Blog « Christine Rains Design

Twilight Zone

July 7th, 2011

The fourth of July weekend is the traditional Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy channel and my husband and I LOVE those old black and white shows. The tales are always full of unexplainable happenstances and oddities. Most of the episodeswe’ve seen before but I actually caught two new ones this time around. One I saw was about a famous Hollywood starlet returning to her hometown, lured back by a ring she was given by her sister. The ring kept playing a siren song of sorts, with people from her old town begging her to come back to help them. She eventually understood that the ring was calling to her so she could save all of the townspeople from a plane that was going to crash into their annual picnic site. Unfortunately, she was actually ON the plane and was going to perish in the crash. So she showed up back at home and was able to get on TV and promote a free show that she would do that afternoon. She was able to entice most of the townspeople away from the site of the crash. They all saw her, in town and on TV and yet, there was her body amongst those discovered at the crash site that same afternoon. So how is it that she was able to appear in the town while she was really and truly on the plane? Aha! Therein lies the beauty of the Twilight Zone … we will never know! It WAS the Twilight Zone. All we know is that it happened.

I feel like we could all use a bit more of the Twilight Zone in our lives. More unexplained happenstances and events. Things we just can’t understand (beyond things like Sarah Palin). More selfless acts that benefit us all. More close calls that remind us how lucky we are to walk the earth daily. Remember that episode when the drunk finds a bag of toys at Christmastime? He starts passing out all the boys and actually BECOMES Santa Claus, eventually finding a sleigh with a bunch of reindeer attached to it and away he flies into the night sky. What a gift to an otherwise hopeless man.

I love Twilight Zone.

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Blues Festival

July 1st, 2011

Hey, head down to the Blues Festival this weekend, I’m selling tickets and accessories!

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CHICAGO!

June 27th, 2011

Just back from several days at the Creative Freelancers Conference in Chicago. It was fabulous. Met some really interesting and fun people, ate some interesting food (no deep dish pizza, though, there just wasn’t time!), learned some, and was inspired much. Check out Millennium Park’s bean, by Anish Kapoor.

Yes that’s me.

The last Mayor Daley spearheaded the city beautification project, as evidenced by these massive planters which march along the streets. Big city, big planters.

The face fountains, also at Millennium Park, are pretty amazing. Glass blocks down the front with the image behind them and water running over them.

LOVE Chicago!

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My dragon boat team

June 14th, 2011

Dragon boat races over the past weekend for Rose Festival, we had so much fun, what other sport can a bunch of older folks (not all my team is old, thankfully) compete in as a team, and successfully? We ended up in the finals of the second division. It is so much fun. Check out the photo of our flag catcher Consu leaning over the head of the dragon. We had so much fun. These photos are by a teammate’s father, thank you Jerry Braun.

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Order North/Northeast SmartTrips materials NOW!

June 10th, 2011

It’s your last chance to order some cool materials that will give you lots of good ideas for walks and bike rides around North and Northeast Portland. Also get a coupon book with tons of valuable coupons. And you can also order a water conservation kit from the Water Bureau which includes a nozzle and aerators for two faucets … they’ll save you money! If you live in the area shown in the map, you can order FREE stuff! Last Saturday I went on one of the walks, led by Rich Cassidy, it was so much fun. Lots of folks on this one, also LOTS of stairs, up and down the public stairs along the Alameda Ridge.

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Starlight Parade Update

June 7th, 2011

It was so much fun, and so hot, and so crowded. We had a blast. The best part was after the end of the parade, when the driver of the semi truck hauling our boat/trailer was mis-directed through the disband area and we ended up driving through the streets of the Pearl District, waving at people on the streets and in restaurants. How he fit that huge dragon boat on an even huger trailer through those little streets I don’t know but he did it. We ended up back where we started in the formation area where there were still floats and bands lined up waiting to start the parade. It must have been a really late night for some people.

Here’s my friend Jane and I standing in the boat before the parade.

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Starlight Parade for us!

May 31st, 2011

The Rose Festival gets a big send off with this Saturday’s Starlight Parade, the night time, lights-on-the-floats parade through downtown Portland. Of course I am old enough to remember the good old Merrykhana Parade which was a wild thing and was eventually done away with in favor of the much kinder and gentler Starlight. I still miss it, although those pirates from Seattle Seafair can still give me nightmares. They would grab people from off the parade route and put them in “cages” on their float. Eventually the captive parade viewer would come running back to their seat along the route, having been transported several blocks down the route on the pirates’ float. I lived in fear they would grab me. Why I thought they would bother with a dorky little kid like me I don’t know. Typically they would grab a buxom blonde.

So this year my dragon boat team, U Dragon U, has been asked to be on the Portland Kaohsiung Dragon Boat Festival’s official float which is basically one of their new dragon boats put up on a flatbed truck. We are pretty excited about it. Should be fun and the weather MIGHT be nice. And we also MIGHT have our new orange shirts to wear. So much fun.

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Creatives Unite

May 24th, 2011

I’ve just registered for the Creative Freelancer Conference in Chicago June 23 and 24. Ilise Benum at Marketing Mentor has done such a good job of organizing this conference and providing marketing and promotional tips for designers. I’m looking forward to meeting her and connecting with other designers . . . and seeing Chicago. Never been to Chicago. Can’t wait, I so love big cities! Also love sharing ideas with like-minded individuals from other parts of the world. So necessary for us solo-preneurs to link up with others.

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How time flies

May 16th, 2011

Just coming off my busy season and getting back to some blog updates. Has it really been since December that I posted anything? That’s pretty sad. Fortunately it’s because I’ve been swamped with my SmartTrips and Sunday Parkways jobs, not to mention several huge proposals for Stacy and Witbeck. Here’s some of the new look for SmartTrips Northeast:

I love the color palette:

If you live in Northeast Portland (area below), click on the color palette above. It will direct you to the SmartTrips website where can order your free transportation resources. You can get tons of cool transportation materials, plus a water conservation kit that has a bathroom faucet aerator, kitchen faucet aerator, a shower timer and lots of other water-saving gadgets