I have found hell.....

but more about that later in the post.  First, last monday (how time flies!) Laura, our friend Meg, and I went to see Heather Armstrong .  Seems like the rest of Portland went too, so things were a little crowded. I did manage to get a few photos. Here's one:

The thing that most surprised me is Dooce is MUCH BIGGER than I expected.  No, this doesn't have to do with the fact that she is seven months pregnant.  I just did not expect her to be so tall.  Everyone should be 5'3" and 1/2--just like me.  It was super fun seeing her, and she is just as funny in person as she is on the internet.  After the reading, we founds some light reading in the magazine section at Powells.

For those of you who can't read the text, the title of the magazine is WITCH.


Now, more about Hell.  I've found it right here in Portland.  It is the speed skating class that Laura signed us up for.  We had our first class this past saturday.  First, we arrived to find all the doors to the skate rink locked tight shut.  After finally managing to get in, and finally managing to find someone who knew what was going on and gave us skates we skated (well, laura skated, and I hobbled behind her) out to join the rest of the class--which consisted of mostly 7 to 10 year olds, one set of parents (the mother was wearing a shirt that said "God's property,"  guess I will get a chance to wear that satan's minion shirt I was always wanting to wear at the Y in Redding after all...)  and one totally dorky guy who was almost as bad as I was but was wearing a yellow shirt that read "Danger, Aggressive Speed Skater"  Oh, and one of the instructors was wearing a lycra singlet.  The kind you would wear for road biking.  We spent an hour skating around the rink trying to do crosses and drills.  Well, Laura did that. I pretty much did all my activites holding onto the CARPETED wall that I don't think has been cleaned since 1952 when the rink was built.  We've signed up for 10 weeks of that shit!  I'm changing my name to Apollo in hopes it will help.