Heidi In Avignon

Heidi In Avignon
Originally uploaded by King Cnut.

Can you see her? This is from when we vacationed in France in December 1999.

Alida Relocates

Alida's New blog is on Blogger.com.
Thanks to Blogger.com's automatic atom feed system, you can subscribe with this url:
http://allygirl20.blogspot.com/atom.xml

While I'm here, I may as well jot down some other news:

The solar-radiation sensor has arrived and so my weather station will soon be armed to it's proverbial teeth. Today was strange, with respect to the temperature in particular. When I first checked the outside temp, at around 8 am, it was 8 degrees Celsius. And it was clear outside! Usually a clear night is a cold night, but this one bucked the trend bigtime. It has been windy, and the high temperature today was 17, which isn't much less than we keep the house.

I'm going to plug Skype now, because it seems to offer some really substantial savings on worldwide phone service. I may post more about it later, but, if you're interested in making some long-distance calls without paying a mint, you'd be doing yourself a favor to look into it.

Real Homemade Belgian Waffles

Made with yeast, let rise for over an hour. Nearly as fluffy as angel food cake. A little bit of mace added to give them a doughnutty flavor. Blueberries on top. MMMMMM. Cooked, to perfection, in the new Waring Pro belgian waffle maker.
Don't even try to tell me life get's better than this.

Death to Dryers

Fort Bale, which is my new preferred nickname for our home, is death to clothes-dryers. We have had three of them come and go since we moved in here, roughly 9 months ago.
Now, in a sign of surrender, we are attempting to go 1860's-style and hang everything on a dowel-rack next to the woodstove.
Which reminds me, we've been weaning ourselves back off of the floor heat, since we still have a lot of wood left for this season, and a bunch stacked for next season. And so far we still haven't received a bill from the utility company so that we can assess the cost of running the floor heat for the month or so that we ran it. I'm starting to think they sent our bill to some law-enforcement agency to have them look into why our electricity-usage went from "refrigerator, lights and a couple computers" to "refrigerator, lights, couple computers and uranium-enrichment facility with a mid-sized aluminum smelter"

Bridge Maintenance

The Cedar Ridge Homeowners Association maintains the bridge. But outside of some massive flood-event all that needs to be done is a periodic resurfacing.

The rainfall since Jan. 7th is now a hair's breadth from 9 inches!!

Hillsides are slumping
No trees embrace to protect
Overcome by tears

Rain Storm

We've been having a rain storm since the 7th of January, according to my new weatherstation. The total accumulation of the storm is now at 6.65 inches!

Spice of Life

Heidi and I were able to take an extended day to ourselves yesterday, and we really enjoyed it.
First stop, Penzey's spice store in SE Portland. Wow, what an awesome place. You don't just get cinnamon, you get China Cassia, Vietnamese Cassia or some other type, which isn't the 'best' so I forget what it's called. You can get three types of saffron, (their best, the Kashmir, is cheaper than what I found at Fred Meyer, by a considerable margin!) nutmeg whole or ground, mace whole or ground, and enormous variety of premixed seasonings. It's all highest quality and very reasonably priced. Envy would be a natural and healthy response right about now, it's ok.
Second stop, Sur La Table, where we picked up a professional Belgian waffle-maker, which we've had our eyes on for quite some time. We had waffles for breakfast this morning and wow! We are stoked. Plus, the ground mace we bought from Penzey's we found out is the secret flavor of doughnuts, so we threw some of that into our waffles and mmmmmmmmm yum.
Third stop, Powell's bookstore, which is pretty much our idea of heaven on earth. I got a few technical books to bolster up my knowledge of the newest versions of ASP.NET and SQL Server. Heidi got some fun books for herself and the kids.
Fourth stop, Whole Foods, which is our other idea of heaven on earth, where you can buy anything in the store because it's all carefully reviewed for harmful chemicals etc.., and they have things like 5 year old cheese from Europe, Seville oranges and perhaps the best pizza in town, although admittedly we have a few more pizzas to try before that assessment can be conclusive.
To cap off the night, we rented The Wedding Crashers, which despite having next to nothing for a plot, was hilarious. How could it not be with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson teamed up?
The kids got to go swimming, so they were having a great time too.

