4:20

Just got a message from my friend Christine:

"Hi! It's me. It's 4:20 ... ... hmm ... time to smoke pot. I don't have any. Anyway ...!"

I love her! So, NOT in that way (even though she does drive a Subaru, watch Ellen and wear Japanese Man Shoes). She likes men, too, which trumps all of those indications of stereotypical lesbianism. C, you crack me up! Thanks for being one of my bestest p-izzazz-als. :o)

P.S. - I'm pretty sure C never has smoked pot, but if she did, she doesn't do it regularly these days. Just a disclaimer for the authorities -- she's not the one you're looking for, unless you're a single, mature, good-looking man. Then, good luck -- you've got some interviews with her friends to survive first.

The Quilt

So, I know I haven't finished the post-vacation blogging yet and I hope I do someday -- it was awesome. But, since I shared about it earlier, I wanted to share pictures of my final quilt for Heidi and her husband Phil (obviously not the same Phil as my Phil, Heidi's brother).

Here's me with the whole finished quilt:


And here's a kinda-close-up of the fabric patters and hand-quilting:


This project (the "Ice Pops" pattern from Denyse Schmidt's awesome book Denyse Schmidt Quilts) has totally inspired me! I can't wait to start on the next quilt project.

Post-Vacation Blogging - Day 2 - Portland to Klamath, CA

On Day 2 of our vacation adventure, Phil and I got up early to go get our rental car from the Portland Airport. After the $2 ride on the TriMet to the airport with all of our luggage (and a very interesting conversation with a lady at the train stop who had taken a day-trip to Portland to look for a house and had her purse stolen so she wasn't able to get home to Washington -- no money, no ID, no credit cards), we arrived safely at the Hertz desk to pick out our carefully-selected vehicle.

We'd heard rave reviews of Hertz's NeverLost navigation system, so we picked Hertz entirely for that reason with our cross-country drive ahead. To shorten a long story, they didn't have any cars with NeverLost systems in them in Portland except for H2's, which they refused to give us as a free upgrade from the Ford Escape we'd reserved. So, we ended up with a Ford Edge. It turned out to be a nice vehicle except for the light-colored dashboard that reflected annoyingly every time we broke through the shade of the trees into the light. It drove nicely, though. If it wasn't a Ford, we'd consider getting one.

Another thing about this particular vehicle was there was no tape adaptor for us to hook up our iPods like we do for our usual long road trips. We determined to stop at the next Best Buy we passed to pick up an iTrip. We've purchased and returned iTrips at least three times, so we decided to keep it this time whenever we were able to get it.

Our first stop with the Edge was Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge. It's an amazing area and a must-see if you're ever in the area. Here's one of the pictures a nice bystander got of Phil and me in the rain at Multnomah Falls:



On the way out to the falls, we were searching desperately for coffee and breakfast. We didn't find anything on the way there, so we visited the falls and continued our search on our way out of town. We sadly settled for McVomit's (a.k.a. McDonald's) where I decided to be a coffee snob and, therefore, was fighting a car-nap the entire morning while Phil drove. We both determined this was a poor start to the driving portion of our trip and vowed not to eat junk and fast food (and, consequently, have diarrhea) the entire time.

Our next stop of the day was to visit our college friend Darla who now lives in Eugene, Oregon. We got to meet her precious son Mars, but missed her husband Jason who was at work. Darla also took us to the warehouse of the place she's been working for the past six years, Swahili Imports. Her boss travels all over Africa and hires artists and craftsmen and women to make lots of their creations, then she imports them and sells them in The States. They have two physical stores right now, but they're also selling wholesale to suppliers like Pottery Barn, World Market and Crate and Barrel. This is one of those places where I told Phil he could go into the store blind-folded, grab something and give it to me for a present and I'd love it. :o) It's beautiful stuff and they're supporting micro-enterprise big-time in Africa.

We also grabbed Baja Fresh with Darla and Mars (our first trip there, too). I just kept laughing when she suggested it because Paulie on The Sopranos episode we watched the night before called it Baja Fresh (with the emphasis definitely on the hard, non-Mexican "J"). Anyway, we thought the food was mediocre at best compared to Wahoo's or Chipotle, so we'll stick to Wahoo's and Chipotle. Then, Darla and I got Ben & Jerry's while Phil got coffee next door. We dropped Darla and Mars back off at home and headed west to the coast!

We hit Highway 101 at about 4:00 thinking we had about four hours left to go to get to our hotel in Klamath, California. Of course, we also thought Highway 101 was the historic "Pacific Coast Highway" that went along the coast with amazing ocean views. After a little while, we realized we had to go west another mile or two from Hwy 101 in order to actually see the ocean. So, we kept driving and just pulled over somewhere in southwest Oregon for pictures using the tripod and remote, since no one was really around. Here's my favorite one:



We finally made it to our hotel in Klamath, California at about 11 pm. We thought we could grab dinner at the next town after we took pictures, but it turns there were no places open after 9:00 in the next town, so we went dinnerless. Thank goodness for the Nutter Butters we had picked up at Target on our way out of Eugene!

