"Bad week?" my friend Riona asked me over the phone.

"Weird week," I replied.

I said that Thursday night. Without getting into details, the past week had been a little frustrating, odd, and "off." By Thursday night, as I was walking around in my neighborhood, I was feeling a little worn own by that. That's when Riona called me. I turned down going to a Friday night event with her; I wanted and needed some time by myself.

Luckily and happily, I've been getting that. Got out yesterday (Friday) and today, treating myself in cheap ways — Friday was cheap pizza from the SE Foster Rd. Little Caesar's, today was the fun Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 at a second-run theater and a Slurpee on my way home — getting good long walks done, and simply enjoying how Portland looks.

I'm feeling better. I hope, as always, to feel more consistently good.

One hundred-plus degrees. Both Saturday and Sunday.

We got through the weekend. Before that, we got through the week. Sometimes it was a challenge. Last week I often felt (say it with me) off; I tried when I could to take it easy and be gentle with myself. I seemed to be getting enough sleep; I don't think that was my issue. But from the week's start, I felt off. I chose the later of two days Mom had suggested for her visit to see me, because I didn't feel up for having company last Monday, for instance. (We visited Thursday. And last night Mom and Dad stopped by briefly on their way back from a family gathering here in town.) Wednesday, as I sometimes do, I paid the Belmont Goats a visit. Took pictures. Here are my most recent shots. Visiting the goats can help. So did spending several hours Friday at Beulahland, then riding around for a while (up to Lloyd Center Mall for a change of venue) because one of the servers at Beulah passed along an all-day TriMet bus pass someone no longer needed. I didn't have to be limited to my usual 2 1/2-hour bus pass!

Having survived the week, I then survived a hot weekend: 100° on Saturday and 101° on Sunday. Hydration, hats and shade were my frequent companions those days. I still got out; I didn't want to be a shut-in. On Saturday I got over to Beaverton, visited a handful of friends, and went with one of them to a Hillsboro screening of Wonder Woman. My second screening; my friend's first. She was mixed on the film; I still liked it a lot. I appreciate the film's earnestness, which is never undercut by its humor, thank goodness. I'm so glad this film exists, and is doing so well. (FYI: I have no interest in the fifth live-action Transformers film. None.) Friends,crankily, and s good film over the weekend. Good.

Welcome to this week.

Luckily I was awake enough this morning to see, in the bathroom sink, a spider.

I wasn't surprised by it — well, not too surprised by it — and made sure I didn't drown it: I turned on the water less strongly than normal, so as not to splash it. My hands clean, I opened the bathroom window, gave the spider my fuller attention, helped it get out of the sink, found where it then hid under the counter, got it onto a piece of toilet paper, and let it go out of the window.

Leaving the spider for another of the house residents to find would've been cruel and wrong.

I'm sure the spider was happier, and I certainly was. That was this morning.

Another highlight of the day involved no spiders at all (other than the many spiders who are always close to us, whether we're inside or outside): Mom drove into Portland to visit. We went to coffee (Rain or Shine Coffeehouse at SE 60th and Division), walked on Mt. Tabor — yes, a full-fledged extinct volcano in SE Portland, and that is cool — and the further indulgence of fast food and a cone at the nearby Dairy Queen, before Mom drove me back to where I live. We went on to other things today.

Did the spider go on to find flies to eat? I hope so!

Maybe, Tuesday morning, I should have waited to be around people.

Yesterday I went to breakfast at the nearby coffee shop, and while there I realized I was having trouble tuning out a conversation two guys in the café were having. (That they were on the other side of the café is probably a sign they were being just a little too loud for the café, but oh well.) I then realized: I was crankier than I thought.

I already knew I was cranky. That made me realize I hadn't done enough yet that day to make myself less cranky.

To counter that, I went back to the house and took my time, there by myself. Come early afternoon, I felt ready to be around people again, and walked to the nearby Fred Meyer to shop. By then, I could again handle people, plus I had a goal and a short shopping list. And getting that done helped me feel better. Less cranky.

