laptop recovery: boom roasted

I have officially survived Computer Apocalypse 2012. With aplomb, even. Hard drive successfully replaced and formatted? Check. All software, plug-ins, drivers, applications, and miscellaneous desirable (as opposed to undesirable) bells and whistles successfully installed and calibrated? Check. Over 67.5 GB of data successfully restored from the online backup? Check.

Laptop recovery: BOOM ROASTED.

And now my laptop is all shiny. It's like a little reward for all the sturm und drang of a computer meltdown. I am now in I Have My Shit Together mode, empowered to clean and reorganize and generally fix all the things. This will last approximately 2.5 weeks, and then I will be back to Have You Seen My Shit? I Think I Lost It Somewhere Near Albuquerque mode.

lunch, bento colors purple

• grilled Thai peanut chicken
• peas
• cucumbers
• carrots
• strawberries
• Honeycrisp apple

snacks, bento colors mini

• morning snack: Honeycrisp apple & cashews
• afternoon snack: hard boiled egg, cucumbers, carrots

the gerbils have gone on strike

<-- So that's pretty much been my life in the two weeks since I first started writing this post, except without the adorableness. The gerbils who make my computer go are way meaner and far less eager to help than kittens.

The good thing is that my problem (hard drive failure in my laptop) happened in slow motion, which gave me time while I waited for a new drive to get here to double and triple check my backups, make a list of programs I'd need to reinstall, copy critical files to a flash drive so I could use other computers (i.e., Sal's) while mine was down, and all the other things that make starting over much easier. I'm the most prepared I think I've ever been for an imminent hardware crash.

But oh, how much it sucks nonetheless. Even though I knew it was coming and had time to prepare, and have a second computer at my disposal and a smartphone to keep me connected to email, just the thought of the hours of reinstalling the OS and software, swapping out disks through endless reboots, the inevitable glitches and unexpected errors, etc. etc. etc. made my stomach churn, nevermind actually having to suffer through all that. Pile on the fact that it requires hours I really, really don't have right now, that I was up against a deadline for getting everything up and running again due to work and my website business, and most importantly, my book was being threatened in whatever minuscule way...well, let's just say I have morphed into a female Bruce Banner, on the verge of hulking out at any moment.

When you're tech savvy, I think people assume that these kinds of things don't faze you. But I can tell you that when you're trying to resurrect what is essentially your day-to-day life in a fancy metal box and you're only a blue screen of death away from utter devastation, you're just as liable to commit ritual seppuku as a less tech savvy person. You'll probably just do it in a really geeky way.

Anyway, I'm still here, I've successfully avoided hulksmashing anything (yet), and I seem to be reaping the benefits of all that preparedness, since the transition has been relatively smooth thus far. (With the exception of about 30 heart-stopping minutes very late Monday night, when I thought I had accidentally overwritten my backup. Sal happened to call in the middle of my building freakout to tell me he was on his way home, and I'm pretty sure nothing I said was coherent, but I don't know for certain because I've blacked it all out.)

Since I had a post mostly written before my laptop started bidding adieu to this mortal coil, I'll just quote it below. More for me than for you, if only to remind myself that we had a life before the gerbils went on strike, and we will again soon. (Also, I won't try to post makeup listings of my bentos in that time, but you can see them all here.)

(post originally written on August 14th, 2012)

Sal did the Bridge Pedal Sunday, riding his bike on a route that crossed all 10 city bridges. It's about 35 miles altogether, plus the 18 miles he rode to and from the race start/finish. Whew! We met up for lunch and drinks when he was finished, which is proof that I'm way smarter, since I skipped right to the good part with none of that silly bike-riding nonsense.

Sunday was officially hot enough that we set up the bed on the back porch and have been sleeping out there since. It's supposed to be even hotter later this week, so we're going to be out there for a week or more. [ETA: And so we did, for a full week, and it was glorious.]

Getting to sleep outside is pretty much the only upside when it gets hot. It's like camping, sort of! We camped all the time when I was growing up -- the really real kind of camping, where you hike into remote areas and cook your food over a firepit you dug yourself and the nearest bathroom is a good 20 miles away -- and I miss that kind of summer getaway sometimes.

It always takes a couple of nights to get used to the change and remember the details of sleeping outside: the rustling of the raccoons on their nightly sojourn through the backyard, the scritchy screetchy sounds the possum family makes as they shuffle under the porch and around the side the house, the occasional mortar round sound of an apple falling onto the porch roof.

Or, I should say, it always takes me a couple of nights to get used to those details. Sal sleeps like a damn rock, and whether it's the creaking sound of a floorboard that may or may not be the footfall of an axe murderer, or the unidentified but very clear sound of something rustling about under the apple and maple trees where it's too dark to see, he sleeps blissfully on.

I've gotten used to the nighttime sounds of our neighborhood wildlife, and with the exception of the apples, no longer shoot bolt upright in bed every time there's a new sound in the dark outside our screened-in porch. In fact, I've even been able to enjoy my current reading material -- a book about the zombie apocalypse -- in this setting, read under the covers with a flashlight*. Without nightmares! I think I'm officially a Big Kid now.

*(I have read many a book with a flashlight, snugged down inside a sleeping bag out in the middle the damn wilderness, but it's been a long while. It's kind of made me all nostalgic. )

and only the stormy hearts know what it says

While the rest of the PNW was suffering its first hot temperatures of the summer this weekend, we were literally basking in the glory of a beautific summer day on the Oregon Coast.

The timing was strictly a stroke of luck. We scheduled this bonus weekend at the end of June, when the proprietors of the cabins we frequent offered us first dibs on a cancellation for this weekend. The perks of being a regular.

So instead of sweltering in 102 degree heat in our non-air conditioned house, we were stretched out on the sand on a perfectly perfect 80 degree day under ridiculous blue sky.

And we remembered the sunscreen! And the sunglasses! So we weren't burnt to human-shaped crisps! Nor were our eyeballs broiled in their sockets! Hurray for responsibility!

A tempered victory, though. We have a standing Oregon Coast Checklist to help us remember the things we need/want/might bring. It's rare that we bring most or even half of the items, but it's indispensable in helping us remember everything for each trip. In our haste to get out the door, I didn't bother pulling up the list. We've made this trip dozens of times, surely we'd remember what we needed. And we were traveling especially light this time. Most of the list wouldn't apply.

Oh, nay nay.

Throughout the weekend, one of us would suddenly name a thing we realized we'd forgotten, accompanied by a facepalm. "Camera!" "Chairs!" "Butter!" Whoops. Lesson learned: always leave a note check the list.

Sunday was nearly as hot in Portland as Saturday, but in Oceanside, we had fog and cloud cover so heavy it was as if the sky was only a hundred feet high. No wind, no sun, and just the right combination of cool and temperate. It was goddamn glorious. Sal and I did not a single damn thing all day except relax and read and nap.