The place we stayed in Klamath was a gem I found on Google Maps in the "find business" search function. The Ravenwood Motel was very cute, very inexpensive, and the management was extremly kind and helpful. Their website is an unfortunate display of a bad FrontPage template (what other kind is there, really?), but we'd definitely stay there again anyway.

All in all, Day 2 was a success and great fun -- especially considering we braved it with no coffee, no dinner and no iPod entertainment. It was amazing to discover we could survive in such conditions ... and still have a blast! Day 3 recap coming tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Post-Vacation Blogging - Day 1 - Portland

So, as my two readers gathered probably, Phil and I recently took a week of vacation! This was technically the first official vacation we've taken since our honeymoon 8.5 years ago. So, it was really fun to get away and see some new places and just take it easy for a week or so (if you can call driving 2,700 miles across parts of six states relaxing). We had an incredible time and saw some spectacular sights.

We basically started in Portland, went down to San Francisco and Yosemite, then headed home to Colorado on I-80. I'd be remiss to skip over the details and pictures as well as links to some of the great places we visited, so let's get started with the recap!

Phil is a Ruby on Rails developer full-time through our own business and he had a conference in Portland called RailsConf. It sounded like a neat time for him to network and be encouraged, so I'm glad he got to go again this year.

I flew out to Portland at the end of Phil's conference so we could rent a car and begin from there. When I got there, I just took the TriMet from the airport to the convention center, which was near where Phil was staying. It was awesome -- it only cost $2 for that trip, but the train is free all over downtown. We used it a lot while we were there.

For lunch the day I arrived, Phil and I took the train in to downtown with some friends and walked around to try to find a place to eat. After a little trouble finding an open restaurant on a Sunday afternoon (not many Portlanders go to church on Sundays, but I guess they don't object to a day of rest anyway), we stumbled across E-San Thai Restaurant. Being from the rural Midwest and now living in Colorado, Phil and I had never had Thai food before ... and now we're addicted! It was delicious for sure.

Then, on the way back for the last afternoon session, we stopped at what Phil calls "the best coffee he's had outside of Europe" at Stumptown. I didn't get anything because I desperately needed a nap and didn't want to be kept up by caffeine, but it smelled heavenly in there. When Phil got his latte he offered me a sip and I declined. Our friend Toby said, "Yeah, you'd better not have any because if you do, you'll get right back into that line and order one for yourself!" So, I'm sorry I missed out, but was really happy with the nice afternoon nap while the guys were in meetings.

That night, Phil and I just explored a bit and went to Powell's. Phil is an incredible photographer and he captured a few really cool shots in Portland with the sunset and everything. The picture at the top of this post was from our hotel at about sunset as the clouds were clearing. It was a gorgeous night! Knowing we had a long drive ahead, we just took it easy after sunset and watched the latest episodes of The Sopranos and Entourage -- a vacation doesn't have to be a vacation from our TV addictions, right? It was a relaxing and fun start to a busy week ahead.

More tomorrow!

Diamonds in the Rough

Knocked Up is another movie that I loved, but I can't whole-heartedly endorse. As you could expect from the makers of The 40 Year Old Virgin, there's a fair amount of trash in this movie (most of it is still admittedly funny). But, the messages in this movie are really incredible and positive and it turned out to be one of the most challenging and positive commitment- and marriage-oriented movies I've seen come out of Hollywood in a while.

Obviously, I'm not unmarried and pregnant, so I couldn't necessarily relate to that aspect of the movie. But, the approach (as far as the pregnancy) they take in this movie is against the typical Hollywood norm: she keeps the baby! They are two totally different people with different personalities and lifestyles, but they decide to learn how to make things work. They don't just up and get married to cover things up (which I think is sometimes another mistake), but they give their relationship an honest attempt, and it's neat to see. There are some doozie fights between them, but they make a conscious effort to be honest with each other -- more than lots of us can say about our relationships, even after years of marriage.

Also, we learn lots from the marriage of the main character's sister and her husband. They're also going through rough times around the 10-year mark of marriage. My favorite part is when the husband (played by Paul Rudd) says that all of his fights with his wife are because she loves him so much that she wants to spend all her time with him and he can't believe he's fighting with her about that -- he should be thankful! I thought that was pretty profound. We do need to give each other space, though, too ... so finding that balance can be really hard.

I know you're all shocked because I seem to like everything, but this was a great movie, too. I'd actually like to see it again. The relationships were accurately portrayed as hard work, but so worth it.

Here's another interesting review (thanks to Instapundit.com for the link).