So, let's say you have a large code base, and this entails lots of different modules that have their own CSS files. Now, in a production environment, you don't want to make the end user download all those stylesheets because it will slow down page loads, so you package them all up in a single file, minimize white space, remove comments, etc. In a development environment, however, you want to be able to see what the heck you are doing. So you've developed this nifty code that will include files individually on a development environment and smush them all together on production. You pat yourself on the back because, really, the whole thing is pretty slick. Until.

Until IE starts messing with your head again. Because this week was when we reached the magic 31 number. Moreover, we reached it with the stylesheet that takes care of one module on our system. The one I happened to be working on. So all other browsers in the known universe displayed my page correctly, but IE, for no discernable reason whatsoever did not. I sorted it out rather quickly, thanks to Google + random nerds, but should we really still have to be dealing with this kind of thing? Should I still be raising my fists up to the ceiling shouting, "Why, IE, why?"

Internet Explorer, I beseech you: please stop making me shake my fists at you. My vocabulary isn't getting any less colorful where you're concerned, and although that's fantastic from a creative standpoint, it makes us both look unprofessional. Thanks.

Work was quiet when I arrived. I was the first one in, replacing the blue-gray of the office with light from the lamps we prefer to the overhead fluorescent lights, the hum of the heating system the only sound. The others showed up, our keyboards clacked, and all was quiet until the protest began.

First, we noticed the helicopters. Then some cheers from the crowd. On our way to lunch, we stopped to watch a standoff between police and protestors. A woman with a surgical mask asked a co-worker to take her photo and then tried to talk to me about Saturday Night Fever, but I didn't know the words to the song so she gave up. Across the street, about 15 bike cops corralled the protestors, preventing them from moving into Pioneer Square, or to the Chase Bank on the opposite corner. Mounted police were stationed along the Max tracks while trucks with SWAT teams hanging off them circled the block. A white box van with speakers on the top left its spot next to the mounted police so a bus could pass through.

Eventually, the protestors were allowed to continue marching north on 6th Avenue and we went to find food. The red and yellow leaves on the sidewalk around the food carts were stunning. Lunch in hand, we returned to the office, noting that the protest had moved east of the office by a couple of blocks and had grown louder. The tension could be heard, seen, and felt.

Back in the office, we mostly heard the police helicopters hovering overhead. We pulled up a Twitter feed to follow what was happening. People reported: "The Wells Fargo at Standard Insurance closed," and "I'm outside the bank, they just closed the curtains". Jokes were made: "I'm occupying a parking garage because the protestors are blocking my way out," or "#occupyashower". One woman tweeted about her female co-workers piled up against the window to admire the hot cops. Maybe riot gear is the new sexy. People criticized or vented frustration: "losers go home," or "shutting down public transportation hurts me, not the 1%". Two of my co-workers waited until the protest moved a few blocks, then ran down to get some coffee.

Work resumed, but we checked in periodically. 20 new tweets. "Mayor Adams says police overtime is at $750,000." 16 new tweets. "Chase Bank shut down." Then there was a flurry. 90 new tweets. That was when the pepper spray came out. Once the woman was sprayed in the face, it was pretty much over.

Quiet resumed after that. The helicopters eventually moved on, and by the time I left work, no protesters were left. Alone in my yellow rain jacket, I rode over the bridge toward home with a red light blinking behind me, bike tires zzsshhing on the wet concrete.

When a sponge is saturated, you just squeeze it out over the sink to free up some room. With a brain, well, that's kind of a disgusting visual. And while there's probably some room for squeezing information out of a brain, I've already squeezed out the obvious things like celebrity pregnancies and the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. Now the information I'm not retaining feels more important. In order to stick with the sponge analogy, I'd say that the goal isn't to squeeze out the water/information to make more room. I want to absorb it, making it part of the sponge, thereby resulting in a larger sponge. You with me?

OK, maybe that analogy has outlived its usefulness. What I'm really noticing here is that there has been a change in the amount of information I'm able to retain. I think this has three primary causes: 1) I don't have enough time to reflect upon the events of my days, 2) the constant switching of topics has reduced my focus on any given topic, and 3) my brain is getting older along with the rest of me. So to improve, I'll have to make some headway with #1 because #2 isn't going anywhere and #3 is just plain inevitable.

