The Flying Machine

Seems like even if you know something is for the best and was going to happen sooner or later, it doesn't make it any easier to accept. Even if you yourself were thinking of maybe doing it first, it doesn't matter, because you didn't, you wouldn't have, not yet, but it happened, he did it, it's done, it's over.

Put it all in the box labeled The Past, yes, even those loose ends and unfinished plans and ideas and shoulda- coulda- woulda-s. That door has closed forever, sorry.

Posted by Sarah at 11:21 PM | Permalink

I'm not a regular Oprah reader but I happened across this and it's a good thing to remember:

When I stop and ask myself, "What am I really hungry for?" the answer is always "I'm hungry for balance, I'm hungry to do something other than work." If you look at your overscheduled routine and realize, like I did, that you're just going and going and that your work and obligations have become a substitute for life, then you have no one else to blame. Only you can take the reins back.

It's been said a million ways by a million people but each person's got to learn it for herself, eh?

Posted by Sarah at 9:41 AM | Permalink

2008, you really had a hard act to follow. 2007? Now that was a year. All that newness of the West and the desert and all that free time and the traveling to Wyoming and Idaho and California and Florida and New York and all over good Oregon and then the boys, lots of boys.

2008? The year I learned what it was like to work 70 hours a week. To not have a day off for 6 weeks. To assume the responsibility of an Executive Director. To see what that does to your social life and your friends and your poor roommates.

Not that I realized it at the time, but I spent most of 2008 keeping a tight hold on my feelings. Tried not to get too attached to any of it because none of it was really at all permanent. I made and enjoyed the company of friends, coworkers, a boyfriend, but none of it ever felt complete. There were few moments of true open-heartedness or abandon.

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot to love - cozy evenings cooking with housemates, gleefully laboring away my weekends in the garden, growing enough food to hardly need to buy a thing for months, camping with N, enormous successes at work (mobile market! harvest dinner!), a 100% awesome East Coast trip, learning to be pretty competent on my xc skis, the glorious family reunion on Siesta Key, a long December vacation in FL, friends' visits at various times in the year... plenty to love.

I just didn't do a great job of really loving all the good stuff like I could have.

My job keeps me here for now: I'm being paid to learn and do what I love and I have the freedom to decide how things get done. It is a huge privilege and I do my best every day not to take this for granted. I just wish the rest of the pieces of my life fit together around it better. I did a pretty piss poor job last year of balancing my work, my life, and my person. I worked hard and let my social life and personal health suffer.

Last year I made a bunch of very concrete resolutions and followed through only partially with them - I mean, did I really think I'd try kiteboarding? So this year I'm going to take a different tack, in the interest of getting back into balance and back to a place that I want to be.

It boils down to this: to make an honest, open-hearted effort to live each day and fill them with the things I need to be happy - friends, family, solitude, the outdoors, art, words, love. And when that doesn't work out so well, (because it doesn't always) to let that expectation go without frustration or beating myself up over it.

Sounds pretty simple, pretty cheesy. But it's what I need to hear from myself right now, and it's where I want to be. Now to make it happen.

Posted by Sarah at 10:01 PM | Permalink

Tonight is my last night living here. I've been at this house for three months now - long enough for my belongings to have spread throughout the house, despite my best containment efforts, and long enough for me to have been made aware, in sometimes blunt manner, that this is maybe not the best long-term housing fit (even if all residents ARE a good long-term friend fit). I think I never really realized how good I had it when I lived at the Pebble, or Foley, or even 211 South Mass - laid-back housemates with a really flexible attitude toward a co-op food system and a modest amount of cleanliness.

I'm trying to come to terms with the clutter that dogs my life like a shadow, and to determine what's reasonable (one dish left in the sink) vs. what's not (leaving the Thule box in the driveway for over a month). This, of course, is supremely subjective, and I guess I'm more on the cluttery side of clean.

Next week I'll be homeless and crashing with N; after that, three weeks in Florida and then the big move into my 6-month house sitting gig. Here it is, another clean slate. I'll have a housemate for the duration and I'm optimistic that we'll be able to get it right.

It's a huge hassle to be moving again after just 3 months. I want to find a great place and do all the fun nesting things that come with it - as it stands, I hang a few prints, put my clothes in the closet, and call any old place home. Maybe it's an outward sign of my inner restlessness. This doesn't feel like the right place to settle down. That's something I'm going to have to deal with. Soon.

Posted by Sarah at 8:30 PM | Permalink

A few ways:

1. Backburner that thing, dream, idea, plan you’ve had running around in your head since you were ten, twelve or twenty.

9. Make a criteria of what things need to be in place before you can begin.

22. Be devastated when there are no marching bands, accolades or public service announcements celebrating your progress and begging you to go on.

28. Eat another cookie.

30. Complain you don’t have enough time. Continue to say yes, when you meant to say no.

32. Refuse to make mistakes. Insist on doing things right the first time.

36. Read Blogs.

(more here)

I was out on a hike this weekend with my friend Josh and we'd been out for a few hours, merrily photographing the shaggy misty mossy Eagle Creek trail, when it started to rain. We stuck it out but ended up spending several hours soaked to the bone below our rain jackets (last time I'll forget the rain pants). At some point along the way, a thought occurred to me: I wonder what birds do when the rains come? How do their nests stay dry? Do they have holes in trees?

The thought of a snug and dry hole in a tree sounded perfect. I imagined myself as a bird and fluffed out my feathers, shifted my feet, felt the smooth wood against my body. I could actually feel all of this, and it startled me, this unfamiliar sensation of placing my consciousness in an entirely imaginary situation.

I'd used my imagination and it startled me. That's a pretty bad sign for creativity.

I spend a lot of time emailing, talking, problem solving, and organizing. I spend time cooking, driving, cleaning, and reading the news. I spend time shopping, drinking, and shooting the shit with friends. But I spend no time allowing my imagination free rein. I don't even remember the last time I picked up a charcoal stick or paintbrush or my mandolin. I might have written a poem in the last 5 years, but I don't know.

This is a problem, and it may have a lot to do with why I'm not really all that happy lately: I never let my mind out to play.

Hell, my body either. We met up with some Dartmouth people in Portland on Sunday and played round after round of screaming toes all over town. Just for kicks. And it was awesome.

I gotta get my imagination and my creativity back on track. End of story.

Posted by Sarah at 11:53 PM | Permalink

Some good stuff.

I forgot to mention but SALLY was here the other weekend and we went over this:

(that's not us being catapulted, but that IS Husum Falls and it was amazing) We also went through a couple bottles of wine and had good times being raucous on the front lawn.

What else.

LIZ is engaged! And moved to Denver! So now I have another reason to like CO. And she asked me to be the Maid of Honor, which I am delighted to be, as this means I get to plan a fabulous bachelorette party and help make everything go swimmingly and be there for my best girl. Also, Liz and I will get to get together and pore over colors and flowers and other delights this December in Florida. Awesome.

And did you see these? My yin-yang beans?

I had 5 seeds to try that I got at a seed swap and they flourished and have been popping out the bean pods right and left. I have, however, yet to taste them.

Posted by Sarah at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Wake up between 6 and 7 AM
Get ready for work
Load coolers full of veg from house into car
Drive to work
Check email, eat breakfast, read news
Call Meals on Wheels person to give the produce rundown, talk shop
Walk up to car, drive produce to Meals on Wheels / restaurant / market / etc
Drop coolers at house, rinse out, lay out to dry
Return to work
Make a few calls
Run planning meeting for fall fundraising dinner
Line out tasks for volunteer team for fall fundraising dinner
Answer some emails
Chat on phone with chef about delivery logistics for donated food for farmers' market
Answer random consumer calls
Hassle printing press about late printing of local buying guide
Powwow with market manager on items for vendor newsletter
Guide afternoon volunteer in food assessment-related research, answer lots of questions
Review agenda notes from steering committee meeting from last week, send task-related reminders to members
Squeeze in a few more emails
Go home

Posted by Sarah at 4:47 PM | Permalink

An injured kitten showed up in our back yard last night. She was hobbling badly but very friendly and not wearing any sort of collar, so my housemate took her inside and we fed her and petted her and this morning took her to the cat rescue agency in town.

Turns out she has a broken pelvis. Poor thing. We've put up 'lost cat' signs in the neighborhood, but no word. She visited us a few weeks ago and had a collar on, so if she's been abandoned, it's recent. The thought that someone might abandon an injured cat makes me so angry. Whoever did this better hope they don't meet me. Lucky for them, my axe is broken.

We are working on finding her a foster home where she can heal and be put up for adoption. I wish it could be my house, y'all. I worry about her pelvis and whether that will impact her ability to be adopted.

The other neighborhood abandoned cat, who we call Cat Stevens, was very jealous last night that the kitten got to come inside. We think he was recently abandoned, as he's friendly and doesn't behave like a stray but has no ownership collar and is rather thin. None of the neighbors claim him. I worry about him, too.

Posted by Sarah at 9:10 AM | Permalink

Geez, have I killed this thing, or what?

It's not that there's nothing to say, it's that there's no real time in which to say it, or maybe no energy with which to write it down. I'm not sure.

Posted by Sarah at 3:06 PM | Permalink

Also: my first HARVEST!

Posted by Sarah at 4:40 PM | Permalink

Thoroughly exhausted post-vacation.

In the best of ways.

Posted by Sarah at 3:45 PM | Permalink

Heading out tomorrow night on a red-eye home to Florida. Gonna spend a long weekend on the beach with my entire family, aunts, uncles, and cousins included. From there I'm flying back West to Oakland to see Sally and make a jaunt to Yellowstone. It is going to be great.

I am so ready for a vacation.

Posted by Sarah at 10:20 AM | Permalink

The laptop that I use every day at work, which belongs to the U of O and contains everything job-related that I do, in addition to all of our archived organizational documents, was stolen on Monday.

From a parked locked car at a trailhead when I was only gone for about 30 minutes.

Yeah.

Painful lessons learned:

* NEVER EVER EVER LEAVE ANYTHING OF VALUE IN YOUR CAR AT A TRAILHEAD EVER. EVER. I knew this, but now I KNOW it.

* Back up your files weekly. Not monthly, not yearly, WEEKLY.

* The show must go on. Projects don't stop for you to feel bad about your misfortune.

Needless to say, things may be even slower around here for a while.

Posted by Sarah at 2:45 PM | Permalink

I don't usually dwell on my regrets. There's certainly plenty enough of them. But Sarah convinced me to give it a try:

This sounds like a downer, but it’s actually kind of fun. There are the obvious ones that stand out at first, but it’s the careful combing of your life’s back stairs that makes this interesting. The main rule is your regret can’t be an undoing. Think of the Mark Twain quote, “Twenty years from now, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do, rather than the things you did.” If you ignore this rule, this game quickly deteriorates into My Life’s Bad Romantic Decisions, or Why Did I Ever Say/Do/Ingest That, which I suppose are both valid games, but not nearly as fun.

So, in no particular order:

• Never doing the Ledyard Challenge.
• Not writing down any of Poppa's stories so I could remember them better after he was gone.
• Never riding on the back of Ben's motorcycle.
• Not learning how to successfully side-part my hair until age 22.
• Never won the state championship in academic bowl even though we had all the knowledge and we made it to the finals and my dad even drove up to watch.
• All those times I stayed inside on the computer instead of going out with friends, age 13-22.
• Never using my newspaper column to speak out against the archaic invite-only drinking social clubs at my public high school.
• Pretty much everything and anything about age 14.
• Never kissing E.V., even though he's Out now and probably wouldn't want to anymore.
• Never crowd-surfing back when I listened to all that hard rock and punk.
• Letting my dad sell our river property and the muddin' Jeep.
• Us c&g girls never getting our tattoos.
• Letting my shyness or introversion or awkwardness or whatever get in the way of telling people how much I really care about them (this applies to almost everyone I have ever known: I probably like and respect you a whole lot more than you think, I just suck at saying so)

Posted by Sarah at 6:38 PM | Permalink

This is my garden. I'm sharing the land, water, work, and produce with my friend Lisa. We are both really excited about it: if the bugs or gophers or diseases don't do us in, we'll have enough produce outta this thing to feed both our houses and then some.

We make a great garden team, too; we sat down and gleefully drew out bed diagrams and then just as gleefully staked out the beds and tamped down the walking paths and measured the rows and spaced the seeds just so. We also did all kinds of wild and crazy stuff like sticking herb plants in between the beds and zig-zagging the pea trellises. Oh yeah. It is going to be so rad.

Posted by Sarah at 1:39 PM | Permalink

So we started a Southern cooking club. Nate named us Southern Culture on the Stove. The first meeting was last week and it was phenomenal:

Shrimp and andouille gumbo (me)
Roast chicken with peach glaze (Magz)
Maque choux (Cajun corn) (Will)
Cornbread (Nerissa)
Collards with bacon and garlic (Nate)
Peach cobbler (Cat)
Berry crisp (Becca)
SWEET TEA (me)

Oooh man was it good. We got to do this again SOON.

Posted by Sarah at 4:16 PM | Permalink

Played Rock Band for the first time last night. Turns out it's pretty fun to push buttons on a cheesy plastic guitar if there's drinks and dancing people and a dancing barking dog and songs you can sing along to and did I mention drinks?

Tonight'll be even better, though. Everybody and I mean everybody is coming into Portland to see the Avett Brothers. Eug, Florence, Lakeview, Newport, Da Locks, White Salmon, Hood Rivah... Rural Oregon's gonna roll deep. There better be dancing.

And then Mego rolls in this weekend. Just in time for sunshine and 70 degrees. Things are looking good.

Aside from all the rockin' good times there's some more interesting stuff going on in my head. Don't have the time to really get into it, which is a shame, because I need to, but maybe soon. The short of it is that I am ready to make some exciting changes around here.

Posted by Sarah at 9:42 AM | Permalink

My Malheur Co hazards plan was APPROVED BY FEMA.

YES
YES
YES

Posted by Sarah at 5:16 PM | Permalink

Stressed out and busy. Nothing exciting going on here for a few days.

On the bright side: had a great weekend in Portland - Corvallis - Eugene; orchestrated rides in 4 different cars to get from place to place. Got my Dartmouth on with Anna in Corvallis; watched Say Anything with her plus her bf plus a good-lookin' friend of hers (whose number I regrettably neglected to nab) from the fabulous amazing happy Veggie House; ate a lot of seasonal winter greens. Ate my first pastrami sandwich. Bought a short red skirt that works pretty well with long white legs. Listened to 2+ hours of FREE sweet sad country courtesy of The Everybodyfields. Got the last of my personal belongings back from Eastern Oregon by way of E, who will hopefully take me rafting with the Malheur croo this summer. Had some great political debate last night, washed down with Dbl Mtn beer 'n' pizza. And so on.

Posted by Sarah at 4:12 PM | Permalink

What I did last weekend:

Here's the thing. As somebody who works for a small nonprofit that aims to improve people's lives, it's easy to get out of the habit of, well, actually working to improve people's lives. Sure, I spend a ton of time firing off emails, coordinating meetings, and moving projects forward. But rarely do I do anything, work-related or not, that I can say has had a demonstrably positive impact on anyone. That's kind of the nature of organizing, it's a lot of slogging and hard work for every small step, and you don't always see the results quickly. It can get you down.

So I'm really glad I went out to Vernonia last weekend. Some of my RARE friends organized the trip. Vernonia got hit by a major flood last December - hundreds of homes were underwater and many rendered permanently uninhabitable. The work we did to help was meager when compared to the long-term needs of the community, but it was tangible and legitimately helpful. We spent most of the day crawling under houses, ripping out ruined insulation and plastic, for individuals who are unable to do that work themselves. It's an important first step to getting one's house elevated and re-insulated to prevent against future floods, and it's damn expensive if you want to pay somebody to do it. We also helped load and unload FEMA-supplied sheetrock for folks who didn't have an extra pair of hands to help do it. Things we as 5 strong adults could do in 10 minutes would take one person several hours.

(img credit)

If it's been a while since you've gone out and done some direct-assistance volunteering, give it a shot. You're not going to fix any of the systemic problems that caused people in Vernonia to be too poor or unhealthy to clean up their own flood-damaged homes, but you're going to help some real people for one day. Likewise, we can talk all day about whether food pantries and food handouts help poor families get by or merely enable poverty and poor nutrition - but either way there's people going hungry every day and is it not better that they get to eat while we argue about how to fix things?

Posted by Sarah at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Some specific, some not. First, the specifics. There are 10.

1. Try windsurfing.

2. Try kitesurfing.

3. Try snowboarding, try skiing (maybe, my knees!), improve at nordic skiing.

3a. (to keep the sporty ones together) CLIMB!

4. Keep up the hot yoga habit.

5. Read a book every other week. (I know, that's a sad, paltry goal, but I got a lot of other goals too.)

6. Do one creative thing every week. Either drawing, painting, photography, writing, or mandolin.

7. Try one new recipe every week.

8. Host or attend one potluck a month.

9. Get out of town for an adventure once a month.

10. Blog about and photograph/flickr all of these things. As in, post actual entries. With actual content. Because things are pretty lame around here lately.

Posted by Sarah at 10:51 AM | Permalink

While home in Florida I squeezed in time for some boating with Meg - it was great. We did the Rock Springs Run, which is a tributary spring of the Wekiva River, which starts at Wekiva Springs. It's a gorgeous chunk of Old Florida, a total jungle, just 30 miles from Orlando. Highlights:

• The gorgeous scenery and perfect weather, natch.
  
• Our canoe, which was emblazoned with LIONS.
  
• The sound of countless sunning turtles plopping into the water as we passed.
  
• Spotting a few baby alligators just a few yards from our boat, and, a few seconds later, their 6-foot mama, whose eyeball was trained on us the entire time.
  
• Working our way through half a bottle of Wild Turkey by the light of a flashlight , and, later, the moon.
  
• Great, long, thoughtful, rambling conversations.. both before, during, and after the Wild Turkey.
  

There's lots of pictures, too.

Posted by Sarah at 12:16 PM | Permalink

Home in less than 2 weeks. Gettin' pretty excited. Next time you're in Arcadia and bored out of your mind you best call me.

Look at all this fun stuff!

Bluegrass at the RV park, Casanova rednecks at the bar

Sweet rides

ALSO,

Posted by Sarah at 8:30 PM | Permalink

It was kind of an off-weekend. You know how sometimes even when you're giving it a good effort your timing's just off? On everything? That's how it was.

This weekend my mom told me that my Amma is not doing well, health-wise. She will be 91 in a week. Anyone who knows me knows how close we are. It is weighing on the back of my mind. The whole family is hoping she makes it OK through the holidays.

It's been raining and snowing and wintry mixing for days. The river is up and people are worried it might flood like it did last year, when the Hood River tore out hunks of highway 35 and left a swath of gravel and downed trees up the valley. I was sitting at Dog River this afternoon for a coffee+meeting and a ceiling tile not 5 steps from my head crashed to the floor, splattering accumulated rain and wet particleboard across the room.

