Merry Christmas Oliver

Aunt Sharon sent us a very nice house warming gift and Oliver really likes it. What's funny is that he almost immediatly claimed it as his space.

Oliver has been growing in a thicker coat for the winter and as a result has been shedding. I mused that instead of vacuuming all of his hair off the carpet and furniture we should just vacuum Oliver. After I said the joke a light bulb appeared over my head.

Oliver's face says it all...
We probably won't be trying that again.

No Knead Bread

I found this recipe about two years ago and always wanted to try it. Until two weeks ago I wasn't sure it was worth the price of admission. The bread must be baked at 450 degrees in a 6-8 Qt pot that had a lid.

I love bread, especially fresh bread. In college I found a bread machine at a garage sale for $5 and made quite a few loafs with it. The problem with the machine is that for one it's loud and annoying and second, the shape of the loaf was circular so all of your sandwiches, toast, etc... had to be circular. The shape also made it hard to cut without smashing it. To remedy the shape problem, I started taking the dough out before the baking cycle, shaping it myself and then baking it in the oven. This ended up being quite a bit more work and the luxury of machine automation was now gone. The one thing my bread machine kneaded, oven baked bread lacked was was an excellent, crispy crust. ( I tried spraying water in the oven every fifteen minutes but never had a noticeable effect.)

The recipe is extremely simple, mix water, flour, salt and yeast then 24 hours later bake it for 60 minutes. Time does the work for you. Indecently it actually takes less of my time to prepare than the bread machine bread. Here are two things I've learned after making a half dozen loafs. First, regular flour will work but bread flour rises much more and produces a loaf that is about 30% bigger. Second, don't use tap water. The chlorine in the water gives the bread a very slight chemical taste (I always had this taste in bread machine bread but didn't figure out it was the water.) I use distilled water from the grocery store.

The bread from the no knead recipe is nothing short of exquisite. The crust crackles to reveal a delicious crumb...

I also made a pie...

Helicopter

Megan and I live right next to Christmas tree farm. The farm, which has been bustling for the past few weeks, uses a helicopter to move trees from the field to the trucks. We've really enjoyed watching them work, the helicopter doesn't stop moving for a second. It puts the trees into the truck and heads back to the field in one fluid motion. In fact, the only time we saw it hovering at all is when they hook the cable up to a new bunch of trees.

Here is the view from our home...


The helicopter bringing in a bundle of trees...


Dropping the trees into the trucks...

Hiking, Backpacking and Moutain Biking

I love getting out in the fall, as the days get short and crisp they seem much more precious and energizing. The past few months we've done a pretty good job of getting outdoors once or twice a month. In September, I went mountain biking on the Mckensie River Trail with my friend Scott. This trail is legendary amoung mountain bikers across the country for a very good reason. It's 33 miles of dirt single track. No fire roads, no double track, no gravel, just dirt. The only downside to the trail is that it's one way. So we rode 15 miles one way, then turned around and rode back.








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Megan and I went for a hike on Cascade Head near Lincoln City, on the Oregon Coast. This is a short hike with very nice views of the beach. We took Oliver and Molly, my parents dog, with us.

Here is a picture of Molly and Oliver in the back seat of the car...


On the trail...


Looking south...


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We also went backpacking on 25 October. The weather was cool but we had the place to ourselves in the evening and morning. We chose Pamelia Lake since it was less that three miles to the campsite and very little elevation gain.

We took a side trip to the point where Milk Creek intersects the Pacific Crest Trail...


Here we are warming and stoking the fire...




As you can see Megan and I are wearing alot of clothing due to the colder temps. To keep warm, Oliver dug a shallow bed for himself and curled very tight...


He was scared of the fire.

Ultasound

Profile...

Aparently this baby thinks a little to highly of itself...

Preggy Meggy

Here she is at 23 weeks...


And here she is at 27 weeks...

It Snows on Mars?!