In all, things are looking good on that front, given that I've found some time to idly muse about sponge-brains. It's been a delightful way to spend a rainy afternoon in a café in Portland.

The thing about having all this information at our fingertips is that it sometimes feels too fast. In the end, I almost felt cheated that The Case of the Purse in the Carport was solved so easily. Shouldn't I have had to write letters to some Rosicrusians? Or at least scour the phone book and make several phone calls to unrelated Duthies and then have to worry about whether or not to trust someone if they claimed to be relatives?

The purse and wallet were a matched set

But given the day and the age and a fast internet connection, I was able to learn about FloKat and her family very quickly. I knew she had two sons, Thomas Jr. and Roderik. She was born in 1893, and was a short, stout woman. I began to wonder about her, about her life. Why did she immigrate? How did she meet Thomas? I will not go so far as to call it a full-blown obsession, but I did not think of much else for several days. So it was immensely satisfying to receive an email in reply to my query

To: Rebecca
From: DuthieOnline

Thank you so much.

Please contact David Duthie of Portland, Oregon - see email address above.

Cordially,
Free Duthie

I am under a tornado warning hence short message.

Wow! Someone named Free emailed me during a tornado to help me locate the purse's rightful owner. How cool is that? And why did I feel a little sad? I did not email David right away when I got the email. I could argue that I was busy with work (true), but I also wanted a little more time with the purse, time to let my imagination run wild. So it was that David emailed me first.

To: Rebecca
From: David Duthie

Hello Rebecca -

Florence Kathleen Duthie is my grandmother! She passed away in 1965. How amazing to hear that her purse has been found somewhere after all these years! My brother and sisters will be amazed also when I tell them.

I sure want to talk to you and here the details, and of course get the purse. I live in the [redacted] area of S.W. Portland. my phone number is [redacted]. Please give me a call!

Thanks very much,

David Duthie

Kathleen's purse, back with family

Even reading that again after all these months, I get a happy, slightly goosebumpy feeling. I had been afraid of who would eventually lay claim to the purse. What if the response had been, "So? Is there money in it?" And what if I had to give it to them anyway? But I couldn't have found a better person to pass the purse onto. Because for all my musings about FloKat, David was right there with the facts, and willing to share his stories with me.

So obviously, we arranged to meet, and I gave him the purse. He and his wife were so lovely and they even brought photos of FloKat (at my request). I had been so curious to find out what she looked like. I took pictures of the pictures, and they even posed for a photo for me. David told us stories about his grandmother, and how she used to cruise around in her 1955 Pontiac Star Chief. Apparently she wasn't the most attentive driver.

A young Kathleen Duthie

I am, of course, kicking myself now because I didn't immediately write down the stories he told, instead relying on my memory. I can tell you that FloKat was born in England and that she and Thos. were separated by the time the purse was stolen. She used to buy cakes with elaborate scenes (like a circus) on them, and she was musical--a singer, if I recall correctly. The house on Talbot is no longer around. The Portland Water Bureau now owns the land. Some day, I will drive by to see where it once was. And, of course, I can tell you that she lost her purse in 1957, and it was found 54 years later during a garage demolition project.

Oh and Free? His name is actually Fred. I guess it's easy to make typos when a tornado is on the way.

So closes The Case of the Purse in the Carport. Carolyn Keene would probably have done it better justice, and remembered more details (or faithfully reported them in a more timely fashion). But I think these photos round out the story nicely.

Most of these are Kathleen, with Thos. up in the right corner and a photo of her with friends at the house on Talbot in the lower left. I think David said she used to do music recitals up there.

Fast foward 28 years to last April, when a purse fell with an unremarkable thud from the ceiling Jesse and I were in the process of removing from the carport. I didn't pay any attention, as it was about the 50th thing that fell from above that day. So when Jesse said, "It's a purse," my first thought was, "Huh," and I went back to my meager attempts at wielding a pickaxe overhead. (A note for those of you foolish enough to try such a thing: muscles help.)

