August Update

What have we been up to the past few weeks, you ask? Well, let's take a look!

We got to go to a preseason football game in San Francisco - Niners vs. Kate's Broncos - thanks to our friend Karen. It turned out to be quite an exciting game, with the Broncos scoring a touchdown down by 7 with a minute left, then failing on the 2-pt conversion to lose the game. It was entertaining to watch Kate go through the full spectrum of sports emotions within a 30 second timeframe.

Here's a shot of the action. I kinda like the blurry-ness, you can see how fast the wideouts are moving relative to the linemen.

And here we are (Cara, Dustin, Kate, with Karen hidden behind Kate) bundled up against the chilly SF August evening.

And as you know, Kate is now teaching kids that Physics is fun. Most recently/currently she's doing a project involving bottle-rockets:

3... 2... 1...

Just this weekend went to one of our favorite summer activities - Shady Shakespeare in Sanborn park near Saratoga. This year our friend Mikey was in it, playing Touchstone in "As You Like It." Here's a few shots from our picnic cookout beforehand and the performance.

Kate happily stocking up on the ever-important pickles.

The Adams manning the grill

Other friends - Dustin, Kate, Ashley, (another) Adam, Cara, Katie (hidden)

Blurry Mikey in one of several compromising positions his role required.

Touchstone and Celia peeking through the curtain.

Bravo!

And of course Banjo is being cute as always. Somehow he always manages to turn would-be distinguished poses into something silly just in time for the shutter, but the results are usually pretty amusing. Not quite the surprise squirrel picture, but still pretty good.

If teaching doesn't work out for me...

I think I might have a promising career as a lunchlady.

One of my goals for the end of summer was to stock our freezer with healthy breakfasts and lunches that I can grab on the go on days I'm too busy to make something. Breakfasts are particularly challenging because my new teacher schedule has me waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 am (class starts at 7:27) and I just can't force myself to eat that early in the morning.

So, in the last couple of weeks I have made the following:

~12 Gorgonzola Burgers (top left)
~80 muffins (top right), both apple-walnut and pumpkin-cherry. I did make them healthier, substituting some apple sauce for oil, halving the sugar, and using whole-wheat flour.
~27 burritos (middle / left), both beef and chicken
~20 baked potatoes (bottom left), with vegetarian chili, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and cheese
~5 batches of pesto (bottom right)

Tom has contributed, too, with double batches of pecan bars and lemon bars, SOME of which found their way into the freezer. Suspiciously, I couldn't find them to photograph when I was making this post, though. Do you have anything to tell me, Tom?

So, the freezer is packed and I am getting ready for my first day of school (tomorrow!). Hopefully this will last us a couple months, at least, and it will be nice not to have to eat the dreaded school sloppy joes on mornings that we couldn't quite stretch the leftovers.

Banjo and Rufus say: "We can has cheezburger?"

2nd Floor Mid-Mass Reunion

This weekend we got another visit from our good ol' Dartmouth friend Frank, who was in the Bay Area on a buisness trip again but this time stayed an extra day to socialize! Also in the area for a few weeks on a med school rotation is our friend Matt with whom Frank and I (and some of our other readers, I think) shared a corner of Mid-Mass (dorm) during our sophomore year. Friday was Matt's birthday, so we celebrated by going to a local comedy club, which gave us all some good chuckles. Saturday we decided to head over to Santa Cruz to see the sights, beat the heat, and visit our favorite Greek restaurant ever. Here are some of the highlights.

From the nice walk along the cliffs near Lighthouse Field Beach, where we watched the surfers catch the waves for a while.

Getting up close and personal with the piles of sea lions that are always hanging out on the boat landing at the wharf. Frank seemed strangely compelled to try to communicate with the sea lions in their native "language," but I'm not sure if he ever got through to them...

While Kate and Matt got carmel apples on the boardwalk, they decided to treat Frank to a surprise snack and have him guess what it was. Can you guess? It was chocolate covered bacon. Frank got close by guessing "pretzel." Sure puts the fried twinkie stand a few booths away to shame.

Here's Kate at our favorite carnival booth - the tennis ball bazooka. You shoot tennis balls out of this pneumatic cannon at 186 mph at various targets. The only prize you get is the satisfying "whoooompfh" of each ball getting blasted out the barrel, but trust me it's worth it.

Good times, gentlemen! Come back soon, Frank.

Phish at Shoreline, 8-5-09

The highlight of the week for me was not only getting to go to my first Phish show in 6 years, but that I could even ride my bike to and from the show! A band that I have invested a lot of brain cells and hours between headphones in over the years since middle school, it was thoroughly enjoyable from both a nostalgic and forward-looking perspective; the band is back and playing their old classics (almost) as well as ever before, and they also have some real inspiring new material as well to keep things interesting. While it's definitely not just a "reunion tour" or novelty act, they are seemingly paying appropriate attention to the old stuff that the fans like.

The venue was about 5 miles away from our place and accessible via a scenic biking/walking trail that heads out to the Bay. Getting to bypass the throngs of people in cars both getting in and out was especially fun. If anyone's curious, here's a video clip from their performance Wednesday, it cuts off, sorry. (not filmed by me despite the same last name, my seats weren't quite that good!)



Two of my cousins will be in Washington state catching a pair of shows today and tomorrow, lucky ducks! Hope you guys have fun at the Gorge.

From Belgium with Love

The last few beers we have made were relatively common styles that are generally liked by us and our friends - an IPA, a Smoked Scottish Ale, Pale Ale, Nut Brown, Porter, etc. This last time we wanted to try something a little different, so below is our first attempt at making a Chimay clone. (Sorry the picture is so bad - lack of camera required using my webcam to take the picture.) If you haven't had it before, Chimay is a Belgian Brewery made famous by its three types of Monk-brewed beers that - as is typical of the "Belgian" style of Trappist Ales - are extra rich, flavorful, interesting, and alcoholic. The extra alcohol (it should be around 8-9% when finished) comes from the 9 or so pounds of malt extracts, candi sugars, and specialty grains that the special trappist yeasties chow down on vigorously, as you can see from the photo below. This was taken about 2 days into the fermentation.

We just racked (or transferred) the wort (or unfinished beer) into secondary (or a separate jug) yesterday to help it clear and keep it off the dead yeast cells, and in doing so I definitely got strong aromas of blackberry and pepper, in line with the distinctive Chimay Grande Reserve flavors. We'll be sure to let you know how it turns out in a month or so.

Maybe some day we can have a taste test with Steve and Sarah, who I'm happy to hear have just started homebrewing themselves! In the meantime, what should we make next? Does anybody have any other favorite commercial beers that we should try to clone?

Back from the Northwest

Hi readers - time for an update! We just recently returned from a trip to the Great Pacific Northwest where we spent a fun-filled few days with Kate's family (parents, sibings, and nieces and nephews and all) and then did some exploring on our own to break up the long drive back. Yes, we drove up to Seattle, in part because we were bringing the dogs. And yes, I said dogs (plural) because in addition to Banjo we brought up the cute little puppy that Kate adopted down here for her sister's family (as they had been unsuccessful this year in a search for a small terrier-type breed from a rescue/shelter in the Seattle area). So our drive up was pretty much a straight through blast, complete with a comfortable night spent in the back of the Subaru at the Roseburg, OR Wal-Mart parking lot (the price is right!). Unfortunately my camera went on the fritz and died right at the beginning of this trip, so you'll have to make do with these pictures from the internets that I think represent our travels.

The puppy delivery went well and while it was very fun to have a well-behaved and adorably small puppy around the house for a week, we are happy to see Kate's sister (and especially her dog-loving niece) get to have a dog of their own now. We think that Clover (as she's now named) will miss Banjo a little more than vice-versa, especially given Banjo's sudden increase in toy protectiveness that coincided with the puppy's arrival. They did play quite nice together, and it was really a blast to watch the two of them rough-house around outside or play-fight over a stuffy-toy.

Little Clover, back when she was just "puppy."

The big family gathering was at a gorgeous house we all rented for the big group in Union, WA - right on the Hood Canal at the SE end of the Olympic peninsula. This gave us great access to some beautiful spots like Twanoh State Park - a charming Depression-era CCC park project right on the water and with some lovely rainforesty trails - and the Staircase area of Olympic National Park. Kate and I tackled the thigh-burning Mt. Ellinor hike one morning, with 2,500" of vertical in the last mile to the summit! I even shared a shady nook on the summit crags with a mountain goat as I ate lunch, but as it turns out these goats are not uncommon in Olympic these days and are even becoming a nuisance.

One of the neat CCC-built buildings at Twanoh SP

The view from atop Mt. Ellinor N to Mt. Washington Some of the ubiquitous Olympic NP mountain goats with whom I shared the summit (the photo is from the top of Ellinor, too)

Some of the highlights of the family portion of our trip were the delicious meals we all took turns making each night, the lovely view over the water from the house's deck each evening, making exciting waterside or rainforesty discoveries with the nieces and nephews, a fun-filled day jumping off inflatable floats and boats at a nearby freshwater lake, and of course some game-playing with the adults after bedtime.

