hanarchy

One of the all-time best Portland spots. SE Grand and Stark-ish. I never eat Lebanese anywhere else because it's SO GOOD and SO AFFORABLE. With vegan options! And piping hot pita brought to your table when you sit down!


I always get a shawarma combo. For around $10 (what up Golden Corral), it gets you a fat plate of humus, a good little side-salad, and a BIG pita with your choice of meat and more salad wrapped up in it. I never finish the sandwich or the humus, so it's like two meals. TWO MEALS for $10, y'all. Can't beat it.


Every ex-pat Portlander that I know weeps when I mention Nicolas anywhere. Suckers! Why would you EVER move somewhere with no Nicolas! (as an aside, this is my current favorite pix of Evie)


We didn't get it (still sad), but the baklava is so amazing. Baklava in general makes me the happiest of campers. All of the best in the world: honey, phyllo dough, and nuts UM YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU. The turkish coffee is wonderful too, although I did manage to get it all over myself/my camera last time I was there, so consider yourself warned.


Nicolas is usually CRAZY busy on evenings at the weekend, so go a smidge early or on a weekday. We went at 6:30 or so on a Tuesday and there was no wait at all. I mean it's COMPLETELY worth the wait though - I've waited up to 30 minutes for a table, which is pretty beyond me considering how much fast food I eat. You can stare pitifully through the window at the fat steaming pita breads to whet your appetite!

-hannah

Aaaaaaah, that's better. I tried the long hair thing for a couple years and it's just not my bag. I always had short hair as a kid, so I never developed good habits and so it feels like A Lot Of Extra Pointless Effort to brush it or blow-dry it or do anything much besides wash it. The long hair was all wrong anyway; I just feel much more like *me* with short hair. Like now that I did it, I have no idea why I put up anything else as long as I did!

(yes I did shoot this in my bathroom be quiet, it has wonderful light)

-hannah

Nothing too special... just dinner with my gramma c: The sun was setting, and the light in her west-facing living room was GORGEOUS.

-hannah

Previously on The Secret Life of the American Teenager:

Adrian and Ben are gonna get engaged. Hasn't happened yet, but it's a given. Grace is having an STD test, but no one really cares much about the results because we all know she's gonna fuck Grant regardless. Amy and Ricky wanna do it SO SO BAD, and Amy can't stop telling her dad aaaalll about it. The girl who plays Ashley is awful, but she has amazing hair. Ricky's birth mom is in town and staying with him and he ain't cool with it, so he asked his foster parents (who he considers his real parents) to take her in.

Nora & Margaret (Ricky's foster mom) meet. So can we talk about this weirdness about who Ricky calls Mom??? Have none of these people heard of the term "birth mom"? Not that I have a problem with him referring to both of them as Mom, because whatever, who cares, but there's all this totally needless ANGST about it.

Margaret: No, I didn't know you had allergies, because you seem to have the immune system of a horse.
Nora: An insult like that would be seen as a come on in the big house, sista.

OH GODDDD NORA IS GAY THIS IS GOING TO BE A DEAL GODDD


Their faces when they figure it out. ("It means... your mom is a lesbian??") I mean this would be funnier if that wasn't Ben's face 90% of the time. Ricky angsts about it of COURSE, but eventually is actually really cool about it, and their conversation is sort of adorable.



So nice.

Amy is just being so proactive with her sexuality you guys. I couldn't even transcribe the conversation she had with George, it was too awful, all like I AM REALLY GONNA HAVE SEX, OKAY, and he's like I REALLY DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE SEX and she's like SEX SEX SEX and he's like SEX SEX SEXXXXXXX


Amy: Teen pregnancy joke?
George: Teen-who-won't-have-sex-after-being-pregnant joke.
Amy: Ah. Funny.

Ashley is tryin'a get mom/EVERYONE to do her dang biology project, and the actress who plays her is still terrible, even in the context of this show, where the ONLY REMOTELY DECENT PLAYERS are the girl who plays Grace and Jennifer Coolidge and MAYBE the dude who plays George.

Ashley: This is on ecosystems. This is planet Earth and this is a picture of my world, a microsystem of the larger planetary sytem. And when you put another life into a shaky ecosystem, where people are fighting for food and water and attention, the system becomes vulenrable. And when there are too many lives added to an already vulnerable sustem, the system collapses. After the world collapses, the survivors start over again, sometimes reproducing with other species.