An hour or so before sunset, we changed to warmer clothes, filled a small cooler with ingredients for a campfire meal (hot dogs, buns, marshmallows, carrot sticks, etc.), and claimed a spot on the beach for building a fire. This is a pretty regular thing on Oregon beaches, so it's easy to find a ring of rocks and remnants of a previous fire someone else built. The sophistication of the firepits will vary, but it's rare that you have to build one from scratch.

We managed to snag a good one, complete with two big driftwood logs for seating, and only had to build a second ring on top of the first to make it deeper. Our luck ended there, though. We'd bought a small bundle of wood (with the heat, the beach was crazy-crowded, which means there was not a stick of small driftwood to be found) but didn't realize until we were trying to get a fire going that it wasn't seasoned and there were no pieces that were really kindling-sized.

We'd almost burnt through all of our paper trying to get the fire going and were about to admit defeat when a guy came down the hillside, saw that our fire, you know, wasn't, and offered to bring some kindling from his van. WAY too good to be true, this guy. It could've been a candy-from-strangers situation, but he was just a nice guy with good timing doing a nice thing.

A really nice thing, actually, since he didn't actually have kindling in his van, he had wood in his van, which he then chopped into a big bundle of kindling and hauled back down the hillside to us. And single-handedly saved our much-anticipated beachside picnic in the process. Then politely refused any offer to share in our fire or food, just left with a handshake and a smile. Faith in humanity: restored.

So we enjoyed our cookout and our fire until well past dark, ocean rumbling nearby, fog bank keeping the air cool and still, the smell of woodsmoke bringing back too many memories to count.

title taken from "Young Sea" by Carl Sandburg, which contains one of my all-time favorite lines:  "I am the last word/ And I tell/ Where storms and stars come from."

this is like the great lentil miasma of aught three

You have to really enjoy drinking tea to order it in two pound batches. The school recently chose a new local organic tea supplier, and Sal had the opportunity to buy from their ginormous selection. The only catch was that they sell it in two pound batches, so whatever we picked had to be something we'd really want to drink. A lot.

Since Sal was opting for a black tea, I decided to choose an herbal. Apple-cinnamon tea sweetened with a bit of honey is one of my favoritest things in the fall and winter (second only to orange-spice tea), which means I go through it like crazy, so that seemed like the logical choice for ordering two pounds. While we waited for the order to arrive, I entertained lovely-cozy apple-cinnamon tinged fantasies of curling up in the library with a book, of our quiet Saturday mornings with the NPR lineup in the background and rainy gray outside the window, of day-long writing binges fueled soley by cup after cup of hot tea and a plate of something freshly baked by Sal.

Be careful what you wish for.

Because despite being double-bagged in heavyweight plastic, it turns out that two pounds of apple-cinnamon tea smells strong enough to give you a headache if you're within ten feet of it, and will probably knock you out cold after more than fifteen minutes of exposure. I had to shut it up in the kitchen cupboard before bed the night Sal brought it home to get a relief from the intensity.

Or so I thought. I woke up that morning -- UPSTAIRS AND ON THE OPPOSITE END OF THE HOUSE -- to that smell, and not in a good, "oh, what a lovely, cozy way to wake up" kind of way but more like a "ye gods and little fishes the smell is so strong that it's moved past any semblance of apple or cinnamon and moved into cologne of Hades territory". Down the stairs, the smell intensified. Open the door to the side of the house where the kitchen is, and it was like being punched in the face by a meth-addled Johnny Appleseed.

It was The Lentil Incident all over again.

When I got home from work that night, the smell had taken on a physical presence, infusing every room in the house. Opening all the windows couldn't air it out fast enough and the only way to get relief was to take the tea out of the cupboard (still in its double bags!) and set it out on the porch until we could transfer it to a more impenetrable container. Just the sight of the bag through the back door window gave me a headache.

The tea o'doom has since been divided amongst sturdy, sealed containers and no longer threatens nostrils within a one mile vicinty. Dividing it into smaller quanities seems to have cut its potency to more tolerable levels, eliciting something akin to the lovely-cozy apple-cinnamon fantasies I'd originally entertained. Cranked up to 11, but at least that's still within human survival limits.

The irony in all this? Sal's been so stuffed up with hayfever that he can't smell any of it.

lunch, Origami Squares

• teryaki chicken meatballs
• green beans and caramelized onions (both from the garden, woot woot!)
• cucumbers
• carrots
• cubed egg (as in, an egg molded into the shape of a cube, because my husband is delightful and sweet and got me an egg cuber for an anniversary present; he also got me "All the President's Men for an anniversary present, but that has nothing to do with bento, so)

lunch (last Thursday), Fit 'n Fresh

• red leaf lettuce green beans, sunflower seeds
• carrots, cucumbers, fresh peas
• tomatoes (from the garden!)
• boiled egg
• Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Bento: ranch dressing to top what became a hella big salad

goonies never say die

Friday, we celebrated our 16th anniversary.

We actually celebrated all weekend. Friday was dinner in Astoria at a favorite restaurant on the water, then to our hotel with a lovely view of Youngs Bay. Saturday, a leisurely start of late morning coffee and pastries at a hole-in-the-wall cafe, a bit of shopping, a visit to Fort Clatsop. Then a pretty drive over to Fort Stevens, where we picnicked on the beach and read and sketched for a few hours. The day was dry and temperate despite a fog that hung heavy and low, which made the whole day feel deliciously still, as if everything had just sort of...paused for a little while. Sunday morning, brunch and a stroll through my favorite art gallery before leaving for home.

At the last minute on our way out of town, and despite a soaking drizzle, we acted on impulse and took a quick detour to drive by The Goonies house.

The Goonies, you see, are part of the reason I fell in love with Sal. On our second date, when I sheepishly confessed a secret wish to live in Astoria someday because I loved The Goonies and maybe kind of hoped I'd discover my own well-creased map that led to adventure and treasure and pirate ships, Sal didn't laugh. He squeezed my hand and confessed he maybe kind of had the same secret wish.

A month before our big move to Portland, we came out for the first time to register Sal for culinary school, look for a job, and find an apartment. We had five days to accomplish everything, and a budget so tight that two loaves of bread, a package of deli turkey, a handful of apples, and small jars of peanut butter and jelly had to stretch for a week's meals. Sal's admissions coordinator tipped us off to a small local motel that was clean and quiet and affordable. We walked a lot.

Sure that we were in over our heads, we were country mice in the big city, just trying to keep from being run over. But being terrified can be good for you, and it was incredibly good for us, that terrifying and terrifically exciting adventure, that leap from the safe to the absolutely unknown. Our lives were never the same, in all the best possible ways.

The last day of that exploratory trip before we had to drive home was our fourth anniversary. Sal was officially registered for culinary school, the beginning realization of a lifelong dream. No job or place to live yet, but I had completed the registration process with a temp agency, and we were hoping to hear we'd gotten the apartment we wanted. We'd survived the city all on our own, and we were making it happen, this intrepid new future of ours. We'd managed to set aside a little bit of money to splurge on something more than PB&J for our anniversary and we had lots of reasons to celebrate. So that afternoon, we headed west on Sunset Highway for a late afternoon lunch in Astoria.

We had only just gotten the hang of two of the main freeways and the streets immediately around our hotel. Driving west, to parts even more unknown, felt like we were driving to the edge of the world. As if we might go flying right off into the starry black if we drove too fast. On our map, I wrote, "Here there be dragons."

But the edge of the world, we discovered, wasn't an abyss stretching boundless past a sharp cliff of earth. It was an ancient sea breaking on verdant mountains, breathtaking and serene. No pirate ships, but no dragons, either.

We were still trying to absorb this monumental change we were undertaking. For a week, we had ridden a fine edge between elation and outright terror, both of us wondering at times if this dream was too big for us, too much for us to hold. But on that anniversary, as we stood along a dock railing watching ships bigger than buildings slide through the water like glaciers, deep blue sky overhead and deeper blue water below, our hands clasped tightly, if only to anchor ourselves to the ground, the realization hit more viscerally than ever before: together, we could face anything. Even flying off the edge of the world.

We've been looking back a lot recently. Marveling at how far we've come, how much more we became because of the leaps we took, the chances and the risks gambled to turn our dreams into this life, this wonderful life. So there was something neatly, perfectly circular about celebrating our anniversary in Astoria this year, in our special together place, our edge-of-the-world place, our we-can-accomplish-anything place.

The place that we discovered adventure and treasure with a well-creased map.

in which i let my inner fandom nerd off the chain

Lunch first, then geekery...

lunch, Lunchbot Duo:

• Thai peanut chicken (grilled on skewers)
• couscous with caramelized onions, green beans, and sesame seeds
• sugar snap peas
• cherries
• raspberries (from our yard!)
• chocolate-covered candied almonds**

**Okay, so this is pretty much the best thing ever, made by Sal, of course. They're almonds that have been roasted with a caramelized coating, cooled, then rolled in dark chocolate cocoa powder. They're totally cracktastic, and no matter how big the batch, it never lasts long.

On to the squee! This is a quick rundown of all of the non-TV geekery in which I have engaged in the last few months, and my ratings thereof:

Movies:

• The Hunger Games: A -- Loved it, despite the changes. When the countdown started in the arena, I damn near had a panic attack of OH NO THEY'RE REALLY GOING TO DO THIS NOW I AM NOT READY.
• Cabin in the Woods: A-  -- So thoroughly and hilariously Jossian that there was no way I wasn't going to enjoy this. Plus, Chris Hemsworth, freshly post-George Kirk, so cute. And Topher!
• AVENGERS OMG: A -- Who would have ever thougt that the Hulk would steal the show? I have never cared about the Hulk in any incarnation ever. Holy crap, Bruce Banner, you win the universe. (Thank you, Mark Ruffalo.) Plus, Bruce Banner and Tony Stark as nerdy genius buddy cops! Being all science-y and stuff! And Natasha and Maria Hill, not objectified or fridged! And Thor, Thor, Thor, Thor, Thor! (WHAT THE HELL CHRIS HEMSWORTH YOU ARE NOT EVEN REAL YOU ARE A PHOTOSHOPPED VERSION OF A HUMAN MALE.) And again, Joss' fingerprints were everywhere (for good and bad). Speaking of Joss, I had one GIGANTIC issue with this movie, the same one that someone else already tackled much better than I could have, so go read that instead.
• Snow White and the Huntsman: B -- Kristen Stewart cannot act for shit, and there were some plot gaps that were ridiculously lol-worthy, but it was fun and pretty and also Chris Hemsworth, which is all that needs to be said, really.

(It was a seriously Chris Hemsworth-y run, there. Thank you, movie people, for the 1-2-3 punch of hotness.)

• Brave: A++++++++++ -- OMG I LOVE EVERYTHING THIS MOVIE CHOOSES TO BE. A central character who's a girl! With agency! Who saves herself! And a mom who isn't evil! Or dead! And a story about a mother and daughter and how that relationship is complicated and hard and wonderful and also did I mention this story is set in Scotland and also that every detail of this movie was made specifically for me?
• The Amazing Spiderman: B+ -- Wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I have no particular loyalty to the previous franchise, but was kind of mystified about why they were rebooting so soon. But wow, that was fun. I see from various reports that there was a lot of butchery done to the script due to studio politics stuff behind-the-scenes, which would explain some big gaps that I was wondering about, as well as the lull in the middle. But despite those problems, I still enjoyed it more than the Tobey MacGuire version, which I didn't not like, so my reaction was a surprise.

Music:

• Waaay back in May, ProcrastiGirl and I saw Snow Patrol in concert, and I died of ecstasy. I was maybe 20 feet from Gary Lightbody. He was just, you know, there, right up there, just being adorable and Irish and amazing. And Nathan and Johnny and Tom and Pablo, all of them just kicking ass like it's a regular thing that normal people do, which it totally is not. And I heard my all-time favorite, favorite song* live, and they played for 2 hours and came out for 2 encores, and Gary's voice was gorgeous from start to finish, and everyone who said they are incredible live was so totally right. Setlist:  "Berlin (Remix)", "Hands Open", "Take Back The City", "I'll Never Let Go", "Run", "Hands Open", "This Isn't Everything You Are", "Crack the Shutters", "New York", "Set the Fire to the Third Bar", "Shut Your Eyes", "Chasing Cars", "Chocolate", "You're All I Have", "Called Out in the Dark", "Fallen Empires", Encores: "Lifening", "Just Say Yes"

*Arguably. I have so many favorites, it's like picking a favorite kid. But "Run" appears in almost every playlist I make, so.

I also just finished reading The House of Leaves, so my cult-pop geek cred is restored. Wow, that book was like putting your brain in a blender and hitting puree.  I haven't worked so hard to read a text since my engineering days (I'm looking at you, Differential Equations II). I know I probably didn't even catch half the embedded codes and riddles and cannot wrap my brain around the idea that a single person wrote that book. Mind officially blown.

on the nature of the unintended hiatus

You know how you get behind on something, and then you finally get a minute to do that thing, but you're so behind that you don't know where to start so you don't? And then you just get more behind and it seems like too much to even begin, and the whole thing just kind of snowballs into a big icy ball of Do Not Want?

Welcome to the last two months of website non-updateyness.

We have been busy, yes, but not significantly more than our usual Hamster Wheel O'Crazy, so it's not attributable to some new escalation. And some of those busy things have included many fun and exciting things. Things which include adventures and hilarity and sometimes even photographic evidence! Things that are, in short, terrific website fodder. The radio silence is therefore also not attributable to a lack of material about which to post.

So we will chalk it up to a case of needing to cut something out for awhile in order to maintain sanity. Also: laziness.