Just kind of hanging in there today, trusting that things will get back online in good time, as they always do. There's bikram yoga tonight, nothing better on a cold cold day. I hear the weather's gonna clear up later this week. I will get to see my Amma in 2 weeks. And I've alway got my Bobby Bare Jr and Todd Snider.

Posted by Sarah at 3:29 PM | Permalink

I went to Eugene this weekend for Thanksgiving and it was sweet. Mego and I cranked out some mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts and buttermilk rolls and a pumpkin-maple cheesecake and hosted a table full of potluck dishes from the 10 new friends who graced the living room. Some planners, some hazards people, some natural resource management types, and, randomly, a few physicists. They were my favorite - as nerdy and awkward in their oversized sweaters as you'd expect, but also funny and engaging and full of interesting news from the world of physics. When else do you get physics news?

The best was the Bill-from-Freaks-and-Geeks doppelganger, who came bearing a glass dish of his granny's sour cream cranberry Jell-o salad and waxed lyrical about Thanksgivings past at home in Albuquerque with her half-dozen holiday Jell-o salads. Oh man.

Marc-o won for best wine. A Spanish red.

Mego and I did a little hiking, too, and Christmas shopping. I got home last night and dropped my bags and spent some time reading and editing my housemate's great grad school personal statement. It reminded me how much I miss that kind of writing - not the wonky bullshit that a Professional Job requires but writing with some thought and feeling behind it. Also, I love to edit, and I miss my old college job as a writing tutor. Maybe someday I'll be able to get paid for it again.

For now? Back to the working week. There's a lot of working to get done this week, too.

Posted by Sarah at 9:13 AM | Permalink

I'd like to say that this is uncharted territory - that we're bravely marching forward into challenges and uncertainty with open eyes and brave grins. You know, living the questions, like Rilke said.

This is not the case. This is charted territory, crisscrossed all over with trails that dead-ended. Lovely journeys that ended too soon. Don't think I don't know better than to hope for a destination. I'm not looking for a destination, I'm looking for a path that will take me as far as I want to go.

And I think I've become gun-shy. Enough failures, enough balks, you get kinda frustrated, especially when things start to look depressingly familiar. We've been here before and we need to either push through it or give up and go home.

PDX this weekend for a wedding with J, plus Powells and Stumptown and Beulahland and Tao of Tea and maybe Screen Door. J is still on the mend after post-op complications so it's super chill super low pressure. I guess we'll see what happens. I'm holding out hope that there's no dead-end around the corner.

Posted by Sarah at 9:16 AM | Permalink

Day One on the job: sit in hip coffeeshop all morning, read through pile of binders left by previous sole employee. Nurse tasty but slightly over-watered americano as long as possible. Walk down 438 stairs to get to downtown lunch with boss, talk vaguely about projects, get alternately excited and terrified. Acquire an additional binder. Walk down with boss to see downtown office, into beautiful LEED building, past beautiful couches and tall windows, past other nifty office spaces, up to dark, windowless cubicle. Still - better than last year's 'office' aka desk with back to the door and daily operations of a tax office going on all around. Determine that someone else (who?) has colonized my desk. Have to wait 'til other person clears out before I can move in. Shift operations to library. Shift to the other hip coffeeshop. Snobbily avoid touristy faux-Italian coffeeshop. Wonder if work will pay my coffee bills. Walk home up 438 stairs.

All is well! I've put up some kinda belated photos on Flickr:

Moving Out; Last Shots in Malheur County

Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness with Josh

Posted by Sarah at 4:15 PM | Permalink

I'm finally in Hood River. Unloaded, albeit not yet unpacked. I like my housemates a lot. I like my house a lot. However, I don't know how I feel about being on Pacific Standard Time. It's harder to call home at a reasonable hour.

Sorry to disappear on y'all like that. My last day at work was August 30, I was out of my apartment by noon on August 31, and that night I was in the mountains. Then I went to Boise and then I went to the Sawtooths (Sawteeth?) and then I went to Salt Lake City and then I came back to Boise. I spent a good part of that time staying in houses without internet access. Luddites. It did mean I had a lot of fun, though, and do you know how good it feels to have disconnected for a while? To have stopped compulsively clicking through my blog reader and have started reading some real live books with my downtime?

Yeah.

But you wanna know what I've been up to, don't you? Stories and pictures and all that? I'm workin' on it. First maybe I should unpack some blankets to sleep on 'til I get a bed. And maybe my toothbrush.

Because I'm nice and because I'm excited about it, here's a few bullet points to get you through in case life gets in the way (as it is wont to do):

• I saw 4 rattlers and 2 black bears and hiked along one heck of a gorgeous river with Josh. Bonus points for lots of great conversation and a couple of tiny trout on my line.

• I bonded big time with my buddy B, who reminded me how great generosity and openness are. He opened up his home and hospitality to me for anything, anytime, who bought me food all over Boise and showed me where all the desert swim holes are.

• I rediscovered my love for vintage Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen tracks.

• Ryan showed me some of the best of Salt Lake City, from the smelly lake itself up into the Wasatch and the Bayou and night-biking and porch-sitting and snippets of music everywhere. Also, I met the inspiration for none other than HAYDUKE. Yeah.

• I had a gracious goodbye with L & E; for my worrying we were all on the same page. (no awk, ladies!)

• Met a keeper straight out of the blue, J, a real damn fine one, who reminded me why I should never ever settle and why I keep a shelf for candles above the woodstove. If you've got jive, you've got jive. And a small string of bright memories like pearls - Dawson's, chai with a shot of espresso, the dock and the stars, a dog's warm nose on my shoulder, a compass rose, and the kind of endless conversation where you trip over your words because you can't keep up and you're so excited because you're connecting and lighting up like whoa. Yeah, I live 6 hours away now. Yeah, I know you can't really make that work and no I'm not going to try. So it goes. Here's to letting go ... and to trusting that one good turn deserves another.

• In general was reminded of why I do what I do and what and who and how I want to be and who and what I want in my life. It's a great feeling.
  

Posted by Sarah at 10:47 PM | Permalink

Sometimes things happen in your life and they happen in a manner so eerily perfect - even if sad or hard or whatever - that it makes you wonder. And they change you so completely that you can't even imagine how you lived before, because that time seems so very far away.

Posted by Sarah at 7:41 PM | Permalink

Real quick now, maybe more time later -

It was already gonna be hard to leave Boise BEFORE I spent one of the best weeks of my life with one of the coolest people I've ever met over there in the city and in the Sawtooths. Damn, y'all.

Now I'm in Salt Lake! Hangin with my buddy R! It's pretty great so far. I like this city.

Posted by Sarah at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Back from a great weekend up in the Idaho wilderness. Pictures and stories (Bears! Rattlers!) coming soon, aka as soon as I can find my camera cable.

In Boise now, spending time with B & J before I head down to Salt Lake.

So we're at the house and B mentions something about stick shift cars. I grumble that I don't know how because people keep offering to teach me and then never doing it. We get into the car to meet J and some friends for dinner. B stops the car on a side street, opens the door.

B: OK, you're driving.
S: ... ... OK!

And then I drove around for a bit on the residential streets of Boise. Only stalled out once or twice when I had to stop on an upward incline and watch for traffic. I need to practice some more, but shoot, hey, I can sorta kinda do it now. SWEET!

In other news, the real world is kind of a pain right now. Last-minute work stuff, bills, errands, bills, rent, insurance, ugh.

Posted by Sarah at 9:33 AM | Permalink

Going insane over here. It's hard to finish your job and move out of your apartment and turn your life upside down AGAIN all at once. I was writing a friend to explain why I hadn't replied to her rather important email and it sounded something like this:

I sorely underestimated how long the loose ends at work would take to tie up.. all those things I said I'd just do tomorrow? Tomorrow is suddenly TODAY. And how long it would take me to do all the address change/legal/important Moving Shit so that my crappy stupid bills (up yours, medical insurance, UP YOURS) and useless catalogs (have you seen my bank account balance? DO NOT TEMPT ME) and freelance paychecks and stuff get to me in the Gorge. And to pack up/prepare/store things like food, which I am too broke to toss or give away! What is that frozen lump in the recycled Nancy's yogurt tub in the freezer? I don't know either but I better thaw it and find out. Packing leftovers and miscellaneous food items into plastic to be stored in the freezer at E's place for when I pass through homeless in a week and am broke and need to NOT make one last sentimental stop to Burger West. There's something kind of sad in being so broke you are storing food in your friend's freezer for the next time you come into town. Also something smart, I guess. They're storing all my condiments, too, but they don't know it yet. That shit's expensive. Even tossing in the last of my Hamm's and Pelican for free.

It sounded like a really fun plan to be homeless for 2-3 weeks in Sept and bop around visiting people. Except it involves packing for the road (water, ipod, clothes, making sure car is shipshape), packing for a backpacking trip (gear!), packing for car camping (gear!), packing for no-laundry-for-at-least-a-week (underwear!), packing for freelance-projects-that-aren't-done-yet-but-need-doing (pens paper ruler eraser printouts of early drafts internet connection at coffeeshops wha?), packing camera and phone and laptop shit, packing things to go into storage at E's place until I really DO move... lining up a place to sleep every night or at least a tentative plan for a place to sleep and kinda sorta knowing where to camp if you really get stuck in a bind and having of course food and water just in case it's you out on some godforsaken patch of BLM dirt under the fierce blue desert sky. Because you kinda wanna do that, solo style, for a few days at least. One last round with the sagebrush and the wind. One last round of beers or jokes or jive or whatever with all your friends in town, in Boise, in the whole damn Interior West, who all happen to be male, how did that happen? Don't know. Call it a last tobacco-sunburn-callused-shaggy-crude-blustery-weird-whatever testosterone shot before you shift gears like whoa and move into a white cottage with two smiling super nice girls on the West side where the lawyers will not chew Cope and the boys at the coffee shop will have college degrees to go with their metaphysics and their skateboard scars. In theory.

Plus that Ack-I'm-Leaving urge to clear out the inbox and pay off the bills and clear out the pile of packages-to-be-mailed and books-to-be-finished and pictures-to-be-taken and one-last-bike-ride-with-the-scent-of-onions-in-the-air. Those onions.

Posted by Sarah at 3:10 PM | Permalink

Continuing in the thread of "I'm kinda sad to leave", I met up with Megan for one last round at Barley Brown's in Baker City the other night. BB's is a brewpub that just happens to be located almost halfway between her place and mine (we live 2 hours apart). Mego rocks, y'all, and I'm so glad we'll be within spittin' distance next year - me in Hood River, she in Eugene.

I remember when we were both new to this RARE thing, this Eastern Oregon thing, this leave-all-your-friends-and-family behind thing; and it was winter and it got dark at 4:30 and we needed to talk to somebody under 30 - so we'd drive an hour on the terrible icy snowy highway and meet for a beer and a few hours' good conversation.

It was a surreal drive in the winter - no towns to speak of on the entire stretch, just utter darkness and the great bare mountains blanketed in snow and the odd light from a ranch house once in a while. And then the cement plant, brightly lit at all hours, tucked into a cleft between two hills like those bright, laser-eyed sphinxes in The Neverending Story. And, of course, no cell phone reception the entire way.

It's less surreal but no less lovely in the summertime; unfortunately I've never gotten any pictures because I'm too chicken to pull over on the interstate. Also, a picture never really gets the feeling of moving over and around and between the silent bulk of the mountains.

We did, however, take some pictures in Baker -

(full set HERE)

Posted by Sarah at 9:15 AM | Permalink

This is my last full week working in Malheur County.

Wow.

I move out at the end of next week. I've already started packing.

Got a couple big entries on the horizon - photos from Pam's AWESOME visit, and maybe a year-in-review too. Lots of thoughts to catch before they're gone for good.

In the meantime...

So I had this bomber weekend in Boise. Didn't really DO anything, just chilled with some friends at coffeeshops and cafes and drive-in diners and bars and couches. But you know how sometimes you just jive with people? How it doesn't really matter what you're doing cause you're just enjoying their company and the conversation and the flow? Yeah. I'm gonna miss Boise.

I busted out my camera when we were at the Westside and ridiculousness ensued.

You can see the full set here if you want.

Posted by Sarah at 9:45 AM | Permalink

Just got home from a whirlwind 6 days from Boise to PDX and back with PAM!
It was awesome. Pictures forthcoming.

The next month and a half is pretty exciting. It will include:

• A trip to Hood River to Move My Belongings.

• Backpacking/hiking/fishing in southwestern MT / north-central ID with Josh.

• A trip to SLC to visit my buddy R and see the Great Salt Lake.

• Some solo time hiking/camping/driving through the Big Empty one last time. I want to get down to Steens Mountain.

• THE PENDLETON ROUND-UP

• Maybe getting to see/hotspring with Z?!

• Maybe some hangtime in Boise / the Sawtooths with B & co.?

• One last party with the Hazardous Hotties, probably camping at Pacific City.

• A few restful days in Florida, including my bro's new place on SIESTA KEY!
  

In general things are good. The heat has finally broken (low 90's instead of low 100's), I'm making headway on my piled-up freelance projects, I have a few weeks' worth of time left for enjoying this place in an unharried fashion, my work is nearing completion (sort of), and I dig my infrequent but enjoyable chill time with E. I think Roscoe has even come around to liking me, with the help of a few biscuits, but he's no Cali dog.

Posted by Sarah at 11:16 AM | Permalink

Yeah, sorry I've been so MIA lately on the life-updates front. All I've been is grumpy, so you don't really wanna hear it anyway. Got some Big Topics I want to write about up on the horizon - but I can't get there 'til I get through some seriously backlogged work projects. It sucks being poor and it sucks being broke and working side jobs to pay for rent and gas and the shit your car needs to stay running well and the new stereo that you're going to try to install yourself because your old one got stolen and then your iPod got stolen and then your tape deck broke and now all you got is the radio. Thank goodness for the radio.. but there's entire hours of country out here where you can't even get a radio station.

It sucks having to reap the stress you sowed when you procrastinated for all those weeks and said yes to all of those fun, irresponsible things and pretended your work would do itself. It didn't. It won't.

I wonder if switching my freelance graphic design pricing from by-project to by-the-hour would cut down on the micromanaging and hassles I have to deal with.

I wish I had something to stop these bug bites from itching. They get me while I'm sleeping, the bastards. It is too hot for nightclothes, it is too hot for sheets. It is too hot to do anything but stand by the fan and flip through magazines with a cold rag on my neck.

I can't listen to music when I'm at home because my computer overheats. But if I could, I'd put these songs on. Especially Ethiopians and Red River Valley. I never do get tired of John Darnielle.

Posted by Sarah at 3:37 PM | Permalink

The next 2 weeks are busy ones, so don't expect much from me on here
(not that you get much anyway, but.. you know).

Tuesday - Thursday: Workshop in Lakeview with the Disaster Dames.
Thursday - Monday: R's in town! (He's en route from DC via train this very moment).
Tuesday - Sunday: Road trippin' to San Francisco and attending the AnderBois wedding aka Dartmouth'05AlumniFest2K7 with Sally!

Posted by Sarah at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Waiting to huck some softballs

I spent a good part of each of the past two Saturdays volunteering at a charity track meet in town. This wasn't some big competitive event with runners in spikes and zealous parents toting oversize cameras, just a charity meet for kids from all over the county to try their hands and feet at running, the long jump, and a softball throw. It was for kids ages 1-14, you know, the pre-serious-competitive-running ages, which meant some good times:

• 1-year olds being asked to "throw the ball to daddy!" who simply carried the ball over.
  
• Unsteady, uncomphrehending 2-year olds with arms out trotting desperately after parents stumbling backward in the 100-meter dash.
  
• A veritable army of ponytailed tomboy girls popping bubblegum and sassing the scorekeeper (me).
  
• Bluster-filled boys all claiming to be able to whup each other.
  
• Crock-pot hot dogs for a dollar and root beer popsicles for fifty cents!
  

I spent my time out on the football field at the softball throwing station, writing down names and throwing distances. These two were my compadres:
 

That's "This is the scar from my tendon surgery" Greg on the left and "C'mon sister, pop me in the nose!" Ronny on the right. Greg and I bonded over the superiority of long-distance running over sprinting. Ronny and I bonded because, well, I'm female.

R: You're new around here, right?
S: Yep! Moved here in October.
R: Married?
S: Nope.
R: In a relationship?
S: Not really. Sort of.
R: ALRIIIIGHT!!

Two LOL moments:
 

L: The way a kiddie race SHOULD be run. Line 'em up and let 'em go however they please.
R: A new use for the big plastic letters implanted into the slope bordering the football field.

Posted by Sarah at 10:39 AM | Permalink

Two weekends ago I made a somewhat spontaneous trip out to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks with Megan. It was, in a word, awesome.

We set off on a Friday with a cooler full of food and cookies and wine and nothing but wide open Idaho highway between us and Wyoming. 7 hours later we rolled into Jackson just in time to catch sunset over the Tetons and wash up and dress up and catch an incredible Italian dinner with my parents (note to self: need to get some prosciutto and arugula for that pasta dish). Next day we wake up to dawn on the Tetons and hit Yellowstone hard - Old Faithful, various other geysers and hot springs and geothermal wonders, hiking, wildlife-ogling, tourist-ogling, spotting out-of-state license plates, and chewing our way through several packs of Bubblicious. We roll back into Jackson exhausted again in time for another lovely dinner at a brewpub, more good times with the parents, and only a few hours' sleep before another long day, this time rockin' Grand Teton. More hiking, more ogling, and then a few hours' rambling through Jackson proper (including a real sweet 50% off Smartwool sale!). Post-Tetons we hit the highway for the strange and wonderful Craters of the Moon, where we make camp on the windiest patch of volcanic gravel I ever did sleep on. There may or may not have also been wine and a few rounds of fortune-telling with M.A.S.H. After a quick tour the next morning of Craters' windy, surreal sights, we book it back to the big O R, exhausted but happy.

In case you want to see some pictures of, you know, the actual sights of western Wyoming in its glorious late-spring beauty, you can check them out:

(Oh, and a few shots from Craters of the Moon National Monument and Arco, ID, too)

Posted by Sarah at 2:39 PM | Permalink

OK, so I've been a little neglectful around here for a while. That's mostly because I somehow managed to commit to several major work deadlines within days of one another and have had to severely curtail my leisure time.

By that I mean I only basked/read in the park today for one hour instead of two.

But for real, after all these months of having time, time, massive quantities of sweet sweet time, it sucks to be back under the gun - though it's nothing like those Dartmouth days.

On tap within the next week:
- Draft city addendums for the hazard plan
- Draft action items for the county and all 5 cities
- Updated/revised/presentation-ready risk assessment
- Final Farm to D marketing/advertising materials
- Seasons fundraising invitations for VC
- Final round of logo revisions for the local food bank
- L's pig roast invites

Oh, and then there's that float trip this weekend.
And did I mention my parents will be in town next weekend? And that the weekend after that is Sasquatch?

--

Rambling on...