I was listening to NPR the other day, and this was really big news to me.

They think it snows on Mars! Now gravitational force there is about 38% of ours, so this could make for some really boring (slow) or exciting skiing (how many back flips can you do?!). Now that would be a ski resort you could brag about having visited.

Not very many posts lately - work and no regular internet at home! All is well. Baby Boes is growing just fine, and feels like he/she's doing skiing back flips in my tummy.

Smartphone Apps

I've been toying around with the idea of making a program for either the iPhone or Gphone (Android) or both. Every time I come up with an idea though I always think that nobody would use it or find that someone has already built a similar app, usually far superior to my idea. Developing on this platform is interesting to me because a smartphone is the convergence of nearly every electronic gadget that you own. Computer, MP3 player, GPS, TV, calculator, watch,... all of these functions can be performed by one device. The main problem being that it is a jack of all trades master of none (I guess it is master of mobility). For example, your not going to write your dissertation on an iPhone and the calculator on the Gphone isn't going to graph 3D equations like your TI-89 but the you could in fact perform both of these on a smartphone.

Mobile applications are by far the most interesting market to me. Sometimes they seem like magic. Take for example Wikitude. This app uses the phones gps and Wikipedia to find interesting things around you. Using the phones camera you can create an augmented reality that points at the location. Have you ever been looking for a museum or store only to find out you were right next to it all along? Wikitude to the rescue! From the website...

The truly compelling feature is the augmented reality cam view, users may hold the phone’s camera against a spectacular mountain range and see the names and heights displayed as overlay mapped with the mountains in the camera. Users may look out of an airplane window to see what is down there. Users may walk through a city like Seville, Spain, holding the phone’s camera against a building and Wikitude tells what it is.

Click here to look at the demo.

The question I have is will people buy these types of applications and how much will they pay for them.

Assuming your phone does the basic things like calling, calender, email, etc... If you could have any application on a phone what would it be? What do want that nobody is making?

Settling In

We got the keys to our new house on 3 October and spent our first night here the next evening. Getting to know our new house has been fun for us. The previous owners left us a house in emaculate shape. The left window coverings for windows in all of the rooms and everything seems to be in really good shape. One bonus we've found is that our house gets alot of heat from the sun. In the living room there are five large windows and one sliding glass doors. These windows face East, West and South so the room always has direct sunlight. All of this sunlight warms the room up to ten degrees warmer than outside. Hopefully the drapes and blinds will deflect that heat next July. 

One thing we've found is that while it's a long and expensive process to buy a house it's an even longer and arguably more expensive process to fill it. Luckily we've had some good luck at garage sales. With the help of my mother, the expert garage saler and West Salem navigator, we've managed to take up some of the room in our house with various furnishings. We spent $20 on a really nice dining room table with four chairs. And got two La-Z-boy recliners for $80. Our mattress was a different story. My expectations was to spend around $300 on a "decent" mattress/box spring set. Having never purchased one before I was shocked to find that "decent" mattresses start at $600 and those are really more bottom line. We looked on craigslist and at garage sales but didn't have any luck finding one so we bit the bullet and got a really comfortable one for $850. We also spent retail on a nice washer/dryer set. Well, it actually wasn't a set. The dryer that matched our washer was $700. I asked the salesperson what the difference between the matching one and one for $300 was and he said "This one matches". Due to some generous gift cards from our wedding and a Sears card that got us 15% off and no payments or interest for a year this wasn't quite as big of a blow as the mattress set. Next month we'll probably start shopping for a couch and a TV. For now, the saying "Shop till you drop" applies to us, only it's our checking account that is doing the dropping.

Oliver enjoying the "new" La-Z-boy...

Megan viewing a rainbow from our back deck...

The rainbow in it's vivid glory...

(Note: there is a perched humming bird on a branch of the tree on the right)

Welcome Connor!