I took care of other stuff yesterday (not saying more because I feel a little superstitious about it), plus I got out for an evening walk during dusk, on a comfortable and breezy night. Followed by decent sleep.

I'd really prefer not to be cranky, and I'm relieved I was able to get at least less cranky.

It hit me (ow) that when someone I know asked me today "What did you do this weekend?," I didn't have that much of an answer. It was a weekend that felt like a lot happened, and a lot did, but most of what happened mostly didn't happen to me. So. I decided to list what did happen.

I'll start with Friday, which was a nice and comfortable day. I bussed downtown, visited Powell's, ran into my friend Mike Russell in Powell's southeast lobby, then found and bought a relatively rare, and very good and fun, Star Trek novel, John M. Ford's 1987 book How Much for Just the Planet? I'd seen the book on the shelf on a previous visit, and I felt lucky that it was still there, when I could buy it. As I had cash on me, I also went to the Alder St. food cart pod and revisited a cart I liked to go to when I worked near there in 2014-15, Huong's. I got fried rice with chicken and some shrimp, some of which I ate downtown (in Director Park) and the rest which I took home.

While I was on my way home, a few miles away from me, the attack happened. The attack that led to Saturday's memorial. And Portland's mood jolted, as people in town and people around the world tried to process that that could have happened.

Saturday, I dressed nicely, like for a weekday at an office job. That afternoon, I headed to the memorial at Hollywood Transit Center. I was part of the mass of people, there as a sign of support for the victims and survivors. I felt I should be as presentable as possible, even in as informal a city as Portland. After I'd attended, I walked for the rest of the night: down Sandy (running into another friend, Andrew Hill, who was headed to the memorial), over to Beulahland at NE 28th and Couch to eat and regroup, then home. Yes, a walk. It's a long walk, but doable: takes an hour-and-a-quarter at highest walking speed and a little longer if, like me on Saturday night, I was walking slower. I slept OK that night.

Sunday, another nice day like Friday and Saturday had been, I hung out for the midday in the coffee shop near where I live, listening to a podcast (on headphones, I'm not a jerk) and having coffee and a muffin. After a library visit, and that evening once I was home, I watched the first of the two film adaptations of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I'm pacing myself; I haven't watched Part Two yet. I wasn't surprised that I wibbled a bit during Deathly Hallows Part One; those stories can hit me emotionally.

And then there was Monday, which went differently than I'd planned because when I boarded a bus, my TriMet bus driver converted my ticket (usually a 2 1/2-hour ticket) into an all-day ticket. LET'S USE THAT. As first planned, I headed down to the Belmont Goats and hung out, putting goats and reading, for a bit; but then, instead of heading to the store as I'd first figured, I went up to the Max and rode trains up to PDX. As I've said before, I'm someone who sometimes visits airports just to visit them. I spent a few hours there, watching people come and go, editing photos I'd taken of the goats, and looking out at the planes. Shopping happened at the Gateway Fred Meyer, since I had to get off of the Max there to change lanes anyway. Then home, then night. Then, now.

So. Things did happen. Still, feels like more did.

Wednesday feels like a long time ago.

I'm at, I hope, the tail end of this cold that I started to feel Tuesday night. I managed to get out and run my ballot errand Wednesday, so at least that got done; yesterday my only trip outside the house was to the corner coffee shop. Hot tea and a milkshake for soothing my throat, and a small pasta salad for comfort eating. Plus some face-to-face interaction, with one of the café workers I know. Nice to run into her.

Since Wednesday, I've had plenty of tea and broth, but since midday yesterday, thank goodness, I've gotten more substantial food down without a problem. Just had ramen with sautéd carrot slices for late breakfast, and more tea (caffeinated this time) for further soothing.

And my bedroom window is open, I hope to move any disease-tainted air out of the place. Plus it's nice outside.