More on Lichen

It must be peak lichen season. It is so thick now. In the field of cascara outside my window, it looks like key-lime mousse has fallen from the sky and coated all the branches.

Two Weeks On The Job

Two weeks into my latest gig and I tell ya, things are looking good. This company is going to be bleeding-edge efficient in no time. And, with a rock-solid database design to boot.

My maternal-unit discovered this wonderfully odd news item about an 88 year-old woman who drove off the side of the road and into a blackberry thicket that was so thick, the car was swallowed up, and nearly invisible. It tells about how she survived several days trapped, by blackberry vines, in her car, before someone found her.

The rain has, thankfully, subsided of late; only .61 inches today. That is good, because things that shouldn't be in danger of washing away were. Like the one-lane bridge that crosses Cedar Creek and is the only access to our neighborhood. Luckily the pasture downstream is low and was able to fill-up with some of the excess water. The horses might feel a bit put out by it, but the fish are probably really enjoying the extra elbow-room. That last phrase really tickled me. But then I'm a little rummy from the fast pace of the week.
This is the kind of mood that lets you write something really inane, and just be pleased as punch over your cleverness. For instance:

River swelling high
How do the fish survive it?
Swim out to pasture

I wrote some other piece of doggerel a few months ago and thought it was the most profound thing since the last nietzche quote I heard. A couple weeks later I read it, expecting to lift my ego, but instead felt utter shock and dismay at how truly banal and lacking in substance it was. If my perceptions can be so wrong on any given day, I better tie myself to the mast, you know?

Theorizing

Heidi: "Friends and family are more important than money."
Arthur: "We need to find lots of money to buy friends!"
Jamey: "Silly Arthur! You don't buy friends, you have to grow them in an egg."

Weather Station Report 001

Apparently we've been in a rain storm for the past three days straight! We've had 2.09 inches in the past 24 hours!

Jamey On New Year's Day!

Jamey On New Year's Day!
Originally uploaded by King Cnut.

Arthur took this picture of Jamey. Once Jamey noticed the camera though, the smile went away.

The I-5 Drawbridge

Did you all know that I-5 is a drawbridge crossing the Washington-Oregon border? I had the opportunity to contemplate that fact for about 25 minutes while waiting to cross back into Washington this evening.

That made me late for the first evening Grange meeting. It was a big success, as many people made it, albeit some rather late. : There has been a small group of ladies that has held it together without much support, but recently we have had a string of new recruits, which is encouraging.

Coming soon, more pictures!

New Job

I have a new job as a database consultant for a firm in Portland that manages litigation information. Currently there is a large internal project, but I'll also help with custom databases for new client projects.
So far it has been quite fun and interesting.

Notions

I was prodded about blogging my New Year's resolutions by my uncle Earl. He's in law. (Buh-dum-bum.)
The very word 'resolution' raises alarms within me that cannot be ignored. Yet, I find myself craving to participate in this hallowed tradition. What to do? Fear not, since I am a seer of possibilities I have determined that I can participate as long as I disclaim any true intention of sticking to the ideas I put forth. Hence, instead of resolutions, I'll list my New Year's notions! These will be notions that I have about how to make this year a little better than previous years. Nothing's set in stone here. I'm not "resolute". Just trying to recognize these as decent ideas. This concept is my gift to you. I will demand no royalties or rights of any kind in relation to the usage of 'New Year's notions', so feel free to run with it.

Here's my list:

• get more excercise
• learn more
• let people I love, like and appreciate know that I love, like or appreciate them as often as possible
• avoid letting people whom I revile know that I revile them
• spend less than I make
• make more order than disorder
• create an abundant garden
• contribute my weather data to noaa and wundergound.com
• promote world peace
• keep a positive, can-do attitude

That's all I can think of for the moment.

The New Year's/Birthday party we had on the 31st was a success by all accounts. I can't go into much more detail, because I don't want it on my permanent record.

Of some note: I came out of semi-retirement and actually cooked some decent food, albeit saved by the mango-peach salsa Heidi bought at Costco.

Starting a new job tomorrow. Woohoo!