Sunday, April 26, 2009

Bend and Beyond


We drove down to Bend, OR (see Sarah's pics) with the trailer last weekend to see Carrie and do a bit of exploring. We didn't end up spending much time in Bend(see Michal's photos) itself, except for breakfast on Friday morning before hitting the slopes. (We highly recommend the Ocean Roll for tasty goodness.) Michal and Carrie hit the slopes of Mt. Bachelor while I relaxed with a book in the lodge. Then we packed up and hit the road for another two hours to Umpqua National Forest, just north of Crater Lake. We went in search of hot springs, but found several other things as well: snow in the pass, an awesome campground, a fun canal and an incredible waterfall. After spending the better part of Saturday in the hot spring quest and enjoyment, we drove back towards Bend.
The combination of snow conditions (in April!) and the Beetle kept us from both the lava casts and tube, so we detoured to the High Desert Museum for a couple of hours. They had a desertarium, which made it way cooler than most natural history museums. We then spent some time on the loop around the visitor center (which was still closed for the season) of Lava Lands National Monument.
To wrap up our trip, we made one final stop on the return ride at the Crooked River Bridge not too far north of Bend. At the gorge there, three bridges cross the river: one old highway bridge that's now visitor friendly, one new highway bridge, and one railroad bridge.
Not bad for a long weekend. Thanks for hosting, Carrie!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Black Bottle Birthday Bash



Happy birthday to me! The best present of all - spring! - has finally arrived in Seattle today, with sunshine, cloudless blue skies, temps in the 70's, and gorgeous views of snow-topped mountains.

Last weekend, we had a blast in the private room at Black Bottle to celebrate in style. Thanks to everyone who showed up for making it so much fun! See our photos here and here.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Easter Eggs


Happy Easter! We made pisanki last night. The traditional way to make them is to boil the eggs with onion shells to give them a brown color, then etch designs into the shell which reveals white. Then on Saturday before Easter you take them to the church in a basket containing the eggs, a sugar lamb, salt, meat, and bread to get all the food blessed. (There's a lot of symbolism, if you can't guess.) Then on Sunday you make a white borsch called zurek out of everything.

So that's what we did. Check out the photos.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Two Facts (aka "That Noise Last Night")

1. The noise last night was the cat knocking down my jacket and a camera filter from the green chair.

2. As a result of the jacket being on the floor, she peed on it this morning. I don't think that's legitimate. If I leave it on the floor, ok. But she can't put things on the floor then pee on them. Sadly I didn't discover this second fact until I had gotten into the car, wearing the jacket of course, and thought the car smelled bad. It took me all the way until 15th and Beacon to discover what smelled bad. When I got home again the cat was in a lot of trouble. Still is going to be in a lot of trouble tonight. I'm probably actually going to take the time to cut off her food supply finally. Grr.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Happiness Is



Chick-Fil-A. In Washington. That's me in Bellingham with Bellingham Bay in the background. We had to go 90 miles to get the goods, but that's a pittance compared to the distance to L.A. (previously the closest Chick-Fil-A), and much more doable on a weekend. I gorged myself, then we brought home enough to share and then some and I am still hoarding chicken. When we got home, all of it was still warm. Mmmmm.......

In other good news, the weather warmed up over the weekend, with lots of sunshine and hitting 70 one day, which added icing to my Chick-Fil-A happiness cake. You can see the brilliance, even 90 miles further north, in the photo.

Oh, and we stopped to see the daffodils, because the tulips also object to the long cold winter, and haven't bloomed yet. Michal has tons of pictures of that, too, and even I took a few here and there.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Cell Phones and GPS

Privacy implications aside, this is really neat:


GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com



Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fools

It snowed. This is not funny.