A Cantilever and Colorful Tidbits in Everyday Ramblings

Just in case you were wondering… it is still raining here. This is a planter box up by the Waldorf School across from the park in the old building that they updated by gutting and modernizing the warehouse next door and then attaching it. I like the creative use of color here at the end of winter.

I did see some blooming daffodils over the weekend but the glare off the gloom made the pictures I took impressionistic but not in a good way.

I was out and about quite a bit and one of the things I did was find the answer to a question Balansert had about a photo of the Portland skyline I posted a few weeks back…

She asked, What is that building with the unusual roof that looks like it is being opened? I asked around and nobody seemed to know so I wandered by there. It turns out that the building is our big Federal Building built in 1974 that was stripped down to its basics and retrofitted to be environmentally sustainable in a big way. The unusual roof is an array of solar panels cantilevered so that it can be pointed at the best angle to catch sun. Ha!

But the whole site is also geared to capture all the rainwater that falls on it. We are good at that. The water is reused for all sorts of things in the building. They even have this cool feature that like a wind turbine, when the elevators go down they generate electricity.

Here is a description from a government website about the project. Maybe I should be a little more cheerful about the rain as it turns out to be useful in unexpected ways.

I’ll work on that.

Tomorrow is Kes’s birthday and we all went out to a very nice dinner last night together (it was our make up celebration for our missed Christmas festivities) and had a lovely relaxing time. They even came early and played with Carlo and Diego. The cats were sad to see them go as they very much enjoyed being the center of attention around here.

I am working today and tomorrow and then have the rest of the week off. S, my student is taking me hiking on Thursday and I am going on a birding adventure Saturday morning.

A couple of years ago, S., who is indomitable even though she has two artificial knees and is overweight walked a half marathon. I asked her afterwards how it went and she looked at me and said, “Never Again!” She is the person I did the First Run with on New Years.

Yesterday she took me out for a hot chocolate after church because basically she is a wonderful person and an experienced hospice nurse and I was able to talk to her about my sister’s illness and death directly in a way that was very healing for me. While we were walking to the coffeehouse she asked if I might consider the possibility of walking the half with her this year in October!

Eek.

She said, “Well, I am feeling better, (of course she is after a year of weekly yoga sessions) and I am retired and have more energy… So of course I said yes. It will be hard to rein in my inner pony but I will enjoy spending time with her so I am going for it, I will have to trot on alternate days or something, I can do that.

And tonight I get to teach my public class. Other than playing with the cats, that is very much the best part of my week. I got a very positive response to the reminder email with yogic tidbits I sent out yesterday…

Last updated February 09, 2015