A day in the life....

Our day yesterday:
Start out with a hot cup of coffee (heavy on the cream) and homemade blueberry muffins (which we eat before I got a chance to take a picture of them)

After a weak attempt on my part to do Week 5, Day 3 (the first long run) of Couch to 5k, we headed off to a very Portland event - Tour de Coops. Local homes open up their chicken coops so people can come look at them.
Our favorite was this one:

This lady had a beautiful yard, although waaay too many chickens (23):

We're considering getting chickens for the new house next year, and we learned a lot. I'm not worried about the chicken part, but building a coop feels overwhelming! The idea of our own fresh, cage-free, organic eggs is very appealing though.
After a quick trip to the grocery store, we headed home to get ready for the annual costume/birthday party of a friend of B's. This year's theme was Gods and Monsters. B went as Jesus (a huge hit) and I went as a goddess.
Two of my favorites were the woman just weeks away from her due date that was Buddha and the woman that was Vishnu...or was it Shiva? Either way, her costume was awesome and she made it!

This guy was funny and was all over reenacting how the Romans hate Jesus. He had a bow and arrow and randomly shot at B all night.

The entire gang:


This was our first year we went to the party, and we had a blast. It went into the wee hours of the night, and I'm tired today. But packing beckons, so I should get moving.

A new decade

Last Saturday (June 25), I turned 30. As the date approached, I felt neutral about it. I wasn't dreading being 30, but I wasn't excited about it either. However, tons of fantastic people in my life changed that! Not many people are in my office on Fridays, so Thursday morning I walked into work to see this:

and this:

That is FOUR dozen donuts from three different local bakeries, plus 30 donut holes. Another coworker added a dozen bagels to the stack shortly after this picture was taken. Then I got an email of this:

from my coworker that works in the building down the street.

It turns out that this was a huge group effort that involved almost a dozen of my coworkers. I felt so loved! Several people said it was the biggest birthday celebration they had seen at the center....all for me! It definitely cheered me up on the way to 30! I should also add that B sent me the succulent garden you can see in the black planter on the top shelf. I was so surprised to get the delivery on Tuesday, since he is NOT a flower guy. He said it reminded him of our recent trip to Arizona (still need to blog about that) and included a very sweet note.

My actual birthday included the adventure of a lifetime, which was my gift from B. We went skydiving!

It was a beautifully sunny day. From the top of the plane ride (13,000 feet) we could see all the way to Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Although I was prepared to be really scared, it wasn't actually very scary at all. Everything happened so quickly. The "training" was about a minute, and before we knew it we were packed tightly into the plane, strapped to our instructor.

The instructor did all of the work. Once the plane door opened, everyone was out in about 30 seconds. There was no "jumping" involved. He threw us out of the plane before I even had a change to think about it. The first second was disorienting as we tumbled, but I was quickly distracted by how cold it was. My hands were freezing! We were in free fall for about a minute (although it felt like 20 seconds!) and then he pulled the chute. That was a peaceful and quiet float back down.
Part of our group:

B is the green chute, I'm the pink one:


Everyone asks us about the landing. It was very smooth for both of us. You keep your legs up until the instructor says to stand up. It was really easy and not jarring or rough in any way. All in all, I'm really glad I did it. I don't think I'll do it again, but I would recommend that people try it at least once. It was quite an adventure, and a great way to kick off 30!

"I'm ready to settle down"

B is a wanderer. Many times I've heard him referred to as a tumbleweed. Committing to anything is a challenge for him, and I've joked that I'm surprised that he decided to commit to me. To his credit, he says that's the one smart decision he made. :)

I was surprised when he broached the idea of house hunting. We sold our house about a year ago and were pretty sure we wouldn't be buying again any time soon or at all. We've lived in 2 places since then, and both have been plagued by noisy neighbors and shoddy construction. On the bright side, we love our current area. We gradually started looking at open houses in our neighborhood, and B was leading the charge. I questioned him about his motivation, and he said "I'm finally ready to settle down." Needless to say, my jaw nearly hit the floor. The world wanderer had decided he was willing to plant. In "my" town. Where I want to be. Where he doesn't necessarily want to be, but where he knows I'm happy and fulfilled. The compromise if we stay in Portland is that he can spend a few weeks in someplace sunny every winter, and I'm okay with that.

We made an offer on a cute house. It was a decent offer, but the sellers countered at full price, no concessions, since it had been on the market only 2 days. Sweet revenge that it's a month later and they still have no other offer!

