Portland trip

We had a really nice trip home to Portland a week and a half ago, which I haven't thoroughly blogged about yet. Before we left on Thursday night, though, we had an old friend visit from Seattle, which was a wonderful last-minute surprise. Sarah came into San Francisco on Wednesday night and stayed at the Chateau Jernstrom (cramped, uncomfortable accomodations with cold cereal for breakfast). It was a short visit, but so nice to see a friendly face from WA. We got to have lunch together on Thursday, before we departed as well. Sarah lived in San Francisco for a year, many moons before we arrived. She is an old hand at public transportation and whatnot. We didn't get any pics of Sarah while she was visiting with us, but here is one that I stole from her: Such a beautiful, happy girl. I love Sarah Kraybill. Come back to San Francisco!!

Thursday night, we trekked out to SFO for our flight home, right on time, only to find that our flight had been delayed from 8:30 departure to 10:30 departure. Ugh. I hate hanging at the airport. We finally arrived in Portland at midnight. My sister was so kind and gave us her bed to sleep in, while she slept on the floor at her apartment.

The next morning we were awoken by a little voice, "hi auntie..." Devin snuck in on us, and was so excited to see us. Chelsea said it was a good bribe to get him to go to sleep the night before, that we would be here when he woke up. We accompanied him to his swimming lesson. He's so far beyond all the other kids in his class. They were jumping off the edge into the pool, and all the other kids held the teachers hand and gingerly slipped into the pool. Devin cannon-balled into the water before the teacher even had the chance to hold out her hands to him.






Back at Chelsea's after the lesson, mom, grandma and Lila arrived and we had a reunion with the doggies. Neil hadn't seen them since Christmas. Alas, Lola was still gargantuan. Lila's weight loss program didn't work:



Then we got all packed up and headed out to the beach. Yay - I LOVE Cannon Beach. We stay at this really really nice house that fits the whole family and is only a block from the beach. Since the point of going to the beach is to actually go to the beach, that's what Chelsea, Devin, Neil and I did.



Unfortunately, when you go on vacation, it always seems to take a day atleast for your body to realize it's on vacation and get relaxed and rested up. We were only at the beach for two nights, so it just seemed to fly by. Plus, I've noticed that the older I get, the faster things happen in life. As a kid, time seemed to just sort of creep by, everything lasted forever. At Christmas, for instance, the three days that my whole family would spend together lasted an eternity (in a good way). Three days was like three weeks - we had so much fun and got so much stuff done. Now, three days is gone in the blink of an eye. There's never enough time to do all that you had planned to do, and it's always over before you are ready. Maybe it's because we had so much more energy when we were kids that we did so much more that it felt like the days were longer.

We spent all day Saturday exploring the beach and looking at the Sandcastle contest that was going on. There were three or four really good teams, and the rest of the sandcastles were just kind of eh. It also meant that the beach was PACKED - they even allowed cars to drive on the beach and park right by the sandcastles. Normally, Cannon Beach is a no-drive beach. So we combed through the tide pools, but there were just so many people there.

The weather looks cold, but there was actually no wind at all and it was really pleasant...

It's quite a long walk from the house we stayed in down to Haystack rock and back - probably 4-5 miles round trip, but Lola and Swarley were troopers. They walked the whole way - even wading through the little streams on the beach. However, when we climbed the dunes to get back to our house, and hit the little patch of grass at the top, Lola plopped down and refused to keep going. Swarley kept tugging at the leash to get her to go, but she was having none of it.

We let her rest for a few minutes, and then she got up and made it 50 more feet to the house. She was pretty wiped out for the rest of the night.

After dinner, we had a family first - bonfire on the beach! We usually come out in October or April, and so it's just too cold and rainy to do a fire on the beach. This was our first one. It was really nice and the wind died down completely for us. And now we have Sean, who is a master firebuilder, as part of our family so the fire was really good.

The next morning, we had one last walk on the beach, and then it was time to say bye to Lila and the doggies already. One more month, though, and they'll be with us forever...

Neil and I headed back into Portland to our old favorite brewpub, the Lucky Lab. We met up with some friends and had a really nice lunch and a delicious Reggie's Red. Ahh, good beer and brewpubs - nothing like it. Then we meandered through our old neighborhood, Sellwood, and had a lovely walk down memory lane. It made me a little misty-eyed. The sun was shining and the air was warm and all I wanted to do was take a beer out onto our back deck and enjoy the evening. Unfortunately, someone else is enjoying that deck now. We drove past our old house, and the hops that we planted are totally flourishing. It's nice to know that a little piece of us is still at the house. And the dogwoods were in flower - they are my favorite tree.

After a stop at yummy Burgerville for dinner we headed back up to mom and dad's where we got the full tour of the garden and the yard, and visited the chickens.

