go together like Nutella and Bananas...

Here, Shayne this is for you....this song makes me cry...Still...
Oh, and anything and everything funkoma vintage in the shop is 10% off all day Saturday, October 10, 2009....cause it's my birthday !!







Saturday, October 3, 2009

Happy birthday to me and listening to John Gorka...

here's what the Birthday girl is listening to....October 10 is my birthday...so don't panic...yet.

had drinks with Nick at Doyles........

Just John Gorka this afternoon in the shop....





Thursday, October 1, 2009

Official: TressieFest





I claim October for my own. I always have. I share it with my son who was born on my 20th birthday...and my brothers...and my friend Jen...and oh, I'm sure there are others...many many others.

But it's about ME. October. I love everything about it except that it is a gateway to winter, and I hate winter. No one on the planet hates winter more than me. Cold. Wet. SAD. Colder. Wetter. ugh. Depressing.



October is....the clearest blue skies with eye-gouging yellow leaves...funnest most inspiring thing to do is to lay under a tree, and gaze through the leaves to the sky. I do this all the time, actually. If you ever see me on my back under a tree, do not assume I'm dead/waiting for a bus/looking for my glasses/napping........
please note I am Enjoying Nature.




I am soon to be 55 (I think). I am on a big kick to Enjoy Nature. I think that since I have only 10 or 20 years left on the planet, if my tremendous luck holds out... that I should stop being a Hater on Winter.



So...to that end...
I shall commence to be making the most wonderful winter stuff you evah seen....
glitter covered eyeballs, glitter covered spiders, satin dresses trimmed with white fur, white tuxedo jackets and silver lame pants, Santa hats, and snowflake hats, and cashmere underwear...
and more stripes.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

It's Your Birfday...Party like it's your mirfday..



So, guess what I was doing August 18, 1979???
I was in labor and having a baby!
wow, am I talented or what...

I love this saying...I'm so crafty I make humans...

Well, today is my youngest childs Birthday...
I really, wasn't sure I was up to handling it all...I mean I already had 2 other amazing intelligent kids...was I crazy. Yes. It was surely one of the top best 5 decisions of my life....(top 3..have 3 kids)

So who is this stunningly clever child...the mommy-looking one in the top picture?
She's Annie Rose Bastian..



Always a sweet and sensitive baby, she has grown into a real person that astounds me...with her ability to be her own person...
I find this trait missing from most humans...Annie isn't a pale copy of some lifestyle magazine....
She has made her life just what she wants...and the love and smartness is like a fragrant aura around her...she has an amazing gift for making you feel the center of attention...

When she was in elementary school, which really did not suit her, and had I been a better mother, I'd have home-schooled her more...but she had me make her, among others, a Pippi Longstocking costume and an Alice In Wonderland costume so she could wear them to school..often...and not just on Halloween...Can you imagine the nasty comments she had to put up with as a 9 year old girl in a middle-class neighborhood? It didn't deter her from letting her Freak Flag Fly !



She had a lot of fun at Grant Elementary tho...but she always kept her teachers on their toes...she wasn't one to receive their knowledge without some challenges to the orthodoxy and provincialism.



She's a talented artist who sews her own clothes and makes things for her home..she paints..she gardens...she recycles...she writes...she crafts....she embroiders and appliques and changes things up, to remake everyday things so the world she creates for her husband and daughter is even more lovely and unique than the boring old daily.

A picture she took...I love her lighting and what she created with only a few items...so evocative...



She mostly vegan...far more than I...if you go to her house to eat you'll get brown rice, raisins, and walnuts in your salad and you will love it ! It will taste like the best meal you have ever had because she has a knack for mixing things you wouldn't think would go together, but Annie makes them wonderful.....She mixed me a special tea blend...for my ailments...

She decided to have her baby in a warm water tub with a midwife...and she did...& even with a supportive community, that is a first-world triumph. But that attests to her fortitude ...

Her husband is a darling and my granddaughter Ruby is a Bee Charmer...I love how she takes me around the yard, climbs her trees, invites me up, shows me the chickens, the berry patch, the swing, and makes sure I have a trowel so I can dig with her while we look for worms.