We put in another offer on a really nice, fully remodeled house that's 2.5 miles from both of our works. They countered, we wavered, and they immediately came back agreeing with our original offer. We're currently in the inspection negotiation period. Most things were fine, but the radon came back slightly high. Now we're trying to decide what to do about it, but I'm 99% sure everything will turn out just fine because the seller is willing to negotiate. So behold our new house:


We're set to close in mid-July. In the meantime, we're headed on vacation next week and couldn't be more excited! Sedona/Grand Canyon/Vegas here we come!

Weekend fun

After spending many weekends with little down time, we took two weekends "off" and didn't schedule any time with friends or family. It was nice to have more free/lazy time, and it made us excited to go out with friends this past weekend. Bryan has friends that are a husband/wife couple that we always like spending time with. Due to our various schedules, it's hard to get together, and it never happens often enough. We went out with them on Saturday and had a blast.

First we started at their house for some beers and chatting. We then headed to Ethiopian food for dinner. It's unique because they don't give you plates or silverware. Everything is eaten with this spongey crepe-like bread (I should know the name of it, but I don't). Luckily our friends were in the know, so they just ordered this for the table. I don't know the Ethiopian terms, but starting form the yellow stuff near the top it is something yellow (I don't remember what that was!), green beans, lentils, cabbage, kale, and minced beef with cheese. Overall it was very good, although B and I agreed we had expected a bit more spice.

After dinner we headed to Whiskey Soda Lounge for drinks. This is the bar/waiting area for the famous Pok Pok, although we were just stopping by to try out the drink menu. They had some very unique options. Mine is the silver martini glass, which was "Hunny": fresh squeezed grapefruit juice with lime, honey drinking vinegar, and tequila. After the initial sour jolt, it was very good. At $9 a pop I wasn't having more than one though!
Portland is known for its food carts. As if we weren't full enough from dinner and drinks, we decided to add some dessert to to already awesomely gluttonous day. We walked from Whiskey Soda Lounge to the nearby cart pod. On a recommendation from our friends, we tried The Pie Spot.
Apple pie, marionberry pie, and chocolate hazelnut pie. They were clearly made in a muffin tin, so it was the perfect size. Mine was the marionberry one, and it was fantastic! I would definitely go back again.

We then headed back to our friend's house, chatted for a couple more hours and played some cards. We got home and went to bed just before 1:30am, which is crazy late for us. We had such a good time. It's always nice to have couple friends that you click with.

Smartphones

I do not own a smartphone. Admittedly, it's mostly because I'm cheap and don't want to pay $30 per month (plus taxes) on the data plan. However, in recent months I've really started to hate smartphones. The average smartphone user within 10 years of my age seems to care WAY more about what OTHERS are doing (Facebook, game scores, chatting, etc) than what they are currently doing.

Just a few days ago we went to a Portland Trailblazers game. The entire row in front of us was some former frat brothers. At some point during the game, every.single.one of them took out their phone and was browsing Facebook. I'm not talking about during halftime. I mean during the middle of the most intense parts of the game. They spent more time wondering what others were doing rather than enjoying the game and their time with friends.

I've been at concerts where people were watching sports events on their smartphones rather than paying attention to the band. I've been out to eat and seen couples on a date where one (or both) of them texts during the entire meal. I've been on cruises where people use their smartphones until the exact last second that they can. I've seen more people than I can count surfing the web while driving. Twitter is the dumbest invention of late, and I'm astounded to hear how many people are addicted to it. I see Facebook status updates literally every day where someone was supposedly "spending time" with their family. My favorite one lately was the hour by hour update of "Sue Smith is at XYZ restaurant" while on a romantic vacation with her husband. PUT AWAY THE DAMN PHONE AND PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR HUSBAND.

Why can't people untether themselves and enjoy the moment? Is life that awful that you constantly have to be seeing what other people are doing via your smartphone? God forbid you wait for a table at a restaurant and don't check your email while you're waiting!

I feel grateful that I married a man that barely even checks his phone if you call him. He goes days without remembering to take it to work, and it is often left behind when we go out to eat, to the movies, or just for a walk together. Why? Because we go out to BE TOGETHER. We don't go out to then see what others are doing. I feel sad that people are unable to enjoy being present at what they are doing.

So to all of the addicts out there, try giving up the smartphone whenever you are with other people. You might find you actually have a good time not being reachable (i.e. interrupted) every 5 minutes. Trust me...the world will be a better place if you keep your 140 characters to yourself. Better yet, use those characters to tell your friends and family how much you like spending uninterrupted time with them. Then follow through and leave your smartphone at home. They will thank you for it.