Monday, Neil and I headed back into Portland. Neil dropped me off downtown and headed out to Beaverton to the Nike employee's store and to meet a friend for lunch. I went back to my old office and met up with all my friends and we went out to Lebanese lunch. It was SO great to see old friends and faces again and get all caught up on what's going on in Portland. I was just all smiles for the rest of the day after that. I miss Portland. I walked from the office to Powell's, which I would have thought was a ridiculously long walk when I lived in Portland, but now that I am a San Franciscan, it seemed like just a short ways. I guess I'm getting used to walking. I spent a really nice 15 minutes (which, if you know Powell's is definitely not enough time) browsing through Powell's and wishing that there was one in San Francisco. Neil picked me back up and we hung out at my sister's pool until it was time to go to the plane. It was such a lovely, mid-70's, perfectly sunny, fluffy clouds kind of a day. I just wanted to stay.

No delays on the flight home and Neil and I were back in S.F. and in our house by 10:00. Just a few weeks now, and we'll be trekking home again for Chelsea's wedding.

Oh yeah - I came across a discovery last night when I was making tacos. I thought I had a packet of taco seasoning, but I didn't, so I looked up a recipe on the internet, and gave it a whirl. It tasted EXACTLY like the stuff in the packet, and took about 10 seconds to mix up. Give it a try:

1 Tbl. chili powder
2 tsp. onion powder

1 tsp. each cumin, garlic powder, paprika, oregano and sugar

1/2 tsp salt

mix together thoroughly. Add to pan with ground beef and 1/2 cup of water. Simmer 4-5 minutes or unti liquid is reduced.

Delicious!!

My happy place

Just got home from my happy place - the pool. I love swimming so much and the pool is such a happy place. I have loved pools my whole life - we went to Hawaii to visit my Aunt when we were little and was I interested in the beach? No - give me the POOL! The beautiful faux blue water, the smell of the chlorine - ahh....heaven. Even now, I still love the pool. It's full of happy sounds - kids having a great time playing around, the gentle splash of flip turns as adults do their laps, the music to the water aerobics. The atmosphere is filled with happy sounds. And then there is the sunlight shining through the windows, making that beautiful pattern on the walls as it bounces off the water. It's really lovely when you're underwater, too, and you swim out of the dark, into the sunshine. And then, of course, there is the actual swimming itself. The rhythm of the strokes, the noises of the pool fading in and out as you breath, the sound of your heartbeat and breathing. Lovely. It just feels like a meditation to me. Plus all that great exercise. You burn the most calories when you swim, or so I remember hearing.

But the best best thing about the pool isn't even the pool itself - it's the hot tub. I LOVE hot tubs. Someday, I will own one. It's like a bath, but so much better - BECAUSE THE WATER NEVER GETS COLD!!! LOVE it. I could sit in the hot tub submerged up to my ears all day long. Heaven. I sit in the hot tub for awhile before I get in and start swimming, then I sit in the hot tub again after I have finished swimming my laps. Lets just be honest, the hot tub is probably the real reason that I go to the pool. The promise of warmth at the end of a long swim. 

Now I'm going to get a big glass of orange juice and two gingersnaps that I baked last night, and snuggle up with my new Cooking Light magazine that came today. Oh bliss...

The day the TV died

So while we were in Portland this last weekend (a better blog to come sometime soon - we had a great time and I got some super-adorable movies of the doggies), the change-over from analog TV to digital TV happened. Back in Feb/Mar when the TV was originally supposed to switch, Neil and I had made the decision to not buy the converter box and just let the TV go. Neil's gone most of the time, so it's not really much of a temptation for him, but I get sucked into the black hole all the time. When you're home alone, it's so easy just to say that you're "turning it on for background noise", and then sit down and get sucked into some crappy program for the rest of the evening. It's just such a time-suck, even though a lot of the stuff I watch is on PBS, so I can convince myself that it's actually educational. So, I was totally on board to the experiment of no TV. Then, they pushed the date for conversion back, and I got a 3 month reprieve.

So, this week was the big day. We got back from Portland Monday night, turned on the TV to check it, and got only one channel, with some lady telling us how to connect our converter box. Wow - it's real. Neil and I went to see UP on Tuesday night, so didn't get to really experiment with what it would be like with no TV, so last night was the big night. What would I do to fill all the extra time? Would I be twiddling my thumbs? Bored out of my mind? Well, I kind of cheated. I had laundry to do, which took up half of the evening anyways, then I was searching for a recipe, which took up a bunch of extra time, and then I had to make dinner. So even on a normal day, I probably wouldn't have turned on the TV until after dinner anyways. But this is when I cheated. I dished up my noodle salad and plopped in front of the TV to watch a couple of episodes of The Wire that I had from Netflix. So, the end result was kind of the same - still in front of the TV. Hmmm... not to mention that half of the programs that we watch on TV are actually on the internet, so having no TV won't prohibit our watching them. Come on, we can't miss The Office and 30 Rock, right?