Can we talk about this for a minute? Ashley is acting out y'all, and pretty much nobody cares. She's exhibiting some CONFUSING ass cries for attention and everyone's just like HOMESCHOOLING, ALSO YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS, YOU'RE WEEEIRD, like christ, what a shitty family, no wonder she's so pissed off.

Ashley: I'M SICK OF MY WHOLE LIFE BEING RUINED BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP HAVING BABIES

Slackin' on the Grace front. No Grant at all this episode. Poop. We do get this nice scene with Grace & Adrian where they have a conversation about sex/boys, and it ALMOST sounds like a real conversation real girls would have. There are flickers where they're laughing and it's vaguely believable.

Grace: You're not gonna have... sex... with Ben, though, are you?


Adrian: And if you have any doubts [about having sex with Grant], don't do it.
Grace: And if YOU have any doubts, just don't do it. Don't do anything.
Adrian: And what does that mean?
Grace: You know what that means. Don't get married to Ben just because you're pregnant and you like all the nice things he does for you and the baby. You have to really love him to marry him, Adrian, if you don't it's just not fair.
Adrian: Well he hasn't asked me, and he may never ask me, so I don't have to decide that, do I.


Oh, Adrian. Even GRACE knows what's up. Can we please have cool spicy Latina Adrian back please :( :( Ben is taking Adrian out to Papi's Tacos. I really hope a Papi's Tacos exists somewhere because I really love the name, and Adrian manages to say it like 80000 times. Papi's Tacos Papi's Tacos I want Papi's Tacos!!! The repetition on this show is just weird and sounds totally unnatural, I'm not sure why they insist on it so hard.

Adrian: You know who loves Papi's Tacos more than I do? Ben. He LOOOOVES tacos. That's his favorite place. Papi's.


Ruben: Do you love him, Adrian?
Adrian: UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I thiiiiink... so? Yeah, yeah, he's a nice guy.

Ben has been running around getting everyone's (no one's) approval. Ruben is GUNG FUCKING HO about the wedding, especially it being before the baby comes because DUH unmarried women having babies is the MOST SHAMEFUL. Leo thinks it should be a year after the baby comes (so smart), and from what I can tell, Betty doesn't think they should get married at all - she pretends to, and definitely doesn't try to hide it.


Betty: You know, Ben, when really people love each other, they lie for each other. And one day, when you're married, you'll lie for Adrian, and she'll lie for you. It's fun.

JENNIFER COOLIDGE YOU ARE TOO WONDERFUL FOR THIS SHOW. I hope they're paying you well gurl!!!

Adrian's mom, who was VERY against the marriage (and against Adrian having the baby to the point that she was DOWN for an abortion, and basically the only bastion of cool on this show left) is now totally fine with it.... sigh.

Ben: Thank you.. mom.
Adrian's mom: *hugs* Ben you are a charmer and Adrian is a very lucky girl. Except, of course, she got pregnant when she didn't really wanna get pregnant... but anyway, she's lucky to have you.
Ruben: Welcome to the family, SON.


Adrian: I love you Ben. Wait, I think you said you love me, right?
Ben: Yeah, I did.
Adrian: I love you too! :OO she's moving! She's moving right now!

I WOULD HOPE THIS HAD BEEN WELL-ESTABLISHED PRE-PROPOSAL BUT I GUESS NOT, ARRRRRRGHHH THIS SHOW

Tune in next week for the wedding :| I hate everything.

-hannah

Just a quick shot of Reggie, overexcited and antsy because I went downstairs. Being a dog must be STRESSFUL. Ours freak out at almost everything - someone walking in the door, someone getting an ice cube out of the freezer, someone paying attention to the other dog, someone looking at them funny...

-hannah

Had a nail party a few days ago with a couple cool ladies and some nachos & amber ale. The homegirl Megan busted out some boss nails - SO inspired! All my attempts at nail art end up looking real amateurish and messy. Gotta figure out how to get some clean stripes and I'll get the Ireland flag on my middle finger for next St Patrick's Day c:

-hannah

Working on getting my photos off the computer screen.

Last year as Christmas presents I mounted prints on some cheap finely-milled plywood I got at the Home Depot. I bought a bunch of pieces slightly smaller than 5x7", but had a few 4x6" prints lying around and figured I'd get 'em on there and see how they looked. I'm not sure how I feel about the border, but for this series I think I like it. Still meditating on how to hang them - possibly string them together and literally hang dangling from the wall?

-hannah