A quiet day, mainly because I have a sore throat and low energy. But I did get out for one errand this morning: I'd gotten a message from County Elections that I'd forgotten to sign my ballot, so I got to the Elections building and finally signed it. "You're not alone," a clerk told me.

Home since, mainly resting and reading.

Getting to Portland Meadows at 5 in the morning for my work as an extra was involved. Too early for buses, I wasn't going to drive, I wouldn't be able to get a ride there, paying for a taxi (which I didn't even think of possibly doing) would cut into my earnings for the day, and I've yet to use Uber or Lyft. So I got permission from my friends Ryan and Kristen to sleep at their home, closer to Portland Meadows.

And I walked.

A four-mile walk, but that was more manageable than what would've been a 10-mile walk from the house where I live.

Yes, I was willing to walk that walk. Took about an hour and 15 minutes, from a little after 3:30 to 4:45. I was careful around traffic.

If I'd gotten called back for Wednesday work, and it had been an early call again, I had a different plan for getting there. I would've come home, showered, gotten some sleep, awakened late at night, ride late buses to North Portland, and stage myself at the 24-hour Heavenly Donuts on N. Lombard, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts and reading until it was time to walk up to the track. Which is a mile-and-a-half walk.

In many case, walking works. Eventually. (I kind of like knowing that if absolute push came to absolute shove and for some reason I needed to get from Portland to my parents' Dundee home, it's 30 miles, a doable one-day walk. But I'd most likely have to do that if civilization collapsed, which I hope it doesn't...)

Friday was another long-walk day, with me leaving downtown by a route I often took back when I worked at OHSU. I walked the sidewalk of the Ross Island Bridge; I was the only person either walking or bicycling on that sidewalk at that time. (I wonder if the opening of the far more pedestrian- and bicyclist-friendly Tilikum Crossing has cut down on most Ross Island Bridge foot traffic.)

But right before I got to the bridge, a vehicle taking the ramp from the bridge westbound to the I-5 southbound ramp slowed down, drove around the sidewalk island I was about to cross to, and stopped. Pointing the wrong way on an on-ramp; it'd be facing any vehicles needing to turn from SW Kelly (leaving downtown) onto the freeway. The woman on the passenger side unrolled the window, and the man driving leaned over and asked me "Hey, where's the Old Spaghetti Factory?"

Shoot, I froze up. I get worried about steering someone wrong, or confusing them, and the roads at the west end of that bridge are confusing for giving directions. Wanting to be quick, I apologized that I didn't have directions, and just added "It's south of here." The driver, to his credit, moved quickly and got going, and got off of the ramp where he'd been pointed the wrong way, heading north on Kelly.

That's when it dawned on me that until he'd turned to rendezvous with me, the driver had already been pointed the right direction: that I-5 on-ramp also has a lane to get not only to South Waterfront, but to SW Bancroft St., the street that that location of the Old Spaghetti Factory is on. IT ALMOST WOULD HAVE BEEN SIMPLE. Except even if I had realized that while he was stopped, would my telling him "Just go the way you were going!" have gotten him to try and turn around right there, with traffic coming fast off of the bridge and maybe with traffic coming from downtown too? This could have gone badly.

I wish I'd just pointed towards the tall, striking South Waterfront buildings looming beyond the bridge and said "It's on the other side of those." That would've been a better guide.

I'll hope they figured out how to get to where they wanted to go.

A quick catch-up on where I've been and what I've been up to:

As time's gone on, my job hunt has continued. Here's some of what else:

Monday was a stay-close-to-home day. Not much to report.

Tuesday, I let myself have Turkish coffee, a very occasional treat. (I usually have it at Nicholas's, a Mediterranean chain here in Portland I've liked for decades; I hadn't been to a Nicholas's in a while.) I had this Turkish coffee at my first visit to Marino Adriatic Café, on Division near 39th Ave./Cesar E. Chavez Blvd. More walking and reading-while-walking, though when I passed through neighborhoods I hadn't been to before I was more likely to put down the book and look around.

