Photo contest!

My picture got third place in a photo contest! How thrilling!

Summer, how I love thee

I can’t wait for summer. I am so excited for long days and warm weather. Deborah and I are tentatively planning on a Big Trip this summer. This makes me insanely happy. We had a fabulous time on our last Big Trip when we went to the Canadian Rockies in 2004. The scenery was AMAZING and we both had a lot of fun. We get along well and we have similar travel tastes, so we make excellent traveling partners. I hope that job and money stuff allows us to bring this year’s trip to fruition.

We’ll drive, since this will be an outdoors trip, meaning that we’ll be camping, hiking, and backpacking. So we’ll stay in the West. I had suggested the Tetons, but it may be that we don’t have time to go that far, since it’s a four-day round trip drive. So we may just stay in the Pacific Northwest. I usually decide where I want to go based on how beautiful it is in pictures. As such, I have acquired Washington: Portrait of a State, and have dug Oregon: Portrait of a State out of one of my many boxes of books I just got out of storage (GOOD GOD I HAVE SO MANY BOOKS). Oregon, I’m pretty familiar with, as far as vacation destiations. Washington, not so much. So I started with the Washington book. So far, I’ve found:

• Enchatment Peaks near Leavenworth
• North Cascades National Park (but we won’t go there because Debs went there last summer)
• Mt. Baker Wilderness (ditto)
• An unremarkable lake on page 42, but it’s near a town called Twisp. Twisp! Awesome!
• Lake Chelan (central Washington)

It may be, though, that not only will we stay in the Pacific Northwest, but we’ll stay in Oregon as well. We’ve been talking about the Wallowa Mountains in NE Oregon, which are really beautiful, and I’m told that the Eagle Cap Wilderness there is breathtakingly gorgeous. Our options are many!

In addition to providing travel ideas, these kinds of pictorial books are also a huge inspiration for me in my photography. In the Washington book there’s a GORGEOUS picture of wildflowers on page 15: Indian Paintbrush, lupine, beargrass, and asters. The colors are vivid, the lighting and exposure are perfect. It’s amazing. I took several hundred pictures of this exact mix of wildflowers on Silver Star Mountain last July and while they turned out pretty good, none of my pictures look remotely as awesome as page 15. It is my dream to become that good of a photographer, not necessarily to have my pictures appear in a book, but just to have the ability to take such great pictures.

Birthdays

My Dad turned 60 on Thursday. I won’t even talk about how weird this feels to me. I don’t like to think about my parents getting old. I suppose nobody does. Anyway, we didn’t get our acts together soon enough to throw a party or anything, but the four of us went out for a really nice dinner on Friday. We went to the Black Point Inn (not an inn, actually, just a restaurant) in Oregon City, where my parents live. It’s a pretty new restaurant, and quite nice. Entrees in the upper teens and lower 20s. The food was fabulous. The salad, the bruschetta, my roast beef, everything. YUM. And because we were celebrating both Dad’s birthday and mine, we got two free desserts! I got the 7-layer chocolate cake, which was rich and chocolatly and which I could only eat a few bites of after that delicious dinner. Dad got the strawberry coconut sorbet, which was THE BEST sorbet I’ve ever had in my life. My sister agreed. We went home and wallowed in our culinary contentedness.

While we digested all that food before eating birthday cake, we opened presents. After much stress and brain-racking, Debs and had I decided to get Dad a five-month fruit-of-the-month club from Harry & David. January’s fruit should arrive next week and it’s going to be Royal Rivirea Pears. These are no ordinary pears. These are pears straight from heaven, I swear. They practically melt in your mouth. I’m salivating just thinking about it. (Must not think about the pears anymore!) My gift? An ipod nano! I’m thrilled. It’s something I wouldn’t splurge on for myself right now. Any spare money I have these days seems to go straight into my photography hobby. But I did really want one, and I told Mom that. So now I’ve got one! It’s hot pink. My friend Jenna named her new ipod last year, which I thought was deliciously clever. I never think to do stuff like that and then I’m always impressed when people come up with cool names for things like cars and ipods (I should point out that my car is ten years old, and I’ve owned it for six years, and it is unnamed to this day and probably will remain so.) But I think I’ll name my cool little hot pink ipod. So far, all I’ve come up with is Big Pink. Wow. Could I possibly be any more uncreative?