Yesterday the clock was ticking toward the golden five o'clock hour and I was cleaning off my desk and rattling my keys when the phone rang. 4:50 PM. "Sarah? This is M, the city police chief. This is a terrible way to introduce myself, but..."

After I picked up my stomach from the floor and rid my mind of images of my apartment engulfed in flames and let him finish, it turned out he wanted me to speak to the local Lions Club, of which he is a member, the next day. You don't say no to the police chief even if he calls at 4:50 PM, so this morning I freshened up my canned presentation and talked for 30 minutes in front of a room full of people in yellow satin vests festooned with small bright pins.

It's hard to tell if people like these talks - they don't really respond much, and believe me, I'm pulling out all my tricks - talkin' slow with a little drawl, using hand gestures, making jokes about the police chief, cracking on Salem/the West side of the state, etc. It's kind of one of those dancing monkey moments. You just want to get a belly laugh out of those old men, because if you do, you know they'll love you.

But then afterward one man took my arm and pulled me aside and said, "I want to talk to you about joining the Lions Club." I must have looked startled because he gestured to the emptying room and said, "You saw, there's women in the club!" I tactfully gave him my card and told him to call me. This could be interesting.

--

In unrelated news, I got to hear some stellar music on Sunday at Z's last real performance in Boise. It was a trio for piano, oboe, and horn.

Classic Z:

S: (on the phone with Z) Hey man, it's 2:45, I just got off the interstate, you still home?
Z: Yup! I was about to take Cali for a walk.
S: Uh, isn't the show at 3?
Z: Uh-huh. I'm not going on til 3:30 though. Why show up early?
(We ended up pulling in about 5 minutes before Z was due to perform. I can't tell you how many times we've blasted through town, on a hurry to something or other, arriving by the skin of our teeth. I will miss this kid.)

Other good Boise things:

+ Hanging out with Cali dog. Officially my favorite dog ever. Nothing like pulling up to your friends' place and having the dog gleefully bound over to say HI HELLO HOW ARE YOU I MISSED YOU LOVE LOVE LOVE.

+ Makin' breakfast for dinner, complete with fancy cheese grits and fresh-made strawberry syrup.

+ Walking by the river on a gorgeous afternoon.

+ Catching flirty vibes from another Boisean, a cute one, getting his number.

--
Also good: the various things I made with the catfish I bought last week. Yep, catfish. More on that later.

Posted by Sarah at 10:17 PM | Permalink

It was a real good one.

YMSB live in Boise with E.
++ hippie dancing
- that one old guy with long hair who kept whipping it around - into my face
+ the fact that he had, in fact, washed his hair recently
+ 3 Fat Tires (on E's tab, saweet)
+ making it all the way up to the third row front an' center
+ did I mention dancing?
+ Pie Hole on the way home
- they didn't play Sidewalk Stars or their fun cover of Ooh La La

Lawn Chair Party at the Mystic Vine
-- the fact that it was MV's last night; it's going out of business
+ talking fair trade coffee with that public interest lawyer guy
+ talking gardening with Sherry, L's girlfriend
+ a nice $5 glass of cab

PADDLING THE MALHEUR RIVER with L and E
+++ not tipping!!
- a 3-hour float becoming a 6-hour odyssey
+ borrowed boat, borrowed wetsuit, borrowed drybag
- L's abominable music taste on the ride out
+ E's somewhat better music taste on the ride back
++ goslings!
+ swimmin' mule deer
-- not having my camera out due to the water splashing
+ L: ok E, would you rather eat 50 Big Macs in one sitting or 10 sticks of butter? E: uh, the butter. L: what if it was 10 sticks of butter or 10 cups of mayonnaise?? E: uhh...
+ (getting kayaks back to the truck) S: dude, Moses, you chose the worst path through the brush. E: uh, Sacajawea, yours isn't lookin any better.

++ phone calls from various friends who live far away
+++ being pleasantly exhausted and kinda sunburnt and windblown and happy at the end of a good weekend.

Posted by Sarah at 10:12 PM | Permalink

I'm back out West. Well, actually I've been back out here since late Monday night. I miss home already, but there's plenty of good things going on out here too. I've got some photos and stories to share soon.

By the way, thanks for all the haircut comments, y'all!

Posted by Sarah at 9:13 AM | Permalink

I'm in Florida 'til Monday. Mom's birthday is tomorrow, and it's good to be home.

Posted by Sarah at 8:09 PM | Permalink

Good things about this weekend:

+ 4 lbs of strawberries for $5 at the grocery story.
+ New running shoes, finally.
+ Lovin' on Cali dog, who I hadn't seen in a while.
+ Watching Space Ghost with Z.
+ Climate change rally in Boise.
+ Reading by the Boise River, tucked into a tree.
+ Finding out that Barry Lopez is speaking Tuesday in B-town.
+ Helping out at the Food Bank benefit concert.
+ Coffee with chicory; making Vietnamese iced coffee.
+ Getting fbook props from two(!) friends for mixes I sent them.
+ A drafting table! A nice one! With folding legs!
+ An apricot tree.
+ A striped shirt.

See:

Not so good things about this weekend:

- Worrying that Barry Lopez's talk will be sold out.
- Majorly bungling a strawberry rhubarb custard tart.
- Discovering that my Chacos are missing.
- Wind so strong it almost blew me off my bike. In the middle of the road.
- Never getting everything that needs doing done.

Posted by Sarah at 10:10 PM | Permalink

When I walked outside early this morning the air smelled of new onions - sweet and sharp and earthy. Fresh, like spring.

I told you I live in onion country, right? The fields that surround this little town are full of onions, some 20,000 truckloads worth on a good year, in addition to some corn and wheat and mint. But mostly it's onions. I rode my bike to the coffeeshop, loving the tiny bit of moisture in the morning air and the fragrance it carried. By noon the air is always dust-dry.

This weekend I'll be in Portland, where I hear spring is making a more riotous entrance. I guess that's the good thing about those rainy winters - luxurious, beautiful springs and summers. And then there's the Farmers Market, Stumptown, good friends new and old, and maybe some nice single-malt scotch. It should be a real fine time.

Posted by Sarah at 10:21 AM | Permalink

Highlights from meeting up for a weekend at the halfway point between Vale and Salt Lake City:

- Evel Knievel's ramp dirt pile, from where he tried to jump the Snake River Gorge.

- Shoshone Falls, even if it was almost dry and the rocks were kinda bulbous and strange.

- Talking to those kid punks downtown: "I don't really love Jesus."

- That Volkswagon bus-truck AKA dream car.

- The Grand Vu Drive-In.

- Ghost Rider, which was terrible, but in a really fun way.

- The Oasis, the only damn bar in town.

- That lonely cowboy in the corner with black hat, black pants, and white puka shell necklace.

- People on the dance floor: a middle-aged couple and a young man with Down's syndrome.

- Arguing at the bar about whether pomos are more or less inclined to like Prince. (toss-up)

- The "NUKMALL" vanity plate on a truck in the motel parking lot.

- Frankie's Oatmeal and sitting by the Snake River Gorge.

- Not needing a radio when you got a guitar in the car.

- Jumping off of hay bales.

- Talking to the farmer who came out to see what we were doing jumping off of hay bales.

- Jumping, in general.

- Good times and good friends, in general.

(more pictures here)

Posted by Sarah at 12:50 PM | Permalink

Here comes a long one, folks:

Let's start with Thursday. So I've got this deal worked out with my friends L and E, both lawyers for the county who also happen to be young and fun and in possession of a washer and dryer. I cook for them in return for the use of their laundry facilities. Not only does this mean my clothes are happier (laundromats are terrible for your clothes), it also means I get to test out fabulous dessert recipes on a willing audience.

For last week's laundry session I made a big spicy pot of tortilla soup in the slow-cooker and tried the recipe for "Very Good Chocolate Cake" from Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock's The Gift of Southern Cooking, which happens to be a bomber cookbook (Thanks Pam!). I rolled into the dudes' place with a steaming vat of soup in my passenger seat, all nestled up to the beginnings of the cake - a bowl of dry ingredients and a bowl of wet. Short on time and disinclined to deal with the making of buttercream, especially in a sparsely-outfitted bachelor kitchen, I paired it with macerated strawberries. Needless to say, it was a hit. This is indeed a very good cake - moist and tender, with a sweet, old-fashioned chocolatey flavor tempered by the inclusion of strong coffee. Next time I'm going to go all out and do it 2-layer style, with a full dark chocolate-coffee frosting and everything. After a few hours, a few beers, and some good conversation with E (who is a bit more reserved than the ebullient L), I headed home - all of, oh, 6 blocks away.

Friday happened in a very low-key way. Work, coffee and logo/design brainstorming with my friend the Food Bank guy, phone calls from a few faraway friends (B en route to Cali, Mom, East Coasters doing East Coast things), and an evening at home.

And then there was Saturday.

Continue reading "A Very Fine Weekend" »

Posted by Sarah at 1:45 PM | Permalink

It's funny how sometimes you won't hear a song, really truly hear it, until days or months or years after that first time. I mean this musically and lyrically; maybe it's the back harmonies you never noticed, the way a fiddle swings lazily into melody, or the verse that for whatever reason suddenly socks you in the gut in the best possible manner.

You sit there listening, struck dumb, wondering how the hell you missed it the first time, the first fifty times. You wonder what changed. But mostly once you really hear it you can never go back. It'll never be background noise again.

Dear Wilco,
Thank you for writing and recording pretty much every song on A Ghost is Born. I'm sorry it took me so many years to truly hear them. I'm making up for lost time.

Love,
Sarah

---

I think it was just about a year ago that somebody gave me some good advice. It was: Sarah, you need to give yourself more credit. I bristled upon hearing it. I have this memory of puffing uphill on a cold afternoon shortly afterward, preparing an arsenal of snippy, defensive replies that I would never use. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I give myself plenty of goddamn credit! It's you and everyone else who needs to give me more credit! And then I forgot about it and proceeded with a rather dissatisfying Life as Usual.

A few months later, I moved out West and started over. Sans friends, family, and familiar territory, I found myself flailing. I mean, I had new friends and I liked my new location and I was doing great at my new job. But it was still a rather dissatisfying Life as Usual, just without all of my old comforts.

It was just about 2 months ago that somebody else gave me some more good advice, given in a rather less... pedantic tone, as the closing to an email: be good to your heart.

Something prickled in the back of my mind, but I brushed it aside and kept on walking. I am good to my heart! See how open and willing to love am I, even in the face of gigantic red warning flags? Now that's treating your heart right, that's love.

As should be obvious, I paid big. Don't really need to go into details, but it involved a month of irrational expectations, impulsive behavior, and piss-poor decisions. It sucked. And, well, something changed.

I can't think of a way to say this without being heavy-handed, so rather than that, I'm gonna go a little oblique - in the immortal words of Jimmy Cliff, I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW. *

There's some real progress being made over here at Sarita Inc., folks. I'm doing well - better than I have been in a real long time. Knowing something and living something aren't nearly one and the same, but you've got to start somewhere. It's about damn time.

* Yes, I know he wasn't the original artist. But the Jimmy Cliff version is the one they used to play on 94.9 FM every Monday morning when I was a kid and by God I love it.

Posted by Sarah at 9:28 PM | Permalink

I'm back east of the mountains today - woke up at 8:30 and looked outside onto a bright clear high desert morning and smiled a big wide smile.

I went for a jog and unloaded the last junk from my car and took a shower and ate a big hot sugary spudnut (brought home from Eugene) and did some mega kitchen restocking and now I'm hippied out in Carhartts and wool with John Hartford on the stereo and the ingredients for a Cajun stew simmering all fragrant in the slow-cooker. Every window in the place is open and it smells like andouille and yams and it is so good to be home.

(Eugene stories and pictures later...)

Posted by Sarah at 2:01 PM | Permalink

Some highlights from life this past week:

- Snowshoeing with Marc and a herd of old people on Mt. Bachelor
- The warm comfortable feeling of a house full of friendly people
- The long drive to Bend being made much less long by having Megan for company
- Foosball, even if I lost both games
- Being blindsided by good fortune
- The laundry room
- Tennesseans (even those by way of Indiana)
- Impromptu jam sessions with a guitar and a mandolin and a tambourine and a whole bunch of bongos and noisemakers and singin and laughin and feeling SO DAMN GOOD with the music and the people and the bright fire and the cold keg and a couple of good pictures too.

- A good bottle of red Spanish wine
- Stir-fry in the wok
- The comfortable company of friends in my apartment
- Gossip, of a good sort
- A couple of long phone calls across a very long distance
- Plans to visit Eugene for a week in February and see and do so much!

Posted by Sarah at 4:41 PM | Permalink

As you might have guessed, I was in Boise this weekend.

Suffice it to say that the score is now something like P-A 10, Sarah 1. I'm workin' on it, OK? But while I'm down I might as well enjoy it:

Here is an illustrative example: if you give someone a song on a mix cd, a quite good song, do you find it charming or insufferable that the recipient's comment is that one of Jim James' guitar strings was terribly out of tune, rendering it nearly unlistenable? I mean, charming that they can tell, insufferable that something like would ruin a song.

Another: if you make a vegetable risotto with lots of basil and parmesan and black pepper for a dining companion who claims to appreciate subtler flavors and vigorously denies dependence on various hot sauces, how do you respond when said companion says, "Hey, this is really good - when I add some more pepper and hot sauce." I mean, you've got to just laugh, right?

Multiply that by about a hundred and you have my weekend.

On the bright side, I did get to go on a lovely snowshoe adventure in some incredible powder, almost got frostbite, went for a long solo walk in the woods and saw mergansers, geese, quail, a great blue heron, rabbits, AND two foxes, saw Babel (eh), finally ordered some boots and gaiters and a camera bag (thanks to those who offered input), found some nice Spanish white wine and a bottle of red that has yet to be opened, ate a very tasty donut, enjoyed a near-constantly lit-and-toasty woodstove, finished Cold Mountain (I know, I'm several years late on this one), and found myself more charmed than I expected to be by Jonathan Franzen's memoir. Now I'm just waiting for this one to arrive and the reading can continue (Thanks, Pam!).

Another good thing - a good two-thirds of my waking hours this weekend were accompanied by Steve Reich, and that was great. Driving through the snowy mountains outside of Boise, listening to William Carlos Williams' words as musically interpreted through Reich: awesome.

Posted by Sarah at 10:01 AM | Permalink

Today I did something that I have never done before.

I called a company to register a complaint about a product. As I listened to the pleasant please-hold music I thought of all the reasons that I should hang up. I would sound rude. I would sound ignorant. It was unnecessary. They might get mad at me. I could just return the pants and pay all that shipping and complain about the company to all my friends instead.

But I stayed on the line and I spoke to the nice woman on the line about why the pants I'd spent a gajillion dollars on were wholly unsatisfactory in quality and fit - even after having exchanged a small for a medium. The mediums sucked too, and that time around I noticed other problems too. I was very polite and she was very polite and in the end I got my shipping costs refunded for both pairs.

Surprise surprise, it was painless, if a little awkward at first.
Sarah 1, passive aggression 0.

This totally falls under New Year's Resolution #1. I was on the phone last night with Miss Helen and we were recounting numerous embarrassing incidents wherein we were called out for PA behavior and when I'd laid it out like that all in a line of words several minutes long, these stupid little incidents with people I care about that could have so easily been prevented, I kinda shook my head and resolved again to get better about it.

So I am.

Posted by Sarah at 7:52 PM | Permalink

So Liz posted this pic on her LJ and that reminded me that 1) I never posted it and 2) I never really talked about my birthday. So, because my fingers are hurtin on the mando and my bread's just gone into the oven, here we go:

I'm 23 now. I don't feel old yet. I'm actually kind of happy about 23, as it puts me more squarely into "20-something" as opposed to "college student." This may be partly due to the fact that I hang out with adults and young people all 2-10 years older than me these days.

When I go back to Arcadia, though, I'm always the oldest. My best friends at home are all a few months to a few years younger. I'm the old lady. So in true fogey style we hit it to Harpoon Harry's for some cocktails and fried things. It was a quiet night at the 'Poon, so they closed up at midnight and afterward we went to Liz's place and just sat around and talked and laughed for hours. I'd tell you some of the funniest bits but they aren't for gentle ears. (Hey Liz, what's that about hands and measuring? HA) It was a good night.

Also, Mom gave me a Pendleton blanket for my birthday! A very Oregon gift. I love it.

Posted by Sarah at 10:10 PM | Permalink

I'm a few days late to hop on the resolution train, but really, tonight's as good a night as any - tomorrow I fly back out West and, as at the end of each calendar year, I'm drowning in waves of coulda-shoulda-woulda-why-the-hell-didn't-I-get-that-done-s. So let's look to the future instead, shall we?

I am only making two resolutions this year and they are going to be the same every year from now on because these are pretty much the two things that have always and will always be my Big Challenges. They're like asymptotes on a graph - always approaching but never quite reaching that beautiful round integer. Goals made for working toward, not for completing easily.

1. STEP UP.

2. STEP BACK.

(Were I using parallel structure I would pair up with down or forward with back but neither of those are as accurate as the [albeit literarily awkward] above pair.)

1. Step up. By nature I am risk averse. I am failure averse. I am prone to the creep of intertia as enabled by hesitancy and guilt. But once I take that first step toward something - anything - I'm pretty unstoppable. I need to take it more often. I need to lay myself on the line and put myself out there and give a big fat middle finger in the rearview to every lame inaction-excusing excuse I've ever made.

I've made a lot of great new friends this fall thanks to my job. But how many of them have I truly attempted to get to know? I've spent too much time at group gatherings observing people and wishing someone would start a conversation with me, occasionally jumping into the general group vibe before awkwardly backing out. You can get by with that but jeez it's cowardly. Jeez it's lazy. What the hell good does it do for anyone?

One of my friends sent out a quote from Maya Angelou via email earlier this fall, and it has really stuck with me.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

The responsibility is on me to step up and make those connections. Because I do care immensely about my friends, new and old. I just don't often enough express it and work to deepen my relationships. Things with Z are quite nice, but we'd both get so much more out of it if I took a little more initiative. And of course it cuts both ways, it's nice to be on the receiving end of social initiative, but I have got to stop counting on it and start creating it. You can't stop to think about your insecurities when you're really honestly openly engaging with another person. And that's the thing, in engaging with somebody, conversation isn't enough - you've got to be open, you've got to be sharing, too, not just firing questions and listening to replies. Why keep yourself bound up tight with fear and insecurity when you can open the doors and let a little light in?

I'm using social stuff as an example here, but this goes for pretty much everything in my life - work, friends, love, exercise, activism. I've been sliding by with a lot of Bs and B+s and what I want are As. No more of this bullshit wasting hours on the computer when I could be doing something. No more half-assing work stuff. No more pretending that walking up and down the stairs a few times counts as real exercise.

2. Step back. OK, so here's the flip side. I was watching a TV special with my dad the other night on Annie Liebovitz. I've always enjoyed her photography in Rolling Stone, and the program was a good one. The thing that's been running through my head for days, though, is this quote from one of her mentors, advice given at a time when she was manically snapping shots and exploding in every direction socially and professionally. Her mentor said, You've got to edit your work, Annie.

