Monday, June 30, 2008

The Dude Ranch Summer Movie Night


Place: Our backyard, 5200 NE 35th Ave. (map)
Time: Wednesday, July 2nd @ sunset (9:03 PM)

This wednesday will be the inaugural Dude Ranch Summer Movie Night. The Movie Night is where we pick a film that we want to share with a bunch of people and then watch it in our backyard, eat pie, and drink beer. So come out, bring your own blanket or lawn seat. This weeks film is Dan's pick, The Mosquito Coast (See trailer here). 


posted by d.cook

Cross-State Insect Shipment Arrives/Escapes

Dan received a box in the mail this weekend. The return address was Idaho - his father. When I came home Saturday afternoon, the box was sitting on the kitchen counter and Dan was sitting on the kitchen sofa, avoiding opening the box.

"Come on! Openitopenit!" I whined, shaking the box. I never get boxes in the mail. Dan sighed.

"It's going to be full of poisonous bugs. My dad always sends me poisonous bugs in the mail," he said, morose. But he took the bread knife I handed him and slowly, carefully cut open the packaging tape.



Inside was a live monster cricket. The sides of the box were splattered with cricket shit and the cardboard reeked a little. "It's a Jerusalem cricket," Dan said, shaking his head and taking the critter outside, "My dad sent me a Jerusalem cricket." Dan then shared with us a few facts about the Jerusalem cricket:

+ they're apparently very hardy, having survived shaky, foodless 3-4 days in the hands of the U.S. postal service.
+ they populate Idaho en masse during the summer
+ they're cannibals, eating almost exclusively each other


This beast is now roaming Portland's NE streets! It disappeared from human view soon after we opened the box.

posted by s.mirk

Saturday, June 21, 2008

a love poem

Dan wrote a poem this morning. I thought I'd do him a favor and post it.

Love is like a rock thrown through a fog
weightless and dangerous
love climbs trees
too weak for its weight
love is all things
except here.


This made us so sad that we had to go out to lunch and make bow ties out of dollar bills.



yah!!! By the end of the weekend, everything was coming up roses.




Wednesday, June 18, 2008

not serious trouble, but something worth noting.

someone slipped me (Nate) the password to the blog-site (I'm pretty sure thats a word that makes sense).  Anyway, it seems kinda dangerous.  just cuz, i don't know... now i have a supposed audience, and  when i start thinking that people are into what im saying, i'll start saying a lot more, and thats how you lose friends. 
also, Dan tried to be cool and do hacker shit with his computer that was just way over his head and he melted half the hard drive and now he is sitting on the couch sighing heavily to try and get my attention so he can complain about it more, but there is no way i am giving him that satisfaction.  
word.
LASER FACE BLOG HAWK! (major-CAW!)

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Bonecrusher

The Dude Ranch has experienced some high and low times this week.

High Times: We were all standing around in the kitchen one night eating beet soup when a car pulled up into the driveway. Who should pile out but housemate-for-life Nate, returning unannounced from his Grand Tour of America. We made him camp out in the back yard because every couch was full of vegans and both the basement and his former room are occupied. Poor kid can never go home again.

Also this same week, the sun came out and we chased an ice cream truck down the street. I bought a creamsicle and they showed us how to work the ice cream music machine, which can play a mix of hits most notably including the Tetris song! I didn't think ice cream could get better, but it just did.

Low Times: David Cook and I were riding over the Burnside Bridge to Soul Night when he braked too hard and immediately flipped over the handlebars, right onto the asphalt as a wave of cars approached. Like a mustached tiger, he kung-fu rolled across the road, grabbed his bicycle and within a second was safely on the curb. What saved his life didn't save his bones, though.

Cole and Kevin waited with David in the emergency room for FOUR UNGODLY HOURS before he could get x-rays and a cast on his broken arm. Then they had to go to work and David had to spend a long day contemplating all the things he will be unable to do for six weeks or so. Weeding, bike riding, doing the dishes: all impossible tasks. We're looking for cripple tasks he can accomplish so he helped us make dinner by sadly crushing tortilla chips
with one hand.


"This is pathetic," he said. Then we all had a good laugh.

posted by s.mirk

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Job Hunting

Since 80% of the Dude Ranch is currently unemployed or hates their jobs, Cole's been holding Open Resume Workshops and giving some inspirational pep talks nightly from the kitchen sofa corner.

"Repeat after me!" he shouts, jovially, "YOU ARE A MONEY MAGNET!"


His most life-changing advice is "BE AGGRESSIVE! YOU ARE THE MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE FOR THAT JOB! what do you say? YOU ARE A MONEY MAGNET!"

David Cook and I both revised our resumes under his stern over-the-shoulder direction, so now we're pumped full of Arial Narrow right-centered resumes and ready to apply for some gainful barista and yard work employment opportunities.

"I'm a wildcat!"

posted by sarah

Sunday, June 8, 2008

chess masters

The sun was shining today so Cole and Dan sat on the back lawn playing chess and looking smart.

Dan won. He described his winning strategy as: "I moved my pieces really fast and sometimes I take two moves at the same time. Especially with the pawns. I incorporate things like enpassett and I move the queen like a horse."

posted by: s.mirk

today we make a pancake cake

David Cook sleeps in our basement now and washes our dishes. His friend Ian came up with a brilliant idea eons ago. "We should make a CAKE out of PANCAKES!" he said on Friday night, when we were downtown eating milkshakes and french fries at the Stepping Stone.

So today we woke up early (11?) and while Cole futzed through some Bach fugues, David and I (Ian was late) whipped together blueberries, mango, butter, flour, sugar and oil and things. We cooked the pancakes in our big cast iron frying pan - each pancake as large as a the pan! The frosting took some experimentation. We tried corn starch + maple syrup and flour + maple syrup but both were too starchy. Then! A stroke of genius! cream cheese + maple syrup and away we went.

We wound up having to flip the fat pan-sized cakes with our bare hands and piled them five high. Frosting, decoration with blueberries and a giant knife later, we were in the back yard, cutting in. "How's it taste?" Ian asked David as he ate the first bite. "Like pancakes," David replied happily. "Oh!" exclaimed Ian enthusiastically, "That's exactly how I imagined they would!"

photos:










posted by s.mirk