A soda machine Dirk Gently would like.

...or the pensive soda machine
...or what gave me the giggles on Saturday
...or the day that spell-check failed

Open letter to Bank of America

Thank you for your kind attention:

It was today brought to my attention that after ages and ages of wanting to leave this banking relationship and find another that I really have much to be thankful for.

First, I would like to compliment you on the quality of your customer service. You have trained your employees to be extremely friendly and able to answer every imaginable question while avoiding giving direct answers or even correct answers, and all with a smile and a parting wish that they have addressed my concerns.

Second, I must applaud your excellent lobby design, the palette of the seating area is soothing and almost is able to calm my nerves as I wait a full hour to be helped with my latest BOA inspired issue.

Third, thank you for making it possible for me to talk to a new (and friendly) customer service person on the phone every month to correct the mistakes that are associated with having accounts with your bank that are in two different states. It's excellent that you're able to span the globe and still keep the scope of your customer service capabilities local.

Fourth, thank you for always promising me things that you cannot deliver. It helps to keep my expectations of other things in my life extremely low.

Fifth, I especially appreciate the efforts that your bank has made in keeping me on my toes. If I hadn't been trained by your inefficiency I may not keep such a close watch on my accounts and might have completely missed the random monthly maintenance fees you occasionally, accidentally dole out; the theft and compromising of my checking account by a person cashing a fraudulent check at your very institution (thanks for keeping an eye out for my best interest!); or the omission of part of my name on our OR statement; or even the fact that you kept our closed account open and started to assess fees for non-sufficient daily balance. I feel lucky to have this training and I hope to be so vigilant with all aspects of my life.

Sixth, although I do realize the market fluctuates I still want to give credit to you for selling me foreign currency at a much higher rate than you purchased it back from me. It is a rare occasion that the common people have opportunity to give a bank a loan and I was so pleased to be able to hold currency for a few days so that you could make some money off of it.

Seventh, I had started to feel like everything in the world was good and golden after I signed the papers on my house, but I again am indebted to you for slapping me back into reality and allowing me to feel the usual stress that first-time home buyers should all be feeling, waiting on tenter-hooks to see if wire transfers really can come true.

Eighth, I really appreciate that your employees are my equal. It's so nice to go into a branch with a question and have an employee pick up the phone to get the answer. I can hear them cycling through the prompts the same way I would; how refreshing to not have anyone available with an answer at their fingertips.

All in all it's been one of those excellent learning relationships that we've had and I couldn't be more glad to be soon moving away and finally having the ability to take my account with me.

Very truly yours etcetera etcetera and so forth...

I have a really long name.

It's my own fault. I realized it when I did it four years ago and shortened my everyday signature to suit my level of patience.

Lenders have a different level of patience for the inch of paperwork you sign when purchasing a home. First name, middle initial (phew!), last name. Thank goodness I only had to sign about half the documents- Joe observed that we might have been there twice the time if I had, had to sign each page.

The official close is still a few days away, but it still feels good.

Observations upon riding my bike to work...

I like it.

At first I was trying to hone in and reduce the amount of time it took me to get from point A to point B. I’ve changed my route rather much since I commuted by bike last fall. However, I had limited myself to a certain degree by taking those roads which I was most comfortable with. I’ve since become slightly more daring and have reduced my bike in time from 1 hour to 40 minutes which is kind of exciting. However, I have now found that given the prospect of a new yard (that’s ours all ours!) and a new home I am sight-seeing quite a bit on my way to work (read…dawdling). I’ve made up for the sight-seeing by taking the hill, and it’s not so bad. In fact, when I can make the light at the bottom it’s quite thrilling.

My sight-seeing has afforded me views of interesting landscaping (lots of people are digging up their grass….) and has also given me a route that is perhaps less used by others. I do join the mainstream by hopping on the east bank esplanade and having a bit of a bike stroll (if you will) along the river. So far, not a day has gone by that I haven’t seen the local police either arresting or harassing (I mean chatting) with the vagrant community that calls the esplanade home. That and some entertaining graffiti (highlights include the witty: “bros not hoes” and “call your deadbeat dad he still loves you”) make this portion of my commute feel seedy and scandalous…mwhahahaha. Not really, but it’s just a strong contrast coming off of Willamette Blvd.

The best thing about my morning commute is that Widmer usually has a boil going and it smells terrific.

4 day weekend

I think it would be absolutely splendid if the fourth of July fell on a Friday or Monday every year.

Unfortunately, the calendar is not so kind.