When I am with Annie I sometimes I forget she's my daughter...I see her as her own person...like someone I met in college, someone who works at the co-op, an artist at a Farmer's Market...because she is.....

The thing I love about her most is her super-sharp wit and dry observances of life, of the people she meets and how it all doesn't knock her off the path...while she packs it all away in her mind ....all the cacophony of the modern world...

So Happy Birthday Annie...thanks for letting me be your Mom!

no, I still haven't scanned in the mountains of pictures I took the old-fashioned way...I have only a darn few of digitals...so here goes. She's the tiny one in these first 2...




A few years ago at christmas...



Saturday, July 4, 2009

USA and groovy movies and Happy Birthday Aleks !!!

I love the movies ! and I love this link to rotten tomatoes that gives you 50 movies about the 50 states that make up America...and since this is the US of A's birthday...

(and my oldest granddaughter!)...here it is.

Each movie features a sweet or daring or scary and exciting vignette about a state...what creates the culture.....Because though we are all Americans by birth or design, we are not interchangeable....
Diversity !

Singles (click the full cast and crew for some funny surprises!)
was chosen to represent Washington...well fine. Everyone is looking for love and we're still talking about good public transportation......in 1992 the Mayor of Singles/Seattle TOM SKERRIT ! dismissed the Great Train with Coffee Idea....ha ha .....now for 120 billion trillion dollars...I guess we get it now......

yeah, 1992...let's do some math....17 years ago. Seattle and the Northwest .you are slow. That's your culture. But not slow in the good way. Sorry.

Here's a cover of Lucinda Williams' Metal Firecracker by Bright Eyes ..Conor Oberst...



Blow something up and be safe!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

SOTA...Art, Fun & Music

Saturday the 15th........So we went to the SOTA Theater to see Our Town by Thornton Wilder
.....acted by some preternaturally talented young folks.....superb!
It's a little play with all the big subjects in it.
-- Thornton Wilder in a letter to Gertrude Stein, 1937


It was also John's birthday (14 !!!) so we went.......... since , you know me, I love the arts!
I've vowed to see more live plays......to hell with the budget......

I'm doing my part to A) Pump the Economy.....and B) Support the Arts.......

And now, it's your turn.

So much to do in Tacoma now. It used to be: bowling, homework, and a bath on Saturday. Not no more!!
I really wanted to go to The Helm show.....but alas.
And music and booze was at The Tempest.
And I'd like to just point out that neither SOTA, The Helm, The Tempest.....were here for 23 years after I moved here........How did I survive? How did my children grow up and not become crackheads?

So for John's birthday, we did more sedate activites......ate Sushi.......he got a brand new VINTAGE Polaroid camera........

...... children are a drag.....what with birthdays and Washington State Liquor laws being what they are......
I grew up in my mom's bar....surrounded by drunks, drinking, bar food eating, and bad words and it didn't do me a bit of harm.
Made me Salty tho.
It's just asinine to keep kids away from venues where music is played.....and booze is drunk......if the kids are with the parents.........
Hells Bells.....that happens right here in Tacoma, at home, in front of the children everyday.
And in Spanaway too........A little Metallica....A little Red bull/Vodka/Schmidt Ice.
Now that Obama is our president (almost..) maybe we can become more cosmopolitan.......more in love with life.......celebrate more......hate less..........

Thursday, October 9, 2008

It's My Birthday....So Sing Along !

So I just wanted to remind you that I hate landlords...but for Riley. Here's some Tressie music.....
Enjoy. Happy Birthday Shayne, my beloved son. And Miles, you lucky kid.
I'm the same age as um, Lucinda Williams...Oprah! Matt Groening, Harvey Fierstein, Michael Moore, Marsha Warfield, Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Kathleen Turner, Stevie Ray Vaughan...
so when I feel like telling the Straight World a big wet FU...Well I just listen to these songs....and right now, I feel like telling all the rich people a big FU!!! and send me cash....American Cash....
The UWT MBA Fight Song:





don't ya just love Charlie Watts and that little fn ting ting he does on the high hat.....


My eternal question....


And is there anything scarier to straight people than people lovin' SEX !