If there's a pie somewhere, anywhere, I want my finger in it. I've only got 10 of them and at Dartmouth there were many more than 10 pies and I just about exploded from the overwhelmingness of it, the desire to see it all and to capture a little piece of everything for myself. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to take it all in -

If you feel discouraged
That there's a lack of color here
Please don't worry lover
It's really bursting at the seems
Absorbing everything
The spectrum's A to Z

But at some point you have to have some boundaries and you have to winnow it all down. Quality always beats quantity. If I had my druthers I'd spend a little time every day on each of my favorite hobbies - reading, writing, cooking, music, drawing, painting, craftwork, sewing, conversation, etc - and time on progressive/activist projects and friends and family and everything else. This is, obviously, impossible. But I still feel guilty at the end of every day when I think about how little I accomplished and how much I want to do with my time.

So I'm going to try and work on that. I'm going to stop beating myself up for not Doing It All Every Single day and maybe in the process I will free up a little time for my passions when the mood (or the moral imperative) strikes.

--

I'm starting to fall asleep at my keyboard, so I think that's my signal to wrap this up. Love to all of you and a new year that's going to be the best one yet!

Posted by Sarah at 1:08 AM | Permalink

So I just got home from the Everglades where I've been the past few days. Got updates galore for y'all when I get a chance to shower, celebrate the new year, and maybe get a few hours' worth of sleep.

Posted by Sarah at 3:29 PM | Permalink

It's funny how no matter where I go or what I do nothing feels as much like home as dusk on a cool, clear night in Florida out in some broad pasture with the frogs and the crickets and the orange blossoms and palmettos.

Dad and I went out tonight to visit Fred and Mr. Steward. Fred is a longtime friend of my dad's and he loves to tell stories and his family homesteaded in Arcadia generations ago. He's a tinker and an inventor and he has cars and tractors and farm implements and rusting antiques strewn across his property. His two lady German Shepherds follow him everywhere and they love to have oranges thrown for fetching. He lets me come out and take pictures whenever I want and I don't go out there enough. But we went out tonight and he and dad had Budweisers and I climbed over the barbed wire and took pictures while they visited. He showed me a big steel rake he welded for his front-end loader and his generator and some salvaged steel supports from the old Arcadia water tower, rivets the size of lemons, that will soon become a small steel bridge to cross a stream. He's been working on clearing a piece of land out on Kings Highway and he says there's an old homestead site on it where he's been finding glass bottles. I want to go out and dig some up.

Then we went across the street to Mr. Steward's because Dad's gonna be his tax man starting this year and he also happens to have a nice big organic garden - it's his hobby and his retirement plan and so we went out to see it and he came outta the house with his Wranglers and his big mustache and Cane the dog and he flipped out his knife and started harvesting lettuce and broccoli and potatoes for us to take home. Hurricane Charley took the roof off his house but they put a new one back on, him and some carpenter friends, and he's slowly rebuilding the entire thing. We stood out on the porch watching the sunset and drinking more Budweisers and he talked about his plans to get out of the citrus business and expand the garden and try some new techniques and start a CSA, and his seaweed fertilizers and his horse supplements and the cypress trees he's putting in out back and the wetlands and the grove, still recovering post-hurricane, and his wife, the daughter of my old choir director, who gets out and helps sometimes but maybe worries a little too much about the weeds.

Drove home with burrs on my jeans and a couple of decent pictures and a head buzzing full of ideas. Sometimes I think that amazing things could happen here, that maybe they already are.

Posted by Sarah at 9:42 PM | Permalink

Home again. It's humid and warm and it doesn't quite feel like Christmas yet. Ben and I went to Sarasota to catch up and do a little shopping; he played some Jacqueline du Pré cello performances for me that were remarkable. Tonight, though, things feel a little off.

Maybe that's because someone put Donnie Darko in the family Netflix queue (nobody remembers doing this, it must have been on there for a while), so my dad and I watched it tonight.

Somehow I missed the presence of Love Will Tear Us Apart the last time I saw this movie.

Posted by Sarah at 8:39 PM | Permalink

The Las Vegas airport is kinda creeping me out - strange neon lights, crawling with people, dim smoking lounges, and slot machines EVERYWHERE, a cacophany of electronic bleeps and blips and flashing lights and spinning numbers and people all hunched up pulling the levers.

I did get to see MGM Grand from the airplane, though, and the desert-colored afternoon light coming in across the mountains and down along the palm trees in the distance is pretty gorgeous.

Posted by Sarah at 5:04 PM | Permalink

I'm off today for Florida - two weeks' vacation here I come!

Got lots of stories for ya on the flipside.

Posted by Sarah at 10:30 AM | Permalink

The only thing I want to post today is a link to my friend Nick's last entry from China. It's about what it means to leave behind what you know and set off toward something that isn't easy, telling stories that are hard to put your finger on but ring true anyway. So check it out.

29 - Conclusion

Posted by Sarah at 2:44 PM | Permalink

I'm off to Bend again for job training - can't wait. Friends, free food, useful skills, and a weekend at the hot springs at Summer Lake. Back on Sunday.

I was putting some music on my iPod for tomorrow's long drive and I found a playlist for the stuff I was listening to 4 years ago this time of year. Last of fall 2002.

To be honest, this combination kind of boggles my mind:

Jump, Little Children: Cathedrals
Ennio Morricone: The Mission
Doves: M62 Song

(Astute friends might know from whom that Ennio came. Think freshman fall friends. Think "preternaturally inclined toward melodramatic violin swells")

Posted by Sarah at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Oops, I forgot to mention that I'm at a conference this week. Updates will be light 'til Friday when I get back to Oregon. Will of course have lots of news and gossip by then.

Posted by Sarah at 6:51 PM | Permalink

This weekend, it was a good one.

The memorable bits, in chronological order, +/- style, which I got from Pam who I believe got it from Riz:

+ Riding over to Bend with Megan, who has agreed to be my Wintergrass buddy in February.
+ The chocolate milkshakes at the Oasis in Juntura (pop. 143).
- The not-so crispy fries that accompanied the milkshakes.
+ Watching a corpulent, heavily-bundled-in-flannel local rumble up on his 4-wheeler for dinner.

+ The Green Line pizza at Mondo Pizza in Bend.
+ $1 brownies at Mondo Pizza.
+ Squeezing 5 people into a Motel 8 room in Bend.
+ Deschutes Brewery's Jubelale and Bourbon Porter.
- Lemon Ale (a little Pine-Sol-y).
- Having the motel attendant threaten to kick us out for noise complaints at 1:30 am.

- Waking up way too early after a late night.
- Riding bitch seat all the way from Bend to Silver Lake.
+ G. Love on the stereo.
+ silver lake store... the sign
- Repeated turn-arounds on an icy Forest Service road in search of the proper parking area.

+ Hiking shoes + foot warmers + wool socks + plastic bags = semi-winter-worthy footwear.
+ Breaking in the new snowshoes!
+ Snow on the pine boughs.
+ Cougar tracks in the snow.
+ A seriously good cardio workout up the mountain.
- Spending most of the 4-mile snowshoe totally out of breath.
+ Stopping for a sushi lunch at treeline.
+ Maki sushi eaten like a corn dog as one fat roll.
+ A great game of Fuck-Chuck-or-Marry to get us up the last steep mile above treeline.
(I mean, really, Chocolate-Salt-Lime - TOUGH ONE!)

- My snowshoe straps freezing solid.
+ An outhouse with a view of the Cascades.
+ A snug, cozy lookout cabin with 360 degree double-glazed windows, a propane stove, a compact woodstove, a well-stocked woodshed, a couple of comfortable places to sit, and a wraparound porch.
+ Being able to see all the way to California to the south and to the Three Sisters to the north.
+ Sunset.
+ Spaghetti.
- Cleaning the spaghetti pots.
+ Hot strong coffee.
+ Passing a bottle of Jager.
- Passing a bottle of Seagrams 7.
+ S'mores.
- Tim's card game-teaching abilities.
+ Down booties.
+ My new really sweet 4-season Thermarest.
- Getting said Thermarest back into its stuff sack.
+ A nearly full moon.
+ A porch railing on which to set the camera for night shots.
+ Night shots of Silver Lake by moonlight.
+ Standing on the west-facing side of the cabin and gazing out into a wild dark horizon with not a single light from civilization.
+ Propane lanterns mixed with moonlight.

+ Live coals for the woodstove in the morning.
+ Sunrise.
- Being unable to string the lobster boxers up the flag pole.
- Last night's dishes.
- Needing a shower.
+ Chillaxin' in the morning.
+ Leaving behind a tidy cabin.
+ Galloping down through the deep powder.
+ Stopping to take pictures constantly.
- Most of them just looking like trees and snow, not the sublime light that I could see in person.
+ Making it back to the cars.
+ Putting on my cowboy boots again.
+ Homemade turkey noodle soup and french fries at the Silver Lake Cafe and Bar.
+ Izze and Kettle Chips from Wild Oats in Bend for the ride home.
+ A beautiful sunset on the way home.
+ Lots of good conversation with Megan.
- Rolling in exhausted.
+ A hot shower.

+ ... And, of course, taking hundreds and hundreds of pictures and having a few of them turn out really great. Check 'em out at Flickr, y'all:

(Haven't added descriptions to any of them yet - so if you want to know the context to the photos, check back in a day or so on the flickr album...)

Posted by Sarah at 6:59 PM | Permalink

I'll be gone all weekend in the woods. Can't wait. I'll come back with pictures and stories. Also got a few pretty interesting longer essayish posts on the back burner that I hope to finish next week.

Til then, you can check out:

- Seal's good piece on the current Dartmouth brouhaha (it's a big one).

- Annie Proulx on Wyoming's little-known Red Desert.. and Colorado:

At the end of the night, Patricia Limerick asked Proulx if she had any final thoughts for the hundreds of Coloradoans who had braved the inclement weather to see her. "Stay on your own side of the Little Snake," she said, naming the river on the border between Colorado and Wyoming.

- These funny iZone pictures from high school. I just found them on my website! Remember when? I am sooo bringing my Polaroid (regular size, not iZone, lost that) back to Oregon with me after Christmas.

Miss y'all. Well, the first two at least.

Posted by Sarah at 1:02 PM | Permalink

Not too much to say about Thanksgiving. There was turkey (free range) and all the fixin's and challah and dinner table conversation with people I'd never before met that spanned Food Network hosts to appendicitis horror stories to fossil fuel usage in industrial agriculture. Guess which topic I brought up?

I also brought a pecan pie. It was effing delicious. Too bad I didn't take a picture 'cause it looked good too. It was seriously better than all previous pecan pies I'd made before. You want the recipe? If so I will type it up. There is really only one secret ingredient. But it is clutch.

Speaking of clutch I have got to learn to drive stick. I cannot believe how many opportunities I have missed. Except for that time when I tried to get Chris to teach me and instead he took me out to do spinouts on the back roads. Yeah that was helpful. Anyway.

Where was I? Oh, Thanksgiving. So there was food and there was conversation and there was also an alphorn. Then there was hours of walking dogs and taking care of dogs with Z. You would not believe how much some Labs can shed. Ugh. Or how fast a Brittany spaniel can run.

After that we watched The Edukators. Now that's my kind of thriller. A little romance, a lot of gorgeous mountain scenery, and some culture-jamming-idealism-gone-too-far drama (and the way cute guy from Goodbye Lenin!).

That's about all I've got. Hope y'all had a good day too.

Posted by Sarah at 9:41 PM | Permalink

Tonight there's snow coming in, you can see it in the clouds. I'm at home, drinking green tea from my friend Josh and listening to Irish and Scots - the new Damien Rice, Fionn Regan, James Yorkston - and sketching landscapes from photographs I've taken this fall. It is a good way to spend an evening.

Posted by Sarah at 7:29 PM | Permalink

For y'all who are more interested in what I've been doing than what I've been reading online:

Life is rolling along. It has pretty much 3 main elements: 1) work, 2) Boise, and 3) solo time. Every once in a while other exciting things happen, like an upcoming weekend in a fire tower with some RARE peeps and then a weekend skiing/snowshoeing/bumming at Mt. Bachelor with some RARE peeps. And I talk on the phone with people sporadically. You, too, can call me - anytime! I am usually not doing anything! I will usually talk for longer than you have the time to talk!

This weekend I went to Boise for Z's orchestra performance. As per routine, I waited to call him 'til after lunchtime, after spending a morning busily making banana bread for my week's breakfasts (meh, not the most successful new recipe, I still need The One) and a pumpkin pie (just 'cause I wanted to). I called, I got no answer. I did some more stuff, baked the pie, called a few more times. No answer. I packed my stuff and headed over anyway.

(changing tenses)

I get to Z's place and his car is there so I knock on the door. No answer. Huh. I decide to take a walk, thinking he must be out for a jog or something. 15 minutes later I call again - and get a sleeeeeepy hello back. Turns out dude decided to nap. All afternoon. Hey, nobody ever said we were peas in a pod... We then had just enough time to whip up some ramen-with-fresh-veg-and-few-flavor-packets and get dressed and go (woo hoo tuxedo!).

But anyway. The program:

W.A. Mozart: Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio
Richard Wagner: "Forest Murmurs" from Siegfried
John Corigliano: Voyage
Aaron Copland: Three Latin American Sketches
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 3, Op. 97, Rhenish

(changing tenses again)

I particularly liked the Corigliano and the last two movements of the Schumann. Even better, I didn't fall asleep - or even get sleepy. Those who have attended orchestral performances with me at Dartmouth know that I had a tendency to fall asleep during shows back then. I think it was just sleep deprivation, though. Have I mentioned how nice it is to actually be able to sleep 8 hours a night after 4 straight years of being chronically unrested?

Afterward Z and I went to the orchestra's post-show reception, gorged on finger food, I met people, charmed them, etc. Heard some hilarious Idaho stories from a lifelong Boise resident and enjoyed people-watching. Afterward we headed to The Milky Way with some of Z's orchestra friends for a martini.

(you know, in retrospect we should have taken a picture in our dressy attire with martinis.. alas, I forgot)

So there's this restaurant in Boise, The Milky Way, and they serve what's been repeatedly voted the best martini in Boise (which means, really, all of Idaho and probably the general 10-hour driving radius). And, yes, it was as good as they say it is. Here's an approximation of their method, along with a similar recipe for a gimlet (I need to try this, 'cause I love a good gimlet).

Even better, though, was the bread pudding.

Y'all, it was beyond belief. Tender and buttery and sweet-but-not-too-sweet.

Never have I ever.

(There was also a delightful lemon tart involved in the evening. BUT THE BREAD PUDDING!)

Eventually we were too tired for intelligent conversation and we sacked out for the night and woke up and ate frozen waffles (sigh) and just talked for a long time and then I drove home and then it was dinnertime and then it was bedtime and then it was another Monday.

And now it's Wednesday, tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and is it me or is the time really flying?

Posted by Sarah at 4:28 PM | Permalink

On Saturday I made the grave mistake of thinking I'd do a little shopping before meeting up with Z for dinner.

First I stopped at TJ Maxx. After circling the parking lot several times, looking for an empty parking spot, I ended up parking a foreverlong walk away at the end of the strip mall. Naively, I thought, Surely all of these people aren't in TJ Maxx right now!

Then I walked inside. And they were all in there. People everywhere, pawing everything. Screaming babies, women with overloaded carts, terror-stricken men, bad haircuts and dye jobs and even worse winter jackets. My eye started twitching, so I cut short my ambitious browsing goals and made my way over to the kitchen section for the one item I actually needed - some airtight plastic storage tubs for my flours (white, wheat, whole wheat pastry, bread, plus oat bran, wheat germ, and corn meal, and I still need to get cake flour). I found a few, snatched them up, paid, and scuttled out with a sigh of relief.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson at this point. But no. I decided to go to the M A L L. The mall is appoximately 1 mile from TJ Maxx and it took me 20 minutes to get there. I pulled in. There were no parking spots. Anywhere. Even next to the crappy stores. Cars circled slowly, like buzzards above a sick animal, just waiting for some sad soul to vacate his or her spot. I stuck a mental middle finger up at the teeming Idahoan masses and left.

I was running a little late at this point, but I wasn't worried. Z and I have yet to do anything anywhere close to the time we say we will. True to form, when I arrived he was just setting out to take a jog with Cali, the dog. I contented myself with talking to M, his housemate, and toying around with M's fabulous Nikon digital SLR. Then Z came back and showered and we sat around in the living room for a while, shooting the proverbial shit with M. 2 hours after arriving at Z's place we left for the grocery store, speedily bought dinner goods, and headed to the house where he was house-and-pet sitting, home of a three-legged husky and 2 lovey-dovey cats.

The plan was to make shish kebobs (kabobs?) with peppers and onions and squash and tomatoes and chorizo plus mashed potatoes and salad. I set Z to work chopping veg and started working on the potatoes. Once I wrested him away from his beloved teriyaki sauce (seriously, I'm going to have to hide that stuff) we settled on olive oil, lemon juice, and a liberal application of chili powder and cilantro. Soon, M arrived, we tossed everything on the grill, and commenced sampling beer.

The selections:

My (rather unsophisticated) thoughts:
Grotten - serviceable but unremarkable brown Belgian-style ale.
Ommegang - excellent! nice fruity finish, super smooth. Belgian.
Imperial Extra Double Stout - tasted like tar and licorice. blackest liquid since crude oil. an acquired taste, perhaps?

Dinner was excellent, as was the conversation. M is one of those people who's blessed with a phenomenal storytelling ability - and the life experiences to match. I don't know exactly what he does for a living but it involves filming sporting events like international rodeo championships. Turns out there's some crazy stuff that goes down on the international rodeo circuit.

Next morning we made pancakes and eggs and puttered about and I got to hear some cool sounds on the horn and then I had to leave to drive to Bend. Which I'll write about soon.

Posted by Sarah at 11:51 AM | Permalink

In case you sent me an email or made a comment on here and I haven't replied - I will soon. Kinda in one of those not-really-able-to-reply-to-stuff modes this weekend.

Posted by Sarah at 12:57 PM | Permalink

There was a lot of awesome this weekend. The awesomest of the awesome, though?

Breakfast at Goldy's.

On Sunday morning I dragged Z out of bed (this took a while) and we went to breakfast. I'd been jonesin' for some breakfast food for weeks. We got there and there was an hour's wait, so we walked down to the Boise Co-op and browsed their vast bulk tea section and I bought one of these (v. exciting!)

I am going to bake it with honey and butter.

But I digress. Eventually it was time for breakfast. Oh, what a breakfast it was! Goldy's calls itself a breakfast bistro - they're only open through lunchtime, and 90% of the menu is breakfast items. Bon Appetit calls Goldy's one of its 10 favorite breakfast joints in America (by the way, I think I'm going to archive that list for future traveling purposes).

We walked in and had hot coffee within seconds - really good coffee. After an arduous decisionmaking process, we ordered and sat back to smell the coffee and baking things and listen to the bustle of a Sunday morning Boisean crowd. And then came the food.