We spent a fabulous weekend at the lake, entertaining ourselves, munching on food, drinking beer and generally having a marvelous time. Other lake dwellers lit off fireworks to the benefit of the entire lake...it was even better to watch from afar as I was able to play with the settings on my camera and feel much more at ease watching fireworks from across the lake.

It was a our group tenth anniversary (give or take) this year and we put together a rough time capsule. As with many things we do, it's not quite finished, but I figure that we have the rest of the year to get it together. I have to say that I found it rather difficult to find things from the past to toss in there that I hadn't already parted with...however, on Joe's recommendation a couple of newspapers from the week were tossed in and have hopefully created a good base. Now we just have to decide when/if to open it.


Because it was such a long weekend and we were supplying the beverages for two parties we ended up with quite a lot of beer in our car...I estimate roughly 30 gallons, kegs and cases combined, that we brought for the two gatherings (not to mention the 4 cases we transported up here for others). I still can't believe we fit all of it plus a jockey box in the car.

The kids...fearless and daring, braved the cooler water and had some bumper boat fun...

About every other year we have good weather (and sunburns)...this year was chillier and overcast. Without the sunshine to tempt people we became a much smaller party on Saturday and had some low key fun, the highlight of which, included an old lake pastime of driving retired golf balls into the water. Scott came up with a couple of new tricks to an old game by grabbing one of the keg cup pens and creating an effigy on a golf ball. The rest of us followed suit and, I for one, derived more pleasure from the smacking sound of the club than ever before as I hit a ball bearing the title "factory farms." It was entertaining to watch the different style we each had...

Scott entertained us with a running shot...



Sunday brought Pat's retirement and a whole new group of people...that night, we entertained the lake with our own fireworks display.

Pat ordered in a show that took two hours to set-up (the display was set off remotely), lasted almost a quarter of an hour and that kicked total ass.

If you called....

and you got the voice mail, this is why...

Symptoms:
- mosquito bites
- sand in shoes
- warm beer
- berries
- itchy kitties
- dinner outside
- farmers market
- sandals
- sunscreen
- water...lots of water

...it's properly Summer.
Spring made no appearance, but summer is definitely here. And where there is summer, there is busy.

We spent last weekend at the beach for the Brewers Games and a small charity beer festival put on by Pelican Brewery in Pacific City.


Joe participated with a hodgepodge of other Portland Brewers- competing against 12 other breweries/distributors in some whacked out beer olympics.
















I watched from the sidelines as this motley crew tossed, dragged and ran with kegs through obstacle courses and around the beach, threw active yeast in balloons to each other, moved mashed grain from barrel to barrel, and drank and obliterated macro-brews on a homemade iron-maiden.

It was quite a show and lasted pretty much all day. We retired to a small cabin across the way from the brewery and sat around the fire rehashing the best and worst moments of the games and planning for 364 days later when they could compete again.

It was a pleasant and pretty drive to Pacific City; we returned home and promptly recreated a beach environment by introducing half the beach onto the living room carpet.

This past weekend we took in the Organic Brewer's Festival which had many contrasts from our attendance the previous year. It was beautiful, sunny and packed with people. My only complaint is that I went in thinking I'd save my favorite brew of last year, Alameda's IPA, for last and as I approached the tent with my last ticket a pathway cleared in front of me showing the way...literally...people had gotten out of line because the keg was tapped. Lame.

Otherwise it was a pretty low-key weekend. Hung out at the Saturday farmers market at PSU. We stood-in for a friend, volunteering at a bike event doing helmet fitting-which I am very bad at and Joe is not. Biked to and from the bike event (seems only fitting eh?) in the 100 degree weather and spent the later evening walking around the garden and enjoying a beer. Sunday was a relaxing day, spent out at Sauvie Island picnicking and having a little bit of frisbee.

ah....summer.

On the Gorge...

On Saturday I thought home inspections were exhausting.

On Sunday I knew the true meaning of exhaustion as I tumbled out of the car when we arrived home after hiking 14 miles on Eagle Creek.

It was an incredibly beautiful day to be out on the Gorge, the trail was mostly shaded with some sun breaks and spirits were high all around.

This trail is a favorite of ours...we've enjoyed it in many different seasons and have back-packed it...each time the trail has something different to offer:

Chilly morning hikers

Throwing rocks into the gorge below

puddle jumping

wet feet

shoe drying

into the tunnel

Good Hike.

Creating a new stomping ground.

In the last few weeks, we've been making trips to Eugene for meetings, to have a look around and see about housing etcetera...