In any case...hello! I have many things to tell you about! I will probably tell you about most of them! If I feel like it! I will probably forget something I meant to tell you about! I will include pictures! If it's not too much work! It will probably be too much work! Because I am lazy, as previously established! Some of the topics I plan to tell you about if I'm not overcome by an overpowering desire to do something else:

• The Great Gallstone Adventure of 2012!
• Why family is totes the best!
• Sal's birthday!
• All of the many movies we have seen recently! See also: geeks are the greatest.
• That time I was 20 feet from Gary Lightbody and totally didn't lose my shit! Except for maybe a little bit!
• Girls' Road Trip!
• Girls' Art Weekend! Launched with an actual Mad Hatters' Party! Because I am the raddest.

So, you know. Those things might be stuff to look forward to hearing about. Although that really puts a lot of pressure on me to make them interesting, and I don't need the stress (see also: gallstones), so I make no promises. Also, vacation starts in two weeks so I am a kitten distracted by shiny objects right now.

Anyway.

dear asshole in the truck in front of me

Despite what you may have been told, ownership of a truck the size of Mongolia does not, in fact, entitle you to drive like a meth-addled monkey. Indeed, neither your state license nor the vehicle title conferred on you the entitlement of squashing everyone in your path as if playing your own real-life version of Frogger. Perhaps that was a feature advertised to you by the salesman at time of purchase, in which case I would advise you to file a claim of fraud against him, since trying to run me off the road isn't going to be of much help in that regard.

It may also surprise you to learn that riding 2.57 centimeters behind my bumper for three miles and flashing your brights at me doesn't actually make me go any faster, especially when both I and the cars in front of me are already going faster than the speed limit. I apologize that five miles an hour over the speed limit simply isn't fast enough for you, but since my vehicle doesn't possess the capability for, you know, physically pushing the vehicle in front of me out of the way, your efforts at getting me to do so are sadly ineffectual.

And although it might have seemed temporarily satisfying to cut around and in front of me as soon as traffic opened up, it was not necessary to attempt to remove my bumper when you did so. You may be under the mistaken impression that my bumper was an optional and unwanted accessory on my vehicle, but I assure you that I do actually wish to keep it attached. Interestingly, bumpers mitigate the damage to the vehicle in the event of collision, so that makes them a very nice feature to have.

Lastly, I realize that flipping me off in the rear view mirror was your way of providing feedback after all that you had suffered while driving behind me on that stretch of freeway, and while I applaud free expression, you may wish to reconsider how you choose to make your opinion known. In fact you may wish to follow my own example of a smile and a wave as I passed you a few minutes later when that nice highway patrolman pulled you over. Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,

The Driver You Harassed On The Way To Work This Morning

signs that it's time to go back to bed and try again tomorrow

but the day wasn't all bad, thanks to a rare snow fallYou put your bra on inside out, wondering all the while why it's so hard to get on, and spend the entire day feeling like Something Is Not Quite Right.

The breakfast that you could've sworn you packed does not, in fact, exist.

You wonder what that annoying clicking sound is as you drive to work, only to realize that it's the turn signal that you forgot to turn off three exits ago.

You repeatedly enter your debit card pin as your computer password, getting increasingly irritated at someone in IT for no good reason.

Every attempt at drinking water from your water bottle has resulted in water dribbling down the front of your shirt and caused you to check for a hole in an insulated stainless steel container instead of, you know, your head.

My life, ladies and gentlemen.

lunch, black strawberry:

• salmon cake
• pumpkin seeds
• green beens sauteed in sesame oil, with black and white sesame seeds
• peas
• carrot sticks
• candies made by Chef Sal: nougat (with dried cherries and pistachios), chocolate caramels, and mango gelees

tragedy and triumph

The tragedy: my mom sent me a package for my birthday that was supposed to arrive last Saturday (18th) via FedEx. The package, I would learn later, included the last quilt my mom made (hung on the clothesline "so it would smell like home"), a very valuable ivory carving from a family friend she had received when she was a girl and that I had always loved, the carousel horse music box she had handpainted when I was younger, and her Depression glass candy dish that had been on our receiving table at our wedding.

When the package didn't arrive, we looked up the tracking number to learn that their records show it having been delivered at 8:24 AM on the 18th, delivered at the front door of our address, no signature requested. Which was impossible, because Sal was home Saturday until mid-afternoon and no one came to the door, nor were there any delivery trucks on our street all morning. The delivery driver confirmed a few days later that he had accidentally delivered it someplace else but couldn't remember where.

A week of checking with neighbors, multiple contacts with FedEx (including via Twitter), and their delivery driver checking a list of addresses in our area with our house number have turned up nothing, and the package is now officially unrecoverable. My mom and I are both heartbroken. (The tiny blessing in this is that at the last minute, she reconsidered including her diamond ring or my great grandmother's amethyst ring in the package.)

The triumph: So that has been a dark cloud over the whole of the week, tinging everything else. But life marches on, and so did we. Saturday, we finally made it to OMSI for the BodyWorlds exhibit, which is closing here soon and which Sal has wanted to see since the first exhibit that came through the year before last. ProcrastiGirl also wanted to see it, so she joined us for a fun Saturday afternoon and evening. Which worked out really well, because I had absolutely no desire to see the exhibit, so that gave Sal someone to go with, while I headed next door to the planetarium to indulge my inner astronomy geek.

Afterward, we stopped at Guardian Games for the first time, after hearing my friends from Nerd Night (aka neighborhood game night) rave about the place for months now. Stepping through the door was like crossing into Nerdvana. Their inventory is ridiculous (they advertise 14,000+ games in stock), literally wall-to-wall games of every sort imaginable, with game tables and vending machines set up in the back, and staffed by the most sweetly helpful game geeks ever.

They had in stock all three of the games we were thinking about getting for ourselves: Dominion, Pandemic, and my most recent obsession thanks to last week's Nerd Night, Last Night On Earth. Sal and I debated about what to get for at least fifteen minutes, and nearly walked out of there with all three when it became clear it was going to be a Sophie's Choice situation, but reason prevailed and our bank account heaved a sigh of relief, and we walked out with Pandemic and consoled ourselves that we would be back soon. Well, and also consoled ourselves with Zombie Fluxx (because even Fluxx can be improved with zombies). And my own set of swirly purple and pink dice, which means I am officially That Girl.

lunch, Paris slimline:

• last of the spicy meatballs
• boiled eggs
• carrot sticks and peas
• tangerine
• pumpkin seeds

proof that it takes very little to turn things around

Yesterday I was having...well, not a bad day, exactly, but a pretty intense one. Many things going on at work that needed close attention and I had (stupidly) scheduled 3 appointments for the day, two of which were in quick succession. Those latter two were late in the day, the second one ending just before I would need to leave for Nerd Game Night, which was a bit of a drive and would be at a house I hadn't been to before. And somehow in between all of that and before leaving for game night, I needed to stop at the store for chips and salsa (game night is a snack potluck), get the cats fed (incuding enough time for Smaug to rinky dink around while eating, because she's a true diva), change my clothes, pack today's bento, and have some dinner.