So the jury is still out on whether this will really accomplish anything at all - but atleast it will prohibit the aimless flipping of channels, then settling on some really dumb program, just because it's on. Baby steps, I guess.

I've got my baby back, baby back, baby back...

Neil came home last night and it is definitely true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I was SO happy to see him. I hadn't realized this, but I'm almost always the one that leaves home alone, to go home, when I went to Vegas, etc. I'm not usually the one being left at home. In fact, I can't remember having to sleep alone in our bed at home. And it sucked, big time. I stayed up really late on Sunday night, because I just couldn't bring myself to turn off the light and curl up all alone. So I was very happy to see Neil walk through the door yesterday! He was a little worse for the wear from his L.A. trip, though, so he curled up on the couch and I made some chicken noodle soup. Good for a sore tummy. We went to bed at 9:30. It was fantastic. I woke up this morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

An old friend from Seattle is coming to visit tonight! YAY! She will be spending the night in our tiny studio. It seems like we've had more people stay with us in our little studio in San Francisco than in our house in Portland when we could offer an entire living room. This is our third house guest since we moved down, and I think we had zero house guests in Portland. But I'm not complaining - I love having visitors!

And we leave for Portland tomorrow night for four whole days of rest and relaxation. Hah. We will be heading out to Cannon Beach from Friday to Sunday, which will be really lovely. We rent a big house out there and the whole family joins us - Aunt, grandma and Lila will be coming too. And bringing the doggies!!! Can't wait to see my little babies. Lola is supposedly on a crash diet, so we'll see if there is any improvement. Although I think Lila is serious about it this time. She didn't realize that if you leave them alone while they eat, Lola will steal Swarley's food. Which makes sense then why she's ballooning and he's staying regular-sized. Here's a pic of them just because I think they're adorable, and that's enough:

Okay, so it was more than one pic, but they're so super-cute, I couldn't help myself. And on Monday, I have a lunch scheduled with some good friends in Portland, and Neil will get to hang out at Powell's books for a few hours, which he loves. And I'm sure we'll have some time to track down some good beer. There's always time for good beer!

Anywhoo, nothing really exciting to talk about, but probably won't have anything to say until we get back from P-town, so - see you next week! Happy weekend to all (just a little early).

Catching up

Well, once again I've fallen off the blog wagon. With everything else in my life, I get very very excited about a project at the beginning, then have a hard time following through with it in the end. Not really a trait that I'm proud of...

So, last time we talked was awhile ago, I guess. May. And a lot has happened since then that I haven't written about.

Mom, Dad, Sister and Devin all came to visit for a weekend. And we had a busy, jam-packed, fun-filled time. Actually, the weather was kind of crummy, so my visions of playing in the water at the beach were turned into huddling in jackets at the beach, but it was still nice. We rode all the public transportation for Devin. The Muni-underground was his favorite, even though he got to ring the trolley bell at the end of the ride. We went to Golden Gate Park and Devin spent a LONG time on the concrete slides in the Children's quarter. We ate at Pacific Catch and Polkers and dad declared the Polker's burger one of the best burgers he's ever eaten. I concur. We had a wonderful breakfast out on the back patio of the Squat and Gobble, and Devin finished off a huge pile of whip cream and a few bites of waffle.

We went to see the Sea Lions at Pier 39 because Devin was dying to see them. I don't think they were quite what he had in mind. He said, "They smell ugly." Boy is that the truth. And they sound ugly as well. We drove down the windiest street in the world. I think Devin was more impressed by one of the steepest hills in the city, Fillmore street. After we drove down that, he said, "maybe we should drive down that big hill again." We went to Ocean Beach which was cold, then we drove 20 miles south to the little beach that Neil and I discovered, in the hopes that it would be warmer. It was not. But it was less windy and still fun.


Isn't my nephew adorable? We stopped at the Golden gate bridge and Devin discovered a fear of heights. Then we ended up back in our neighborhood where it had been sunny all day long. Ah well...timing. The next morning I took Sister and a very sleepy Devin out to the airport via BART. We were on the bus and a white man in a suit got on. Devin pointed to the man and said, "Look mom, it's the president". She said, "no, honey, it's just a businessman." A few blocks later, a black man in a suit got on the bus and Devin said, "No, actually there's the president." *smile*

After that whirlwind weekend, we had a few days to rest, and then another whirlwind weekend day was upon Neil and I. The CA Academy of Science is having free days for certain neighborhoods on certain weekends, and our neighborhood was Saturday. All you do is show up with a bill or something that has your name and zip code on it (to prove you live in the neighborhood) and complimentary admission is yours!