Mine:
Scrambled eggs with cheddar and broccoli
House-made sage sausage
Sweet potato hash browns
A blueberry scone
Endlessly refilled smooooth coffee

His
Blueberry pancakes
One egg over easy
Smoked salmon and caper hash
(with house-made hollandaise)
Ditto on the coffee

I'm not really patient enough to describe my meal in excruciating detail, food pr0n style, but I'll say this:

Perfectly scrambled eggs are hard to do and these were perfect.
Sweet potato hash browns = tha bomb.
Scone: good, but not good enough. alas.
Pancakes to rival Eaton's (though not Wasp's, of course)
SMOKED SALMON AND CAPER HASH OH MY LORD. I am going to learn how to make it. Pronto.

Combine that with reasonable (though not dirt-cheap) prices, friendly service, and portions large enough to eliminate the need for another meal until 7 pm, and you get a new addition to Sarah's Top 5 Breakfast Places. I'd say the above was on my Top 10 Breakfasts Ever Eaten, too.

After breakfast we went shoe shopping and gear ogling. Dude, since when does a nice sleeping pad gotta cost me $79? Well, let me state that more precisely. Since when do I need the top-of-the-line women's 4-season Thermarest that will cost me $79? Somehow all the cheap ones just don't look as, well, cool. (didn't buy it, though)

But - I'm at the end of Sunday here and I never got to the beginning on Friday. Starting from there -

I took off early from work on Friday so that we could get an earlier start out into the woods. We headed out at dark, with a tasty stop at Flying Pie on the way. The 4-lane turned into a 2-lane turned into a 1-lane dirt road and I pulled out our list of scrawled directions to potentially sweet hot springs: Fire Crew, Boiling Springs, Moondipper, Pine Burl.

It was a drizzly night with a low-hanging sky and shrouds of fog on the hillsides. There were no other cars, there were no other people: just everywhere shades of night blue and the wet sheen of rain. We stepped out of the car to check out a trailhead by the river and I remember looking around and thinking, Am I really standing here?

We didn't have much luck with the springs, though - Fire Crew was inundated with cold water, Boiling Springs was only lukewarm, and the other two were a 2-mile hike in, which seemed like a bad idea at 9 pm.

So we made camp and decided to try again in the morning. Not gonna lie, setting up a tent in steady, cold, drizzling rain was not so fun. But curling up dry and warm inside sure was. Morning broke still and close. We broke camp, ate our leftover pizza, and set off for the springs.

(side note: Z's tent is a Walrus - the Armadillo model - and it has a big armadillo graphic on the side. At some point just past dawn, I woke to hear a group of hunters on horseback clomping by: "Hey look, I ain't never seen no armadillo in Idaho before!")

After a fast and glorious little hike along the Payette River, we found our landmark - Dash Creek, narrow and rocky, as swift as its name suggested. 50 yards upstream was Moondipper, lovely but not quite hot enough. We found Pine Burl another 50 yards upstream, and it was just about perfect. I'll describe it for you here, and you'll think I'm being cheesy, but it really was like this: a rock-lined pool tucked deep between boulders; a swift, clear stream; moss and lush, low-hanging plants lining the steep cleft through which the stream runs; big, ancient smooth logs on which to rest when you need a break; water that's just hot enough to push your limits but still feel really great.

And, to top it off, there's a campsite at the top of the rise that looks down on the springs to the north and over the Payette River and the foothills to the south. Yeah. I think I'll be visiting this place again.

So we soaked for a couple hours and then we hiked back and drove home and puttered and ate and did laundry and Z went to orchestra and I puttered some more and then we watched part of this (effin' STRANGE movie, y'all) but started to fall asleep and called it a night.

And then there was Goldy's. And that was my weekend.

Posted by Sarah at 9:12 PM | Permalink

So I was cleaning out my overflowing drafts folder in Gmail today and found this funny bit I wrote about 4th of July in Arcadia. I have no idea to whom I intended to send this, so I guess you all get to read it. You can tell I was getting a little twitchy from all the fireworks fumes...

----

See, around here, people start celebrating as soon as the tents go up - the big white fireworks tents in the Winn-Dixie and Sav-a-Lot parking lots. Everybody and their brother and their half-cousin buys fireworks, lots of them, and they start setting them off before it's even July. Every night from around June 25 through the 3rd is peppered with occasional blasts from bottle rockets, firecrackers, shells, wolf packs, and god knows what else those people have purchased and lit on fire in their driveways.

The 4th, though - that's where it's really at. I started my day at the rodeo grounds. I biked up early in the morning to see if there were any cool photographs to be had, but alas, the photogenic elements of the rodeo (cowboys, bulls, horses) had yet to arrive. So instead I went to the rodeo parade. As someone who grew up watching parades through downtown, stationed in front of my dad's office, crouched on the curb ready to leap ferociously at any and all candies tossed from the floats, it's a little strange to attend one again at this age. It's local election time, so everyone was out: the mayor, school board candidates, and the big daddies - the county commissioners. Each float was a competition to see who could marshall the most small adorable children to sit and wave American flags for their candidate. The folks not up for re-election instead rode in 'gators (all-purpose ranch vehicles). Since it's the rodeo parade, it actually starts off with a mock shootout, complete with cowboys and floozies. Once the parade kicks off, floats are alternated with horseback riders, some of whom decorate their mounts with ribbons, glitter, and, of course, camoflauge hats.

Then I did some uninteresting things, like falling asleep while reading my book (Jared Diamond, Collapse, it's very good but depressing as hell) and swimming for a while and rotating in the sun, rotisserie style, for a little while in a lounge chair.

After dinner we went out to watch the fireworks. Now, there were PLENTY of fireworks to be seen from my own home. Once night falls on July 4, all bets are off for peace and quiet in the evening - it is a constant continuous non-stop cacophony of bangs, hisses, sparkles, whistles, and general LOUD NOISE CONTINUOUSLY FOR HOURS. I'm not exaggerating. This goes on, non-stop, for HOURS. Behind me RIGHT NOW are incessant booms and bangs from fireworks around town.

But anyway, we wanted to see the big town show, so off we went to the high school. They shoot 'em off in a big cow pasture by the school, so the whole town congregates here. There are far more people interested in seeing the show than there are parking spots, so we ended up 1/4 mile to the north at the community college. Turns out every road in all four directions was lined with vehicles. The vast majority of people around here, at least those who seem to come out for fireworks, drive trucks, so people got themselves SET UP with chairs and blankets and radios blaring in the beds of their trucks. I wanted a truck really bad at this point. Some people actually brought trailers so that they could fit all their kin on there, and one (large) family had a trailer and 3 picnic tables full right next to it. You would not believe how many people they fit into these cars. It's real popular to sit on top of your car if you have an SUV, the better to see, I guess. People fit like 6 or 8 bodies on the hoods and roofs of their cars, all clutching their disturbingly ubiquitous styrofoam tubs of sweet tea from the Amoco station.

SO the fireworks happened, yay, that was nice. At first we could not tell where they were happening because ALL THE YOKELS WERE SHOOTING THEIRS OFF TOO. Way to make the fun last, y'all. About this time a haze began to develop across the fields and road from all the firework smoke, and you could smell that familiar acrid scent from all directions. This is when the sirens started in, too. Literally about every five minutes we'd hear another ambulance, presumably to rush little Junior to the hospital, minus whatever appendage he lost when he lit that roman candle too clumsily. The cows started in too - they don't like the noise, obviously, so they just make some of their own - a disgruntled lowing in the distance.

I don't know what kinds of safety measures are typical in most towns, but here, well, things are pretty slack. They set 'em off in a field, like I said, and you can get within about 100 yards of the shooting area - there are loads and LOADS of people always packed right up to the fence, breathing buckets of fireworks smoke and whoopin' and hollerin' with every blast. Man oh man.

Well, that was my night. I ended it with some blueberry pie out sitting on the porch, listening to the WARZONE AROUND MY NEIGHBORHOOD and laughing at the snippets of neighborhood conversation I heard, mostly variations on a theme of: "Jarred! Get away from that thing!" "Yeeeeee Haaaaw!" and "Look out!"

Posted by Sarah at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Some food for thought, mostly for my own purposes, given the status of current events. Perhaps not the most articulate source to quote, but it's workin' for me tonight.

Back in the day, the need to feel wanted was easily met: with marriage. But it has been decades since college, or post-college, satisfaction meant finding a spouse, and years since intimate relationships necessarily preceded sexual ones. The latter especially complicates our love and sex lives. We never know what a relationship-sexual or otherwise-means unless it is explicitly discussed. Even when it is explicitly discussed ("We can use words like boyfriend and girlfriend now, right?" or "We are not monogamous, but we are hooking up-at least until further notice"), intimacy levels are subject to difference and change. One person in a relationship may wish to spend every waking moment together while the other may thrive on some time spent alone. And while both partners may go into a relationship with mutual intentions, there is a good chance one will develop stronger feelings than the other.

A recent study found that individuals with high instances of dependency have more positive feelings about intimacy, but stronger feelings about wanting control. On the one hand, the need to feel wanted makes us gravitate toward intimacy; hence the abundance of twentysomethings who get into relationships simply for the sake of being in one. But on the other hand, needing to feel wanted means needing to feel in control. So we keep multiple lovers on hand and let some, if not all, wonder endlessly about what the hell is actually going on in our heads. We avoid intimate relationships in favor of remaining in control, do whatever it takes to feel wanted.

Note to self: don't do this, 'kay?

Posted by Sarah at 9:43 PM | Permalink

Alright, alright, gossip time.

So I went camping this weekend. It was freakin' great. I'm amazed that the very first person I met in Boise turned out to be someone with whom I so enjoy spending time.

I drove back from Eugene early Saturday morning after a great evening spent first with T's parents and then a friend of his who I met this summer, E, who happens to be a wonderful guy. We got dinner and then spent a few hours hanging out at the Bier Stein, gazing at the glory of its long tall wall of coolers full of good beers from all over the world. Loved it. If I remember to ask him for the pics we took, I'll post 'em sometime.

I stayed out late enough Friday night that I ended up having a bit of a late start back east. This was compounded by a stop at the TJ Maxx in Bend, where I got this gorgeous Cambridge Dy Goods plaid shirt and a good corkscrew. I made up for some time by booking it across 20 (not one cop in a 7-hour drive!) but still got home late. I'd planned to be home by 2 or 3 and out the door by 3 or 4. Didn't get out until 5. But I made it - dashed inside, showered, packed, left the car loaded with a week's worth of stuff from Eugene, grabbed a snack, and made record time to Boise (door to door: 50 minutes).

Z had already started making dinner when I arrived, so within a few moments we were downing some salad and veg and tofu, loading the car, and hitting the highway. Up 'til this point I hadn't actually known where we were going - just that it would involve hot springs, camping, and hiking.

So we set off - 2 hours on a narrow dirt road next to the middle fork of the Boise River and its reservoir, nothing but dirt between the car and the cliff-edge, moonlight on the hills and My Morning Jacket on the stereo.

Finding a suitable hot spring took a while. One was scummy, one was shallow, and one was packed to the gills with drunk (but thankfully clothed) rednecks, extended family of all ages in tow. We ended up at the shallow one - which actually turned out to be perfect for lying down and looking up at the stars... as long as you kicked your feet every few moments to stir the scalding-hot water coming down from the hillside with the cold water coming in from the river, which was separated from the spring by only a homemade rock wall. It was seriously lovely, though, and more than a bit romantic!

By midnight we'd moved on to the bigger spring, which was now vacant. It looks like this by day (not my picture):

After another couple hours of soaking, it was time for sleep (ha!) and sleeping in (ha!). Cali had wandered far afield in search of breakfast by the time we got up, so we fed her, had some breakfast (mmm, dry Cheerios), and broke camp.

The rest of the afternoon was a 'shwhackfest up a nice hill above the river - a couple thousand feet of elevation gain and some seriously steep terrain. Plenty of scree and slippery pine needles too - at the top, Z clambered up what had to be a 5.7 rockface while I took Cali around and up a dodgy gully. The view at the top was totally worth it, though. Afterward we had a chill drive home at sunset, made some dinner, lounged by the woodstove, and called it a night. Good times were had by all.

If you wanna see some pictures, you can click on the one below for the set!

Posted by Sarah at 12:20 PM | Permalink

There's a lot of reasons that deciding to spend this year working for the RARE program was a good decision - work experience, a chance to live somewhere new, etc. But the benefit that's been sticking with me the most lately is the people in the program.

The more obvious side of that, I suppose, is the fact that it's really nice to have a group of friends out here - even if I only see them periodically, it's a comfort to know that they're out there, spread out across the state. A solid majority of the group went out after training every night this week to sit and have a few beers and enjoy one another's relaxed company.

The more complex side of things is how starting over like this in a new place with new people has dredged up a whole slew of personal insecurities, confusions, and frustrations that I hadn't had to think about in a while. In my personal life, I tend to prefer close relationships based on a lot of trust and sharing. I certainly have acquaintances, too, and less-close friends, but I am a thousand times more comfortable with close friends than with other friends, and I depend on these people for what I guess you could call social support - someone you can always talk to and fall back on. This is at least partly why I hold on especially tight to boyfriends and best friends - if you have a close, interdependent relationship with someone, you don't constantly question how they feel about you and you don't have to reinvent the wheel whenever you're in a group situation - you just stick with your buddy (not necessarily literally, just... mentally? emotionally?).

But with the RARE program, I haven't been able to really cement any close friendships. I really really really like several of the people in the program, and I'm definitely becoming good friends with a few folks - but the group-centric way in which we all gather is kind of the antithesis of how I go about making good friends. I want to make better friends with everyone, but you can't be talking thoughtfully with every member of the group at once, and groups don't facilitate that kind of thoughtful interaction much at all anyway, so it sorta short-circuits my social functioning after a while. I start to get insecure in those kinds of situations, which results in either 1) saying really stupid things or 2) saying nothing at all. Either way it's crappy - and is probably mostly in my head - but I've convinced myself that I totally dive-bombed most of my social interactions last week. By the end of my time in Eugene I was ready to get out - even though I really liked all of the people and had had a good time most nights.

This is really the first time I've been able to even attempt to articulate exactly what about group situations I dislike. Looking back, I can see myself being guilty of this kind of behavior in all kinds of situations over the past few years. Now that I can see it and get my head around it, I can start to work through it. Thoughts on this are welcome - this is just a first crack at putting my finger on something that's been bugging me for a long time.

(p.s. I'll post some photos from the week in Eugene later this evening)

Posted by Sarah at 1:06 PM | Permalink

The past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind, to say the least. I'll try to update later today - got a few good stories for y'all.

Posted by Sarah at 9:27 AM | Permalink

Training out here in Eugene is rockin' along. I'm amused by how happy I am to revert to what is essentially groupthink for a day - most of us move from place to place as one unit, from session to session to meals to bars at night, and there's always someone to talk to or walk with. After a few weeks of doing everything totally solo, it's been nice. I am not usually a fan - at all - of large group situations, and I'll enjoy returning home to quiet Ontario, but. . . it feels good to have a posse for a week.

Posted by Sarah at 8:14 AM | Permalink

FYI, all: I'm in Eugene for the week for job training. Updates will be sparse, as I don't have frequent internet access. I'll do what I can, though! Already have some good stories from a night out with the RARE peeps.

Posted by Sarah at 8:11 AM | Permalink

Ok, ok, ok, so - Saturday.

The plan was to meet my new friend Z at his place at 5:30, get some dinner downtown, and then go see Carmina Burana.

Saturday morning I buzzed around the Nampa Farmer's Market, bought some books at this great labyrinthine used bookstore in Nampa, and headed home to get ready for the evening. I realized rather quickly that I had nothing to wear (this is a universal condition known to all women, especially those of us living on a budget). I tried my steel-blue dress with some tall brown boots. Oh, bingo. But I needed a sweater - after all, it's getting chilly outside these days. Nothing matched. Nothing was both appropriately warm and appropriately dressy for a ballet. So... I left a little early. At 5 pm I was scouring the aisles of the Boise TJ Maxx, counting the minutes 'til I needed to be at Z's place. I tried on 6 brown sweaters. Nothing worked. 5:10. Made one more sweater sweep. Nothing. 5:15. Decided to try the jackets and blazers section. 5:16. Spotted a velvety steel-blue-and-cream paisley blazer. Very lovely. My size. 5:17. Hustled it to the fitting room. Tried it on. Pumped fist in victory. Looked great. 5:23. By some miracle of God chose the fast checkout line. 5:27. Pulled tags off jacket in the parking lot, put jacket on. 5:37. Arrived at Z's house after a string of fortuitous green lights, a bit of speeding, and the help of my big Boise map.

So I arrived and met the dog (Cali) and the housemate (M) and we chatted while he ironed his pants. Turns out he was running a little behind too, heh. A few minutes later we were out the door. We stopped to feed some big happy labradors (his part-time job) and then went on to the restaurant, sitting outside under the heating lamps, drinking good beer, and talking nonstop. Also I had some delicious (if pretty Americanized) posole.

On the way out, I noticed that he'd nabbed a toothpick. Now, you know you're in the company of a true Southerner when, after you tell him you wish you'd grabbed one too, he reaches into a compartment in his car and pulls one out for you. Needless to say, I was charmed.

The ballet itself was excellent - I know next to nothing about the formal language of dance, but the performers were expressive and the music, performed by BSU's orchestra, was quite good (Z was a bit more skeptical, but I guess he's allowed to be, being a professional). I was enthralled. Z pointed out his friends in the ballet - he walks dogs for one of the dancers, a man with the most amazing back muscles. If I can see your muscles from Row W of the theatre, that's impressive. I got to meet the Philharmonic's marketing director and her grumpy-but-nice architect husband, too. (On the auditorium's design: "Well, the architect was tortured before he was killed.")

After the show we went back to his place to hang out. His house has a woodstove, and while we didn't light it that night, I ought to note this because I love me a good woodstove. I ended up staying 'til almost 2 am, at which point I decided I ought to get some sleep (having a 7-hour drive the next day and all). I promised I'd call when I got back from Eugene and spent my hour's drive home alternately grinning like a fool, kicking myself for several dumb foot-in-mouth moments, and singing along really. loudly. to my iPod.

Basically, I had a blast. I'm refraining from gossiping too much, but suffice it to say this is an unexpected but very pleasant addition to my life out West - to say the least!

Posted by Sarah at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Guess who's going to see Carmina Burana put on by Ballet Idaho tomorrow night?

For free! With delightful company! (Plus dinner!) Heck yeah!

Posted by Sarah at 10:31 PM | Permalink

Oh man, this picture makes me absolutely laugh out loud. I found it this morning on my computer.

This is my old high school cross-country team circa 2000. You can tell: we were real champions.

Posted by Sarah at 12:36 PM | Permalink

I'd been ramping up to this Califone show for a while. Band I love, first show I'd see in Boise, first chance to check out the nearest nightlife, get out of nesting-homebody mode for a night, etc. So I went.

