PDX Pix - June 2013

I'm a bit behind the times again, oops.  June is great in Portland, the days are wildly long and the sun starts to outweigh the clouds.  The world seems to explode with green growth as the mixture of rain and sun seems to make all types of plants quite happy.

Here's some of what we were up to:

Bike commuting while the weather is good.  Here I am waiting for the Hillsboro-bound MAX train in Beaverton. 

On another bike adventure, I explored some roads out Northwest of Portland and ended up on a gravel-laden adventure.  Pretty roads like this at times, though.

At one point I saw a truck with some teenage-looking guys and girls stopped, I said hi and rode by.  Later I heard them coming so I pulled off to let the dust settle as they went by.  The sped by, fishtailing and generally speeding through fire roads, and I couldn't really believe what I was seeing as they spun around a corner and into a ditch, toppling the truck over like this.  Amazingly everyone was ok, and I left after another truck showed up and they started thinking about how to get the thing turned over.  Crazy.

Kate did some bathroom painting despite her balance being a little off-center.  Don't worry, she's safely braced against falling here.

Of course Banjo required lots of snuggles.

I went to the open house for the new Single-A baseball team in Hillsboro, the Hillsboro Hops, with some co-workers.  I haven't been to a game yet (I know, shame shame) but it was fun to see the new field (all turf, even the brown part in the infield) and watch the players practice a bit. 

Nesting.  We got a crib - here Kate ponders the instructions while we put it together.  I should say while she puts it together, I think she did the whole thing herself.

The garden's raspberry crop was great again - it seems to have two peaks of production, one in June and one later in August.

Haircut!

Jeremy and I poured beer at the National Organic Beer Festival again this year (2nd time for me).  This year we got Eel River (CA) and their IPA and Acai-Wheat beers. 

The best part is after our day-ending shift all the "leftover" beer goes to the back and the volunteers get to finish it off!  This year we were smart and affixed labels so we'd know what we were sampling.

I went to a Major League Ultimate (frisbee) match - yes that's a thing.  4 teams on the East and West coasts each, and it's pretty impressive watching these guys run and huck and leap and dive and catch all over the place.  They are good.  Turned out the San Francisco Dogfish were better than the Portland Stags, but it was a fun time anyway.

We visited the Seattle family and Soheil took some great pictures with his fancy camera.  Here's a few shots. 

July next!  (soon I promise...  and if we're lucky Kate will post some pictures about her adventures all over New England for weddings and visiting friends!)

PDX Pix - May 2013

May started off with a fun event - Kate defended her Master's thesis at San Jose State, so as of now she's officially a master!  Of education!  Joking aside, it's a great accomplishment and perhaps more importantly to her, means that she's done and can go back to focusing on teaching.  I tagged along on the weekend trip and we got a nice visit with friends in as well.  We even had a pool party!  Other items of note in May were the DASH puzzlehunt that we hosted in Portland, a visit to Seattle to see family, continued baby developments (and excitement/apprehension!  In case you missed the news somehow, Kate and I are expecting a baby boy at the end of September.  Pretty sure all our 4 readers already are aware of that though), three babies of teacher friends being born (two on the same day!) and the start of warm weather and gardening season.

Portland's living room - Pioneer Courthouse Square.  Downtown, on a nice sunny day.

Adam and Ann, being silly out to dinner with us in San Jose.

Pool party!  A&A are lucky to have a nice pool in their back yard, and it was hot enough in CA that weekend to make it a much enjoyed amenity.  Here's Adam defying gravity somehow.

The Bay Area gang.  And Argo.

Kate's modeling her new maternity pants.  What style!  Does it count as "sagging" if they're still hiked up over your belly button?

Argo!  Always attentive.

To celebrate Kate's thesis defense, we went wine tasting in downtown San Jose!  Don't worry, we had a tip from some colleagues of Kate's to go to this place that had good NA wine.  Surprisingly when we showed up there, one of Kate's advisers from SJSU was pouring wine! Was fun for them to reconnect.  

See!  Non-alcoholic.  Not quite the same, but not bad, really.

Here's Kate with baby Mark, only about a week old at this point.

We did some board game playing on nice nights outside.  This one is Tobago.  I think I probably lost, based on the look on Kate's face.

Final preparations for DASH5.  These hex pieces are all part of the final puzzle, which gets assembled to look like the caffeine molecule - the answer being 'caffeine'.  

Pre-DASH prep at Rogue with co-organizer Rich.  This probably looks familiar to Marc (if he still reads this!).

Start of the DASH.  I think there were ~100 people in ~23 teams at the PDX event.

Baby geese at Waterfront Park!  

Later in the day it did rain, but we managed and all the puzzlers were good sports about it.

And then later in the month it rained more...  still have to go on walks, Banjo!  (He's kind of a wimp.  Not a hardy Portland dog yet, I guess.)