Monday morning (11:22am East Coast) my sister, Kate, gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Connor. Kate was really tired, so I think she'll appreciate my not posting her picture just yet. Here's one with a proud grandma, and one with the relieved dad.

Peach of a Century

Today I rode my bicycle 64 miles (a little more than a metric century) around the Willamette Valley. I've never done an organized ride (one might say I've never done anything organized, but that is a different post). For $23 ($18 if you pre register, I, being unorganized, didn't) you get a route map, a rider number, tons of food at the rest stops, mechanical help at all (3) stops, spray painted markers at all turns, and a large slice of peach pie! Definitely $23 well spent. I've always been critical of organized events such as running events or rides like this but not anymore, I'm a converted man. The best part of the ride were the scheduled rest stops with ample amounts of food. There was no scheduled start time but with more than a thousand riders the course was busy the whole time and the rest stops were bustling.

I elected to ride the metric century as the "real"century sounded like a lot of work and I hadn't prepared for it. At the end I had the muscle strength to go 35 more miles but I'm not sure my shoulders, elbows or back would have allowed it so I made a wise choice to stick with the 64 miles. 

The only downside to my ride was when I rode over a giant pot hole. My water bottle flew off of my bike and before I stopped both of my tires were flat. I was riding very close to another rider and he was also riding close to another rider. He notified me of the hole as he swerved and I didn't have enough time to react. We had the bike in working order in 15 minutes and were back to the grind. Another advantage of riding in a large event like this was that help was never far away. Nearly every minute while we were stopped someone asked us if we had everything we needed.

The ride was put on by the Salem Bicycle Club. The club also sponsors a watermelon ride and the Monster Cookie ride. Maybe next year I'll do the "real" century for one of these.

Motorcycle (boring mpg info)

I've been riding my motorcycle (Suzuki Gz250) to work nearly every day since I stared in late July. With fall upon us I'll be riding less and less but thus far I've ridden it over 3500 miles. When gas was over $4 per gallon I saved nearly $10 per day by taking the motorcycle over my Subaru. 

The Subaru gets about 27 mpg on the highway whereas my motorcycle gets between 70 and 82 mpg. When I use premium I average 77.5 but when I use regular I average 75 mpg. Since premium costs about 20¢ more I save money by using regular - but the money saved is actually pretty trivial. I caclulated my cost per mile and for premium it's 4.77¢ per mile while regular is 4.67¢ per mile so after 10,000 miles the savings would only be $10 using regular. Publish Post

Cyndi is my Idol

I want to be just like Cyndi, so Andrew and I bought a used blue/silver Saturn, just like hers.

Bike Ride!

I just rode my bike from West Salem to Western Oregon University! It was a pleasant (and flat) country ride. Here's the route I took, only I started at Andrew's parents house and don't want to post their address, so I went about 2 miles less.


View Larger Map

I wish I brought a camera to take pictures. Now I have to ride home. Maybe a stop at Burgerville first...

Pennsylvania Vs. Oregon

No, I'm not talking about the Nittany Lions vs. the Ducks (or Beavers), not even the Volcanoes vs. the Iron Pigs (ok - they're in different divisions). After growing up in PA, living in OR for a few months, visiting PA, and returning home to OR, I noticed a few things I like and miss. Obviously my husband (& dog) in OR, and the family I grew up with in PA top the lists. Here are some other things that stand out:

PA

1. Warm Summer Mornings & Evenings - I took a walk in the morning and wore shorts and felt the sun and warm air. When I walk Oliver in OR mornings (even on a 90-degree-high day), I need pants & sweatshirt. I also love to enjoy a dinner-time cookout and still wear shorts. I need a sweatshirt in OR.
   
2. Lightening Bugs - They're just really pretty.
3. Thunder Storms - So much more fun and dramatic than OR rain. I have witnessed some lightening on OR - But not nearly as thrilling.
4. Fall Leaves - Another thing that's just really pretty.

