Daily Pic (Josh) 2009-10-03

"The amazing hoverpoodle is only 3 easy payments of $99.95..."

Daily Pic (Josh) 2009-10-02

"Beautiful grate outside Dow Hall at OIT"

Daily Pic (Josh) 2009-10-01

"Assembly Line Anatomy"

September happenings

It seems like the remainder of September has simply flown by, interrupted only by various stress inflicted health symptoms for both Eden and I; primarily migraines and insomnia. Regardless, we did manage to squeeze in a few adventures before I left, including another trip to Multnomah Falls to catch some of the early fall weather.

Eden had planned a surprise going away party for the 13th, which meant her own self-assigned task was to keep me away from the house all day. We ended up at the Steigerwald Lake Wildlife Reserve, near Stevenson, Washington. Poor Eden was so tired that day that she simply fell asleep in the parking lot for a few hours while I trekked around with the camera.

The actual party was pretty cool too - nearly everyone I'd have liked to see showed up, save for a few with time conflicts or that were mixed up about which weekend things were happening on. To my recollection, no one has ever thrown me a surprise party before, and I've got to admit it felt awfully good that people cared that much that I was leaving.

Our friend Vash threw a barbecue the Saturday before I left, which was also a blast, and had mighty tasty food too. In theory I have the recipe for some killer dip coming my way soon, and I now know that the bulk hamburgers from Costco are tasty as heck with the right man at the grill - Vash set them up with two patties sealed together with cheese in the middle and it was just sinfully good. The company there was also interesting, especially the kids running around - later in the day the girls got it in their heads that it was time to rake up leaves, and they were excessively cute in their intensity at the task.

Eden and I headed down to Philomath that Sunday for a belated birthday party for my brother Tim. It was good to see everyone before I headed off, and the drive down and back was actually a fairly peaceful way to take time alone with Eden. I want to take a moment and point out the picture of the respirator on the left here that I nabbed while I was there - this is the kind of thing Tim does for fun - just awesome art doodles that no one will ever see. Of course the pieces he does commercially are amazing too, but really, his random stuff needs more exposure too.

Now that I've gotten down to Klamath Falls, I haven't taken too much time for shooting, mostly due to feeling cruddy, although that's been getting steadily better. I did feel well enough when I woke up last Thursday to make a run out to the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge that I'd seen on the way down, about an hour out of town. Once you turn off the highway, it's definitely isolated. I didn't see much, other than chipmunks and birds, but those guys posed pretty well in any case. One shot that I didn't nab, and wish I could have, was of pretty much all of them running along the road - the terrain was so dusty that they all looked like Speedy Gonzales impersonators as they left. Oh well - they were just too shy to manage the right angle. I did try to head over to Crater Lake on the way back to take some follow up pictures for the ones we took earlier this year, but the smoke from the recent wildfire interfered, having collected in the crater bowl in thick enough layers to block all view of the lake.

And that pretty much wraps it up for September! October is a new month now, and I'm not so sure that this blog will see a lot of use in the coming months, as Eden and I will be spending considerably less time together. That said, I'm starting a new project; trying to post a daily pic each day for at least the next month. Eden recently had a week long swap with this theme and it seemed very interesting, although I haven't had a chance to see all of her pics. In any case, I'll be posting those pictures here, and of course my scholastic adventures have resumed, so my other blog is back in business, so hopefully you won't miss me too very much.

2009-10-01 Picdump [Show images on map] [Fullscreen slideshow]

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Ow.

There's something wrong with me. I know this for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being the subtle indicator which is a dearth of restful sleep, and a sudden excess of migraine symptoms. Tomorrow I will be precisely one week away from heading south to OIT, away from my lovely wife and toward a minimum of four years of study, hopefully to be followed by a brand new career. The anticipation is simply killing me, to the point where I've been intermittently fantasizing about heading down early and simply camping in the area just to finally be there, even though I would have less than nothing to do. I don't have anything clever or insightful to say on this subject; rather, I am simply abusing you all as a tiny outlet for some of this frustration. Normal updates here will probably resume later today, if my head cooperates. Thanks for understanding, and listening.

- J

P.S. The pic of Mei Mei above does not represent anything in particular... it's just the best pic I've taken of her so far, I think, and I had to share.

A great week

The week started off nicely, having dinner with Bob and Fara, whom Eden first met back in her bank days. They're a really great couple, always pleasant and positive. It'd been quite a while since we'd seen them, perhaps even as long as since our wedding, mostly due to the fact that they both work and our own location outside of Portland. Nonetheless, we had a very nice time with them.

The next day offered few surprises, other than a bloody huge spider visiting our room. Mostly we just took the day easy, although I had a chance to play with a few long exposure night photos that evening before the rain hit. Believe it or not, that shot of the playground was taken just short of midnight with no auxiliary lighting. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this kind of thing once I get the hang of it, I think.

On Thursday we headed to the coast and north, just to get out of the house and try to spend as much quality time together as we can before it's time for me to go. The drive was beautiful, but offered few photographic opportunities, mostly due to few parking areas along the way. We ended up at Grayland State Park for the evening, just a bit south of Westport, where Eden reminded me of just why I love her so very much. After returning from dinner at an excellent place called Bennett's, we happened across two young ladies we'd observed on the road several hours before. As it turns out, Anastasia and Julia were biking from San Francisco to Canada (day 48 of their trip at the time we encountered them). Since we already had a campsite set up and firewood, Eden decided to offer to share. It was an incredibly pleasant way to spend an evening, and it was quite inspiring to hear them talk about their trip and discoveries, not to mention watch them cook dinner with such incredible familiarity. Despite the night being nearly pitch black, they set up in mere moments. To be perfectly honest, I'm truly hoping that they'll drop us a line once their trip is done, because they were very personable. I also tried a few more long exposure shots that evening - you'll notice that by sheer chance I happened to get an owl in frame on the shot to the right - didn't see him at all in the dark.

Most of the day Saturday was taken up rebuilding our friend Jess' computer and meeting her two new kittens, Wednesday and Pugsly. Being kittens, they were of course unbearably cute pretty much the entire time. We also had the chance to try out one of our newest aquisitions, Star Trek Scene-It, which was much harder than we anticipated, even with nearly everyone being huge fans of the various series. Go figure - this one is made for the uber geeks.

We spent the rest of the weekend caring for Bob and Fara's dog, Zelda, which was fun as well, even with most of the time being rainy. We'd hoped to be able to take her up to the dog park in Washington, but it was not to be. I did get the chance to take her up on a nearby nature trail during one of the few breaks though, so that was nice.

Finally, we spent a good chunk of today visiting with our friends Alyson and Marjorie, as well as meeting their new kittens, Ziva and Romey, as well as their other 12 cats - always an adventure. It's also not a bad thing that they share our addiction to Munchkin, and make quite decent opponents.

2009-09-07 Picdump [Show images on map] [Fullscreen slideshow]

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Tasty Bread!

Original Challah Recipe





This past Monday we had a chance to have dinner with our friends Fara and Bob to set up for taking care of their dog, Zelda. In preparation, I decided to try a recipe that I've been anticipating for quite a long time, Challah. Not having the religious background, I'd never had a chance to sample the stuff, but I've heard how good it is for a very long time. I've got to say, I was really pleased with the results, after I made two small changes to the recipe. Firstly, since the recipe as written ended up a bit wet, I changed the flour from 5 cups total to just under 6, and I added about a teaspoon of brown sugar to the final egg wash to add a slightly sweet tinge. It seemed to be very well recieved - if you get a chance, try some!