After a few more swings, I noticed that Jesse was quiet in a way that garage demolition isn't, so I turned to see what he was doing. It was indeed a purse, complete with a wallet, church-going gloves, lipsticks, a couple of faded photographs, and everything. We spent the next few minutes pulling things out of it. It was, if you will, a living purse. Meaning that its owner was very much in the process of using it at the time she parted from it. That time appears to have been 1957, and for at least some part of the last 54 years, that purse gathered dust in between the rafters of my carport.

Did someone lose a purse?

From the purse, we got her name: Kathleen Duthie. From the immigration card in the wallet, her full legal name: Florence Kathleen Duthie. I started thinking of her as FloKat. I also started Googling.

Google found a reference to her in The Rosicrucian Digest from 1953. I knew this was her because there were several receipts and membership cards from the Rosicrucians in her wallet. She was the Master of the Rose Lodge here in Portland, and the address matched the one in the engraved leather of her purse, as well as on several of her IDs.

I spent a little time over the next day looking for more clues about FloKat, but I didn't find any until I signed up for a free trial with Ancestry.com on Monday or Tuesday. There, I was able to find the phone listing and her husband's name: Thos. She was married to Thos Duthie! This was just the breakthrough I needed to crack the case! I also found a reference to this same Thos Duthie on the passenger manifest from a ship that entered Ellis Island in 1915 from Scotland, but he wasn't stopping in the U.S. He was 20-years-old, single, and headed for Canada. After that, I sort of hit a dead end until Jesse told me that Thos is a common abbreviation for Thomas. That made me feel a bit stupid, but no sleuth worth her internet access ever gave up for a little thing like that.

FloKat liked shades of red

In the phone book listing, Thos was listed as the president of Duthie & Company. I wouldn't find out for another several days that they were a fruit exporter. I also found information about J.F. Duthie & Company, which had to do with shipbuilding in Seattle and Portland. Though I'm not sure how (or if) they were linked in real life, I found information about J.F. Duthie & Company at DuthieOnline.com. I hit paydirt when I sent an email asking if anybody there knew the history of the purse or how to contact its owner or her descendants. A couple of days later, I received a brief email...

I'll fill you in on the rest of the details later, and hopefully it won't take me another three months to get there!

Family photos

As some of you do know, Jesse and I have set our DIY sights on making the garage into a usable structure. Currently, it is half carport and half garage. Jesse, an avid collector of BMW engines and transmissions, needs more places to put them—preferably away from rain, snow, and squirrels who love to put walnuts right behind the distributor cap. Moreover, he needs (or at least really, really wants) a place where he can, say, weld up some suspension bits in December or rebuild the top end of an engine in February and stay somewhat comfortable/alive while doing so.

So April was supposed to be entirely about garage work, but we had a few prerequisites to get out of the way, so demolition only really began on Saturday. It was all of these things:

• Dusty (we wore masks)
• A bit dangerous (even with protective goggles)
• Tiring
• Fascinating

We probably should have worn hard hats

Now those of you who were reading back in the days of the termite fiasco will recall that the previous owners of our house liked to store crap in hidden places. So we were not too terribly surprised when a high heel shoe almost fell on Jesse's head after we pulled down one of the pieces of plywood that served as a ceiling. That was, of course, just the beginning. (Or was it the middle? It's all a haze of lead dust and pickaxes at this point).

Anyhow, I will post more photos later, but in addition to the shoe, here is a partial list of things that nearly fell on us when we took down the ceiling over the carport (keep in mind that this is just over the carport side—there was no ceiling in the garage half.)

• The top of a stove
• A red hat
• A set of plates (now in many pieces)
• A Western Family coffee can
• One of those round, cylindrical things they used to put the newspaper in, from The Journal
• A hubcap
• A window, which looks to be in rather good condition
• A mirror
• Three dead birds
• A bicycle chain guard

The most amazing thing that nearly fell on us, though, was a purse, which appears to have been liberated from its owner in 1957. My Nancy Drew instincts have been engaged, and I'm currently working on tracking down the family of the owner, Kathleen Duthie, who sadly died in 1965. I've made a lot of headway, and I have to say it's a lot of fun! But that's a whole separate blog post, and one that I'm going to have to save for later. I'm late for work. But here's a photo of the purse: