time for my quarterly post, apparently

i'm trying to think of really good excuses why i haven't blogged in THREE WHOLE MONTHS, but they just aren't coming. well, maybe we've been a little bit busy?

first, there was christmas, new year's, epiphany, etc. then, my mom came for a fantastic, too-brief visit, and we were too busy skiing, eating, and watching the inauguration.

then, there was hawaii - four days on kauai, including a stay in a treehouse-like cabin up in the hills, and an incredible hike on the na pali coast, where we encountered i guy who'd been hunting overpopulated goats all day with his bow and arrow:

after that, we had a visit from dear san francisco friends - again with the skiing and eating.

and there was this, our gorgeous new downstairs bath, courtesy of one drew derrick (i was no help at all on this project, or any other of late, thanks to a frozen shoulder and other, ahem, developments:

for a moment, i ask you to recall the "before" photos of this space (before we even moved in), and shudder:

and then drew's parents came. you guessed it; more skiing and eating, especially since betsy cooked up a storm the whole time they were here. they left this morning, and we're pretty sure we no longer know how to shop for our groceries, cook our own meals, or do our own laundry. and the house is totally transformed, thanks to their industry - new french doors in the kitchen, lots of installed woodwork and trim, and even a bit of exterior painting. while they were here, we spent a couple of days at a forest service cabin in the shadow of mt. adams, in washington state. it's a 2.5 mile ski in to this rustic little place with propane lights and no running water. lots of fun topography to explore, including a series of collapsed lava tubes and ice caves. a highlight was discovering just how much huck enjoys woodstoves. he'd literally stand with his head nearly IN the stove, until his eyes must have felt like raisins and he was too hot to touch. heaven for a skinny guy like him, i guess.

now we've got no more (planned) visitors, and we're on to one of our biggest and most exciting projects, the complete overhaul of the kitchen. no big whup.

mt. st. helens is okay, i guess

actually, mt. st. helens is insanely cool. drew, tis and i headed up there for the day this past weekend. as a friend mentioned, it's like being on the moon. you get the sense that any one of the hundreds of COMPLETELY CRAZY cyclists attempting to ride up highway 504 with its 3000+ foot gain in altitude could vanish instantly, without a trace, if the right wind came along.

our hike out to the site of this video wasn't really a persuasive argument to the contrary; i couldn't get a photo showing just how narrow the path was at points, and just how steep the cliff was immediately to the side of the path. then again, drew and i are notorious acrophobes.



please do not turn the sound up on your computer. whatever i am saying probably SHOULD be drowned out by the high winds. plus, i sound like i'm 10. but what's new?


drew demonstrating where the top 1500 ft of the mountain would be had it not slid down into the valley below in 1980, followed by a 500 mph rush of boulder-filled gas. not scary or anything.


i was apparently hoping to rope me some steers up on that there mountain.


climbers on top of mt. adams 35 miles away watched the eruption as it filled in silver lake (bottom right hand corner of this shot), instantly and permanently doubling it in size. (and yes, we did sit through three separate presentations on the eruption, so i remember a few facts, okay?)

weekend in something like paradise

i live in portland now

and as of thursday, drew will, too. it's been a whirlwind year, and we're only barely into february. to recap, in images and a few scant words:

we celebrated christmas

and new year's eve.

we drove across the country via chattanooga, st, louis (that's the arch!), kansas city, and the wilds of kansas, colorado, wyoming, idaho and oregon.

at times it was unbelievably cold and windy, like being on the moon. but we made it. and then drew had to fly back to baltimore, and now he, bea and rick are somewhere back in idaho, driving across the country again.

scenes from our mass and vt trip - ok, mostly vt.

the digital camera was out of commision for the first half of our trip, and we've yet to develop the film from d's camera, so here's just a smattering of annotated images from our sojourn to new marlborough, great barrington and environs, and then on to the bethel, vt area for the dooley's pig roast. yeah, it was a while ago. haven't been blogging much.
















inside the war memorial on top of mt. greylock, north adams, ma.
















drew looking towards new marlborough and new york from the top of the war memorial tower
















lily, age 5, on top of mt. greylock
















mike and smitty, reckoning with the pig
















the day after the roast, when it was too hot and we were too hot to do anything but be in a river















drew, right after he lost his wedding ring while bodily shooting the rapids

what a pig looks like the morning after it has been picked clean by a horde of people. note that the eye is missing. that is because someone ate it at 3 am.