The grocery store was such a zoo that there were even lines at the self-checkout. I get up to the checkout and realize I've forgotten my purse, which has both my debit card and my reusable grocery bag.  Great, just great, I thought. This is the Universe telling me that today is not my day. It's time to go home, change into my jammies, crawl under the covers, and wait for tomorrow.

And then I remembered that I just randomly happened to have a few dollars in my pocket that might, just might be enough for my items. Which was kind of miraculous beause I never have cash. Not only was my cash juuuuuust enough to cover my purchases, the total came to an even dollar amount, one of the items on my list of "Things That give Me A Cheap Little Thrill". I love it when totals come to whole dollar amounts! It's like the Universe coming into balance, double underlined, with a red check mark.

So I headed to game night feeling a little less frazzled and played Fortune and Glory for 4.37 hours and then Forbidden Island and geeked out on LOTR and the adorableness of cats and everything turned out all right in the end.

lunch, origami squares:

• sausages
• molded egg
• roasted root veggies (with more under everything else) - parsnips and chiogga beets roasted with some onion, garlic, dill, and a little olive oil and salt and pepper
• steamed broccoli
• Golden Nugget tangerines
• sunflower seeds

and then we said "open", and everyone went bananas

Whew! We have officially survived the week of All The Things and are now on Day 2 of our Winterfest Vacation, aka Two Glorious Weeks (And A Few Days) Of Not Working Dammit.

The week of crazydom was not without its fun, however. Friday was the long-awaited holiday party at my office, and you will perhaps be a little surprised that a company party could be described as "long-awaited", and in some years past, I would agree with you, but this year...oh this year, I have a story to tell.

Way back in August, the Executive Team decided to "go big" for the end of the year party in recognition of everyone's hard work. We upped the party planning committee's budget for food, drinks, and decorations. We also decided to do swag bags, since our company has never really had products with our name and logo on them before. The swag bags would include a reusable shopping bag, a really nice insulated steel coffee tumbler, an insulated steel 1 liter thermos, chocolate bars with our logo imprinted, and polo-style shirts with our logo embroidered.

But that was only the start.

We usually have a raffle drawing every year for prizes (usually gift cards), but we wanted the prizes to be really big this year and for everyone to go home with something great. We couldn't send everyone home with a big screen tv or anything, but we could make the raffle prizes pretty spectacular and then surprise everyone who didn't win with something awesome, too. And when I say "spectacular", I mean it: 2 iPod Touches, an XBox Kinect (w/an NCAA Football game and the Michael Jackson Experience game), 2 Kindle Fires, 2 16x zoom cameras, an HP laptop, an iPad, 2 Kitchenaid Professional stand mixers, and a 50" plasma screen TV. For the remainder, the committee was given a list for shopping for the surprise gifts so they would know what we meant when we said "awesome": cameras, iPod nanos, Garmins, Kindle Touches, Wiis, Keurig coffee makers, cookware sets, and a food processor. (The Executive Team was in charge of the big gifts, so that even the committee didn't know what they were.)

So the committee has been on a series of shopping sprees for everything on their list for the last two months, increasingly running out of room as our storage unit. Space became even more of a problem for the raffle items, since we couldn't even let the committee members see those. At the end of the Executive Retreat on Tuesday, we assembled all the swag bags, then had to cram them all amongst our cars' trunks. But it was coming together and we were downright gleeful about what was about to come at the end of the week.

The committee worked their tails off all week getting the conference room decorated for the party (last year was the first time we did it at the office, and they made it look really terrific; this year, they outdid themselves). Wednesday, the committee and the Executive Team wrapped the surprise gifts, hiding things inside other boxes so nothing could be guessed. We stacked them all up along the far wall of the conference room, and I'm pretty sure that when everyone filed in at the start of the party, they assumed the prettily-wrapped stack of boxes were just for decoration to hide the IT station that runs the projector and sound system in the conference room. Little did they know....

The raffle gifts were set up on tables at the front but covered with cloths when everyone came in, with the swag bags all lined up underneath the tables. Once everyone was seated, we welcomed them to the party, took care of housekeeping (party schedule, turn off cell phones, etc.), then showed them the contents of the swag bag that they would be getting at the end of the party. We then announced how the raffle would work -- everyone got a ticket, which they would place in a bag in front of whatever item they wanted to try to win, and we would draw from that bag for that item.

And then the fun began. We slowly revealed each item. The iPod Touches were first and got a surprised gasp, and it just kept escalating. By the time we got to the iPad, the room was a constant buzz, and when we showed the TV, everyone flipped out.

After everyone had a chance to mingle and put in their tickets, it was time to eat, followed by a fun Mad Libs style game at each table. And then it was time for the main event.

The raffle items were a huge, huge hit. As terrific as the raffle was, however, the best was yet to come. "But wait! There's more!" we said. Pointing to the pile of boxes in the back that most everyone assumed were just for show, we told them that the they were in fact not for show, and that we would draw all the tickets of those who hadn't won, and when their name was called, to go pick one out of the pile. There were only two rules: don't shake any of the boxes, and don't open them until we tell you to.

Getting through the remainder of the names took awhile, and I think everyone assumed that whatever was in the boxes would be something okay, but nothing nearly as great as the raffle items. Maybe another swag item, or a set of knives, something like that. Nonetheless, everyone was still having fun.

Once everyone had their items, we gave them the go to open their boxes, and the next two minutes were the best two minutes of chaos pretty much ever. You know what it's like when kids are allowed to just go berzerk on Christmas morning and open packages all at once, and it's just a flurry of patterned paper and exclamations and noise and excitement? Now imagine that in a room full of adults who weren't expecting it at all, and who had enjoyed a glass (or two) of wine and beer, and you will have an inkling of what it was like for that two minutes.

It didn't matter that they weren't all iPads or stand mixers. They were nice gifts that no one was expecting and in many cases, wouldn't necessarily buy for themselves but really wanted. We encouraged people to trade if they got something that wasn't as useful, and by the time everyone left, I think they all ended up with something they were glad for. I tried to talk to as many as I could to find out if they had fun and to hear their individual story about whatever gift they got. For several, it was going to make a difference for an otherwise tough holiday -- a Wii for kids who wanted one but wouldn't have gotten one otherwise, or an avid reader who was struggling with sight issues but couldn't justify a Kindle, or a new set of cookpans to replace the mismatched set that were older than I am. A laptop that would make it possible to work from home, an iPod nano for someone who wanted but didn't own an iAnything (exact quote), a camera for someone who could now take nice pictures of the new grandbaby.

There's nothing I love more than giving gifts, except perhaps giving them to someone who really needed that little boost of magic and hope and joy. I've been blessed with some really wonderful gifts in my life, but nothing is ever quite as fulfilling as being able to do that for someone else. And Friday afternoon was some of the most fun I've had in quite some time.