Saturday night my girlfriends and I went out for dinner at Romano’s Macaroni Grill in P-town and then hung out at Tiffany’s awesome house with beautiful hardwood floors. Good food two nights in a row. How happy was I? We had to wait for an hour to get a table and I was ravenously hungry by the time we sat down. I wolfed down an appetizer, half my pasta dish, and half a slice of cheesecake and felt full and satisfied by the end. Our waiter was….weird. Every time he brought water refills, he poured water in Carrie’s lemonade. He’d act like he had heard stuff we told him, but he really didn’t. At first it annoyed us, but by the end of dinner we were cracking up about how peculiar this guy was. Catch phrase of the evening, as originally spoken by our waiter: “Heard it.” You had to be there.

So all my birthday celebrating is done, and it’s not even my birthday yet! That’s okay. It’s not a big deal to me to celebrate ON the actual day, especially when it falls on a weekday. Tomorrow will consist of me rockin’ out with my ipod, reading a book, going on a hike, or maybe all three!

We suck at the snow thing

Yeah, we in Portland are used to dark rainy winters and warm sunny summers. That is it. We don’t do the snow thing very well. This is what happens when Portlanders try to drive in the snow. (Fast-forward to 00:40 for the famous ricocheting SUV, 01:31 for the sideways-sliding van, 02:05 for the van sliding head-first down the hill, and 03:40 for the ugly aftermath of the ricocheting SUV.)

Fortunately for drivers, the snow is melting fast now. And that, my friends, is the last time I’ll be writing a snow-related post for awhile. I promise something more interesting next time!

Three inches of snow!

The weather just keeps getting weirder. Last night they were predicting we’d wake up to maybe an inch of snow this morning. But there was quite a lot on the ground when I woke up at 7 a.m. Probably a good inch and a half. I had to be to work in Tualatin at 9, and I tried my best to get there. But the roads were just too snowy. Portland doesn’t get much snow and there just aren’t enough crews to plow and sand all the major roads when we DO get snow. So I called my boss and told her I didn’t think I’d be able to make it and I went back home, feeling more than a little stressed out by my aborted commute. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve driven in snow before.

Anyway, I pretty much spent most of the morning playing in the snow and taking pictures. My roommate and I walked a mile and a half to the nearest Starbucks, which was actually kind of fun. Big fat flakes fell from the sky the whole way there. Starbucks was hopping, as I expected it would be. It finally stopped snowing on our way back home. When all was said and done, we got three inches. It created havoc for drivers, and I got off lucky that I didn’t get in an accident, but the snow sure was beautiful. No complaints here about this unexpected snowfall!

(By the way, the last time we got this much snow in Portland was the series of snowstorms in late December 2003 and early January 2004. Remember my New Year’s Day moving story? So it’s been three years since we’ve seen this much snow here. And it’s all anybody’s going to be talking about for the next week.)

Now THAT’S more like it

After the big scary snow storm that didn’t materialize on Wednesday, we unexpectedly got a snow dusting Thursday morning. When I woke up, the cars had a dusting, but the vegetation was pretty much dry. But after taking a shower and getting ready, I looked out the window to find that it was snowing, and the snow was sticking! It was pretty exciting, even if it only lasted about 20 minutes. Of course I went out and took pictures. It was real purty. (Even better: the sun has been shining ever since and even though it is REALLY cold I don’t care because the sun feels oh so nice.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow? What snow?

