Mt. Hood

Mt. Hood
Originally uploaded by BreadnBadger

Sean's parents visited us for a week recently, and we did lots of sight-seeing! We made our first visit out to Mt. Hood, which had quite a bit of snow on it.

Of course, we drove out to the coast the next day and saw beaches and ate seafood. Oh, how I love Oregon!

Check out the photos I took of the trip on my Flickr site (links above).

We hope Pat and Linda will come back to visit again sometime, even though it was drier and colder than they're used to. We'll have to find some new restaurants and sights to see!

Special Day

Not only was yesterday Valentine's Day, but it was also the one-year anniversary of our arrival in Portland! We left Massachusetts on Feb. 5th of last year, and it took us 9 days to drive across the country in our Uhaul.

We decided to celebrate by cooking a big, impromptu meal, since we're not really the restaurant reservation types. I made spinach and sausage calzones, which turned out great, thanks to our pizza stone! Sean put together a key lime pie (with regular limes, not key limes), which was also fantastic. He should make those more often! We also watched Sweeney Todd, which was really fun.

I think our first few weeks in Portland were a total blur, since I can't remember anything specific about this time last year. I remember going to by first Tea Time, and being thrilled that I could bike there (even though I was unexpectedly sweaty when I got to Lea's house). I remember being prepared for spring snow which never came. I remember flowers blooming almost immediately, and not knowing quite what to make of it.

There are already flowers poking through the ground in our garden. They look like tulips, but it seems really early for them, right? Maybe not. I thought I'd see crocuses, but I haven't seen any yet. I'm getting ready though.

It's strange to look back on the past year. So much has happened! Sean and I are in a different place than I expected, but we're also sort of in exactly the place I'd hoped for. It's a little hard to reflect on the past when you're looking ahead so brightly, but I can tell that we've had a good year here, and we made a good decision to come.

Sleep is for pussies

I don't ever make new year's resolutions. Sure, I should eat healthier and exercise more. But "resolving" to do those things never changes the fact that I like fried foods and sitting down. I like healthy food and exercise too (luckily), and I go through periods where I'm completely on top of things.

This year, however, I'd like to try to sleep in less. As a chronic insomniac, I can't say that without some qualifiers. Since I sometimes go for days or weeks without sleeping more than an hour a night, I clearly need to allow for some catch-up time.

This January, I seem to be catching up in advance, for nights that I won't sleep in the future. I decided to start setting an alarm for the morning (set to one of the many obnoxious PDX radio stations with morning DJ's that I want to stab in the eyes with a fork--these guys have a "party bus" that is perpetually taking "winners" to a casino or similarly depressing locale, and the one guy calls all the lady-callers "beautiful" even though he can't see them). This morning was the first day of waking up within 8 hours of going to bed. Rupert couldn't quite handle the early wake-up, so after his (first) breakfast, he went straight back to bed--lion pillow and all. But I'm planning on going out for some exercise!

Snow Days

I know everyone hear talks about the snow like it's the end of the universe. Everyone who isn't originally from Portland complains about how Portland drivers forget how to drive as soon as the first flakes start falling. But let me tell you something. THEY DO NOT SALT THE ROADS. At all. And they barely plow, sprinkling light gravel on the major arteries when they get around to it. A day after the entire city is covered in hard-packed ice and half the drivers are stranded on the side of the road or partway across one of the many bridges. Good times!

I have never driven with snow tires on my car, even in blizzards in Massachusetts. It probably would have helped, but I've gotten through some tough, slippery days by driving slowly behind a plow or sand truck. People here have been driving with chains on their tires for about a week now, even after the snow had melted!

They either drive at 5mph, or fly around corners at 35, both with bad results. I know it only snows here about twice a year (we've gotten two light snowfalls already, and it brought the city to a screeching halt both times), but this is ridiculous! If they'd just put a little salt down, we'd all be able to get on with our lives!

Some of us had to brave the weather last weekend to vend at Crafty Wonderland, which was supposed to be the biggest craft event of the year. Somehow, Sean and I got a little lost finding the convention center in the morning, and accidentally had to cross two bridges over the river while everything was covered in an inch of slick ice. Our little Scion made it just fine, but it was scary to see 50% of the other drivers (which, admittedly, was only about 4 people) spinning out or sitting with their hazards flashing.

I can't even believe that 3,000 customers came by the show that day, which was totally sweet! It would have been at least 4 times that, if the weather had been nicer. We made a little money, got some shopping done, and got to hang out with some crafty friends. So it was a pretty good day, despite having to lug our heavy glassware around so much. I hope next year we can use a rolling cart for our stuff, since the parking lot felt like miles away from the exhibition hall, and we had to carry it all ourselves.

[I'll try to post some pictures soon! It's snowing again right now, but it's too dark to take photos.]