When the time eventually came for us to disperse again, Kate, Banjo, and I headed North to drive around the Olympic Peninsula and see some of the other areas in the National Park. First stop was Hurricane Ridge, an incredibly scenic ~15 mile drive up into the hills from Port Angeles terminating in a gorgeous alpine playground with several short trails to choose from. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed on any of them so Banjo had to wait in the car while we took in some of the scenery. That may have been a good thing, as we saw a bear (!) just munching on some grass in between some of the paved "near the visitor center" style trails there! Alas, no pictures of the bear.

Some representative pictures of Hurricane Ridge

After Hurricane Ridge our intent was to head to the coast and camp at Kalaloch, a section of the park that covers the coastline, but we arrived to find out that both the regular and "primitive" campgrounds were both full (on a Thursday). Who knew! We took a nice long walk on the wide, foggy Kalaloch beach and let Banjo romp around in glee. Watching our dog run around on the sand, happily sprinting from one intriguing scent to the next and back to us was definitely a highlight of the trip - marred only by the fact that about 5 minutes before our hike was done he somehow managed to find a dead seagull to roll around in before we could get him off of it. Yick. Dead-seagull-covered Banjo with about 15 hours of driving left to do in the next two days. Fortunately we had a bathroom nearby at the lodge and a spare towel, so the little guy was punished for his transgressions with an impromptu bath.

Kalaloch Beach and Rocks, the latter of which were mostly obscured by the fog while we were there, but the beach itself was beautiful and eerie.

That we were denied a campsite at Kalaloch turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as our Plan B was driving a little further down to the Quinault Rain Forest area of Olympic NP. Here we found a fantastic campground with some easy walk-in sites right along a creek and a stone's throw from a lakeshore with lots of privacy thanks to the rain-foresty surroundings. We cooked up a quick dinner, made some s'mores, and cozied up in the tent happy we weren't stuck amongst the hoardes of RVs at Kalaloch.

One of the waterfalls near our Falls Creek campsite in the Quinault Rainforest area

The next day we packed up early and headed south, destination: Crater Lake. After a lunch stop in Portland at Corbett's Fish House for some delicious fish tacos, we veered East off I-5 for some scenic driving over the Oregon Cascades and south towards Crater Lake. We arrived at the lake around sunset and after taking in a couple viewpoints we found out yet again that the campground was full here too (despite a ranger telling me on the phone the day before that "that campground almost never fills up). This time Plan B was another NF campground about 10 miles away, but in 3-4 miles on dirt fire roads. After a turning off onto the NF roads we saw a couple signs directing us to a campsite but those signs quickly stopped and we drove on through the forest wondering what we'd find. Eventually we saw a little spur with a small sign identifying it as "Huckleberry Hill" so we thought we'd try that. This road wasn't grated and quickly turned into a rocky tree-strewn 4x4 road that was just about as much as my Subaru could handle, with Kate helping to pull fallen trees just enough out of the way so I could drive past. But all's well that ends well and we made it to the top of "Huckleberry Hill" which afforded us a really nice viewpoint over towards the rim of Crater Lake and the surrounding area. Interestingly you can see where we ended up in the bottom left of this map from the NPS, and also Google seems to have the dirt roads identified too - we ended up at the end of the spur road in the little clearing shown here. A quick camp-stove dinner, another nice campfire and s'more s'mores were followed by a night filled with crystal clear stars in the sky and visits from the local deer population (which Banjo found some combination of interesting and frightening). Again, everything seemed to work out nicely for us.

After Huckleberry Hill we went back up to Crater Lake early in the morning to get our fill of hiking and sightseeing in before finishing the drive home. Crater Lake was pretty amazing - the water is incredibly blue, the thousand-foot walls down to the lake staggeringly steep and severe, and of course Wizard Island in the middle is so quintessentially volcanic it almost looks like a middle-schooler's baking soda and vinegar science fair project. Views are unique from every vantage point around the lake, making the hike around the rim particularly interesting. Also making that hike interesting was the necessary attention to not trip and fall a thousand feet down cliffs into the lake - it really is right on the rim for a significant portion of the trail, at least for the ~5 miles I hiked on it between the visitor center and the Watchman overlook.

(I'll add some pictures of Crater Lake later)

After circling the lake and taking in some more viewpoints and a couple short little hikes we continued south through Oregon and California, had lunch in the shadow of impressive Mt. Shasta, and made it back safe and sound!

All in all a great trip despite the lots of driving. A few good books on tape and good company in the passenger seat helps there. I'm glad we got to see family and some natural highlights of the Pacific Northwest in the same trip, but it's always good to be back home too. Hopefully my new camera will arrive soon so I can get back to photo-enhanced blogging. Kate, was there anything I forgot that's worth mentioning?