OR

1. Cool Summer Nights - Also the nights of the days with 90-degree highs. Sleeping is so much more pleasant.
2. Berries - there's lots of berries that grow around here and ripen at different times of the summer. We pick pounds and pounds and freeze them and have a delicious treat whenever. Some I've been able to experience so far: marionberries, blueberries, blackberries.
3. Dramatic Mountains - They do put the little rounded PA mountains to shame. On clear days you can see Mt. Jefferson and some others towering over Salem.
4. Skiing - Wow, so much fun. At the higher elevations, we get drier fluffier snow out here (and more of it and for a much longer season). Pair that with the monster mountains and the Northeast can't begin to compete.

Which state wins? I don't know.

So last weekend I went to visit my family in PA. Dan drove up from D.C. and we threw a wild baby shower for Kate (due Oct. 1st). I finally got to meet some of Kate's husband's family. All 3 of his sisters (Anita, Melissa, Angela) were there to pick on him, and his Aunt Karen was a lot of fun too.

The men hang out upstairs. Here's Dan, Dad, and Kate's husband, Andrew. Yes, we sisters married guys with the same name. It makes for some confusing conversations.

Tami and Corynn (and baby Ryan) drove out for the party. Here they are playing a game racing to dress a doll.

Kate says, "What?! You aint got nuttin on this belly!" I guess this is one of the first pictures of the cousins together. Kate looks really healthy and energetic. She bounces up and down my parents front hill (pretty big/steep), and 2 sets of stairs. She goes to the Y most mornings for swimming and other workouts, and it shows. I hope I can stay as active and healthy as she is! To see her so well, alleviated a lot of my anxieties/fears (of course now I'm nervous about a dry red itchy irritated tummy that becomes allergic to lotions & creams). Any day now... Connor's coming!

And just to show you my belly is growing, here it is at 17.5 weeks:

Sweet Bloopers

Nothing really exciting to write about over the past few weeks. My job is going well and I really enjoy it and the people I work with. And...well that's pretty much it. So I'll share four really funny videos. These are from Home Shopping Network type shows and the best parts are when after the salesperson screws something up they are still trying to sell their junk. Have a look..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeLg9cKhrIw&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC70vdm4Al0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5woNs9WRE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZhMfzc9RbU&feature=related

Accepted!!!

Megan and I made an offer on a house at 2pm on Saturday and our offer was accepted at 7pm! It's a very nice house that is on the end of a dead end street. It has four bedrooms, two baths and is around 1500 square feet. Our favorite part about the house is that it has a lot of windows but also a lot of privacy. Next door to our house is an elementary school and less that 100 feet from our front door is a nice field with a 1/4 mile track. I didn't post the address on purpose maybe that is just me being paranoid but here are some pics that I lifted from the realty site.













There are a few more hurdles (home inspections, VA loan inspections, etc..) we have to overcome before we move in so we're trying not to get too excited. But we really are :o)

Today

I was just taking random pictures, one of Andrew watching TV just to tease him, and look what else I got:
Oliver and Molly were wrestling. They look and sound quite vicious when the play.

Here's my belly this morning at 14 1/2 weeks.
I may get camera shy and more self-conscious as it grows, so don't count on more!

Fourteen Weeks: Baby Baby Baby!

Long before I ever seriously considered having a baby, my friend, Kristen, told me a story. Kristen had had pregnant friend who cared about nothing other than her pregnancy and baby. While Kristen completely understood why her friend's interests had changed, she was frustrated that the friend had zero interest in anything else, including Kristen's life. Kristen's an especially comical story-teller, and repeatedly imitated her friend saying nothing other than, "Baby, baby, BAABBYYY!" (Kristen did this rolling her eyes with an exasperated expression.) Kristen made me laugh, but it also left an impression on me. I hope to be a well-rounded, interesting, fun, good friend and mama.

So now, at the risk of boring the pants off most of you (if you're bored, don't take your pants off, just skip these kinds of posts), and for the benefit of my parents on the other side of the country (who are interested) and for myself (to record & remember stuff), let the baby baby baby posts begin!