Top 5 Reasons Neurolux Rocks

5. Ample, free, close parking

4. Cheap & good beer on tap

3. Space for sitting and space for standing

2. $5 cover to see CALIFONE

1. Acoustics that don't require earplugs. Lemme repeat that. A sweet venue where you don't. need. earplugs. I never thought I'd see the day.

5 Unranked Thoughts on Califone

5. They ramble a lot more live, but mostly it works, except that some of the gentler sounds get lost.

4. Rutili looks a little bit like a young Woody Allen.

3. When the drunk girl screamed in between songs, a bellowy screechy terrible sound, you could see Rutili clench his jaw and pretend not to have noticed her. Later he refused to play Michigan Girls until she shut up. Finally, she shut up. Except some other drunk guys in the back started orgling.

2. They were remarkably good-natured about all the noise. Turns out Boise people have bad concert manners. There was no encore.

1. I think that if I go to see them live again it'll need to be somewhere where I know people won't be rude and loud. I talked to one of the guys after the show at the merch table (got a silkscreen poster, ya!) and he indicated some frustration with trying to play quiet music in a loud place. No kidding.

Top 5 Types of Cute Guys at the Show, By Appeal

5. Bald-and-spectacled, left early

4. Skinny barely-legals hunched into hoodies

3. Hipster types, but with friendlier faces

2. NATURAL HIPSTERS*

1. Gangly-and-friendly professional musician with sly friend in tow

* In case you were wondering:

Basically, Califone were excellent and the crowd sucked. Except, that is, for this nice guy who ended up sitting next to me as part of a slow shuffling and moving about in between sets - long after I'd pretty much given up on making any friends, actually.

I arrived pretty early to the show - that is, the time when the opener was scheduled to start. Silly me. I went up to the bar to get a beer and wait and caught a dark-haired, bearded guy out of the corner of my eye, sidling toward me. The bartender flipped two coasters our way, assuming I was either with the guy or about to be. I felt a little awkward, though, so I never caught the guy's eye and walked off with my drink to find a seat. At first I felt dumb for missing a chance to make conversation with someone, for behaving like a shy bumpkin instead of a confident newcomer. I didn't feel so bad a few minutes later when I glanced back and saw him leaning salaciously over some blonde. Ew. Besides, he decidedly resembled B. Grainier. Double ew.

I smiled at a few other people with whom I was able to make eye contact but didn't really get any conversation going with anyone. Most people were attending as couples or loud groups anyway. So I settled in to be quiet and just listen. A few minutes later I found myself chatting with an animated and friendly guy close to my age, new to the area like me, who'd come to the show on a whim and dragged his roommate along. We name-checked some bands, talked about Califone, cracked some jokes, and in general had a bit of fun conversation. Turns out he plays in the Boise Philharmonic. He was excited for us to hang out next time I'm in Boise, so I'm excited too - I've got someone to hang out in Boise with! The city is suddenly a thousand times less intimidating. (I mean, Boise's small, and very navigable, but there's just something about not having to explore it solo) I'll be back up there this weekend for the farmer's markets (and possibly a contradance), so hopefully we can meet up then. We'll see...

p.s. He says he can totally get me free tix to the orchestra's performances. Champion!

Posted by Sarah at 10:04 PM | Permalink

First, the I'm-really-excited yell: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

So today was a day out. I got up early (actually I overslept, but it was still early) and hit the road for Idaho. First stop: the Nampa Farmer's Market.

Nampa is a growing town about halfway between Ontario and Boise (it's something like 55 miles to B from O) and I knew nothing else about it. Turns out it's got a serious problem with suburban sprawl and the classic conflict between new folks and long-time residents who were used to a more stable, small town. Nonetheless the downtown is lovely and the market was fantastic and low-key.

Sweet deals:
Heirloom tomatoes 2/$1
Carrots $1/bunch
Parsnips $1/bunch
Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies 4/$1
Strawberries $1.75/half-pint
Honeycrisps $1/lb
Sugarplums $1/lb
Baby squash 8/$1
husk cherries $2/pint
Bag of chocolate maté $3

Sometime around here my bags got too heavy and I had to go to the car. Also I had to save some of my, uh, limited cash for the Boise market. So the produce was good. But the best thing? Meeting this awesome farmer lady who cultivates a half-acre in Parma, Idaho: we chatted for a while about vegetables, and farming, and markets, and contradancing, and talked about the possibility of my helping out next growing season with vegetables as payment (and perhaps a small growing plot of my own!). This is pretty much the best thing ever. Also, I got her business card and looked up her website and it turns out she's a renowned BEE EXPERT (with a Harvard Ph.d). You can't get much awesomer than that in my book. I can even forgive the Harvard affiliation.

So I left that market feeling just skippy. I then drove on to Boise to find that market. I found it alright, and it was a total zoo. Busy busy busy, not the kind of place to talk to people. There was some lovely produce, of course, and a farm called Peaceful Belly, which I thought was a lovely (and yes, seriously hippyish) name. I found more dirt-cheap tomatoes - BRANDYWINES for $1 each! I bought several. Guess who's making tomato sauce tomorrow? And pretty much eating tomatoes all next week? I win. Got some mizuna and heirloom pears and a new green mug too. Now if you come to visit me you can choose between my pottery mug collection and my beer glasses. I'm getting into drinking out of my beer glasses all the time. Forcefully resisted the absolutely dreamy breads, because Ima make my own tomorrow. Sunday is for baking and cooking.

On the list for tomorrow's cookery (to supply me for the coming week):

2 loaves of bread (wheaty somethingorother)
dorset scones
feta-and-chard turnovers
quinoa chard chowder
buffalo black bean chili (maybe, if I get the crock-pot going)

OH it will be great. And OH I've gotten off track. Anyway. I left the market and went to Renewal, which is a hip consignment furniture boutique. Lots of amazing stuff. No good desks for me. Almost bought a huge wool woven rug, kinda funky pattern, for my bedroom. Quailed on price tag ($150) but am still kinda considering it. It's really unusual and lovely. Lots of pinks and reds and warm blue tones.

Next up: my new gold standard for grocery stores: the Boise Co-Op. Seriously guys. This place blows the Hanover Co-Op just out of the water (though I still love that place!). They have 4 different kinds of bulk sea salt. I navigated my cart through a sea of slender blonde Boise women on cell phones and teenage-ish hippies and older, slightly-overwhelmed looking men with lists to get the stuff I'd written down to buy:

Milk
White Rice
Fruit

And then I just went hog wild. Spent all of my food stamp allotment in one fell swoop. Boom. I won't need groceries for weeks. Some of my most exciting booty:

Fresh carrot juice
Dried gooseberries
Organic molasses
Bensdorp cocoa (full fat, yeahhh)
Miniature kiwi fruit (the size of grapes!)
San Marzanos
Lots of other more mundane but fabulous stuff

AND the biggest tub of yogurt you have ever seen in your life, guaranteed. 4 lbs of it. Looks like the biggest one you see here:

"Billions of healthy bacteria in every teaspoon"!!!

I left that place feeling giddy. I love grocery shopping. Then I drove out to TJ Maxx to contemplate another rug (and grab a few discount airtight plastic tubs for my growing baking-supplies collection). I blasted the car's A/C on high for the whole way there, the better to keep it cool while I was in TJ Maxx. Wouldn't want the chard to wilt. I got out of the car, dusted off some ice crystals, and went in and bought the rug. Only spent approximately 3 minutes looking at sweaters. I have some serious self-control.

Hauled the rug to the car, took off for home, tired after a full day. Put the rug down at home - turns out it doesn't help the carpet as much as I'd hoped (it's not as big as the entire floor). Bother. I still like it though. Will post a picture sometime soonish. Since it was warm and sunny I then lounged in the park (2 blocks away!) and watched kiddies on the playground while reading a book. It's kind of an embarrassing book so I am not going to tell you what it is. I mean, it's not that bad, just a little cheesy and escapist, but still.

Am now very tired. Tomorrow I'm going out to my boss's storage warehouse to look at some dish sets and cookware that he has and might sell me cheap. This would be nice, as right now I have 1 bowl and 1 teacup saucer as dishes (plus my beer glasses and mugs). Would like to add to the collection. Unless you fancy soup in a beer glass... ?

Posted by Sarah at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Spent 2 days in training this week. I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing now - mostly - and it's nice.

Most of the time, though, I'm seesawing back and forth between feeling confident and excited (This will be the best Pre-Disaster Mitigation Plan evar! I'm going to meet so many people and get them so excited to be involved! Everyone is so helpful! I will be so useful!) to completely overwhelmed and uncertain (There are HOW many FEMA requirements for this plan? I have to give HOW many public presentations? I have to do HOW much documenting and reporting for the grant? I have to become competent in assessing HOW many different natural hazard risks? I have to negotiate interviews and wheedle support from HOW many conservative old-white-rancher-type men?)

I'm sure the result will be somewhere in the middle. I'm sure I'll do fine. That doesn't stop the feeling of falling, though, every time I think about how responsible I am for this big thing that will have lasting impact on this county. I'm not just some intern cranking around on a laptop in the corner (though I am in the corner, on a laptop) but a professional who has a job to do.

For all that I griped about not getting the local foods job, I think that this one will give me a lot more professional training - which I can then take to what may be a future local foods job. Or at least some kind of cool job in the nebulous future. Whenever that is. See, I've got a few ideas floating around in my brain... but that's for later.

Posted by Sarah at 11:37 AM | Permalink

Today was (is) my first day of work. I'm still here, taking care of various small tasks.

Thoughts so far:

I have a desk in the tax collector's office, which is a big room staffed by 3 ladies who are generally friendly and pleasant. I also have a window - hoorah!

My supervisor works across the hall. When I came in today he had on plaid, black jeans, and black Chucks. He's a few years from retirement, but he is awesome and very laid-back. We talked about bikes some, and live music, and kitchen knife accidents (I have a huge honking bandage on my finger from the huge honking cut I gave myself last night while chopping onions with my new verysharp knife).

Still don't know exactly what I'm doing. Hope that will be solved after this focused hazards workshop that's happening in Burns this week.

I need to get over my dislike of eating at restaurants by myself because if I want to try out the several different greasy spoons downtown, I'll have to do it on my own, most of the ladies bring their lunches (as will I, most of the time, but I've heard good things about the pie at the Starlite Cafe!).

Going to Boise to see Califone next week for all of $5.

Going to Portland next week for a work training with Katie, including a stop-over in Bend. Good thing I like driving. (too much driving!)

Things are good so far.

Posted by Sarah at 5:35 PM | Permalink

I went yard-saling (yard-sale-ing?) today. I tell you what: people in this town are serious about yard sales. Early birds everywhere, big crowds at every sale, people hauling off bags of loot and bargaining right and left. The question is: what exactly were they buying? I didn't find much at all worth my cash. It seems that living in a lower-middle-class Western town is not as lucrative a yard sale region as was rural New England, with its perfect mix of upper-middle-class affluenza, rural folk with a penchant for old, high-quality old-school goods (!), and frequent large-scale flea markets and junk stores. I should have been buying and hoarding stuff years ago - IF I HAD ONLY KNOWN I WAS LIVING IN USED-JUNK MECCA. I also should not have left so much of my #%$ing kitchen stuff in Hanover. Pebblonians, I hope you are enjoying my measuring cups, spoons, pyrex dishes, saute pan, spices, vinegars, various dry goods, and plates. Not that I had 2 inches of extra room with which to take it home, seriously, I had to fight to keep my wok lid, but man. You have no idea how hard it is to fine a nice piece of Pyrex out here. They got that shit in spades back east. I am about to break down and go to Wal-Mart because all these peeps are holding on tight to their Pyrex measuring cups.

I did find a few neat things, though none of them are what I really need: a desk. I tried to buy a real big table for my desk, but it wouldn't fit in my car and the lady couldn't deliver it. I found a kids' desk, but I think I can do better. I wish I'd bought one of those old Moosilauke tables right about now. What did I get, then? Well, since you asked -

- small copper kettle with porcelain handle
- antique glass gallon jug with original label (distilled water from Utah) that is going to be my sweet tea jug
- bright yellow antique cereal bowl
- an oval mirror with a fabulous ornate frame
- a big antique tin (like 2 feet tall), powder blue, says something like Hornsby's Shortening on it. don't know quite what to do with it yet.
- a new bike tire pump (not at a yard sale. at the bike shop. the owner is real nice. too bad he is married with small children.)

I did find this amazing store today that I want to check out again - it's called The Trading Post or something like that and it's a big tall tin building just CRAMMED with stuff. There were at least 10 crock pots. This after I bought one for twice the price at the "no refunds, no exchanges" Salvation Army. It's retro orange. I love crock pots. You can apparently make lasagna in one, though I have never tried. Mostly I intend to rock the soup in mine. Put it in in the morning, come home from work, and it's done! Like magic! The Trading Post is run by this rotund Latino man who walks on two low black crutches. He was friendly, and I got a decent saucepan and lid from him for $1. Mostly I just need to photograph that place. It's seriously got some character.

Also in progress: tracking down local foods! Got some tomatoes and pears today from a farm just outside of town. Next week I'm checking out this really sweet farmstand in Payette (oh, the pumpkins, the squashes, those massive oddly shaped delights!) and the Boise farmers' market.

Man, when you don't have a lot to do in the evenings, it's easy to write a lot on here. I just condense what would be a day's worth of prattling on to friends into one long missive on my blog. We'll see how long this lasts... and I can't really do news and links and things yet since my internet is crappy - it comes and goes and surfing is agony. Typing, however, is just fine. If you emailed me and I have yet to reply - um, I have no good excuse. I'll get on that ASAP.

p.s. Marc - send me your email address? I have tunes to send you. Good luck with the housing search!

Posted by Sarah at 12:03 AM | Permalink

I’m sitting in my living room tonight, watching the sun fade into steely blue over the tops of the trees. I’ve got Greg Brown playing on my laptop and the room is warm, lit by my new retro ‘70s lamp on loan from the landlady. My couch is brown velveteen with red and beige flowers, a loveseat really, of an indeterminate old age. It is very comfortable. I have a chair, too, a fat black one with grey diamonds in the upholstery and gold plastic trim. It is undeniably ‘80s, so much so that it will probably never come back into fashion. I’m going to cover it with fabric soon. The carpet is brown-and-beige vintage shag. It doesn’t look as bad in the evenings, really, but I’ve got my eye on a wool rug in gorgeous cochineal red for the floor. It won’t cover it all, but it’ll help. I have a really fantastic wooden ammunition box that I got at a yard sale and it sits against the wall. The walls are white and they have a few strange pieces of art, also courtesy of the landlady. I think that I will make some drawings to go up instead.

I’ve got a nice coat closet behind the door and a small built-in bookshelf. I didn’t bring many books out, having had a very full car, so it is lined with candles, pictures, a few of my small masonite paintings, and a New Hampshire motorcycle license plate. My trunk sits over there, too – my magenta one, all covered in stickers. My bike lives in this room – it’s the only place I can keep it safe and dry, so once winter hits I’ll tuck it behind my loveseat. I’m hoping to get out and bike a bit tomorrow; there’s a street festival, the October Faire, happening downtown and the weather looks to be lovely. My landlady is having a big warehouse yard sale and I desperately want a desk for my laptop and my craft supplies and (after Christmas) my sewing machine.

The kitchen is coming along – I’ve started stocking the cabinets and the counter is lined with a glass jar of wooden spoons, a row of dry grains in small glass jars, a lamp, a big blue bowl, and on the other side, my herbs and cookbooks. I only brought 3 out with me. I’m bringing more at Christmas. I bought a wall hanging that’s part mirror, part beer art: Rainier Beer, Mountain Fresh. I talked to Helen on the phone tonight for a long time, and she told me about all the new recipes she’s trying now that she is living alone in her own small apartment in Burlington. It got me excited to start plowing through my own cookbooks and especially bread-baking – I already bought bread flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and my beloved King Arthur all-purpose, along with a jumbo bag of yeast, some good sea salt, brown sugar, and honey.

There’s a small grocery store no more than a 5-minute bike ride from my house that specializes in organic food. It’s small, and there’s not much in the way of fresh produce, but they have the important stuff: big yogurt, bulk grains and spices, Annie’s, frozen goods, and, of course, Panda licorice. They also take food stamps. I signed up for food stamps today. I felt a bit funny about it at first – after all, I do have a job and a bit of savings. But my stipend is far below the poverty level and over half of that paycheck goes to rent and utilities each month. The second-year RARE participants with whom I spoke all recommended it, said it was a huge help and kept them afloat, so today there is an Oregon Trail debit card in my wallet that will give me the money I need for food each month. My caseworker was friendly and matter-of-fact and seemed to enjoy telling me about the community and her own experience with AmeriCorps (she was once a VISTA). I’d worried that she would look at me strangely for doing what I’m doing, taking a random job for almost no money in a remote corner of a state so far away from home, but she didn’t. She was great, and I left feeling like I had a friend, or at least an ally, in this new place.

My bedroom is not quite friendly yet. It’s the hardest space to work with, layout-wise, and so far all I’ve done is put in my favorite easy chair (rust-orange corduroy velour), fill the big closet, and stick my narrow bed against the back window. I bought a lovely hanging ivy and a basket for it to hang in. The carpet in there is actually worse than in the living room, as it’s that industrial-type stiff stuff in a heathery grey-brown that looks like it belongs in a dorm. I’m going to have to get (or make?) a good rug for it. I’m going to hang up my license plates and make my pale green sari into a curtain across the front of my bed. My bathroom is in here too – and the sink’s in the bedroom. I’d like to get a folding screen for it so that it’s not the first thing you see when you enter, but I haven’t found one yet. The lino in my bathroom is sweet retro: olive and mustard curlicues, vaguely ethnic. I got a leafy bathroom rug to match.

Yesterday I discovered that while this town doesn’t have any true hippie liberal wonderlands like the Upper Valley Co-op or the Kiva in Eugene, it DOES have Grocery Outlet. Not only does Grocery Outlet have a big rainbow on its sign, it also has really cool organic products – at cut rates. I fully outfitted my bathroom with jumbo-size bottles of organic hair stuff for less than half of what I saw the same product for at the Co-op. I also got, randomly, some organic pomegranate juice and a carton of corn chowder, and I saw several varieties of Ben & Jerry’s for under $2. I think they take food stamps too! There are also 2 different $1 stores and they are both fantastic and I have already made several happy impulse purchases (sturdy glass jars in which to hold my dry grains, a set of 4 heavy beer glasses from which to drink, etc). The liquor store had gin that is distilled in Bend. I will tell you if it’s any good.

I think I’m the only gin-lover in the RARE social group. Everyone seems pretty down with good beer though, which is fine by me. We talked at orientation of ambitious group trips – rafting, backpacking, snowshoeing, summiting Mt. Hood, skiing, parties, weekend get-togethers – and I hope that at least a few of them come to fruition. One of the girls, Katie, is doing the same thing I’m doing (disaster mitigation) just in a different county. She is the nearest friend I have right now (3 hours away) and I think that we will definitely do some hiking and snowshoeing – the Steens are in between our respective counties, so we can meet in the middle. She also owns a kiln.