All day yesterday, the local news got their panties in a wad because it was supposed to snow today. Arctic air blowing down from Canada combined with preciptation, blah, blah, blah. They were even going on about how you need to carry food, water, and warm clothes in your car, and never have less than a half tank of gas in case you get stranded. Good advice, but it never snows THAT bad in Portland.

And after all that hype, do you think we actually had snow today? No. There was a tiny dusting in the hills around town, above 500 feet. But it was pretty mild considering how much they built it up in the news. It’s not the first time they’ve done that, and it won’t be the last.

Schedule uh-oh

My worst fear happened yesterday, and I didn’t even know it. I was scheduled to work and I didn’t show up. It wasn’t on my calendar, so I don’t know where wires got crossed in the scheduling process. In any case, I was horrified to show up to work today, pick up my copy of the January schedule, and see my name in yesterday’s slot. Apparently a missed call (from an unknown number) I got yesterday morning while I was in the laundry room was from my boss wondering where I was, but she didn’t leave a voice mail, so I was in the dark until today. Working at five libraries, with a really erratic schedule, I’ve always worried about something like this happening.

My boss wasn’t mad at me and said everything worked out okay yesterday, but I’ve spent the rest of today feeling bummed out. I’m a really responsible person, so I hate it when I look (or act) irresponsible. And I could have used the shift too, because I have Sunday through Friday off next week. I guess no one needed me to work next week. I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself for six days. I haven’t had that many days off in a row since last May.

Inappropriate word!

I am enjoying exploring the Sellwood neighborhood, which is just a few miles from my new apartment. (It also has a Wikipedia entry. Is that not cool? I friggin’ love Wikipedia.) It’s a wonderful and interesting south Portland neighborhood with lots of restaurants and shops. For you Vancouverites reading this, it reminds me a lot of Kits. I am really loving the fact that I live closer to town now and can explore neighborhoods like this. I’m just a mile from the Portland city limits. A mile!

Anyway, this morning I checked out a place in Sellwood called Patisserie Cafe Lili. I’ve driven by it several times and I keep thinking how cute it looks and that I should go check it out. So this morning I did. It definitely was cute. I ordered a pot of tea and checked out their pastry case, which was rather empty. When I asked if that was all the food they had, the woman said there was a pound cake in the oven, but otherwise that was it. Not ten minutes later, two separate groups came in, sat down, and were handed breakfast menus. There’s a whole menu??? What part of “is this all the food you have?” did you not understand?

Anyway, the point of this story (I’m getting there) is that I came home and wrote a review on Citysearch (I LOVE writing reviews online). In the review, I mentioned how I had ordered a small pot of tea, what the cafe called a “pot for one.” But when I clicked Submit, I got this error message:

We have detected the following inappropriate words: pot

Boy did that make me laugh! I guess it makes up for my breakfast-less morning.

Happy 2007!

I hope everyone had a good New Year’s. I had a great New Year’s doing what I like best on that eve: taking it easy, eating good food, and hanging out with new friends. I’ve never been the type to go out to loud smoky bars on New Year’s. Or any other time for that matter. I can’t wait for Oregon to pass no smoking laws.

It was three years ago today that I moved from Portland to Vancouver, BC to start grad school. I know I’ve told you all this story before – because it’s such a good story! – but here it is again for your reading pleasure!

It almost never snows hard in Portland. But the winter of 2003-2004 it snowed several times. It had already snowed good and hard two times towards the end of December, and it snowed a third time on New Year’s Day, moving day. We woke up that morning to a fresh new layer of snow that was still accumulating. 20 minutes after shoveling the driveway, it was covered up again with falling snow. My mother was a nervous wreck. But we had to leave. So our little caravan moved out, one U-Haul truck and two cars creeping down the road, the only people crazy enough to be driving in such weather on a holiday. My sister drove my car, while I madly tried to keep the windshield clear, both inside and out. Yes, I was leaning out of the car, clearing the windshield with an ice scraper, as we drove down Redland Road. I’m sure it was a sight to see.