On June 11th, I took a pregnancy test. There was a an obvious positive plus. Of course I took the second one in the pack later the same day... just to make sure. Andrew and I were really REALLY happy. Here's the proof:
Yesterday was the second check-up. The baby's heart beat (152 bmp!) was heard for the first time. In the video, you can hear it. What you see is the ceiling of the room.

It only sounds sporadic because our midwife was still moving it around to find the strongest spot. After I stopped recording, she found a really strong spot. It was so loud you could hear it in the next room.

Skiing in August (Part 2)

I had such a great time! Well - ok - hiking up with skis & boots on my back, not fun. But skiing down, and watching Oliver play in the snow, and hanging out with Andrew - tons of fun and worth the hike up. I've had a few skiing dreams since then. I just wanted to add a picture of Andrew since he rarely includes one of himself.

Andrew & Oli in the snow:


Didn't anyone tell Andrew you can't run in ski boots? Notice the dust trail behind Oliver.


You think Oliver was having fun in the dirt? You should see him in the snow, he just goes nuts - digging, throwing it around, just crazy romping and playing.

Thanks so much Andrew for a really fun time!

Skiing in August

The thought of missing one ski season due to life in equatorial Micronesia and the prospect of missing another due to a large belly made Megan really sad. I had told her that you can ski in Oregon all year round. The skiing is on a glacier high on Mount Hood and can be really terrible or really pretty okay depending on weather and the previous winter's snow fall. Last Saturday we decided to give it a try. Megan was really excited. Of all my life's accomplishments getting my then girlfriend and now wife to love skiing ranks pretty high.

The thing with summer skiing is that you have to start pretty early in the morning. Mt Hood is about two hours away so we left around 0530. If you want to ski all day it costs $45. This gets you six or seven hours of skiing on a glacier. We decided that one run was enough for us so we carried our skis up the mountain. The run that we paralleled is called the "Magic Mile" so named due to its length. The ascent is a little over a mile, gains about 1500 feet of elevation and took us about an hour and half (we took a lot breath/picture breaks).

The decent took a quite a while because Megan kept stopping saying that she wanted to savor it. The snow was good. Oliver was really good...


Here is a view of Mt Hood socked in from the parking lot...


The trail had a nice view from time to time...


Here is a video of Oliver following Megan. The sound is absolutely terrible due to skiing on hard snow and wind. You can see that the run is so long it kind of ends in the clouds. Oliver ran down the whole run following us during all of our S-turns...

Liars

Q: What do you call two empty seats on a bus full of politicians that is flying off a cliff?

A: A waste.

_____________________________________________________

A bus load of politicians were driving down a country road when all of a sudden the bus ran off the road and crashed into a tree in an old farmer's field. The old farmer after seeing what happened went over to investigate. He then proceeded to dig a hole and bury the politicians.

A few days later, the local sheriff came out, saw the crashed bus, and then asked the old farmer, "Were they all dead?"

The old farmer replied, "Well, some of them said they weren't, but you know how them politicians lie."

I've watched more TV in the past week than I have in the past year. The reason for this is the Olympics. I love to watch just about any kind of sport. So far, my favorites are badminton and synchronized-diving. I like watching gymnastics too but they don't start until 2230, so I never get to see them all. Due to my time in front of the tube I have, for the first time this election season, also been subjected to Presidential Political ads.

There's the one that compares Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears(Ms. Hilton had her own response) . Obama has some light ads, you know, hope, change, blah, blah, blah. But he also has this one about energy. McCain has a similar one that deals with energy.

The problem is they spend millions of dollars saying they are going to provide tax incentives for solar and wind power while neither of them showed up to vote for a bill that provides said incentives. Not showing is the same as voting no. McCain has missed the vote for this bill eight times. Eight.