Busy Busy

In case you're wondering how busy things really are at Chez Badger, I'll try to paint you a picture. I should first point out that over the weekend, we sold 96 pint glasses (plus a lot of other stuff) at Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle. Normally, I don't even bring more than 24 glasses to an event, and they never sell out. I can confidently say that we could have sold more if we'd brought them to UCU, but our tiny car just didn't have any more room.

Today, Sean and I sandblasted over 200 items--mostly pint glasses, but also spice jars, soap pumps and small tumblers. It took us two days to mask them all, and we weren't able to ship anything out today because we were so busy.

You want to know the real kicker though? Almost everything we made today has been pre-sold online. And that doesn't even count the 40 or so orders I received today and haven't even had time to look at.

So, we're a little bit busy, you could say. ;)

Tomorrow is a ship-only day, where we'll pack up everything we can and take as many trips to the post office as we need to. Everything ordered before the 12th will get to its destination by Christmas, though our shipping schedule is a little out of whack from where I'd like it. And we'll be bustin' ass to make sure we have at least another 96 pint glasses for Crafty Wonderland this Sunday. At least our 13 hr. work days will pay off when we can pay all our bills next month! :D

On a totally random note, I somehow managed to stop by Queen Bee Creation's studio/shop today to work out a trade. I ended up with a fantastic new purse, in the design shown above, only I think the colors are reversed. It's a big "truckette" satchel, which I will love and cherish for always. Or until I get another of her bags, since deciding between them was so hard!!

Oregon Coast

I forgot to post something about my parents visit here at the end of last month! We had a great time wandering around the city, eating great food and seeing the sites at the coast and the gorge.

I posted my pics on Flickr, if you want to check them out. I have one of the foggy beach photos as my desktop image right now, and I love it!

We were all lucky that the weather was really nice while Mom and Dad visited, even though it was a little hazy for viewing the mountains. I think there was only one day where it rained, and it was gentle. It's rained pretty heavily (for Oregon) almost every day since they left, and the temperature dropped dramatically. The first frost is coming tonight, so I'm cutting all the basil in our garden to make pesto and curry with.

The next good visiting time will probably be late spring, so if anyone would like to drop by, make your plans now! :)

Ninja Cat Video

OMG. I just watched this video on Laughing Squid and had to share. It is hi-larious. Just can't get enough silly cat stuff.

For something completely different, did you know that on the longest day of the year, the daylight hours are about half an hour longer here in Portland than in Boston? The sun also tends to set half an hour later here (and rises half an hour later) most of the time. This was really noticeable this summer, when the sun just never seemed to go down. We also have a lot of big hills with great views of the distance, so if you're up higher (like we are) then it can still be light out at 10pm. Check it out!

Waterfalls are Pretty

Sean and I finally left the city of Portland today! It was our first Oregonian excursion since moving here, and really, our first one ever!

We'd gotten a bunch of recommendations to see the waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge, but we didn't really know where we were going. We headed out on Rt. 84 and took the exit for Historic Columbia River Hwy (or whatever it's called at that point). It was super scenic, with vista points overlooking the huge river ever couple of miles! I've never seen so many beautiful views in one short drive!

We stopped at every single overlook, scenic view, vista point and waterfall we could find. There was lots of stopping. I've gone on a lot of hikes in New England, but nothing compared to these! None of the places we stopped made us walk more than 2/3rds of a mile from our car (round trip) to see amazing views or breath-taking waterfalls. Check out my flickr photos to see pics and videos! Sorry some of them are redundant--Sean and I took the some of the same shots, and I was messing with exposures on some of them.
I'm used to waking up at the crack of dawn, driving a few hours (into another state) to a mountain, then hiking straight up through mosquito-infested stank-smelling forest to see a damp rock that the guide book claims is a "waterfall". Okay, so it was more enjoyable than that! Sometimes we actually saw running water.

There were no insects. It smelled clean. There was tons of water, lush greenery and moss, and the other folks on the trail were friendly (except for the collection of college dolts at Multnomah "Huge Tourist Attraction" Falls). We'd avoided the rain most of the day, but got a bit wet at Bridal Veil and it continued to rain at Multnomah Falls and the whole drive home. It was a great day, however, and some hot tea and dry clothes have brought me back to a peaceful place in the world. Maybe we should do this every weekend!

Buffalo Roast

This weekend, Pat (one of Sean's friends from high school in Germany) came to visit! Pat flies planes for the Navy, and he was lucky enough to schedule a day off in Portland between flights.

We took him to the Farmer's Market where we picked up a buffalo roast and some veggies to grill, plus some venison pate and a baguette. Unfortunately, no one told us that a roast shouldn't be cooked on a grill (even though we asked the meat guy what he'd recommend for grilling). We spent the afternoon hanging in the backyard, drinking beer and eating fancy snacks. The buffalo was a bit tough, but tasty overall. The grilled potatoes and zucchini were awesome, and the pate was excellent. I could get used to all this amazing food...