Yesterday, we booked Andy for the day and went to check out the Sasquatch Brew Fest.

It was about the same scale as the Organic brew fest in Portland, small. We hit the scene early and had no line to wait in for ID check and no lines for beer. Even as the festival grew more crowded, there was rarely a wait.

Highlights:

Actual souvenir glasses, generous pouring by the volunteers, the India Pelican Ale (twice enjoyed), the unabashed and loquacious nature of the locals and, of course, the good company.

Having arrived a bit early, we also had opportunity to wander the farmers market, which occupied quite a bit of space, was fun to walk around and made my heart swell, in thinking of future visits.

I think we're going to like it here.

49 nifty United States...wait that doesn't rhyme

While enjoying a quick walk around our yard and sitting down with a beer to watch the rain clouds roll in last night we witnessed the disappearance of a state.

Our next door neighbor has a car parked outside with an Arkansas license plate, he's 'car-sitting' for his brother.

While sitting on the concrete in our side yard completely hidden from the street, two chatting teenagers strolled by. One stopped at the foot of our driveway and as I peeked through the cracks of the fence, she looked at the neighbors car and said very pointedly "how rude, Arkansas isn't even a state!"

Maybe it was a joke? Or, maybe it was a flashing red light in the face of their education...

...sigh.

Slugs Rejoice!

"I wouldn't even feed this to slugs..."


- Joe, on an old case of beer sitting in our 'cellar' that was made by the graduating class at UC Davis (Spring, '06)

Have you seen my stapler?

So while I was not in Paris I was relocated to another cubicle at work. It was kind of funny, I felt like a brand new employee setting everything up again. Unfortunately, it's away from the people I enjoy being around and it's in an area that has a lot of traffic because of proximity to the kitchen...but I'll live, so long as they don't ask me to move down to "Storage Room B."

Paris or bust

or as I like to think of it...Paris or bust

Flying standby has perks, like, super-cheap tickets, free drink coupons and feeling like you can go anywhere. It also has downsides, such as, being without an actual seat on the airplane...it's not like the bus where you can still get on and hold the rail, swaying with every turn and avoiding the stare of the creepy old guy in the priority seating area.

We spent an entire working day at the airport on Thursday, hoping for seats that would get us to a connection hub (Atlanta, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City), so we could fly out to Paris. I have had enormous success flying standby...not this day. Three potential flights and...nothing. The best that can be said about our day at the airport was that the server at the Laurelwood pub in concourse A let us order beer at 6:45am and that Andy was gracious enough to get up before dawn and take us to there in the first place.

Apparently there's some event going on in the south this weekend that people wanted to go to...and therefore crowded the flights. sheesh. We were invited by the kind folks at the airline to come back tomorrow morning and try again. After thinking through all possible scenarios we realized that our already quick trip to Paris would be ridiculously short and we would have zero chance of attending the wedding that was bringing us there in the first place. So we gave up and hopped the Max home.

So, mourning our lost trip, we conceived another, switched some baggage around, got in the car and headed south to a B&B in Bend for the weekend.




Instead of capturing centuries old cathedrals, paintings and parks we took in ancient mountains. Instead of walking along the Seine, we hiked next to the Deschutes River. Instead of enjoying fine wine and a baguette at an outdoor cafe, we sampled beer and northwest food fare overlooking Mirror Pond.



We hiked, took advantage of the many amenities at the B&B (including a nine-hole disc golf course), sampled beer from the local breweries and met up with a former classmate from Davis, currently in the employ of Deschutes who treated us to a tour and sampling at the brewing facility. Time well spent.













...and as an aside, I think I'm developing some psychic capabilities...
We enjoyed the drive to Bend with the sunroof open for the majority of the trip, but I started to feel a little chilly through the mountain pass and after awhile closed it. Not 30 seconds later a large splat of bird shit hit the sunroof. Brilliant timing eh? Apparently it required a photo.

"What sort of dining set defines me as a person?"

I'm trying to learn a little bit about time capsules, and the effort has left me a bit stunned with humanity and our self-importance. I can't think of anything that an alien species needs to know about me specifically (but apparently I'm alone on that one)...and I can't think of any one thing that defines me as a person that I can qualify and place in a box and bury. hmmmm.

Also I was wondering...

...how do you qualify ten years of friendship?

Los Tres Gatos del Diablo

...and one more to round things out. Toph & Jess gifted the first two, to great amusement. Unfortunately, there was no "devil kitty" or "crackie" so we went with "from hell" since Catch is a little demon.

