portland is awesome

so I thought I would be able to post some photos from some awesome places we went today, but we didn't bring the right cord for the camera. So... that will be a while. But I can link some things up and talk about how cool they are.

did I mention I love Portland? Lots of fun shops, places to eat and indy record stores and thrift shops and gardens and pretty trees (magnolias and dogwoods and red buds blooming all over!) And there's a Whole Foods market right in downtown... just lots of yumminess everywhere. I got a tasty organic microbrew at a pizza place (where the server was very excited about the prospect of fresh herbs on our pizza). Much coolness. It's beautiful here. Okay! On to the links!

Today we at at Hot Pot City, where you pick a soup broth flavor, and they bring it to you in a pot with a cooker under it, and then you get whatever meets and veggies and spices and noodles you want at the bar and dump 'em all in and watch it cook up. Pretty cool!

Then we went to the Japanese Garden, which is the most authentic outside of Japan. It was absolutely beautiful, and we took a whole bunch of photos, (which I guess I'll put on flickr when we get home).

Then we went to some shops, including a couple of cool yarn shops. I found some great stuff in Lint... I got a bunch of wool yarn... some to make a felted bag for me (since my first attempt turned out great), some to make Angela a felted bag with, and some that was on sale that I just had to get cuz it's awesome (usually $17 a skein, marked half off, so I got all 3), and I'll figure out what to make later. Let's just say I spent way too many $$ at Lint. But Chris told me I could get it as my anniversary present, so hooray (he got some used CDs at some indy record stores).

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Powell's Books is pretty darn awesome and huge.

We dunno what else we'll do with our next couple of days. We have two days where we only have film festival events in the evening, and then Sat/Sun will be all day, all night film festival stuff. So we have two daytimes to fill with random fun. I guess we've got to figure out what else we want to do. We do know that we want to go to Imago Dei Community Church on Sunday morning. I listen to their podcasts every week, and I really like the pastor. It's a pretty huge church, but I think it is worth checking out.

So that's what we know so far. And now I'm gonna go rest before we head out for some dinner.

not yet

sorry Limani, I haven't gotten around to posting photos of my favorite city yet. but it's pretty awesome. And today - NO RAIN! Off we go!

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

Saturday was, of course, St. Patrick's Day. And Savannah has a pretty huge parade in the morning, then an even larger drunken party at night. We went to the former. The weather was nice, and the parade was hard to navigate through, but we walked through pretty much the whole parade route. Chris took lots of photos, so I put a few up on my flickr page. Check 'em out.

More Pi

First of all, I am saddened that Google doesn't have a cheesy logo modification for Pi Day (you know, like they do for New Year's and Chinese New Year and stuff)... But Dinosaur Comics made up for it by talking about Pi Day today... and finally, I'm quite pleased to say that I've converted Angela to the greatness of the day. Speaking of Angela, she's one of my favorite people ever, so you should read her new blog. It will undoubtably be fun for all!

Pi Day

Man, I wish I had this shirt for Pi Day. Not that I'm allowed to wear t-shirts when I'm teaching, but, maybe I'd be able to get away with it for a special occassion. Not that it matters since I don't have this shirt.

And speaking of Pi Day, thinkgeek.com tells me that 3.14 is also Albert Einsteins birthday. How cool is that?

Ribbit?

I really think these new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look more like frogs that like turtles. And why is the movie called "TMNT" instead of the full name anyways? Is this like the rumor that Kentucky Fried Chicken are so genetically modified that they can no longer be classified as chicken, so they changed the name to KFC? Perhaps these turtles have been so mutated by CG that they can no longer be called "turtles" and must just be referred to as TMNT only.

my favorite month of the year? perhaps!

I think this may be my favorite month of every year. March is a great month anyways... in the south it's when everything is blooming and green and the temperature is nice ... and on top of that, THIS week is just filled with random fake holidays - some of my favorite fake holidays at that! Let us start with Wednesday, 3.14, which is Pi Day... the day you eat pie and act like a dork by wishing people a happy Pi Day and no one knows what you're talking about. This is immediately followed by 3.15, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC (you know, "Beware the Ides of March!") ... finally, we have 3.17, Saint Patrick's Day, the day you're suppose to wear green and talk about the "Luck o' the Irish" and eat shamrock cookies. This is especially a fun day in Savannah, because they have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade, everything closes down, and everyone hangs out outside and drinks too much and wears silly green attire. The fountains have all be "greened" with food coloring, there will be much bagpipes and celtic music everywhere... I love Irish stuff, I don't know why. But for some reason I've always loved St. Patricks Day. It's just so random. This year it falls on a Saturday, so there will be more hooplah than usual, because people will come in from all over for the celebration. I'm glad I already live downtown and don't have to fight traffic to go to anything. Chris and I will probably just walk around and check things out. Some people will camp out in the squares to get prime spots for the parade.