I’ve gotten my mandolin out and tuned it. I love the sounds it makes and I’m re-learning all that I forgot. Hopefully I can get some good finger calluses going soon. I need to cut my nails. I got used to having long nails back home where that’s what a lady does – she keeps her nails long, shaped, and polished. Out here it’s back to short and useful for me. If I get good enough, I’ll bring the mando to RARE events and I can jam with Marc, who plays some great guitar. That might take a while, though. I’m starting from square one. A bunch of us sat outside one night at orientation in a dark nighttime circle with a big, furry, smelly, lovey-dovey husky at our feet, listening to him play.

This apartment is a good place to be alone, I think. It is becoming warm and comfortable and I am starting to feel like it is home. It’s strange to realize how few demands there are upon my time and that there’s no one down the hall or street to chill with. It’s just me, here, on my soft brown couch, starting over yet again.

Posted by Sarah at 9:08 PM | Permalink

While my dear old Mac didn't detect any moochable wireless here in Ontario, my new PC work-laptop, which I just got today from the RARE folks, does. Three different networks (albeit not the strongest signals, but they work). Yessss!

Now the question: to buy or not to buy my own DSL/wireless?

(UPDATE: turns out I only get a good signal in my bedroom, on my bed. I'm down with spending lots of time on my bed, but that might not be the best if I want to do any actual work from home. Hmm.)

Posted by Sarah at 12:27 AM | Permalink

My job orientation wraps up today. I'm out in the Cascades at a convention center (the US Basketball Academy, actually) on the McKenzie River.

Here it is by the numbers:

Total RARE participants: something like 20
Number of those I like: something like 20
Number of those I hope will become good friends: 7-10

Cute + eligible + interesting guys: 3
Number of those within a 2 hours' drive from me: 0
Potential hiking/biking/adventuring friends: 10
Potential friend-with-whom-to-do-Burning Man: 1

Campfires built: 2, large
Hours spent around them: 6
Beers: 3 (Full Sail Ale, amber)
SoCo & Coke: 1/2
Tim's homemade blackberry wine: a few good swigs

Hours spent learning Useful Things: not sure
Confidence that things learned are Useful: 80%
% increased enthusiasm for this job: 200%
% increased enthusiasm for fellow RARE people: 500%

Posted by Sarah at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Sometimes I could swear that life is sending me signs.

The agent from whom I've rented my apartment works in a ramshackle little office on an out-of-the-way corner of town. When I first arrived in Ontario, I saw it, and went to stop, but there were no cars there, so I didn't.

The next morning I had a 10 am appointment with an agent to talk about their available rentals. It turned out to be that very office. The owner was out of the office, so I got her assistant. We talked, she showed me the places, and I later decided to rent one of them.

Mom and I drove back to the little office, signed some papers, and made small talk with the agent. In conversing, we talked about my car troubles, mentioning that we'd stopped in Green River. She looked up from the papers briefly, saying, my father is a mechanic in Green River, before going back to checking off boxes and rifling through papers. A light blinked on.

Is he kind of tall, with a moustache? She looked up. He was. Turns out that her dad was the mustached eagle-shirt-wearing fellow who'd helped diagnose my car's problem. In Utah, over 600 miles away. Small world, eh?

Also. So my favorite number is 3, and most variations on 3, like 31, 13, 33, etc. And I now live at a building number 1131 on a street called 3rd in the apartment number 3.

Yeah. It's a good place - the kitchen is bright and has a decent bit of counterspace and linoleum that is seriously vintage 50's and two windows right above the sink. I mean, this stuff is old-school. It's got a nice living room with big windows and a tree outside and the most hideous shag carpeting that I am attempting to cover up pronto with a big rug. My bedroom is unremarkable but nice - bright, airy, more ugly carpet. I really need to work on this carpet thing. It especially makes me sad because I know THERE ARE WOOD FLOORS UNDER THERE because you can see them in the closets.

Ah well. It's a good place for sure. I will post photographs soon, and I have plenty of floorspace for visitors.

This morning I'm in Bend - spent a night here on my way to my job orientation all-the-hella-way across the state. I'm excited because I'll get to interact with young people for a few days. It's been a while. Also, it's right on the McKenzie River, which is lovely!

Updates may be sparse for the next week - don't know if I'll have internet out at orientation and I certainly don't have it yet at home.

Posted by Sarah at 12:28 PM | Permalink

I wish for the sake of humor and cultural capital that I had rented the pink double-wide trailer out west of town by the onion fields.

I wanted to like it, really, I did. We drove all the way out and I met the woman who owns the trailers (there are 4, different colors, all in a row by the highway) and she was just the kind of old woman who lives in a trailer: thinning hair, shapeless housedress over a shapeless body, thick, veiny legs, a slow hobbling walk, and a sly look in her eye that said she was making judgments that might differ from her pleasant tone of voice.

The first thing you noticed upon walking into the trailer was the smell - that trailer smell that, if you've ever been in an old trailer, you know all too well. It's a mix of shag carpet, wood paneling, funky plastic bathroom fixtures, old cooking grease, dead bugs, and something else that's hard to get a finger on but is unmistakable. Old trailers just have a funk. The funk killed the appeal for me. That, and its (relatively) high price tag, complete lack of furnishings, non-functional electrical elements (the landlady rattled off a list of things that she was planning to have 'fixed' whenever she could find a trustworthy contractor. HA.), obviously poor insulation, and the fat highway out front with intermittent-but-loud traffic.

It really is too bad, though: haven't you ever wanted to tell someone that you live in the pink double-wide trailer out by the onion fields?

(more below the cut)

Continue reading "Out by the Onion Fields" »

Posted by Sarah at 10:59 PM | Permalink

Dear friends,

If sometime in the next year I should make my way out to wherever you are for a visit, or if you should make your way out to where I am for a visit, and you notice that I smell of shag carpeting and old linoleum and come bearing a gift of onions pilfered from the sides of highways, please don't think I've gone nuts. I probably will want a hug.

I've got a new place.
There's onions everywhere.
But first, how I got here:

Continue reading "Going to Ontario" »

Posted by Sarah at 12:14 AM | Permalink

Today, in short:

Kansas is really, really huge. But the speed limit is 75 mph - and there's not a speck of traffic between Kansas City and the Colorado border. I find myself compelled by these kinds of places - who lives in Kansas City? Who manages the huge farms across thousands of empty acres? Does anyone ever visit the antique malls and podunk motels? We left at 7 am from Kansas City and drove out into the dawn, surprisingly lovely, green and red and hilly. The terrain grew flatter and drier by the hour, with fewer and fewer people and more and more abandoned farmhouses or tiny tree-ringed islands of civilization amidst fields as far as you could see. I wanted so badly to take off on one of the dirt side roads stretching off across the horizon just to see where they go and who travels there - it is just so wrenchingly empty. People at the gas stations were overweight and talkative. Metalhead boys and gossipy girls and old men in suspenders. I wish I could have taken their pictures.

Eventually we hit Colorado. Denver sucks. Ugh, traffic. Ugh, aggressive drivers. Ugh, sprawl. An hour before Denver my book on tape malfunctioned. I switched to radio - no good stations (even I have my limits when it comes to bad country radio). I switched to iPod. It died as we hit Denver. I switched to bad country radio. I became disgusted. I discovered an old Greg Brown tape, Dream Cafe, and put it in. It stayed in for the next 3 hours and it was blissful. I would marry that voice, that persona, in an instant.

Tonight we're in New Castle, CO, staying with family friends. They have a fabulous cat and fed us so very well. Stuffed and sleepy. Tomorrow's a long haul - 12 hours to Ontario, and then the great apartment hunt begins.

I'll give the full story of the trip, with pictures, when I get better internet access - I'm borrowing a computer at the moment and don't want to wear out my welcome. But I do have a few good pictures and a few good stories. Soon, soon!

Posted by Sarah at 11:10 PM | Permalink

I've got some great stories for you. Unfortunately last night I was on a conference call all evening (yes, we ladies of C&G are STILL organizing), so I didn't have time to write.

The route so far: K-town to Atlanta to Chattanooga to Knoxville to Clarksville to St. Louis to Kansas City. Today: Kansas City to Topeka to Denver to New Castle for the night. Then from there we're hauling it across to Oregon. Arriving a day early! Hunting for apartments!

For now, breakfast!

Posted by Sarah at 7:38 AM | Permalink

I will miss home. Always do, even as I love living somewhere new.

Home is driving out to David's place to pick up my paints and brushes and paintings last night, taking a slow cruise south of town, pausing for the stoplight at Brevard, the scent of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the warm night air, damp and slow-rolling, mixing with the car's air conditioning on my skin, cool and warm at once.

Cruising on, the open-air laundromat to my left, a cluster of men sitting out front, watching the cars at the Family-Dollar-turned-bar across the street, then Slim's BBQ, closed, dark, gas stations, the Dollar Store, the DeSoto motel, a momma with her babies in lawn chairs outside her room.

Streets mostly quiet, the streetlights intermittent, then gone. Black sky, black trees, black road, looking for my grandpa's old truck stop property where I used to sit and imagine saucy big-haired waitresses straight-talking the truckers amidst the water stains and busted furniture, but those buildings are long demolished, it's empty now, then the old Joshua Creek packing plant and a lot of trailers, new and clean and empty, waiting, the left turn I always miss, that one-lane road, pulling off into the ditch to let another car by.

Gathering my stuff at David's, talking outside, talking for a long time and slapping moquitoes, dim light and an intermittent breeze. Chase, the bay horse, snorts and paces the fence. The chickens are all asleep. Walking inside to say goodbye to Buttons, the yorkie, who springs onto his back legs and stumbles forward, tongue lolling with excitement. Sissy, the chihuahua, growls and snaps from underneath the table.

On my way home again, slowing to a crawl to avoid an escaped chihuahua in the road, some neighbor's, tags jingling, headed toward a trailer where the TV glows and flickers through the window. TVs glowing blue and white in window after window, narrow houses on blocks with weeds at the edges.

People from the city talk about how slipping into the anonymity of the city amidst a crush of people is something renewing and comfortable. for me, it is this: a long drive at night through achingly familiar terrain, all of it mapped with a lifetime of memories, windows down, the windows are always down, the better to hear the incessant frog choruses providing the harmony for whatever's on the radio. Surfing the radio idly, slipping into whatever identity comes across the waves, in and out, easy: And the landslide will bring you... / Well I remember when - I remember when I lost my mind - / Hey, yer a crazy bitch but you f- so good... / Oh, she don't know she's beautiful... / This is when I'm most comfortable, this is when I'm excited about everything that lies before me - and I guess it doesn't really make sense, but there's something about being invisible, a small dark car on a long dark highway, when anything seems possible but nothing is required.

------

I leave tomorrow for Oregon. It's exciting, even as I wonder if I'm making the right decision. Of course you are, I tell myself, you will make it right. There's a lot I didn't do this summer that I wanted to do, and these things always hit me at the end, when suddenly there's no more I'll do it next week. So I'll shift it all to the I'll do it someday pile - backpacking the Everglades, photo-documenting the parts of town I rarely visit, properly organizing my photos, fixing my car's dome light, getting Amoco sweet tea, doing more charcoal sketching, learning more than basic chords on the mandolin, working through my clothes-to-alter pile, visiting the cattle auction, photographing the small animal Friday night auction, lunch or coffee or a drink with old friends and old teachers, calling those people who gave me their numbers who I never called, wheedling old stories from my grandma and amma, perfecting pan-frying, going to Little Gasparilla, catching up with Adam, visiting Mr. Pearce's property to see the spring he discovered... the list goes on. Someday, I suppose.

Posted by Sarah at 11:15 PM | Permalink

Today was my last day workin' at the law firm. I'm gonna miss it. In honor of leaving, here are my top 5 colorful Southern expressions from the summer, as spoken by various coworkers who shall remain anonymous:

5. I'll whoop 'is ass.

4. Jus' Cadillac it through the next few days.

3. We gotta scoop the turds outta the punch bowl, y'all.

2. That's as useless as tits on a boar hog.

1. That woman's crazier'n a sprayed cockroach.

Posted by Sarah at 6:24 PM | Permalink

I'm not sure what the fact that I am considering living in a mobile home next year in Oregon says about me as a person.

(For the record, yes, I'm also looking at houses and apartments.)

Posted by Sarah at 9:54 AM | Permalink

Meg is coming to town this afternoon!
Hooray!
Finally I have someone to go adventuring with me!

Posted by Sarah at 3:29 PM | Permalink

I don't know about shopping in Miami. I mean, I got some sweet stuff last weekend - but shopping in the citay is a little different than, say, the Englewood Goodwill Superstore. My bumpkinitude comes out when I find myself next to a display of Manolo Blahniks or thousand-dollar jackets. Looking is fine, but then, the salespeople appear. Pushy, hyper-attentive salespeople. This is when I make my uncomfortable exit.

There are two types of shoppers in the world: those who like to be helped, and those who very decidedly do not. I do not. You know, it's thrill of the chase and all, slinging my prize finds over one arm like so many spoils of victory, guarding my laden buggy (you realize what it means when you are shopping at a clothing store with buggies) with a watchful eye. No assistance needed.

I made the mistake of stepping over to the Benefit makeup counter, 'cause I swear by their lip tint and was curious as to what else they had. Next thing I knew, I was plunked down on a black stool with a talkative Cuban lady applying a myriad of unidentified products to my face. In response to my tentative questions about the various products, she gave me one reply: Oh, I LOVE it! When she was done, she handed me a mirror, and, well, it looked good! She shrewdly realized that I was an au natural kinda girl and did me up as such. Of course, then she assumed that I was going to buy all 6 products. Ladies, that would probably have emptied my bank account.

So I opted for 2 items (the most inexpensive, useful, not-makeup-y, and decidedly lacking-from-my-cosmetics-bag items, that is). And it was still rather expensive. But hey. When in Miami...

The rest of this entry will probably be of very little interest to most of you.
But.
I made some FINE purchases in Miami. and I want to recount them.

My new dress:



It only cost $12 and it was the only one in the store and it happened to be my size. SO SWEET. It's very much vintage Florida coast with the bright floral print and halter top. I've been living in it around the house. The best thing is that I saw a dress just like this one in Anthropologie (well, actually it was an Anthropologie dress on eBay) a few months ago and nearly bought it. But I didn't. Clearly fate had a hand in this.

The rest of my purchases (sans photographs, alas, I didn't have the patience to put everything on, and you probably didn't really want to see that anyway) are behind the cut.

Continue reading "Some Things I Learned While Shopping" »

Posted by Sarah at 10:02 AM | Permalink

Every time I think about Miami, I think about that Will Smith song Miami. I think it's because the first time I went to Miami was when I was a freshman in high school and that song was all over the radio and it just so happened that our high school football team had made the playoffs and was going to Miami! to play a game. I rode the pep bus down. We lost something like 52 to 0.

I didn't hear that song when I was in Miami this weekend. I did hear Whoomp! There It Is!, though! OLD SCHOOL!

But anyway. Miami!

Mostly I: ate good food with my bro and mom (fresh fish one night at Garcia's, Cuban fried pork and cassava (!) at Las Culebrinas the next), shopped and shopped and shopped some more (didn't buy too much), spent an evening catching up with my old friend and back-in-the-day co-valedictorian Nirali (currently in med school), and re-learned how to be an aggressive driver, only getting beeped at once (!).

Pictures behind the cut.

Continue reading "Welcome to Miami! Bienvenidos a Miami!" »

Posted by Sarah at 8:39 PM | Permalink

Alright, so I'm going to Miami for the weekend. I won't have my laptop down there (I'm an addict, but not THAT much of one), so no love 'til then. But I will return with pictures and stories, of course.

On the agenda: shopping!, fabric stores, good food (cuban!), hangin' with my bro, and going out with friends from high school (Nirali and Neha!) and maybe Dartmouth too (Yany!).

Also, this is just too cool - this NYC dude built a SWING on his balcony/terrace/porch that swings out over the city. I would so love to have one.

Posted by Sarah at 2:38 PM | Permalink

Back at Dartmouth, I always excused my slowness in replying to important emails by saying that I was just too busy to deal with them - and so they'd pile up, waiting, for days, a week, longer. And sometimes I really was very literally too busy; there were plenty of days when I had no time to eat or sleep, much less reply to non-urgent messages. Y'all know I was a little overbooked, overworked, and overcommitted.

But this summer?

I don't really have that excuse anymore. I'm quite busy at work (see below), but in the evenings, I just lose all motivation to do anything that's not, well, leisure. I guess I'm making up for lost time. So if I've been supposed to write you, or reply to you, anytime in the last 2 weeks - I will soon! I promise! But I'm a little slower than I should be these days.

As for work: in case you were wondering, this is what I do. Imagine nearly 6,000 paper documents totaling approximately 50,000 pages. They can all be found, in no order whatsoever, with no indexing (aside from the fact that each page is numbered), no organization, no nothing, just document after document, in several filing cabinets. They can also be found in a computerized database. There is no order to the database either. Sometimes they are labeled, sometimes they are not. No one person has actually read all of them, and there is no quality control - there are drafts, revisions, final copies, duplicates, bad photocopies, illegible handwritten notes, and missing pages.

You have three ways to navigate amongst the documents: 1. Via the one thread of sanity - the Bates number. Each page has a number, and if you know the number you want, you can access that page. 2. Scroll, page by page or document by document, through the entire mess, opening each one individually to ascertain its contents. 3. Use a Google search bar to search within the text of the documents - recognizing that these are photocopies of photocopies text-scanned with capricious OCR that only sometimes actually gets the text right - and more often than not doesn't, leaving you with unformatted typo-ridden gobbeldygook.

Imagine taking that and creating from it a coherent timeline of everything that's happened regarding the matter that these documents discuss. A coherent, succinct, and relevant timeline, focusing on the useful and important items and leaving the chaff.

Welcome to my summer.

(My timeline report, by the way, is almost done, and it clocks in at just 70 pages, though it will likely total more like 80 by the end of the next day or two.)

Posted by Sarah at 12:28 PM | Permalink

Things might be a bit sparse around here today and tomorrow. Got a major workload and need to get it done!

Posted by Sarah at 8:51 AM | Permalink

'Kay, so I never really finished talking about traveling through Oregon. Or where I'll be living next year (I'll get to that soon). So first, the rest of the travelogue, in brief:

(By 'in brief' I mean I made it AS SHORT AS I COULD which is DIFFICULT FOR THIS LONG-WINDED SISTER.)