Our yard has a stray cat and her three kittens as frequent visitors, and the smell of our cooking enticed them over. All the cats seem to be very frightened of us, but that didn't keep them from licking our olive oil-covered plate and meaty tongs.
* * *
I got to hear my first Emergency Broadcast Signal today while in the car! There was a severe weather advisory for the county south of us. While it was hot and sticky for me, they were having a dangerous lightning storm with damaging hail and 60 mph winds! The announcement warned that "lightning is still one of the top killers in the U.S." and "if you can hear thunder, then you're close enough to get struck by lightning". Luckily, it seems to be breaking the hot spell we've had, so I might actually be able to cook some dinner indoors tonight!

My Friends

A couple weeks ago, my friend Eling (from the amazing Traveling Rhinos) came up to Portland after vending at the Renegade Craft Fair in San Fransisco. I had the pleasure of going out for Thai food at Pok Pok with Eling, her husband Dane, and their friend Shots (sorry if I'm spelling her name wrong! Could it be "Schotts"?).

Oh my god. The food was amazing! We were so eager to eat, I forgot to take pictures until we'd already dug in. The food was so light and crisp and refreshing! I even tried the crispy pork over rice and beefy Boat Noodles that Eling had. Plus, I got to try a mulberry drinking-vinegar soda and young coconut juice. Just check out their lunch menu, and I'll take you there when you come visit. ;)

It looks like we actually have a series of visitors on their way to PDX! Sean's friend Pat, Dan Weill, and my parents are all planning trips out here in the next two months. We can't wait to see all you guys!! Hopefully the ants will be gone by then.

If you're not on that list of visitors, you should be. We have outdoor cafes where you can drink alcohol. And there's bound to be a beer festival/parade/giant neighborhood event when you come. If you get here before the rainy season (which allegedly starts in November or so), it's unlikely to rain at all. In fact, it has only drizzled here twice in the past month as far as I can remember.

After lunch, we went out to the Japanese Gardens, which I hadn't been to before. It was relaxing, and beautiful. Maybe not the best place for actually meditating though, since it was packed full of people (on a weekday, no less) and we could hear the train whistle from the zoo train every few minutes. You'll have to check out my Flickr page for more photos from the garden, since I've run out of room in this post.

Email me to plan your trip now--you won't regret it!

Sauvie Island

Today I went berry picking with Leah, Judy and Poe for tea time! Leah drove us out to Kruger's Farm on Sauvie Island to pick blueberries and raspberries, then we went to another farm along the road for cherries. I've never in my life seen such large and beautiful u-pick farms!! Not to mention that Kruger's is a no-spray organic farm.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so you'll have to check out Poe's blog and Leah's blog for photos. They went last week, so there are already some posts with pics from then. I think they might add more soon as well, since it was a beautiful day with only minimal haze. I still don't know how some people here can complain about the humidity! It's barely perceptible.

That big jar of dark, gorgeous honey is going to become my next batch of mead! I can't believe it was only $32 for 12 lbs, since I've spent about $50 for 15 lbs of bulk honey at Whole Foods! I was tempted to buy another jar, but I thought I'd give this a try first. There is so much local honey here, and I can get really picky about the flavors. This jar is carrot and madras, which I guess is a type of onion. It smells and tastes divine (not very floral at all, unlike the clover honey I got last year for about $6/lb.) and I can't wait to use it. I almost bought a small jar of a lighter type of honey (don't remember the pollen type) to round it out to 15 lbs, but I didn't want to mix them. There could be quite a bit of mead in out future if I can keep getting honey at this price!

In other news, I may be doing three craft fairs this month, which is some kind of record for me! Sean is about done with helping me at events, so I might be doing the next two solo (with my booth-buddies). I'm not making loads of money, but it's a lot better than not selling anything all weekend! And these events are super fun. It's like hanging out with all my best friends outside for a day, plus making some cash. :)

In other, other news, Rupert is doing great. He's settling down a little into adult cat mode, so he's sleeping a lot more during the day and is a little less needy. He still talks and chatters like crazy! He's also learning how to purr and rub when he's happy.

Our crafty cooperative is officially legal, and I'm doing a ton of work to get it running! I'm helping design logos and images for the website, and I'm in charge of the Marketing Committee. So far, the "Marketing Committee" (which is just me) is collecting ideas to implement in the future. There will probably not be an official committee which has meetings, since we just need to brainstorm ideas and then carry them out. I'll be the go-to person for organizing ad campaigns and things, making sure it gets done. Very exciting! We're planning to launch or site next month and do a bunch of advertising for the fall. This is keeping me really busy.

