birthday biking with big brother byran

SUPRISE!!!

Yesterday I opened the door to a great birthday present ....... my big brother bryan!

We went for a long bike ride yesterday to downtown lake oswego and bought a fancy pastry from St Honore Boulangerie in Lake Oswego. (bryan is the junk food KING).

I guess bryan just couldn't get enough of me kicking his trash - so we also went biking today for a few hours in forest park.

I appeased his fried food passion by taking him out for some coconut fried prawns (which was free - thank you gift cards) and then made him eat mustard greens for dinner. He liked them.

oh yeah. we also did yoga during our bike ride - bryan does a mean down dog.

Since it was a nice day, we also visited the blossoms around the pittock mansion......if you look really close, you can see Mt. Hood in the distant hazy background (:

Jenn - check out the links - let me know if you want to add more days to your trip........

Weekend with PaPa Paul and Springers (continued)

So like Nicole was saying, I went off with my dad to spend all our hard earned money. We left Portland at 9:00 am to drive to the Marina. After 6 hours in the boat trolling up and down the river we didn't have any bites or fish, but we were getting fried from the sun. (Todd offered us some sunscreen) At 4:30 our luck turned and my pole tip dropped and the fight was on. All the other fisherman pulled their lines out of the water and I battled him for 5 minutes with cheering in the background and coaching from the guide (Jay www.fightclubguidedfishing.com). Then we landed her and (she) was a keeper. Then 10 minutes later, it happened again but my dad was battling and he landed his keeper. My dad's fish is missing a little of its fin because of a seal.
Summary
We sat in a boat for 9 hours; had about 30 minutes of action and got REALLY BAD SUNBURNS. Dad and I are both excited to try it again. Thanks for coming again Dad and Mom thanks for sending him to us for a few days. We love both of you.



Note from Nicole: Now we have lots of salmon and richard barfed up the first salmon meal i made him - so you better come help us eat it.

"what do you do here"

-the hospital has been building this tower since i started and it opens next month, exciting...-

The hospital has a birthday lunch every month for the employees. Lucky for me I made it to april (i was pretty sure i would have quit by now). Even though I don't know anyone, I wasn't about to miss out on free food friday, so I swung by.

There were about 15 tables in this room - and I got there late - so I ended up sitting at this table near the door pretty much by myself. There was one other nurse on the end of the table - and while we were making small talk this old man comes and sits next to me.

There was an awkward silence at the table, so I turn to the old man and say "what do you do here?" He laughed and pointed to his name tag that said "Norm Gruber CEO." Nice nicole - - Real Nice.

Turns out he's a real nice guy. But it's funny - at the end of the lunch he gets up in front of every one and asks if there are any questions or concerns. I guess they do this every birthday lunch.

There were some pretty easy questions (where should the clergy park when they come to give blessings, is there going to be motorcycle parking in the new tower, when are we going 100% electronic charting) - and this lady says " if the hospital is trying to promote health - why dont they reimburse health club fees? I work long days...la de da de da.......I need help with this" And Norm says- yeah we'll look into that. nice answer. real nice.

Weekend with PaPa Paul

Richard's dad came to see us thursday. Last time he came it was winter and we stayed inside our apartment the WHOLE time - partly because it was snowy and partly because it was dark all the time.

So we're trying to make it up to him. (sorry joy and mom we'll have to make it up to you another time)

On thursday I picked him up from the airport and we drove around lake Oswego


Went to see our garden

and stopped by the tulip farms in woodburn oregon (we forgot the camera since neither or our bosses were there - ie mom and richard).

Then I threatened to make him eat this lentil soup for dinner.

But I thought he might get grumpy if I made him eat his least favorite food (espcially when it looks so nasty and his blood sugar was getting low)......And he was nice......so i instead made some yummy chicken stuff.


I had to work friday, so he and richard went fishing at detroit lake.

Visited the oregon state capitol grounds (which are AMAZING in the spring time).

Picked me up from work and we headed to silver creek falls (we actually had the camera at this point in time).

We'de been there in the summer - but the falls are just AMAZING right now when the water is high. i was suprised richard did not reminisce about kayaking.

Then we went out to eat at the Glockenspeil; which is a cool german restaurant in Mt. Angel- a germanish town down by salem. Lucky me they happened to have a fresh local asparagus menu! And I got asparagus bruschetta on amazing bread with bechamel sauce. No weinerschnitzl for me.

Then home it was.

now they are salmon fishing on the Willamette/Columbia ( i dont know - all I know is that it's expensive) and I'm going for a bike ride because its already 53 degrees here and it is going to be a beautiful day! hooray for visitors.

MSG'd !!!!!

Just thought of this old cartoon this morning. gotta love it.

gardens and houses

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We had a "work party" conference weekend - where we built our garden beds. Hooray for gardening.

We are also house shopping so that people will be more enticed to come visit us. So far no luck (on the houses end of thing anyways). No houses have yards and most of the houses in our price range look like this:


Okay, that statement was a bit of an exaggeration - but not the yard part. But if you were trying to sell your house WHY would you put this picture on the listing? Really, I mean come on.