This bill makes the price of solar and wind power competitive with coal and oil power. In a free market people choose what is cheaper. Without the incentive tons of projects will be put on hold or canceled when the current incentive ends, 31 December 2008.

You can find out quite of bit of information here on the information super highway. The bills number, S. 3335, gives you the voting record for every senator (both senators from Oregon voted "yea", how about your state?). From their you can look up the actual description of the bill.

Voting

S. 3335 Description

How can you be for promoting renewable energy while at the same time voting against a bill that does that? Simple. Lie.

"Go buy a helmet tough guy."

I ride my bike very frequently. I own two helmets. I did not buy either of them and I don't ever wear either of them. Last summer I posted a video on Youtube that shows me riding without a helmet. Since then I have received two comments (out of five) and two thumbs up (out of two) saying I should wear a helmet. The last one assumes that I am showing off my toughness by calling me a "tough guy". A few weeks back I went on a group ride with about 40 other people. This was my first time riding with this group and I chose not to wear a helmet. Not one person introduced themselves to me or even said hi. Only three people spoke a word to me.

1. "Where's your helmet?"

2. "You should really wear a helmet."

3. "That must be nice a breezy. You should probably wear a helmet though."

When I was in college I showed up for a group ride and the people wouldn't let me ride with them because I didn't have a helmet. That's how I got my first helmet. A friend who invited me gave me his old one (helmets, like many safety things, have a only a short life).

I aquired my other helmet in a similar fashion.

This post is not about the merits of wearing helmets. I have no good reason for not wearing a helmet, I simply don't like them. Feel free to think of me as an idiot for not wearing one. Don't call me a tough guy though please, that hurts my feelings :' (

No, this post is asking the fundamental question "why are people so adimate about me wearing a helmet?" Most people, when they see a personal flaw in somebody else they keep it to themselves. What is it about helmets that is so special? I am a very stubborn person and have been known to things strictly because other people didn't want me too. So now I can never wear a helmet, even if I wanted to. Otherwise I wouldn't be such tough guy.

In thinking about this I can across a couple interesting stories about bike helmets. One. Two.

The first contians a rather graphic images and it's message is bascially "Always wear a helmet because you never know what's going to happen." But when I read I hear "Wear a helmet, that way you don't have to pay attention to your surrondings."

The second one the guys says he doesn't wear a helmet because he's too pretty. I'm tough and pretty!

Are you a criminal? I am.

Enter your name here to find out. My dad is :o)

Of course they have a small disclaimer:

Note: Some states include minor traffic offenses in the data that we receive; however, these people might not be actual criminals.

Cyndi posted this on her blog, but just in case you forgot (like me), Cyndi's mission team is leaving updates on their South Korea trip here.

Jordan's a Fish

Monday, Jordan and I went to the Dallas Aquatic Center.



We went to a pool with a diving board, because Jordan wanted to learn how to dive. But this center is a series of pools: one with a diving board, rope swing, super slide; another with a river ride and system splashy-spraying fountain things; others with regular swimming areas, lap lanes, kiddy stuff; and a spa (jetted hot tub) in the middle so the parents can sit and watch the kids go nuts.


I didn't tell her it was anything more than a pool with a diving board, so she was really excited when she finally saw everything.




We spent a lot of time just playing in the water.




After a while we decided to try diving off the wall together a few times. We started just by falling in head first. Then I recruited 2 slightly older girls (who I observed diving off the edge with more bounce), to join in with us. In no time, Jordan was keeping up with the young teens. We got bored with that after a while, and went down the slide a few times. About an hour later, Jordan came prancing over to me, enthusiastically telling me what she had accomplished:



I had not prompted her (not even mentioned) to try diving off the diving board. I was oblivious that she had it on her mind to try. So I was thrilled, and she said, "No one told me it was this much fun to dive!" I bet her mom will be awfully proud.

P.S. - She also can swim to the bottom of the deep end (12 feet) and touch bottom with her hands.