Hello again friends! I’m leading today’s post with this picture because I know many of my readers get excited about the same things as I do: beer, crafting, bacon, maple, and doughnuts. All inside a pink bottle? That’s more Portland than a rose tattoo on the arm of a hipster wearing your grandpa’s clothes stuffed inside a can of PBR sitting next to a pack of hand rolled Top tobacco cigarettes.
Let me unravel this for the uninitiated. Voodoo Doughnut is one of this town’s crown jewels, and one of their specialties is the Bacon Maple Bar. People are sometimes skeptical of bacon on top of a doughnut but I assure you: it. is. uh-mazing. Rogue is another institution of this fair city. Reflecting our citizens’ inability to keep our vices separate, Rogue created this ale in honor of the doughnuts. This means we can drink it with breakfast.
I’d like to say it was magical… but really it just tasted like campfire. I couldn’t pick out bacon and maple flavors, it’s all pretty well dominated by the first three ingredients: cherrywood smoked malt, beechwood smoked malt, and house-smoked hickory malt. So maybe it wasn’t a turducken of holy flavors, but now we know. We had to know.
A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to share Voodoo Doughnuts with big group of people from Boise. My brother happens to roll with a pretty well-spoken crew. Below is a note card I grabbed from the floor when I was with them (next to a nice little unrelated drawing I made).
If after reading this, the words “impromptu,” “extemp,” “debate,” or “forensics tournament” pop into your head, I award you 12 speaker points. If this is completely nonsensical to you, then consider this a glimpse into university speech and debate. My brother is a member of the team at College of Western Idaho, and will be traveling with them this week to compete on the national level. So here’s my shout out and wishes of good luck to CWI:
Even if you feel like this…
really you’re like this.
When you get nervous, smile like you know something they don’t. Idahomies, represent!
I honestly don’t know how to transition from unicorns to the other topic-of-the-day, so this awkward sentence will have to do.
This month has been designated to promote awareness of endometriosis.* This one hits home for me. By hits I mean stabs, and by home I mean abdomen.
Endometriosis, or, My Angry Ovaries
I suffered for 10 years before the right diagnosis. I’ve had 2 surgeries to remove growths and likely face a 3rd. I’ve exhausted hormone adjustments and pain relief options. All of these facts are alarmingly typical for endo sufferers. I’m lucky in that I have had emotional support–far too many women face this surrounded by people who think it’s all in her head, she doesn’t look sick, it’s just her period. If you’re interested in a longer narrative on an all-too-common story, I offer this Letter to Endometriosis.
I did not make this image, it was already out on the internet representing waaay tooo many women.
Well, that seems like enough diverse topics for one blog post! Up next will be some new art (gasp!) and probably some more tales from the Endo Life (I didn’t choose it, it chose me!). For now I thank you again for reading and I offer my honest intent to be back before the end of the month.
*In fact, as I write this my spell-check is insisting endometriosis, endometrial, and endometrium are not words, although it has all of the following in its vocabulary: appendicitis diabetes thrombosis mononucleosis sclerosis apoptosis osteoporosis anthropomorphic epistemological