40$ DOWN and dressed for SUCCESS

So we went to a "day after thanksgivingish" sale saturday: REI's members only used gear sale. The line of yuppi's munching on granola bars dressed in tight earthy toned beanies and marmot jackets was wrapped clear around the Tualatin store (which is conveniently located next to a whole foods store).

The sale was outside of the store in a marked off area. There were a few clothes racks and boxes and tables packed with gear. Nice good expensive gear that is slighty used, but SOLD FOR NOTHING. I was amazed that everyone was making the mad dash for the clothing. We were at the end of the line, and by the time we got in there, there was a still a tower of sleeping bags left - think refridgerator box full of NICE bags. So we strolled in and picked up a subkilo for 40 bucks, usual price 140+. That's nice and all - but my point being that instead of grabbing the useful gear - all these hikers were running for the jackets and t-shirts with REI's logo.

Whatever - you can hike in clothes from the DI (see below) - but you gotta have nice gear. I guess that's just my opinion. Well the clothes look nice anyways, i needed a jacket for the rain here - so I picked up one from the aftermath for 10 bucks. I'm pretty sure people will now take me more seriously on the trail since i have a sierra designs jacket.

I guess appearances are everything anyways. I mean - I never played a guitar or beat on the drums in my life - but I was #1 vote for most likely to be a rock star in high school. All you got to do to fool people is dress the part.

Which leads to the main thing I have been thinking about: professional dress at work. For the first 7 months of my job I've gotten away with wearing the same pair of pants to work every day. They are now getting a little faded and I've been working several days in a row - so I switch it up for a skirt every once in a while. The crazy thing is how DIFFERENTLY people respond to me when I'm sporting a skirt, nylons and pearls. Patients turn off the TV when I come in to talk to them (amazing) - I've had a more than usual amount of patients mistake me for a MD - doctors have actually started asking for my opinion on patients - I've had a few nurses get off their computers for me - my coworkers are amazed - and people on the bus talk to me more.

Society is so silly. I don't wear a bandana to make a statement and to look like a punk rocker - I wear it to keep my hair out of my face. It's crazy how we base opinions on appearances - me included (there is a surgeon at the hospital with hair down to his butt and leathery fake baked skin - would I want him doing my reanastamosis....NO). I guess if I want to continue to be taken seriously - I better find some MORE skirts!

Made In Oregon: very sad people

Apparently rainy days aren't the only thing getting people down here in the crater lake state.

happiness-lead.gif (GIF Image, 540x1289 pixels) you'll have to zoom in to read it well.

Utah isn't doing so hot either.....1 foreclosure for every 517 houses! Yikes....not as bad as Nevada though.

You can read the whole article here.

Pomegranate Molasses, Whole Foods and the Organic Dillema

I've got a recipe for asparagus that calls for pomagranate molasses that I haven't tried for two reasons: 1 - I dont know where to buy pomogranate molasses and 2 - Pomogranate molasses is probably as expensive as it sounds.

Since asparagas is finally in season and thus cheap - I decided i'd start the pomogranate molasses hunt. WINCO does not carry it. neither does albertsons, nor fred myers. Next stop: whole foods.

yup they carry it - and yup it's expensive. But so is everything else in that stinking store. 3 bucks for an organic lollipop? really? How do you make a lollipop organic anyways? What part of corn syrup and sugar and food dye is organic? I'm really not sure - and I'm not so sure that organic sugar is any better for you than the real kind.

But I think that if you are concerned about saving the planet - maybe you should save your money and simply eat less. Think of all the waste produced from overeating. Buying organic produce that is packaged on a styrofoam plate with shrink wrap is not the most effective way to stop global warming.

I know that capitolism is the reason that we are blessed with such a comfortable life - but I don't think that "being green" is something that can be obtained with money. Buying organic laundry detergent doesn't make you more green - it comes in a plastic container doesn't it - and you are still using a machine that consumes alot of water and electricity to wash your clothes that probably aren't even that dirty (I wear my clothes at least 3 times before washing them). We live in a society stuck on buying our way out of things. You can't just pay off your carbon footprint. Being green is a way of living. A way of living that requires alot of planning, education and physical energy.


Whatever - I don't even recycle because I'm too lazy to take the labels off my cans and rinse out my milk carton. The greenest people around are probably the homeless panhandlers. They do more recycling than anyone I know..... Does living green need be an all or nothing approach? I care about the planet - just not enough to spend $5.00 a pound for organic apples. Maybe I don't really care about the planet but am actually just a tight wad. People just think I'm a granola becuase I wear a bandana to keep my hair out of my face...... Afterall, I did drive to 4 stores to look for 1 ingredient that was shipped from Lebanon and probably processed in some diesel driven manufacturing plant.......

I dont know. What do you think?

Portland in the Springtime

We don't need to go to DC, Portland's got it's own blossoms! And beautiful they are! We did a little exploring in the "pearl district" of portland last night. We stopped by a cupcake shop called Cupcake Jones and got a oatmeal cupcake with oatmeal cookie dough filling and vanilla buttercream frosting topped with an oatmeal cookie. It sounds alot better than it was...... but it was still neat to eat at a place that sells ONLY cupcakes!