Here we are at the Waffle Window, courtesy of Kate's mom (birthday present).  Very yummy, both sweet and savory waffles!

At some point we were going to have to post a baby-bump picture, right?  

Triplets!  Just kidding.  All your babies are belong to Kate.  

Board game night just happened to coincide with the day Kate used dry ice in class.  She had some leftovers, so naturally we played Pompeii with an active volcano.

More games!  Playing Niagara with nieces, nephew, and Beth in Seattle. 

I know who likes being in warm sunbeams...

Rufus and Banjo apparently enjoy laying butt-to-butt in the dirt pile when it's warm, too.  Dogs are weird.  And Banjo needs a haircut here, bad.  (he got one)

Parting shot of baby in profile!  See, we weren't faking with the above baby bump picture!

PDX Pix - April 2013

Let's keep it moving and go onto April.  Happy Birthday, Kate!

The house, with things starting to become green again in the background.

We went to OMSI, the local science museum, to see the Mythbusters exhibit.  They had a lot of interactive pieces where you could try something that was done on the show.  Here Kate shows off her cat-like reflexes in the "Dodge A Bullet" test setup.

And here she proves that the phone book swing is strong enough to hold her and baby Noah.

Random display in the museum.  Thought it was kind of funny.

So, my distinguished uncle has spent a lot of this year and before putting together an important Manet exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art.  Later, I found out that Fathom Events (the group that does live theater broadcasts of things like the opera, concerts, etc.) had a one-day only showing of this exhibit as part of their "Exhibition" series.  Anyways, it was very cool to see the exhibit on the big screen, and to also see my uncle talk about this amazing painter in the film too!  Neat stuff.  Congrats, LWN!

Saw a fantastic, one-time-only show with Booker T Jones and Charlie Hunter as part of the Portland "Soul'd Out Music Festival."  Fabulous interplay between these two greats, and it was amusing to see Charlie Hunter essentially play as a backup musician.

The pink explosion tree!

Found this book at a library sale.  It's pretty hilarious.  Potters - it's headed your way next.

We'd volunteered to help run the DASH puzzle hunt in Portland later in May, but there was a lot of prep work to be done.  Here's an example of one of the puzzles.  (We didn't create the puzzles, just organized the Portland iteration of the event, dealing with logistics and day-of running).

And here is our band of playtesters doing a dry-run of the puzzlehunt.  Good thing we did that too, as it ran very long and had to be pared down a bit.  Of course we had gorgeous weather for  the playtest in April, and then drizzle/rain for the actual day in May...

Poor Banjo came down with some type of allergies/respiratory issue that kept him down and out for a while.  Several vet visits later we are still without a clear "cure" and he still sneezes/coughs a lot, but is now on Flonase and is generally back to his old self.  For a few weeks though this is pretty much all he wanted to do, other than sneeze and hack up lungs.   

 Kate and Cara did a self-guided painting class!  Here are the results.

Kate's teacher friend Ann, who just had her baby (Mark) a couple weeks ago, showing off the latest in dad-oriented infant wear.

PDX Pix - March 2013

Goodness.  We are behind schedule here.  Please pardon the delays.  This now-antiquated act of "blogging" has apparently taken a back seat to some of the following activities this spring (but we'll get caught up here soon, I promise):

We continued the never-ending process of getting our house furnished.  Banjo approves of new sofa and has claimed it as his own.  He keeps it from floating away most of the day, I'm pretty sure.

We went on a couple of trips with a wildlife tracking/preservation group called Cascadia Wild that my coworker is active with.  The trips were up on Mt. Hood and the goal was to reach some remotely located heat-sensing cameras, retrieve the photos from the last month or so, and re-stock the bait and batteries.  Here's some of our group setting the deer meat bait under the snow and lashing it to a tree so animals can't take it with them.  The cameras are looking for evidence of rare species such as red fox, wolverines, lynx.  Unfortunately our trips only found pictures of birds, pine martens (cute!), a couple wolves (see below), and a lot of stray hikers and xc-skiers (we moved the camera to solve that problem).

Our group en route with Hood in the background.  We had sun and great views on this trip, and a blizzard on an earlier one.

Here's an example of one of the photos showing a coyote eyeing the bait.

Not quite sure what this is...  just Kate enjoying our downstairs area?  Sure. 

In March my grandmother passed after fighting some tough illnesses for the past year.  While sad to not have her around any more, it was very nice to get together with family in Florida to remember her and share some rare time together.  Here's me and my grandpa playing some bingo.

I had no idea bingo was so complicated and there were so many patterns to keep track of!  This is serious business... no time for chit chat!

Late March marks the end of spring training, and therefor our annual fantasy baseball draft.  Steve and Frank came down from Seattle this year and we all had a fun weekend.  Here's Steve and his dogs on our post-draft hike.

Draft-day war-room in our house.  Frank's the photographer here.