Best. Company Party. Ever.

As you can imagine, the week was so busy that I'm behind on posting bentos, so there's some catching up to be done here:

Tuesday's lunch, Paris slimline:

• shrimp sauteed with garlic, toasted sesame seeds for garnish
• kale sauteed with garlic and caramelized onions (wow, lots of garlic today)
• brown rice
• sunflower seeds
• carrot sticks and steamed broccoli
• satsuma sections

Wednesday's lunch, Lunchbot Duo:

• boiled egg,
• shrimp sauteed with garlic, toasted sesame seeds for garnish
• garlic butter dipping sauce in the little cup
• kale sauteed with garlic and caramelized onions
• brown rice underneath everything
• apple slices
• carrots and celery
• sunflower seeds

Thursday's lunch, Fit 'n Fresh:

• romaine lettuce
• boiled egg
• carrots, celery, radishes
• apple slices, mandarin
• sesame seeds

sometimes, you just need a good scare

Despite some questionable choices for entertainment, we had a lovely weekend.

Originally, Sister was supposed to come for a Girls' Weekend, during which we had planned to spend being all arty in the studio, then spend the evening watching scary movies and eating junk. Slumber party ftw!

Okay, about the scary movie part: I don't consider myself a scary movie person, but in reflecting on how many movies (and shows...Dexter, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story)  I enjoy that do have some scary element, it seems I'm into a good scare more than I thought.

I'm definitely not a horror movie fan (although I've seen my share), and want no part of the really gruesome torture-type horror movies that have been all the rage the last few years. But! I do love a good suspense flick, and grew up on Hitchcock films thanks to my mom, who is a fan.

the cat creature from that episode of Scooby Doo...even looking at it now give me a shiverHowever. I am also seriously afraid of the dark, and basements, and I live in an old house, which is the holy trifecta of terror, and I have an intensely active imagination. No, I mean a really active imagination. Like, so active that an old episode of Scooby-Doo gave me a recurring nightmare well into my adolescent years. Scooby-Doo, you guys! So if there's a movie that has a reputation for scaring people, people who are generally pretty jaded about scary movies and not easy to freak out, that is a movie I will add to my "Do not watch this movie on purpose or by accident for that way lies badness" list.

Two such movies that I have therefore assiduously avoided: The Ring and Paranormal Activity. When the TV previews are enough to make you freak out, that's a good sign that the movie in question is not for you.

But I, in a sudden burst of inspiration for something fun to do, proposed to Sister that we should watch these two movies together. We are both very much alike in the scary movie department, which means we spend most of the movie with our eyes covered and ears plugged. Yet somehow, I thought to myself, "You know what would be really fun? To watch a scary movie with someone who gets just as freaked out as I do, and be cowards together and then not be able to turn off any of the lights. HEY I KNOW WE SHOULD TOTALLY WATCH THOSE TWO MOVIES THAT ARE GENERALLY AGREED TO BE PRETTY DAMN TERRIFYING."

Brain damage. It's seriously the only explanation I have.

In the few days leading up, I was having serious second thoughts. I even offered Sister an out -- under the guise of concern for her, not admitting my own trepidation, oh no -- but when she replied that she was really excited about it, I started to realize I may have made a big mistake.

A last minute change of plans may have saved me from myself, however. When a friend offered to take the Fabulous Miss M for the weekend, Guy joined us for a fearsome foursome of fun times. It meant that Sal would have someone to do fun stuff with while Sister and I were holed up in the studio (the fun stuff, as it turned out, being a pub crawl for most of Saturday afternoon) but more importantly, it meant that Sister and I would not be watching the aforementioned scary movies by ourselves, AND even more importantly, that neither of us would be relegated to sleeping alone in wide-eyed terror, paralyzed in fear at every stray noise and imagined monster.

So the movies weren't quite as terrifying as I'd long feared. The Ring was scary and disturbing, but won't scar me for life, thankfully. Paranormal Activity was scary, too, but there were long stretches of boredom and annoyance (and if you've seen it, you know why) that diluted it -- basically, all the same problems that The Blair Witch Project had minus the shaky handicam.

Which is to say, we survived! No nightmares, no sweat-soaked sheets, no shaking awake of our long-suffering husbands in the early morning dark with terrified whispers of "Did you hear that?" Maybe they'd been built up far more than they could live up to, or maybe we're not as easily affected. Are we getting braver? Less easily-scared? More mature?

Probably a combination of all of those things. I mean, my fear of the dark is far less acute than it used to be, and living in an old house means getting used to unidentified noises if you want to keep your sanity. Plus, all those movies and shows have probably built up my tolerance levels.

But I won't be going into the basement any time soon.

tomorrow: Part 2 of our lovely weekend, which will include a recipe from Chef Salvatore.

wicked fun

So at the last couple of neighborhood game nights, the game du jour has been a collaborative RPG called Arkham Horror. It is, in a word, awesome. There are eighty bajillion little cards and intricate character stories and monsters and big bads and weapons and MATH and COLOR CODING and ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS and OMG HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS GAME EXISTED BEFORE. Oh my little rational mastermind heart goes pitter pat just thinking about it.

Both the night following the first time we played, as well as last night, my dreams were occupied with Lovecraftian monsters and figuring out how many die I need to close a gate and strategizing what combination of Fight, Sneak, Lore, Will, Speed, and Luck I'm going to need for the next round. CLEARLY THIS IS A SIGN I NEED TO PLAY THIS GAME ALL THE TIME.

lunch, Paris slimline:

• smoked sausages
• boiled eggs
• green beans (more underneath the sausages and eggs)
• carrots and celery sticks
• dark chocolate with orange zest
• dried cherries

like a girl at the ball, and my dance card is full

The crazy train that has been our lives (and more specifically, my life) has slowed down from "death defying" to "breakneck", and our/my reward for surviving is a pile-up of several things we've been looking forward to for a long time. A trip to the coast, time off to write, Hall-Smiley family time, apple festivals, wedding cake judging competitions, and more.

And things kick off this week with an awesomeness double-header: neighborhood game night tomorrow and Thursday night season premieres (Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock) with ProcratiGirl. Look at me being all social butterfly up in here.

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• potato soup (srsly, I made a vat of it Sunday night)
• carrots & celery
• Honeycrisp! apple
• dried cherries and cashews

summer begins to have the look, peruser of enchanting book

Fall is definitely here. It's my favorite season, all bright, crisp days and cool, clear nights. Or gray and rainy like it was this weekend. I love everything about it, from the smell and feel of the air to the turning leaves to the heavy sweaters and abundance of produce and craving for hearty comfort foods. And, joy of joys, Honeycrisp apples!

We were fortunate to not have a whole lot on the docket at Hall House, which meant that I could spend most of the day curled up in the library with a new book, and fall asleep in my chair for an impromptu afternoon nap. It also meant time to get laundry done without it feeling like a chore (folding while watching movies), and to stay on top of the dishes (always a challenge without a dishwasher), and to write for a good long stretch of time while Sal helped a friend harvest their hops (and coming home with a nice bounty as a result). It was the best sort of weekend, a combination of productive and leisurely, cozy and restful and restorative.