Out goes the light

so...I realize in saying this I'm opening myself up to some ridicule (bygones)...but I have never been a big fan of the Olympic Games, not that I don't think the whole bit is incredible, just that I don't set an alarm to get up at 2am to watch the luge.

I pay just enough attention (as I do with most sports) to have a vague idea of who is winning and who is not (except for that one year when I kicked ass at Fantasy Baseball).

So with all the circumstance surrounding this years games in Beijing, it has been difficult to ignore (and yes, I know the sports haven't actually started yet).

I decided to pay some attention when protests in Paris actually caused the Olympic torch to go out. (Fear not, it is apparently not the first time). I wanted to know the significance of the torch etcetera. According to the Official Olympic Games website: "the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay wants to be a journey of harmony, bringing the message of peace to people of different nationalities, cultures and creeds”. Au contraire. This statement was of course made before the torch actually set out.

Ah.. and most interesting of all, the torch lighting and relay do not hail from ancient Greece...the origins of the torch ceremony come from Nazi Germany, when Hitler oversaw the 1936 Berlin games. Interesting.

Many groups are reaching out to new audiences because the games have come to China, issues that are easily swept under the table are being paraded daily with the passing of the torch. I am feeling particularly aware of this as I will be seeing the Dali Lama speak this weekend and I will be interested to hear what will be said on Tibetan freedom.

I am also wondering how many detours the torch will take en route and what that means for spreading a message of harmony and peace to all peoples.

-Political cartoons from Ben Sargeant and Pat Oliphant (linked from nytimes.com).

Fun with a bacterial process!

This Sunday we had some intrepid friends over to try our hand at making cheese.

We set our sights relatively low and figured we could successfully create a fresh mozzarella. And mozzarella we did create. It was awesome and pretty easy too.

The only unfortunate thing is the surprisingly small amount of cheese you get from 1 gallon of milk. We curdled with citric acid and rennet, drained whey and kneaded and stretched 1 gallon of milk per person - and each received about 3/4 of a pound of cheese for our trouble. On a side note, we saved 4 gallons of whey for use in other recipes (I came into work this morning and had a muffin that was made with the whey-just lovely).

Somewhere between batches three and four pizza dough was tossed onto a couple of cookie sheets and we used our first runnings to make some fresh mozzarella, pesto, black olive, roasted garlic and artichoke heart pizzas. YUM!

You are entering a new dimension of time and space

I always feel a little like it's the twilight zone when there is no traffic during the daily commute. Do not misunderstand me. I hate commuting by car, I hate traffic, I especially hate being trapped on the Freemont bridge (apparently I have a lot of hate). But I feel as though something is lurking around the corner to punish me when I can make it from work to home without having spent enough time in the car to listen to 7 or 8 Tool songs.

Business as usual

As always, I have gotten excited about Spring before it was excited about me.

We started seedlings, I got some spring shoes to replace my 10 year old winter clogs, we tried some new seasonal beers, marveled at the daffodils and even discussed taking the flannel sheets off the bed.

Ah...too soon. I scraped ICE off the car this morning and said a silent thank you, to no one in particular, for not letting me get dirt and plant outside yet.

And once again I wonder why Spring is fucking with me.



In other (more exciting) notes, we will be ushering in the month of May in the City of Light.

Dragon's Blood

On Sunday we racked the mead that has been bubbling away in the den for the past month into a few small secondary containers. At first we were concerned about using several small containers over one larger one, but after some discussion and ideas on how eventually to proceed, I think we’re both happier with the decision. Because the mead is entirely experimental, we’ll likely bottle it in shifts letting some of it age longer in the jugs. We did give it a sample after racking and mostly it tastes like sour (think lime) alcohol that has a slight effervescence. It has a beautiful color –from the pomegranate juice– and seems to be aging nicely.

I dubbed it (rather greedily) Dragon’s Blood, because it is red in color and because mead makes me think of the cartoon Flight of Dragons that came out in the early 1980’s and was a favorite of mine as a child. In one particularly memorable scene, the two main dragon characters drink their way through an entire cellar of mead (while traveling to the castle of the ‘bad wizard’ Omadon) and share a rousing chorus of Oh Susanna!

...and while not trying to question something this simple, the movie itself rests on the idea that the human world must choose between science and magic. So, is it wrong to call what is essentially a science experiment dragon’s blood?

Duck...Duck...Doctorate

The U of O has admitted me for Doctoral Studies in the Department of Geography for Fall of 2008.

{insert dance of joy here}


Let the games begin.


...Update: I've also 'unofficially' been accepted by PSU :)