I love getting in places for free. Especially when the adult price is $24.50. Yikes! The most exciting part of the Academy (in my opinion) is this large globe that encloses a re-created rain forest. It is just beautiful, and there are birds and butterflies flitting freely about inside. You walk up ramps along the outside of the globe, to each level of the rain forest. And each level also has little displays full of all sorts of interesting critters and creatures.

Here are some of the fun, creepy, crawly critters that we saw:

I think this centipede is truly one of the scariest things I have ever seen! It was a good 7-8 inches long, just to freak you out even more. Imagine waking up with one of these crawling on you...

Strawberry poison dart frogs: I was hoping they didn't have a long jumping range, as these were about 3 feet from us, in the open.

After the rainforest, we went down into the aquarium, which was your pretty standard aquarium, but we still saw fun stuff:

After the aquarium, that's pretty much the Academy, so we watched the planetarium show which was ok and then viewed the living roof, which is a super-cool idea, but not really all that much to look at:

Then it was time to rush home for a quick nap (ahh, I love naps) and then off to the ballpark for a Giants game! It's always fun to be at a baseball game live. And Neil's been more interested in baseball lately - he bought a hat. (not seen in this blog post)

Unfortunately, the Giants lost, but it was still fun. And Neil bought a $9 beer. Wow.

I can't even remember what we did on Sunday - but I think it involved a lot more napping. We had a pretty mellow week and then Saturday night we went to see a band play - an old friend from Seattle is in it. They are called The Maldives and they are really good live - they have kind of a country/rock type sound and there are 8 members in the band, including a fiddle and a banjo, so pretty interesting. They were opening for a band called Or, The Whale which is a local San Francisco band and they were really good, too. But the real gem of the evening was, in my opinion, the first opening band. They were called Built for the Sea and they were just phenomenal!! I bought their album and their EP at the concert for $15 and they are just SO good. And I don't know if I've been to a concert where I liked all the opening bands plus the headliner equally. It was a fantastic concert.

Then, Sunday morning, Neil got on a plane and went to L.A. with some classmates. And I went to a bi-yearly meeting of my community garden. Twice a year they hold this meeting for the garden, where we talk about things and vote on things that will happen in the garden. I assumed it would be a nice friendly 20-minute meeting where everyone happily fellowshipped and then we all went home in a lovely, sunny mood. Wow, that was a little off the mark. These community gardeners are SERIOUS! There was debate, voices raised, eyes rolled, sarcasm, fighting. I had no idea that there were deep philosophical rifts between gardeners and what they expect from their community garden. For instance, we were voting on adding more plots to the garden since we have a really long wait list now. My thought - more plots sure, sound great, add em in, the more the merrier!! But the discussion soon devolved into an argument between the people who want to build more plots and the people who want to preserve open space for "community" food - fruit trees and stuff like this. It all came up because one of the spots they identified for being a good, sunny plot currently has a plum tree planted in it. Half of the group said "screw the plum tree, make a plot" and the other half said, "Save the plum tree, screw the plot!". It was quite a contentious argument that ensued. And lasted half an hour. In the end, the plum tree was saved (for now). When I thought we were safely through the arguing, another topic came up for discussion - whether to charge a $25 annual flat fee for new members who join, no matter what time of year they join (the current process), or to pro-rate based on the month that they join. Wow - it's only $25, who cares!! But people really really cared! There was discussion about whether the garden should be making money, and putting aside money for a rainy day, or to buy stuff. People got really angry. Fingers were brandished, voices were raised. Over a $25 dollar fee. After 2 hours, we finally had everything voted on and we adjourned. Believe me when I say I felt lucky to get out of there after only 2 hours!! These people mean business - it's not just gardening to them, it's a life philosophy. I just want to grow a little lettuce. :)

With Neil gone, I can again try cooking things that he won't eat, such as macaroni and cheese, which I tried last night. I have been on a lifelong quest to find a decent homemade macaroni and cheese recipe. I was brought up on Kraft and have probably been ruined by all that fake cheese, but I just can't find a recipe that tastes as good. They are almost always too bland - no flavor. So last night, I tried the America's test kitchen recipe and it was really interesting. It called for evaporated milk, eggs, mustard and tabasco sauce (?!!) to make the base of the sauce. Then I bought extra-sharp cheddar to put in, cause I thought that would really give it a flavor punch, which has always been lacking in the homemade mac'n'cheese recipes I've tried. Well, it ended up being too MUCH flavor this time. Way way too cheddary. I think the recipe is still salvagable, but it needs less cheddar, or maybe just less sharp cheddar. Maybe a mild, creamy cheese mixed in there would be good, too. Like a Fontina or something. Anywhoo... it was edible but not fantastic. Good thing Neil was gone.

Whew - so there you have it. The last three weeks in one post. This weekend we head for home!! YAY! Portland, here we come!