We inched north on the freeway, with the snow falling fast. My mother later told us that she was white-knuckling it in her car the whole way. It took us an hour and a half to drive 30 miles, and then the snow abruptly stopped when we reached the edge of the storm. It was clear sailing the rest of the way. Until we reached the border, that is. Somewhere between immigration and customs, I lost an important slip of paper that had been given me, and we were delayed while the mess was sorted out. I was also grilled about my car and told in no uncertain terms that I was not to dispose of my car in Canada under any circumstances. They showed no interest whatsoever in the giant U-Haul truck that contained all my worldly possessions. For all they knew, it could have been full of drugs!

That night at the hotel in Vancouver, we were all exhausted from the long drive and the stressful weather. No one but my father got any sleep, though. You see, Dad is a terrible snorer, especially when he is really tired, like he was that night. Mom dozed through it; she’s grown used to it over the years. But the constant rumbling kept my sister and me from sleeping soundly. As if that weren’t bad enough, the mattress on our bed had a big dip in the middle of it, so my sister and I kept rolling to the middle and bumping into each other like logs in the surf.

In the morning, I awoke with the beginnings of a cold and a raging sore throat. But I had an international student orientation to attend, so I dragged myself out of bed and out of the hotel and drove to campus. During the lunch break, I went to meet my family at my new apartment on campus. My mother, ever industrious, had already met and spoke with the front desk guy, the residence life manager, maintenance people, and a number of others I could never remember afterwards. Though my family wasn’t allowed into my apartment until I arrived, they had been told which number it was, at which time they discovered it was on the fourth floor of a building with a broken elevator. Mom flew into action, pestering every official person she could find, and by the time I showed up at lunch, the elevator had been fixed. We rode it upstairs, I put my key in the door, and we walked in to explore my new home.

“Alright, let’s get that truck unloaded,” Dad said. Then a moment later, “Where are the keys?” A few minutes later, the four of us stood clustered around the cab of the truck, peering in through the windows to get a view of the keys in the ignition. It was about this time that two guys from the Housing Department showed up to help us move the stuff that we suddenly had no access to. Their presence was the result of my mother’s earlier efforts to find muscled men who could help us haul all that stuff up to my apartment. But it took nearly two hours for BCAA to come and do their work, allowing Dad to get back his keys, move the truck, and begin the unloading.

It was a long afternoon. The elevator broke again (something that was to happen MANY MORE TIMES in the two years I lived there), which meant carrying all that stuff up the stairs to the fourth floor. When it was all done, Mom tried to pay our two helpers from Housing, but they assured her their bosses were paying them for their work. So Mom gave them each a grateful hug instead and told them their mothers would be proud of them. Shortly thereafter, my parents disappeared for two hours, driving around a foreign city in the dark, trying to find the U-Haul place where they could return the truck. When they got back, they were so exhausted that they skipped dinner and called it a day.

That night, Mom and Dad returned to the hotel while my sister and I slept at my place. At least, we slept until the fire alarm went off about midnight. With the kind of piercing shriek that makes you want to flee as fast as possible, it wailed on while we stumbled around scattered boxes and furniture looking for shoes and coats. In a sleepy and cold-induced stupor, I stumbled outside in my flannel pajamas, untied shoes, and coat. We stood outside in the snow with the other residents for 15 minutes, waiting for the fire department to shut the damn noise off. But even once we were allowed back in, I could still hear that piercing shriek in my head.

My family headed back to Portland the next day, encountering yet another snow storm in northern Washington on the way. And it seems Mother Nature’s snow machine perks up its ears whenever I move, because when I moved BACK to Portland last December, it was clear on driving day, but it snowed the next day when we unloaded my crap and returned the truck. And during this most recent move into my new apartment, it was so cold in town, that some areas DID get snow, though for once it didn’t affect us. Why do I keep moving in the winter??