With such weather that makes a person crave hearty comfort foods, it's little wonder that Sunday night dinner would be something thick and creamy and served with crusty artisan bread and likely to put a person to sleep after two overflowing bowls full. Which we totally didn't have. We also totally didn't follow that with a slice of opera cake and a dollop of malted chocolate ice cream. We're all about moderation here at Hall House.

breakfast, cute animals sidecar:

• oatmeal with raisins and maple syrup
• Honeycrisp apple slices

lunch, Ms. Bento:

• potato soup (potatoes, spaetzle, corn, celery, dill)
• peas and carrots
• Honeycrisp apple half
• opera cake

title taken from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickenson, "Part Five: The Single Hound, LXV"

it's just a flesh wound

I took Friday off and headed to the coast to get away from the mid-90s that've plagued us for the last several days. (Seriously, we have had some cracked out weather this year.  Highest temps of the year in September? And we still never hit triple digits, which we usually do at least once or twice. I should be thankful that at least it didn't approach 100....) Just me, some good music, a few snacks, a book, and the open road.

Heading west was the right idea. It was 25 to 30 degrees cooler in Astoria, with a heavy fog bank sitting just a few miles offshore all day and all of Cape Disappointment enveloped in mist. I opted to head to the other side of mouth of the Columbia at Fort Stevens, all around the Jetty Lagoon and up to the observation tower at the South Jetty. (Where I could see across to the river and the North Head lighthouse where we were just a couple of weeks ago.)

see more pics here

While I was on my little Kerouac-esque sojourn, I made the mistake of checking G+ and saw that Sal had posted a pic of an injury sustained while he was test riding a new bike. Beneath the pic of his hand, all scraped and bloodied, he added the note, "Honey, I'm okay :-)". Which are usually the words that precede "I'm at the emergency room". He wasn't, thankfully, but I still worried about him all the way home.

My suspicion that he was hurt worse than the pic showed was confirmed later that night, when he arrived home from work limping. The hand was the least of his injuries -- he'd landed on his knee, which was now swollen and bruised, and sprained his ankle. And then spent the night on his feet on a concrete floor, with neither injuries bandaged.

So we've spent the weekend keeping everything iced, compressed, and elevated as much as possible. Of course, he's an irascible patient, stubbornly insisting on getting up to do things instead of letting me do them for him, and arguing every time I tell him to sit still. Guy, Sister, and the Fabulous Miss M were here to visit for the weekend, and nothing was going to stop him from playing at the park with Miss M, not even a moderate injury. He seems genuinely surprised to find out he's both mortal and destructible, and it's seriously the Knights of Ni all up in here.

lunch, Laptop Lunch:

• enchiladas
• salad (romaine, tomatoes, carrots, celery) with dressing in the condiment cup
• red grapes
• berry swirl cheesecake that Sal made and that I am officially in love with

whose slender roots entwine altars that piety neglects

Oh the adventures we have had! So many to tell you!

Like Wednesday night's neighborhood game night, hosted at our house. Or Friday night catching up and watching stuff with ProcrastiGirl. And yesterday, Sal rode in the Bridge Pedal, which is a bike ride that covers 35 miles and ten of the city bridges (including the St. Johns Bridge). (Which means Sal logged almost 55 miles, since it was 9+ miles to the starting point and then the same distance home.) And afterward, we did up a big ol' batch of stir fry on the patio, because life is ridiculously good.

Saturday, while we took our time over the brunch Sal made, talking about what to do with the day, we decided we were long overdue for a driveabout. We were getting a late start, so we needed a closer destination than, say, the coast. We decided on Vernonia, since we haven't explored much of the Coast Range that lies between Hwy 26 and Hwy 30.

We often pack a picnic for a driveabout, but didn't have much in the fridge that wouldn't take some prep time, so we decided instead just to grab a few snacks and our water bottles and go. Daylight was burning, after all. (You'll note I didn't say "sunlight", as it was overcast almost all day. But still temperate and nice, so no complaints here.)

Vernonia is situated in a little valley in the forested hills of the Coast Range. (Which sort of makes it a mountain town if you consider the Coast Range mountains. We don't, but the rest of Oregon does, so.) We took the Scappoose-Vernonia Highway from Hwy 30, a two-lane highway winding through deep, dark (I mean dark) forest and up and over the hills/mountains.

the Nehalem River at Hawkins ParkIt's a nice little town, a bit bigger than I imagined, with a slightly-larger-than-a-pond lake at one end and the perennially-flooding Nehalem River running through the middle. We stopped at Hawkins Park, which sits right alongside the river. They've built an ingenious little dam there to create a nice swimming hole (in lieu of a city pool, presumably), complete with a concrete embankment so you don't have to walk in dirt to get to the water, a ladder over the side down into the deep end, a wooden lifeguard stand, and a charming bank of lockers. They even used a water diversion to one side to create a wading pool for little ones. It wasn't warm enough to draw swimmers while we there, not even brave ones, but it wasn't hard to imagine what it must be like on hot summer days.

Setting for a creepy horror flick? Do we commit the mortal sin of slasher films and go investigate the creepy abandoned building? Yes, yes we do.We headed to the lake next, where there's a nice paved walking path that skirts the perimeter. About a quarter of the way around, there's an abandoned building off the path about a hundred feet. According to the placard on the walking path, it's an old fuel house for a now vanished cedar mill. (The "lake", as it turns out, is the old mill pond.)  It stored cedar chips to stoke the mill furnaces. It now has trees growing inside it. I love the poetry of that. Of course we had to look inside. And if I had woken up that morning with the intent to have an adventure, I couldn't have planned a more perfect discovery of treasure.

inside, a marvelous surpriseThe interior was like something out of a story. All four concrete walls completely intact, seven trees growing around the interior's perimeter, with sword ferns and bracken ferns and vine maples spreading out in the corners. The walls are decorated with colorful graffiti in more imaginative style than mere tagging, collectively creating the effect of a mural. And every sound echoes so that you speak softly and sparingly. A row of concrete platforms running down the center look like old stone seats from some ancient pagan ritual site, one that's so old that no one knows for certain just who built it or what they built it for, and combined with the simple peaked roof gables and the light slanting in through the trees, it has the look of a cathedral.

We still had some time before we needed to head home, so instead of our snacks, I suggested the restaurant that had caught my eye as we drove through town. It was really the word "brewery" that caught my eye, because Sal loves few things more than trying a new beer in a new town wherever we go, and I have had long experience looking for the signs of such things.

The Blue House Cafe, Espresso Bar, & Brewery, as it turns out, was just as much of a treasure as the mill ruin had been.The interior is charmingly decorated, all yellow and cobalt blue, with delightful touches here and there (like the beaded curtain made of wine corks and the blue painted nail heads throughout) and an ingenious outdoor seating area. It's a quaint restaurant serving time-tested family recipies and run by people who obviously care very much about what they do.

