Thanksgiving was fun. I had WWWWWAYYYYY too many Swedish Pancakes (actually, more like crepes in the way they're prepared) and that was just lunch. Come dinner time, which was four hours later, I was still feeling stuffed. Somehow I managed to cram some turkey and gravy in my (pan)cake hole.

Thanksgiving night, I saw "Happiness Is A Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown" with my dad. We both thought it was very funny and enjoyed it, which is awesome because it's brand new, and new things tend not to be as good as the original (that's one person's opinion, anyway, based on the success of movie sequels). I was extremely impressed with this one, though. It stayed true to the Peanuts characters from the 60's-era comic strip, and the music was done by one of my favorite composers of all time, Mark Mothersbaugh (who also scored the Adventures in Wonderland TV show as well as the Claymation Easter special and Brain Donors). The man is a wizard on keyboards and has a style no one else can match for weirdness and originality.

The morning after Thanksgiving, I woke up with a headache and took two Tylenol PM, and was out like a light just after my mom's famous pizza (no one makes it better, I'm tellin' ya) and...fruit cake. Yeah, I know; who eats that stuff? It wasn't bad, I swear.

After that, the train ride back to Portland (conked out), the train ride back home (conked out there too) and the walk to work from there (conked out in the back room for a good hour- I was super early and needed just a smidge more sleep).

After work, I slept 12 hours, so I don't think my body thought it got enough rest, haha.

Health continues to improve, I don't know what I'm doing right, or if I'm just out of a flare, but I really have no complaints.

Oh wait, I forgot something. Let's back up to when I took the yellow line Max to Pioneer Place and weaved in and out of all the shoppers like Frogger.

I wanted to get some Beige/"Flesh" clay, having run out of it, and what to my wandering eyes (and legs) should appear, but...Not Art Media, which is the store that used to be in the usual place. No, Art Media is gone like it was never there. Instead, what I saw was a brand new Blick's!

YYYYYESSSSS!!!! I called them a year ago in Seattle to ask if they had any plans to put a store in Portland. They said "next year". Well, that's how fast this year must have went, because Dick Blick, in all their glory, are not only in Portland, but also Beaverton! I asked for one store and instead I got TWO!

With these changes have also brought in more variety (Blick's always had a great selection). The switch is not yet complete, but they'll soon have a lot more products that they had at the Seattle location and on the website. So I'm super excited and will hopefully be able to have clay shipped from the Beaverton store when I need a lot of it. That should keep the shipping costs down- clay is heavy stuff! So thank you, Blick's! You're too awesome and if you hadn't moved over here, I would have had go to live in Seattle just to be close enough to take advantage of your great selection and prices!

As for the Beige clay- it was made in 2011. I probably should have gone with the 1998 stuff, but was so tired I just grabbed the first thing I saw. It's great to know that Blick's has clay from that far back! Van Aken ages like fine wine. I'll definitely be back for more!