Rose Garden

We went to the Rose Garden yesterday inside Washington Park. It was a gorgeous day, but hardly any roses were blooming. I took some pictures anyway, which you can see on my Flickr page. There were a lot of other people walking around the gardens, picnicking, and lounging in little corners of the park.

One of the weirdest things about the Rose Garden to me is the way we entered. I knew we could get there if we walked west on Burnside long enough, and as we were trekking uphill past a Chico's store and a bank, I spotted a stone wall with a tiny sign marked "Rose Garden". There was a narrow stone stairway that lead up the steep ivy-covered hillside, so we went up.

It was almost a completely vertical climb up staircase after staircase, occasionally turning to follow the slope. Then we were in the woods. Completely in the woods. You'd never know that we'd just been shopping 10 minutes earlier on one of the trendiest streets in a major metropolitan area. I tell ya, this city is like no other I've ever been to!

After we'd had our fill of nature, we headed back down to 23rd Ave and found the Lompoc bar. We were just in time to see the 8th inning of the Red Sox/Orioles game! We had some pub food and some awesome beer and enjoyed the game.

Last night was the Starlight Parade, which we were intending to avoid, but we caught some glimpses of it as we were stuck in traffic on the busride home. I don't think we missed much, but the rest of the city didn't seem to think it could pass it up. They sure do love their parades here!

Rose Festival

Portland is the City of Roses, and one of the things I love about it here! I'd heard about the Rose Festival before we moved here, but I didn't know what it involved. Apparently, there's a lot to it!

Here's a link to the homepage for the festivities. Last night there were fireworks, which we could here from our house, and tonight there's a starlight parade, but I don't know if we'll be staying downtown that long. I just want to see the blooming roses, since we visited the Rose Garden in February last year and it was devoid of rosy goodness.

One of the big things is the crowning of the Rose Queen. This seems like an antiquated tradition that I thought only happened in farmtowns. You know, crowning of the Cheese Queen, and that sort of thing. Apparently it's a big deal here. Or, at least, people want it to be. I read an article a month or two ago about last year's Rose Queen, and how she won the title because she was the only girl who entered. This year, they've broadened the criteria for entering to encourage more girls to try for the title.

I don't know if it's worked (really, what high school girl actually wants to be Rose Queen in a parade?), but I think we saw a lot of Rose Princesses in the St. John's parade. If they weren't Rose Princesses, then I'd like to know why so many girls in crowns and tiaras were waving at us from convertibles and horseback.

One event I'm sort of intrigued by is the Rose Show. They apparently transform the mall's ice skating rink (yes, our mall has an ice skating rink in the middle of it) into "a delightful rose garden with over 2,000 blooms". The photos show elderly folks browsing the rose bouquets, which appear to be slapped down on white tables. Disappointing! I'd go see it if they actually made cool sculptures out of them or something. At least the competition winner will receive a "sparkling trophy", which I couldn't find a photo of.

If we need something fun to do on my birthday, we can go downtown for the Rose Parade, which might actually be worth seeing. We've already seen two parades while we were here, so I know how pdx-ers love their parades. Maybe this one will be a little more impressive.

I hate migraines

This'll probably be a short post, since I have a killer headache right now. I'm actually trying to remember what it was that I wanted to write about, besides just having an excuse to post more pretty pictures.

I'm trying to set up Wordpress on my website, so I can host my own blog (it's going to be called "Badger Sandwich"), but I'm not techie enough to figure it out. If anyone out there knows how to set up a MySQL database, please give me some tips! It appears to be the kind of thing that's so easy, there's no reason to document how to do it. Which means that me and my Mac are stuck staring at error messages all day and being sad.

This blog, by the way, is going to be *awesome* when I get it going. It better be, with all the hassle I'm going through just to have a fully customizable commercial blog. :)

I swear there was more interesting stuff I was going to write about... Hmmm.

These flowers just above are some of my favorites on our block. I just love the color combo! There's another one (to the left) with purple flowers that are darker blossoms at the bottom, and they gradually get lighter at the top of the plant. They look prettier in person than they do in my photos, since the intense sunlight sort of changed the effect a little.

There's a dogwood tree up the street that has both pink and white flowers. I think the pink ones are coming from a separate trunk that has just wound its way into the branches of the white tree. I'm into those kinds of things.

In biz news, Sean and I had a good time at the Alberta Art Hop, even though it was about 90 degrees all day, and most people were too hot to shop. We had tequila-flavored popsicles and lots of Gatorade to get us through the day, but somehow I think we had a good time anyway. I traded with Gretchen of Salmon Street Studio for a Portland Coat of Arms t-shirt, but I'm still waiting to get my size. I can't wait! She has so many awesome designs, it was a little tough to decide! I bought an Oregon carved wood pendant from Phoebe at Crafty Wonderland last week, so I'm going to be able to fully represent my new home soon.