Since I only had one comment posted on the last entry I have decided to give you more time to enter your comments on the Thursday, Feb 19 entry, but also give you a brand new "What Would Jolina Do?" I will annouce the winners and the conclusions to both of these stories during my next entry.

Now for the new "What Would Jolina Do?"...

About this time of year I start to miss those dog days of summer. At night while I lie under eight comforters with my head dangerously close to the space heater, I dream of lazy backyard barbecues with friends. The coconut scent of sun block, roasting Hebrew national hotdogs and the crisp freshness of freshly squeeze lemonade being poured into a glass filled with ice fill the humid air. I drink in those summer dreams as if they were reality only to wake up to the unpleasant gray sky forecasted to bring showers to the gloomy city of Portland. The other day while I was going through my closet to make room for springtime clothes I found a pair of shorts! Shorts—my legs haven’t seen sunlight since September—did I even know how to wear this unfamiliar garment? These half pants lay on the closet floor as if to mock me. Oh, summer, come soon…I am beginning to forget what you look like.

For me the official mark of summer time in Portland is the opening of the annual Rose Festival by the Queen of Rosaria. No, this is not some science fiction novel, our city really does have a Queen. Selected from a group of area high school girls by the Rose Festival gods, the Queen is required to lord over the festival activities. The activities of this 25 day event include a starlight parade, a grand floral parade, a Pepsi family fun center (think Carnival with cotton candy), Dragon Boat Races on the Willamette River and other Rose Festival sponsored shows and happenings. The whole city is invited to this grand party—young or old there is something for everyone. There are members of the Portland community who get picked to be “Royal Rosarians” every year. They get to wear fun white suits, hats and mini capes. (In a future entry I will talk about my dream to become one of these chosen few, but for now you will just have to wait and find out if my dream comes true.)

Last summer produced particularly pleasant weather for the festival. The entire summer was actually very warm and enjoyable. So, enjoyable in fact I decided to pass up my usual bus commute home and run the three miles from work to my apartment. Geared up with Nike TM Running attire (free publicity Nike TM, feel free to contact me for more advertisement space) I took to the bike and runner friendly streets of Portland. My usual route consisted of the PSU downtown area, then I continued across the river via the Hawthorne bridge. Once on the East side (and the best side) of town, I took the Riverfront pathway past Omsi (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) to SE Division, then glided home all summer. Ok, maybe I didn’t glide ALL summer, maybe I more like hobbled home during the last part of the summer, similar to a hobbit who has been chased by faceless mad men on a quest to destroy a burdensome ring. Ok, maybe it wasn’t the “greatest adventure,” maybe I more like severely pulled some sort of muscle in my right leg, making it feel like a knotted up rubber band. It was about August when I realized that my backside felt rather odd. It was as if when the muscles in my backside were relaxed they still felt tense. I knew that all I really needed was a good massage on those troublesome muscles. However, I didn’t have enough money to go to Salon Tres Chic in the Pearl to get it worked out. And with Josh at Burning Man (an “interesting experimental community in the Nevada desert”—which is an entirely different entry, by the way) I was pretty much out of luck. There was really no one I wanted to ask to “massage” my backside. Until one day when explaining to my friend Gillian why I was walking funny, I figured out that perhaps all I needed was someone to punch me in the tense area to release the muscle stress. Could this nontraditional, alternative treatment be beneficial to my backside? I was running out of options, so I bent over and…
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Would you let Gillian, who is a good friend but definitely not a proctologist, bump your rump OR would you run out of the house (which is how you got into this mess in the first place)?