And this, dear friends, is why I love mid-march. The End.

Epilogue: did I mention I love the end of March because it's Chris and My anniversary? This year we'll be in PORTLAND, OREGON for our anniversary, which is really stellar. Last year we went to NYC. Much enjoyment, indeed!

organic crochet

I ordered a couple small skeins of organic cotton yarn from etsy.com (which I started browsing after .tif said about a million times "have you checked out etsy? really, you need to check out etsy" so i did) ... I got the yarn in the mail today, and tonight I have myself some new hand warmers! I'm especially excited about these since my skin is so sensitive to everything; these shouldn't irritate my skin at all. huzzah!

the only thing that makes me sad is that the skeins were pretty small (they were only $3 each, after all) so I'm not sure if I have enough left to make anything else. There *might* be enough left for a hat, but I probably won't know until I'm almost done with it. The great thing about this yarn is that it's easy to take apart, so if i get to the end of the yarn and realize it's not enough, I can just take it apart and come up with something else to do with it, only time will be lost.

website issues

this website was down for a couple days... some problem with our hosting company... which if you've noticed, is always having problems lately, and doing a very poor job of communicating this to their customers. I'm looking to switch, and I'm so certain that when i do, everything will be better. But that will take time, so... let's just hope they don't screw things up terribly in the meantime to where i don't get important emails or something.

Spring Forward ... again

So although I'm sure no one learns they have to spring forward from ME, I've done this a few times now so I think it's my duty to remind everyone. Daylight Savings Time is this weekend... and apparently it's early, not that I ever know when it is, but people are reminding each other left and right this year because it's early. That also means computers might be confused, so make sure you've run your computer updates so they can reflect the new time.

Awesome timekiller

This is a pretty fun website... look at user drawings of scenes from movies, and guess the movie. But make sure you follow the directions from the little [?] icons or you probably won't do it right. The Burgg

bands and babies

This wound up to be a pretty crazy weekend. Chris and I went down to Jax to see mewithoutYou... otherwise known as the only band I'll go to because I am getting so sick of shows... then we went further down to Gainesville to stay with the Geary's so I could watch their kids while they went to see mewithoutYou the next night. Lucky for inexperienced me, the kids were in bed before Luisa and Adam left for the show, and I just had to sit around in the house. But that was just the beginning of our weekend, because that night, after the show and after everyone was home and in bed, Adam knocked on the door (3:30 am?) and told us that he was taking Luisa to the hospital... she'd been having contractions all night, but they weren't sure if she was going into labor or not, and finally decided they'd better go in at least and find out (she was, and they got her ready for her third C-section). Luckily, we were there to stay with the kids. The next morning Adam came back to get some sleep, and I got up to get the kids up and dressed and fed, and then when I started to crash after a couple hours (I had a cold, after all, and only had 4 hours sleep tops myself) I woke Chris up and made him trade off with me so I could get a little more rest.

Then later on in the afternoon we all made the trek down to the hospital to see baby Ayden*. He's a tiny cutie. Cyris was pretty excited about his new baby brother, and Izabel was about as excited as an 18 month old can get. Adam talked us into staying one more night, because Luisa and Ayden were staying in the hospital until Tuesday morning, so we left this morning. Anyways, we thought it was cool that God planned it all out for us to be at the house when this all happened, and we got to be the first ones to see the new baby. (And probably the first one to put photos up... I hope Luisa doesn't get mad at me!)

And for all you silly people who are wondering, no, it didn't make me want my own kids. At all. If anything, the whole experience made me feel completely inadequate to take care of kids all the time... I just don't have the energy for it.

*I double-checked on how they spell the names yesterday, so I swear I'm not mispelling them)

crochet mania!

I figured out how to crochet hats recently, so I've been a little insane about crocheting in my free time (in cars, watching TV, when my hands are tired of being on the computer and need to do something different)... I have made 5 hats and 2 pairs of fingerless gloves in the past... oh... 3 weeks. The funny thing is that it's no longer cold enough to need to wear a hat. But now whenever it gets cold again, I have a white hat, a black hat, a dark blue hat, a light blue hat, and a tan & maroon hat. I also have fingerless gloves to go with the dark blue and the tan & maroon. Fingerless gloves are my newest obsession. I will probably actually wear those more than I'll wear hats. (Hats look pretty silly on me, so it's actually been my goal to try and figure out hats that don't look so silly when I need to keep my head and ears warm). Anyways, I took some photos to show some friends, so I figured I'd link to them here as well. But I don't have pictures of the black hat or the white hat... I actually can't find them right now... but they exist, I swear.

Hooray for crochet!