---

Eugene - Portland: Woke up at Tom's place, ate baked goods, hiked, purchased shoes at Goodwill, headed to train station. Instead of train, large bus arrived. Sighed. Took bus to Portland. Looked at public transportation map and weighed 1-hour public trans ride + walking (cheap!) vs. 15 minute taxi ride (expensive!) to destination. Opted for public trans. Walked. Got lost. Asked woman for whom English is not first language for directions. Misunderstood directions. Wandered through sketchy neighborhood. Spotted a train! Followed tracks to station, intrepid problem-solving skillz! Rode train to airport. Arrived at hotel plenty early. Sat around. Attended RARE meeting. Met hotel roommate, fellow RARE person. Met other RARE persons, since we invited all to come over and 'party' which meant sit around and talk. Determined that RARE people are certainly interesting but some are a little kooky. Carefully dodged pigeonholing as Ivy Leaguer or Dirty Hippie. Slept.

Portland - Veneta: Woke up early. RENTED MY VERY OWN RENTAL CAR. Drove down Interstate. Decided to take 'scenic route' along the coast. Drove over small mountains, through little rural towns, scenic, etc, arrived at the coast! Hello Pacific! It's been a while! Leapt out of car with excitement to take pictures and feel ocean breeze. Ocean breeze being 60 degrees, quickly returned to car. Drove along coast. Drove BACK over small mountains and cute rural areas, arrived in Veneta. Had successful interview. Learned that Veneta is essentially bedroom community for Eugene, decided it was not what I was looking for, want 'real rural,' etc. Stopped on the way to pick blackberries. Stowed them in leftover baked goods bag for later. Arrived back in Eugene. Went for walk, picked wild strawberries. Met up with Tom for dinner + beer + Halo. Got ass handed to self on plate. Tried old skool "just push all the buttons a lot" Mortal Kombat style. Avatar stared at feet and missed target. Had fun anyway. Went out to get a drink with Tom + Lesli, cool librarian. Lesli and Tom insisted I live in Eastern Oregon and lead austere rural lifestyle. Thought to self, yes but would THEY live out there? Had delightful conversation and EXTREMELY potent drink that happened to be made with Hendrick's. I tell you what any bar that serves Hendricks is my kind of place. Left tipsy, returned home, fell asleep.

Eugene - Ontario: Longest day evar. All ze way across ze state! Woke early, said goodbye, stocked up on delightful scones for road, crossed big mountains (Cascades) over very tiny road. Waved to car from top of observation tower made of lava rocks. Oooh. Waved to 3 Sisters peaks in distance. Exited mountains into desert. Was struck by austerity of it. Drove a long way. Drove more. Arrived in Burns. County population: 7,000. County size: 10,000 sq.m. It looked the part. Had ok interview. Drove some more - decided that desert was lovely, if sparse, big sky, lots of color if you look closely. Kept driving. Listened to bad-but-funny British chick lit book on cd borrowed from mom's friend. Again noted the austerity. Arrived in Vale. Had good interview, liked the Vale people. Felt unsure about living in place smaller than Arcadia. Went to hotel in nearby Ontario, another small town, pop maybe 10,000? Checked in. Called cool fellow RARE person, also in this hotel for the night. On phone: Hi, it's Sarah. I just got into Ontario. Want to get dinner? Him: Sure. Me: I'm in room 102. Meet me here? Him: I'm in room 100. Sure. (room 100 was right next door. 2 feet away. lolz. Hopped in his rented mini van and toured the town. Thought, maybe I could do this? life here? Went to restaurant. They served no beer. Left. Went to another restaurant. Ordered omelet and beer. Other restaurant patrons stared openly. Enjoyed beer and conversation. Did not enjoy omelet. HOW do you mess up an omelet? Poor form. Talked a long time about RARE and jobs and life and music and things. Returned to hotel, said goodnight, puttered in room for a while.

Ontario - La Grande: Woke up early, drove and drove through big brown hills. Stopped in Baker City for lunch, found lefty-looking cafe, ate delicious salad, found a copy of the BOISE WEEKLY which gave me hope that cool people do exist out there. Got really excited. Sent blitz to Pam from cafe computer about how Boise is the new Portland, or something. Moved on to La Grande. Drove around, kicked up dust on dirt roads, took photographs! Went to bed.

La Grande - Pendleton: Woke up, interviewed with awesome lady, drove around some more, purchased cinnamon croissant. Delighted in the pastry. Onward! Made it to Pendleton, noticed extreme Old West vibe, lots of Western stores. Wandered downtown, ate mediocre sandwich. Interviewed with group of people. Decided assistant city planner was cute. Left with bag of goodies including bumper sticker that says: PENDLETON ROUND-UP: LET 'ER RIDE! Yeehaw. Had 2 free! beers at cocktail hour at motel. Luxuriated in large bed in motel room. Puttered. Slept.

Pendleton - Hood River: Drove along the Columbia River! Lovely. Spent time wandering Hood River, which was full of rich yuppies and super obsessed windsurfers. Had mixed feelings about the place. Had great interview. Ate gumbo at Southern food restaurant but it was not real gumbo, sorry folks. But waiter was nice to the dorky girl eating alone with hulking copy of Anna Karenina. Stayed night in The Dalles, nearby town. Accidentally drove in parade-of-vintage-cars with several other confused motorists. Fell asleep to the sound of hundreds of old white men beeping vintage car horns over, and over, and over while driving around the block.

Hood River - Laramie!: Purchased AMAZING SANDWICH from fancy bakery, in addition to cheap and tasty cherry tomatoes. Drove on. Took scenic highway, oohed over waterfalls, kept driving. Made it to airport. Returned trusty rental car. Waved goodbye to its nice red paint job. For the record however I do not recommend purchasing a Ford Focus. It's a little jumpy on the accelerator. Ask that mailbox that I h nevermind. Got on plane! Slept! Made it to Denver alive!

And then I went to Wyoming, but I already told you that story.

Love,
Sentence Fragments Girl

Posted by Sarah at 2:49 PM | Permalink

It's Poker Night tonight! Tia and I are doin' it up for our friend David's birthday. She's got the Dollar Tree decorations and the poker chips, I've got the sweet tea, Lynchburg lemonade, and chocolate chip + nib cookies.

Oh, yeah, there's that tropical storm a-comin' in too. But not to worry, we're not anticipating anything too major. Just some wicked rain - 5-15 inches!

Posted by Sarah at 7:18 PM | Permalink

I'm pretty darn glad I wore my good brown blazer to work today. I brought it as a jacket, cause it's always cold in the office, but it turns out that this morning I'm giving a presentation. Zoinks.

Posted by Sarah at 9:56 AM | Permalink

So I went to Wyoming! This is my (exceedingly long) travelogue. Pictures coming soon!

If you're lame and in a hurry and don't want to read the entire thing, skip to Day 4.

Day 1 - Flying from Denver

Alright. I flew into Denver from Portland and met Ritchie at baggage claim. In case you don't know, Ritchie is a friend and ex and co-environmentalist at Dartmouth. After nearly missing our bus due to a wrenchingly slow baggage carousel, we plunked down for a long ride to Fort Collins, where Ritchie's aunt and uncle were to meet us. I shared my precious Hood River cherry tomatoes with R and we chatted and chatted and chatted the whole way. Coming from the airport to Fort Collins, I understood why my friend Anne, who's from Fort Collins, is so distressed about the development enveloping her hometown - it's a lot like taking Highway 70 out of Arcadia and watching the slow, hideous march of subdivisions creeping across a place that was once beautiful. Sigh. We met Myron and Adele, R's uncle and aunt and our hosts/principal trip organizers, at the bus station and set off to get dinner - Indian food, which I've missed since having left Hanover. Dinner was laid-back and tasty, and on the ride to Laramie R and I caught up some more. We pulled into Laramie pretty late, so R and I essentially dropped our bags and headed to bed, talking until we fell asleep.

(Sidenote: pretty much R and I just talked and talked and talked the whole week. We can do that. It's nice. The other people on our trip, most of whom are perhaps a little less talkative, found this pretty amusing, and there's a photo of us engaged in some conversation or other that I'll post when I upload my photos. It's funny.)

Day 2 - Laramie, Climbing, Meeting the Crew

Next morning we woke early to go rock climbing - and man was it gorgeous. Myron and Adele are just getting into leading climbs, so this made things work really well. Just a little ways outside of Laramie, big bulbous stacks of salmon-beige rocks were stacked and scattered across the dust against the most incredible Western blue sky. We did a few laps on a very chill face climb (with a few fun moves) and then set off to try some crack climbing.

Now I've climbed a fair bit on very basic, easy face climbs. I'm comfortable at that nice beginner level, where someone else leads and I don't have to haggle with all the brightly colored metal niggly bits that real climbers use - cams, bolts, and the like - or deal with the actual real gnarly problems that experienced climbers like. Like cracks. Some of y'all will know all about crack climbing, but for those who don't, the basic idea is to use a natural crack in a rock face to get to the top - using your hands, and other body parts as blunt tools to jam into the crack. We taped up our hands, Myron led, and then it was my turn. I found jamming my entire hand into a crack and using the friction to be pretty useful - but my feet were another matter. They kept getting stuck or falling out. I fell several times, held by the rope of course, but banging myself against sharp rock crystals and losing confidence. I cut up my hand, my lower arm, and both knees, but by God I made it up that crack. And I felt pretty cool.

That evening, R and I started packing our backpacks for the Wind Rivers. I've got a lovely small pack - it's just over daypack size and I love it because it's ultralight - aka I don't carry a lot of weight with me. However, a little while into the packing, my bag was full and there was still a pile of group gear left to go into my pack. Myron looked at my stuffed tiny pack, looked at the towering full packs he and Adele and Ritchie had, and offered me a larger pack. I took it. This turned out to be kind of a blessing, because it allowed me to more easily pack things like the ICE AXE AND CRAMPONS that were glowering at me from my pile of gear.

See, Ritchie didn't tell me we'd be doing any hiking that would require SNOW GEAR. In case you don't know, an ice axe is a lightweight metal axe designed to help mountaineers climb up ice and snow. Crampons are essentially sets of 2-inch metal spikes that attach to boots so that one can cling to ice and snow. These are things that I hadn't ever used.

So anyway, we packed, I stared down the ice axe, and we had a big dinner with the whole crew, ate well, heard some fun stories, and went to bed early.

I met the rest of my hiking crew at dinner and in total we were 6: me, Ritchie, R's aunt and uncle Myron and Adele, both 50ish, who work for the U of Wyoming, and their friends Ben, a retired 60ish professor, and Janet, a 50ish free spirit type. It was to be an interesting crew, judging from the dinner conversations. Ben is just that kind of amiable, intelligent friend who makes everyone comfortable, and Janet, well, in her own words, "I boil my shit."

(she uses it for compost in her garden)
(yes, really)

- The rest of the travelogue can be found by clicking the link below. -

Continue reading "Wyoming 2006" »

Posted by Sarah at 10:33 PM | Permalink

Gads. It feels awfully weird to be home again after two weeks' worth of traveling.

Posted by Sarah at 10:29 PM | Permalink

I'm on my way home today from Wyoming to Florida. Massive lots of stories about WY. Oh man! Hopefully I'll get those up by tonight or tomorrow... Currently I'm at the airport. Using wireless. Like a nerd.

Posted by Sarah at 4:09 PM | Permalink

Leaving for the Wind Rivers tomorrow at 6 am.

I have two things to say:

1) Wyoming is gorgeous.
2) We are packing ice axes and crampons. Oh. God.

Posted by Sarah at 11:06 PM | Permalink

Man, for someone who types fast, it sure takes me a long time to write things down. I'm workin' on the rest of my travelogue. I hope to get it done before I head out into the Wyoming backcountry, or I'll prolly forget it all.

Posted by Sarah at 1:38 AM | Permalink

Part I

Eugene
------

I flew into Portland on Friday evening, right around dinnertime. My flight was early, so I nabbed my bags and settled in with Anna Karenina to wait for Tom. Shortly he arrived, much greeting ensued, and we set off to get some high-quality Portland grub. We ate in the v. trendy Pearl district at Fratelli (that's where I had the salmon, see my food census part I from an earlier post below). We spent most of dinner catching up on gossip and various and sundry other great topics. We then crashed pretty much as soon as we got into Eugene, as the time difference (3 hours) had set in, and it felt like some godawful hour after 1 AM.

The next day I overslept! Well, only until 8:30, but we were supposed to be up at 7. Shoot. Tom's parents picked us up for a farmers' market trip at 9 for purposes of buying supplies for the night's dinner. Mostly I ogled all the really really lovely produce. And chuckled a bit at some of the more hippyish hippies. We also hit up the fishmongers' and the meat market and a natural foods store. AND the parents bought me this fantastically detailed Oregon road atlas. This is pretty much going to be my adventure guide to Oregon!

Post-massive grocery run, T and I set off on our bicycles (well, on his bicycles) and he showed me some of his Eugene haunts - the library, the CAT, the freakin' awesome bike path along the river, which was lined by loads of gorgeous wildflowers, and more. We also stopped back by the farmers' market to hit up the hippie crafts section. This was fabulous. I bought some aged green tea and the most amazing bracelet made of two spoon handles. Really, it's fantastic. I almost got a henna tattoo, but it's a pain to wait for them to dry, so instead we rolled out and kept on bikin'. We ate at the Keystone Cafe for lunch, which is all into free range eggs and hippie-grade pancakes (read: not your usual buttermilk species) and all manner of delicious foods. Spelt toast: who'da known it was so tasty?

Eventually we went back to T's place, as he's housesitting this summer, and freshened up before heading to his parents' place, where we were to help cook for dinner. We set to work on various tasks (mostly mincing vegetables for the chowder, really) and after a few hours of preparations and email-checking-breaks the guests arrived: 3 of T's architecture friends from the U of O and one of his longtime friends from high school. They were all fantastic and conversation lasted well into the night. The weather was cool and comfortable and hanging out with everyone gave me the most lovely relaxed and friendly feeling. I promised to call T's parents when I return to OR, 'cause I will so hang out with them again!

The next day we got up on time and went to the Hideaway Bakery. I had what was probably the most delicious turnover pastry ever since the creation of turnovers: bumbleberry. Perfect crispy flaky tender crust, fat juicy berry interior. Swoon. Also T had this potato donut that was improbably tender and delicious itself. We jetted off after this to Mt Pisgah, which is a great short little hike with a real big view at the top. It's ringed at its base by graceful oak prairies, consisting of wide open swathes of flaxen grass broken up by big, shaggy oaks. I also came close to hugging a poison oak. Thankfully Tom is not a very good jokester.

Hmm, I think after this we went to Goodwill. The pickins were pretty good - 2 pairs of shoes and a t-shirt to refab. T found some nice shirts. Boys are lucky; Goodwill t-shirts actually FIT them.

So the day before, I had seen these crazy tall bikes at the CAT. I'd heard of tallbikes, maybe seen some photos before, and I remarked how fun they seemed to Tom. Well, turns out his friend has one, and he took me over to try it out. You'll have to wait to see the photograph to really appreciate these things, but imagine a bike with its seat at your shoulder - that's how tall they are. With a little kind assistance I got onto the thing and took it for a spin. It. was. great. I would totally ride a tallbike to school. If there were no hills (they don't have good balance on hills, being a bit, uh, top-heavy and all).

Sadly at this point I had to catch the train to Portland for my first RARE meeting.

Also, sadly at this point I'm too tired to keep writing. Stay tuned for Part II!

Posted by Sarah at 12:22 AM | Permalink

It's amazing where you can find wireless internet. Hi from Eastern Oregon.

(eventually I shall update. now I gotta go find some eats.)

Posted by Sarah at 9:37 PM | Permalink

Delicious foods eaten on this trip so far:

Fratelli's, Portland

- Cracked pepper and sea salt-crusted coho salmon over roasted green rhubarb, with a tomato and some-crisp-and-tasty-vegetable coulis

- Buttermilk panna cotta with fresh berries and a tarragon-and-berry granite

Farmer's Mkt

- huckleberries
- honey+honeycomb
- pain au chocolat

The Keystone Cafe

- eggs 'n' homefries 'n' spelt toast (all organic happy free range etc)

Tom's house (dinner party!)

- grilled prosciutto-wrapped figs
- cheese + homemade bread
- salmon corn chowda (me an' T made this)
- tomatoes with basil and vinaigrette
- warm cous cous salad
- grilled Italian sweet peppers and onions with flank steak
- grilled garlic-rubbed bread
- cornmeal shortcakes with strawberries and fresh whipped cream

Miscellaneous Deliciousesses

- bumbleberry turnover
- potato donut (!)
- goji berries
- Blue Sky grapefruit soda
- some fruit leathers
- raisin walnut bread
- several hunks of a very nice 75% dark chocolate bar

Posted by Sarah at 12:15 AM | Permalink

Hello from lovely OREGON!

I'm here.
I'm eating well.
Very well.
The weather is perfect,
the people are lovely,
and Tom and I pretty much bombed around on bikes for most of today.

I also now own a BRACELET made of SPOONS.

Tomorrow night I go up to Portland to meet the RARE people, and Monday starts my interview tour.

Now I'm catching a few minutes of wireless at Tom's parents' house before we set to work helping in the kitchen. More later, when I've got a bit more time to spare, k?

Posted by Sarah at 7:18 PM | Permalink

As of 9:30 am today, I'm traveling out West for 2 weeks. If I get some internet access, I'll update while I'm out there - if not, you'll just have to wait 'til I come home!

Itinerary
August 4-11: RARE job stuff, hangin' out with Tom, driving across the entire state of OR.
August 12-21: Rock climbing in Laramie, WY and backpacking in the Wind Rivers.

(I will take copious photographs)
(of course)

Posted by Sarah at 8:50 AM | Permalink

I have excitedly packed PANTS and a BLAZER for wearing whilst out West.
And FLEECE and WOOL LAYERS for backpacking.
These are words that have been struck from my vocabulary since I came home in June.

Man, it'll be good to get a reprieve from this Florida summertime. Oy. I feel for y'all in NYC and anywhere without A/C. We only use the A/C at night at my house, so that we can sleep, but it really does make all the difference. Ironically, the weather down here is actually cooler than that in loads of other places in the country right now. It may be hot for longer down here, long enough that we can grow avocados and pineapples in the back yard, but we just don't get those kinds of heat waves that swallow other places whole. It's reliably, steadily, suffocatingly hot, yes, but (relatively) moderate compared to what the big cities and the Midwest are dealing with this summer.

Posted by Sarah at 3:37 PM | Permalink

It's the CONTINENTAL DIVIDE!

Here's where I'll be backpacking in Wyoming:

(click here for a larger version)

Posted by Sarah at 11:13 AM | Permalink

From August 12-20th I'm going to be in Wyoming, backpacking through the Wind River range.

Mostly I just wanted to post this picture of what the Wind Rivers look like:

See more photos at Flickr.

My itinerary looks something like this:
August 12 - fly into Denver, head up to WY
August 13 - rock climbing in WY with Ritchie & co.
August 14-19 - backpacking! taking mad lots of photographs!
August 20 - some more climbing, maybe some recuperating
August 21 - fly home

I've never even been to Wyoming. My friend Ritchie has family out there, and he's spent some time backpacking in this region before - so they know the best sights to see and the most challenging-but-not-insane routes to take. I'm so excited - I'm packing my bags this weekend!

Posted by Sarah at 2:31 PM | Permalink