Wednesday, I drove to get my friend Riona and go to the Bunk Sandwiches on NE Alberta, which was giving away free grilled cheese sandwiches for Grilled Cheese Day. It was also a fundraiser; we donated to Dollar For Portland, which helps local people who've had massive sudden medical expenses. After donating, we got our sandwiches (chips, too), sat outside, got lightly but not badly rained on, and visited. It had been a while. Plenty to catch up on.

Thursday and Friday, I again went on long walks throughout SE. Thursday I went to the Belmont Library then up to Mt. Tabor, walking near the reservoirs. Friday was errand-focused: groceries plus more TriMet tickets, which currently make more sense for me than a monthly or weekly pass.

This morning, so far, I've stayed put. OK, now I have other things to do than rest...

Closing out with pictures from the west slope of Mt. Tabor, Thursday at about 5:00:

Sunday afternoon, I walked from the house to downtown. As in "walked the whole way." Up SE 70th to Foster, then zig-zagging from Foster and Powell to about 8th and Belmont, then up to the south sidewalk on the Morrison Bridge, because I wanted to see if it was open (a major bridge repair just started and most though not all of the bridge lanes are closed). Then to Pizza Schmizza for two slices of pizza, then to Pioneer Place to see Logan with friends.

I zig-zagged so I could take as close to a diagonal path as possible plus see some neighborhood blocks I hadn't been on before. I walked in order to save a TriMet ticket; the night before I'd used two when I'd hoped to use one. Yes, to save a bus fare I walked nearly six miles. Sometimes I do this.

I did bus home after the film.

My liberty card was punched, and it took me a little while to realize it. I'd planned out a Thursday night trip to North Portland then Old Town Portland — first to Bridge City Comics to pick up a month's worth of books waiting for me, then to Sequential Art Gallery on NW Broadway to see art by a local comics artist I'm acquainted with. See, for most of the day when you buy a TriMet ticket, it's good for 2 1/2 hours, and I planned my trip around that; it wasn't until I was boarding the bus near Bridge City Comics that I looked at my ticket and saw it was good through the end of the service day. Strictly speaking, I could've jumped on a bus with it until 1:00-ish.

Me being me, I took more time. I do when I can.

Often on First Thursday, a monthly art event in Portland, I go only to Sequential Art, where I know the proprietors. This time, I let myself wander into a couple of other galleries. Plus I hung out at Sequential Art, as I often do; after I'd seen the art I sat outside, read, and people-watched. Gave a heads-up to a woman and a young girl that a guy on a bike was riding towards them on the sidewalk so they'd be less surprised by him.

It can feel like work, me getting into a mindset to look at art. I'm learning, and hoping, to relax more about it: I'm not going to "get" everything, and not every piece will speak to me. It's no one's fault if that happens. (Unless the art is really poorly done.) Plus I had enough on my mind last night — several subjects and issues, not getting into them at the moment — that I could easily distract myself from the artworks. Too easily.

But I got out, and visited people and places, and saw stuff I otherwise wouldn't have seen.

Different scenery. That's what I was craving. So late this morning I let myself walk for four miles: up to Foster Blvd., over to Powell, then down all the way to Milwaukie and Powell at the northern end of my old neighborhood. From there, I bussed — I've ridden TriMet less the past month, since I've been using bus tickets instead of buying the monthly bus pass — over the Ross Island Bridge, and treated myself to lunch at the Lair Hill Bistro. Hadn't been there for years, and hadn't been there even semi-regularly since I stopped working at OHSU which is on Marquam Hill, the hill above Lair Hill. (Bigger hill above a smaller hill. Work with me here.)

I'm glad I went back. Had a poached salmon salad. Also a broccoli and cheese soup, and I generally don't like that soup but this one was good.

After that, I walked and bussed down to the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, where I've hung out before, so I could sit and get online, then before my bus ticket expired I hopped one more bus home.