More Mexico

Mexico seems so long ago now! We're already jonesing for our next vacation, which needs to be planned.

Due to some bad weather and some danger in Mazatlan, our itinerary changed quite a bit. We ended up with a extra "fun day at sea." While it was "fun," it was fairly cold. The next day we stopped in La Paz. The line for the bus into town was REAAAALY long, so we went back to the ship for a bit. B braved the waterslide while we were waiting...but only once! It was too cold for me, and I hate saltwater pools/waterslides, so I stood by and took a photo.


We liked La Paz. It was windy and pretty cold by Mexico standards (high 60's, low 70's).

The beach was covered with little tiny hermit crabs. They were so small that you couldn't really see them until you looked at the shells for a bit and saw them moving.

We spent an embarrassingly long time watching this bird (an egret?) fishing on the shores of the beach. It was so fascinating to watch it's amazingly good crab-grabbing skills. It was eating crabs that were way bigger than it seemed like it could swallow, and we kept waiting to see if it would choke (do birds choke?).


From La Paz, we headed to Puerto Vallerta. In order to appease us from losing a port stop we had a very long time there. We walked around a little bit and found out that without a taxi it wasn't easy to get past the endless fence around the cruise port. We found a nice taxi driver that took us about an hour and a half into the "jungle." Mexican jungle sure is different than my vision of "jungle." The claim to fame in the jungle outside of Puerto Vallerta is that Predator was filmed there. You drive forever on a narrow, winding, dirt mountain road. First stop was an interesting tequila factory.
Tequila starts out as agave.

We got to try a piece as part of the tour. It was very sweet (think agave nectar).

Then we got to try 5 different kinds of tequila. No pictures of that (I was busy drinking!), but it was delicious. A few of the kinds tasted very creamy. At $35 a bottle, we passed at buying any, but it was a nice tourist stop. From there we headed to the Predator filming location. It was pretty and you could swim in the water if you wanted, but again, it was way too cold. Mountain water isn't pleasant in weather in the high 60's!

From there our cabbie took us to "the most beautiful view in Puerto Vallerta. It didn't disappoint, although the aggressive people at the top selling their crap at "almost free" was a little annoying.


After driving around for hours, we were starving. We had been having a conversation with our cab driver about how much we didn't like the tourist restaurants (why would we come to Mexico and eat at Planet Hollywood or Bubba Gumps?), so we told him to take us to a good local restaurant. We didn't get quite what we were envisioning, but it was good. They made fresh guacamole at our table. B will probably kill me for posting this picture, as I'm pretty sure he didn't know he was in it!

We also enjoyed "small" margaritas. I can't imagine how big the large one would be!

We were in Puerto Vallerta until 10pm, so we watched the sunset on the beach.


Just going back through all of these photos makes me want to be on vacation again. It was so nice to be able to spend time together without the stress of work, chores, endless to-do list, and allergies. It had been a long time since we had true down time together, and it made both of us realize how much we actually really like each other :)

Mexico!

I had good intentions of blogging right when we got back from our cruise. But after 10 hours of traveling (for a short 2 hour flight) to get home, then heading back to work just hours after getting home, I was tired. And there was a mountain of laundry to be tackled (let's be honest, we're still not even close to done with that due to our tiny apartment-sized machine).

We had a good time. We decided while on the trip that cruising has lost it's shine, so our next trip will be land-based (Bora Bora?, Italy?, Tahiti?, Belize?, Turkey?). That didn't deter us from loving 9 days of drinking, reading, eating, and sweet sweet napping.

We enjoyed some great comedians and a couple of shows in the theater. B even took one for the team and volunteered for the game show (he took second).


Our cabin steward was a lovely man that always said hello to us by our first names from Day 1. He also made us some of the most creative towel animals we've had.


Our first stop was Cabo - after "winning" an extra day at sea when it was too rough to get into port. It was still pretty cold, but water-loving B was brave enough to try snorkeling in the 60ish degree water.

While he came out shivering, he reported that there were tons of really cool fish. I took his word for it and stayed on the beach in my hoodie. The locals all had on pants and sweatshirts because of how cold it was.


While he snorkeled, I made friends with a pelican.

This guy let me get within just a couple of feet of him. We don't have pelicans in Oregon, so I have a strange fascination with them.

We did enjoy a nice boat ride around Cabo. The seals were very loud and very stinky!



A work meeting calls. I'll go ahead and publish this for all of you asking about updates, and the rest will come in a few days.