drew holding a miniscule frog we found walking through the fields by mike and corinna's house

this image pretty much sums up the bahamas excursion, in spite of the drama surrounding my getting there. more to come.

debacle

i've been feeling even more star-crossed this week than usual. the other night, for example, as i was heating up leftover turkey sloppy joes for dinner (heavy into the american comfort foods right now - last weekend it was glorified baked beans, this week the joes - both straight out of my grandmother's old crock-pot cookbook) i managed to spill absolutely everything before I could get it to the plate. sloppy joes on the counter. salad dressing in the crevice between the stove and the counter (yuck). grape tomatoes skidding across the floor. a real boon for bea. not so much for me.

so should i have been surprised when, upon leaving stained glass class last night, i got a message from my cousin t, with whom i'm supposed to meet up in the bahamas this weekend, saying that, while i was flying to freeport, the other three were flying to nassau? and the two were nowhere near each other? and i might have to fly between them? and that would cost loads and get me there very late at night? guess not.

needless to say, a breakdown ensued. spent almost two hours on the phone with orbitz and american airlines when i got home - during which time BOTH of our home phones went on the fritz in the middle of a transaction with the elusive customer service reps. and the upshot is $154 and i don't get to nassau until 10 pm (vs. mid-afternoon for everyone else - but to do that would have cost $400). so much for a quick, cheap getaway with the cousines.

and what's really weird is that i KNEW we were going to freeport. nassau was NEVER in my mind as our destination. and i was completely, expensively WRONG.

now, about that stained glass class. this was the first of 8, and as i told d, i'm definitely not a glass prodigy. last night we learned the basics of cutting the glass with a little tool that has a steel wheel at its tip and is completely awkward to hold and to use. we practiced cutting out basic-seeming shapes - leaves, fish, moons - with this implement, and the result, at least in my case, only vaguely resembled the original design. i'm told we'll get better. i'm told there are ways to smooth out all those jaggedy edges. most of all, i'm told i'll learn to respect the glass, without being afraid of being cut by it. because "the glass knows when you fear it." and all this time, i thought fear of flying glass shards was a smart instinct.

skyline drive

last weekend, rick, betsy, drew, bea and i met in virginia's shenandoah national park to camp for a couple of nights and hike Old Rag (seen in the distance behind us in this photograph taken sat. morning on Skyline Drive).

r & b got out there on thursday in "bonnie," their trusty little camper. we followed on friday night, getting there around 10:30 because of an ill-advised stop at baha fresh (we couldn't pass up "enchilado-styling" our burritos, which is the baha fresh equivalent of super-sizing, only instead of extra fries you get extra melted cheese and sauce and require knife, fork and a lot of napkins - not driving friendly).

but the happy news was that because we got there so late, we never had to pay the $15 park entry fee. nota bene, anyone planning a trip there. and because it was late and cold and bonnie was warm and already set up, we ditched our tent and crowded into the camper to sleep. we realized the error of our ways the next morning, when, at sunrise, bea decided that jumping on everyone's heads was a brilliant idea. this, after a night spent in a bed slightly wider and shorter than a twin, with two adults and an excited pup. somehow we forgot this lesson and repeated the whole thing the next night. but by then we had spent 7 hours "hiking" Old Rag (at the summit, it's more like bouldering), and slept like, well, old rags.


on saturday we got up and dined on fried bagels (highly recommended) before driving a meandering hour along Skyline Drive and through historic Sperryville (where an ambitious little shop announced, "Antique Tables Made Daily!") to the base of the mountain.

since dogs aren't *really* allowed on the mountain, and we were determined to bring bea, we decided to use the longer but less well-tread fire road to get up the mountain, figuring that once we got up there, it wouldn't matter what way we came down, even if we were caught with the dog. this way proved to be heavy on the wildflowers, and so we got in touch with our innter botanists using the new magnifying loupes the derricks had brought. yes, we are earnest. thank you for asking.



we didn't make it to the summit before we stopped for lunch, which felt like cheating, but turned out to be smart - we needed fuel for an ascent and then descent that required every muscle in our bodies as we pulled ourselves up over towering boulders, leaped over deep canyons, and dropped into narrow channels. bea is basically a mountain goat in disguise and only had to be handed across a gap 3 or so times. this was not one of them (you can see her head in the center):
for our dedicated fans, there are more images here: http://flickr.com/photos/10516738@N00/tags/shenandoah/