Their menu is largely Mediterranean and everything sounded wonderful, although that's one of the toughest cuisines for me personally since there are usually several key ingredients I just can eat. (Feta, kalamata olives, lamb, gorgonzola, pepperoncinis...I could go on, but it's just depressing.) Which means scanning for something innocuous or that doesn't have too many ingredients to ask them to hold, all the while wishing I could eat more than my frustrating palate allows.

We settled on the zataar flatbread, one with feta (for him), one without (for me). No idea what zataar was, but it was an adventure and that means you have to try things without knowing everything that's in them. He ordered their porter, I ordered a lemonade. Sal said the beer was decent, though nothing to write home about. The lemonade looked more like iced tea when it came, but I wasn't feeling particularly picky so I took a sip anyway. It was indeed iced tea, but so good I was glad for the accidental mix-up. It was infused with fresh mint and sweetened with brown sugar, so it had a delicious, crisp summery flavor that was most refreshing.

PLEASE SAL FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THIS FOR ME I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER AMENOur order arrived and with the first bite, I was in love. The flatbread was handmade and still warm, the zataar (a blend made of thyme, sumac, sea salt, and sesame seeds all ground together very finely) was mixed with olive oil and spread on the toasted flatbread, then topped with fresh tomato, cucumber, and onion. It was, in a word, heavenly. It may possibly have supplanted bruschetta as my favorite summertime treat. I'm still thinking about that meal two days later, and thinking a day trip to Vernonia may just have to be on our regular excursion list from now on.

You always take a chance on a driveabout that your search for adventure will end up being an uneventful day's drive in the car to nowhere in particular. You'll take your chances with the doubtful looking roadside cafe and it'll turn into a bust as often as naught. You'll point to a place on the map and arrive to find nothing much of interest. You'll have car trouble that is funny in retrospect, but anything but enjoyable at the time.

Still, even the least eventful driveabouts have their special moments: the hilarity that becomes a future in-joke, the music that imprints the moment just so, the odd sign or bizarre sight that makes you both go, "Did you just see...?" If they didn't, we wouldn't keep taking them. But every once in awhile, the search for a bit of adventure will turn up a little bit of mystery and a little bit of magic alongside those memories, and then you're hooked for life.

see the full set of pictures here

lunch, Paris slimline:

• stir fry (chicken, collard greens, baby bok choi, green beans, onion, garlic, broccoli, and a special sauce blend) with jasmine rice and crushed cashews for garnish
• cucumbers and carrots in rice wine vinegar
• a few bites of zucchini-sweet potato bread, courtesy of the neighbor who brought it for game night lst week
• blueberries (from our bushes!) and cherries

title taken from "Among the Ruins of a Convent in the Apennines" by William Wordsworth

party all the time, party all the time, party all the ti-ime

And now you'll have that song in your head all day. You're welcome.

We had an inadvertent weekend of parties, hootenannies, and shindigs. As in, we didn't really plan it that way, it just sort of happened.

Witness: Friday was my company picnic and yesterday was a house warming* followed by the monthly neighborhood Happy Hour potluck. As if we're all trying to cram a full summer into the considerably shortened season we've been stuck with this year.  It's surprisingly exhausting kicking back and having fun, but doubly so when you're making up for lost time by tripling up on the festivities.

I know, right? These are just tough problems to have....

*One of Sal's coworkers was celebrating being back in their newly-renovated home. They had had a fire in their basement that caused extensive smoke damage to the rest of the house and necessitated basically gutting it and rebuilding the inside, as well as having everything that could be salvaged cleaned and restored. It took 14(!) months, but their house looks terrific and you would never know that it had been the site of such a terrible event. Since their house had already been warmed quite enough by the fire, thankyouverymuch, the party was actually a "house chilling".

lunch, blue bunny & moons:

• Tuscan roasted turkey breast, with a bit of romaine lettuce to eat it with
• carrots and cucumbers
• rosemary roasted potatoes
• cantaloupe and cherries
• garlic dill cheese curds
• cashews and dark chocolate-covered raisins

on losing a bet

Because I lost a bet, I had to pack a bento for a coworker.

My friend and co-worker Tony, who has worked at my company almost as long as I have, rides his bike to work every day. Because of Sal's passion for biking, and his own impressive work commute, I've picked up a lot about the whole lifestyle of being a cyclist in a car culture (and more specifically, being a cyclist in Portland's very active cyclist culture), which means that it's one of the topics Tony and I talk about when we're avoiding work bored picking on each other chit chatting in the midst of being totally productive and not in any way wasting time.

It was during one of these totally productive and work-related conversations that I said that I thought that the saddlebags Sal uses are bigger than the ones Tony uses. Even though he's never seen them, Tony said they weren't, that they only make one size. Call it the sibling nature of our relationship, but next thing we know, we're betting on who's right. WHAT CAN I SAY IT WAS A MORE PRODUCTIVE DAY THAN USUAL.

At stake: two Green & Black's chocolate and almond bars if I win, a bento packed by me if he wins. And because he's an accountant down to his very DNA, and the importance of precision and accuracy were drilled into me by my engineering professors -- which means we are both monumental nerds -- we proceeded to very carefully measure the dimensions of his saddlebag, each of us verifying the reading of the ruler and making careful notes, along with stipulations as to exactly where the measurements were taken along the body of the saddlebag. I WASN'T KIDDING ABOUT THE PRECISION AND ACCURACY PART OKAY.

I brought Sal's bag in the following week and we performed the same measurements. Even though Tony said when I brought it in, "Well obviously it's the same size. I won't humiliate you by measuring it." And I was all, "Respect the rules of the bet, yo." Besides, my ME professor would have my hide if he knew I hadn't verified my measurements.

So I lost the bet. In the meantime, he had ordered his very first bento box thanks to that presentation I did a couple of months ago. And when it arrived, he announced that the first lunch to be packed in it, the inaugural bento, as it were, would be the one I packed to discharge my bet obligation. NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING. But also: awww.

Tony's lunch, Concorde XL:

• salmon cakes
• sushi rice with green beans and carrot shapes for garnish
• corn as gap filler
• stir fry mixed veggies (green beans, onions, red pepper, broccoli, mushroom)
• carrot sticks as baran
• part of a Pink Lady apple, and raspberries and blueberries picked from our own bushes!
• strawberry Pocky

my lunch, purple bento colors

• salmon cakes
• sushi rice with carrot shapes for garnish
• steamed broccoli
• part of a Pink Lady apple with corn as gap filler
• Rainier cherries with raspberries and blueberries
• strawberry Pocky

It was a real challenge to fill such a large box (900 mL), especially for someone whose dietary needs are much different than mine. I stuck more closely to the 3:2:1 guideline than I do for mine, We'll see if it ends up being enough for him....