• A breakfast at Bertie Lou's Café, a Sellwood diner I hadn't been to before but which a friend had recommended. Small, bustling place, and people there were being amusing. I feel I added something to the bustle and noise, as I sat and ate at the counter. (I'd first sat at a two-seat table, but when I heard the owner telling two customers that he didn't have an open table for two I got up and asked "Would it helped if I moved?" Yes, it did. So I did.)

• A drive to get to the diner, then more driving later (after I walked from the diner to the Sellwood branch library and back to the car) since I can always use driving practice.

• A change of scenery, by car: I braved, I mean drove through, downtown (past the Central Library to see where the two sick oak trees formerly in front had been removed), then through the Pearl, up into the Northwest Portland industrial area where I worked in 2012, past the Montgomery Park building, then up Hwy. 30 to the St. Johns Bridge. Scenic! And in and out of sun and rain, since today's weather was variable. I drove around to Columbia Blvd. then NE 42nd, and zigzagged back to where I live.

• Dealt OK, I think, with bad driving, and tried not to cause bad driving either. I've told myself this many times: other people driving carelessly or stupidly should not cause me to lose focus and drive carelessly or stupidly myself. I find myself venting at cases of bad driving I see, but I try once I vent to let it go, and not dwell on it. I know I can dwell. I try not to when behind the wheel.

• A nice, filling dinner back at the house: chicken breast cut up into spaghetti, plus salad and a glass of warm broth for a drink. Hey, this works for me.

It is my solemn duty and oath as an Oregonian to, as needed, travel to verify that, indeed, the Oregon Coast is still there and still Coast-ing as it does.

Means I was on the Coast today.

Saturday, Mom drove to town and picked me up, so that today we could day-trip to Lincoln City and Depoe Bay. Weather was cooperative, if drizzly-to-rainy, but that's better than the snow Mom had the last time she drove to the Coast. So: Hwy. 99W to Hwy. 18 (I waved to the Otis Café, a diner in Otis I like) to Hwy. 101. We stopped at Roads End, a northern neighborhood of Lincoln City, to walk and to take pictures, then continued to Depoe Bay. I'd forgotten that Depoe Bay is relatively close to Lincoln City (8 miles south; I'd thought it was more). We made two stops there, at the whale-watching station — didn't see any gray whales, but we knew some are out there — and at a salt water taffy store. Then we drove north for lunch at Kyllo's, a place my family's liked for decades, on the D River. Good, and surprisingly quick, food: I had garlic shrimp with sides of cole slaw and fries, and I split crab cakes with Mom. Weather stayed cloudy and drizzly-to-rainy, but that often happens on the Oregon Coast and we accept it. It's part of its charm.

I got back home this evening, before dark. Thanks, Mom!

Photos later, probably Monday, after I wrangle up a photo album for them.

Wednesday night, two walkers in SE Portland were struck by cars. Both suffered serious injuries, though last I heard, none of their injuries were life-threatening.

One pedestrian was struck on SE 82nd between Holgate and Foster, sometime before I got back to SE on a bus from North Portland; I'd been hanging out at a signing at Bridge City Comics. That stretch of 82nd was closed. Our bus driver first pulled over at Holgate to get guidance from a dispatcher; best way around?

The route the driver was told to take, it turned out, wasn't the best way. It led to a turn that the driver wouldn't do, because the turn would've been illegal, then led to the bus riding, slowly, down what turned out to be an unimproved street. A bumpy street. Which led to a T-intersection that, from first glance, did not have enough room for the bus to turn — had it turned, it would've hit parked cars.

Here's where we wish a bus could launch vertically. Or that maybe King Kong — no, Mighty Joe Young, he's more helpful — lift up the bus to point it in the right direction.

In one away I was lucky: I didn't have to see the end of this bussing saga (by then, the driver was asking for a supervisor to come to the intersection and guide him when backing out the bus), because the bus had gotten stuck at SE 65th and Schiller, which is a manageable walk from where I live. So I walked. When I've needed to, in this town, I've walked miles at a time.

One of these days I'll manage to walk 10 or more miles in a day.

I hope the bus got out fine. And I hope the walkers who'd been hit will recover quickly.

As humans, we seek out patterns. We see patterns where they don't necessarily exist, and we can mess ourselves up that way.

I wouldn't go to a certain store because of a perceived pattern, not at all a real pattern but one I just thought was there: it seemed like soon after I'd go shopping at a Grocery Outlet, I'd get fired from a job.

I got fired from my Hoffman job the day after shopping at one. I got fired from my Fred Meyer/Kroger customer service job very soon after shopping at one.

THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY A PATTERN. It's not even a coincidence. But I let a sort of short-circuit happen in my brain and thought I go there, a job ends. A bad block for someone who tries to shop around for groceries and save money where possible.

So Friday afternoon I visited the Grocery Outlet about a mile south of where I live, to browse. Even just browsing seemed to be a good, needed gesture, considering what I'd managed to associate the grocery store chain with. I visited on the spur of the moment during a walk, and since I had none of my cloth shopping bags (my main bags nowadays, since Portland banned plastic grocery bags), I didn't want to shop just then. I just decided to remind myself I could.

I watched prices, some of which are better than where I usually shop, some of which are comparable. I was being observant. I needed that after thinking I'd been observant when I was seeing something that wasn't in fact happening.

I'll get back to Grocery Outlet sometime. Start to associate it with something other than what I'd associated it with before.

Friend time! My friend/former girlfriend Alicia was in town yesterday, with a part of her extended family, to say hi and to shop at Powell's City of Books. I met them st the store, then we split off for lunch: the family members to the Whole Foods deli a couple of blocks away, Alicia and I to The Roxy. Good thing we could go there without kids; The Roxy's not kid-friendly. (One of the T-shirts it sells says, in giant letters on the back, "PORTLAND FUCKING OREGON.") Good diner food and a chance to catch up on what Alicia's doing, and what she's enthused about. I like knowing her.

After that, we headed back to Powell's for book-shopping, the big reason for the trip. I helped her find some books and makde some purchase suggestions, plus I sometimes carried the books she was going to buy. Plus I carried a big bag of books I'd loan to her later. We found several books she'd wanted, then hooked up with her other family members, and they bought their books en masse. Me, being a big target with the bag of books she was going to borrow, waited away from the checkout line; Powell's was (no surprise for midday Saturday) busy. Then it was back to the car, where Alicia and I swapped books-to-borrow and got these shots.

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(I couldn't decide which of the two pics I liked better.)

I visited and walked around downtown and East Portland for the rest of the afternoon. Took me until this morning to realize my shoulders were sore from the large bags of books I'd been carrying.

You may have heard of Portland, Oregon's Horse Project. My town still has lots of rings attached to its sidewalks, used a hundred-plus years ago for hitching horses and horse-led carriages when people needed to park. The Horse Project ties toy horses to the rings. All sorts of toy horses: I once saw a nearly foot-tall toy horse at SE 50th and Hawthorne.

People don't have to attach just toy horses, either. Seen today at SE 46th and Salmon:

Portland got to a high in the mid-50s of 59 today. We last reached the mid-50s in late November. Portland celebrated by raining.

It wasn't a celebration, it just rained. Small cells of rain, sometimes drizzling, sometimes deluging.

This afternoon, after I visited the Woodstock neighborhood and its library, I had gotten off the bus and was walking home, up SE 72nd. A neat visual moment happened then: I looked towards Mt. Scott Park, with its trees poking up above the houses and buildings, and what looked like mist started to obscure the trees. The view started to filter, and it took me a moment to realize that it was a curtain of rain between me and the park. Another of the small cells of rain that had been seemingly darting through town. Here in Portland we're a little burned out from snow, of which we've had plenty, so I am thankful that it was a cell of rain and not another snowstorm.