Miniature Golf

Dan and I rematched on the same golf course as always.  Dan schooled me as usual.  We finished with dinner at Arby's.  Mmmmm.....  Potato Cakes.

Front Nine
Par	22
Myles	28
Dan	23
Back Nine
Par	21
Myles	27
Dan	26
Totals
Par	43
Myles	55
Dan	49

Congrats Dan.

Miniature Golf

is super fun, but I have

never beaten Dan.

Responsibilities

Civic

It's hardly been mentioned in the news, but I want everyone to know that the election is just around the corner.  If you vote by mail, absentee, or early, please do so.  Please do read about your candidates and your measures.  Seek to understand.  If you think the country's in a good place or a bad place, it's because you did or did not vote for the people running the show.  I don't care about your politics. I don't care about your causes.  I care that our government should feel accountable to the people and to nothing else.

Societal

This week, I cooked vegetarian Sunday.  After looking around for a bit, we picked a recipe that allowed us to also take advantage of the amazing weather and use the grill.  It was "Eggplant Mixed Grill" and it was fabulous.

Personal

Another month has flown by already.  Another visually interesting budget.  We had a little V for Vendetta thing going on this month.  I think we're out to get overspending.  New rule: Five dollar penalty for every fifteen over budget.  The penalty comes out of the play money fund.

"The proudest now is but my peer"

Gone Fishin'

This morning I woke up at 5:30 on purpose.  Strange as it may seem, I did this of my own free will.  When James invited me to go fishing several weeks ago, I said yes.  

I've never really been a fisherman.  I went with my granddad years ago, and I always managed to frustrate him.  I even pulled on my rod so hard once that it snapped in two.  Oh he loved that!  When I would get bored, which was often, I would toss rocks.  Yep, fishing is in my blood!

Nevertheless, when James said fishing, the memories above became warm memories, and I missed my granddad.  I thought about how I had his fishing pole, and I had never used it.  I thought I could even have fun.  So, I said yes.

Now James is a great guy.  He knew I was basically a novice.  He's taught kids to fish.  He had the right qualifications to teach me to fish and to teach me to have fun fishing.  So two weeks before today, James spent our encounters at work educating me about fishing:  How to properly set up your line, What fishing off a jetty means for you and the fish, Where different knots go, and What to wear.  Then last week, I took my granddad's fishing pole to work, and James brought some weights.  Having graduated from theory, James showed me how to tie knots and had me do some practice casts on the field.  I was prepared to fish.

Granddad had spent his time trying to teach me knots.  He took me fishing and showed me how to cast.  Give him credit, you can only teach someone who doesn't want to learn so much.  All I had wanted was to make him happy; I'm not sure I had ever wanted to fish.

Today, for the first time in my life, I both felt prepared to and wanted to fish.  I woke up.  I got dressed.  James picked me up and we drove in the late evening early morning to Newport.  We crawled down trails and out along the jetty and we cast our lines.   James caught three fish.  I caught one.  Not a great tally, but I'm told the tides were not favoring us.  I have now, however, doubled the number of fish I have caught unaided.  It's a great feeling.

At the end of the fishing day, sun high in the mid-day sky, we climbed back to the car and ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches, our cleaned hands still stinking like fish.  The sandwhiches tasted great.  My cheeks were a bit rosier from the sun and also sore from all the smiling.  I won't be waiting as long to go fishing again.

October Volleyball

Sunny days in Fall

Few dry volleyball games left

Enjoy and play on

P.S. Vegetarian Sunday: On Tuesday: Lemon linguine

Fishy Responsibilities

The water in a fish tank, even for an air-breather Betta, should be replaced every so often.  For a single Betta fish in a 10 gallon tank, that turns out to be every 2 to 3 months.  So, as part of our fish-watching responsibilities, that is what we did today.  It took several hours, but we were probably more thourough than we needed to be.   

First, we filled the holding tank that Flitter would live in for the cleaning process with water at the correct temperature.  Then we treated that water to get the chlorine fixed.  Then we gently captured him using a plastic container and transferred him to the holding tank.

We...

...transferred the plants to their holding tanks.

...took many small trips from the aquarium to the sink, taking dirty water each time.

...carried the tank to kitchen, where we drained what we could and got all the rocks out.

...cleaned the fake rock home.

...cleaned the filter.

...cleaned the heater.

...cleaned all the rocks by putting them in a sifter and running hot water over them.

...dried the rocks by putting them on a large towel.

...further cleaned the rocks by sifting through them and removing plant material.  

...wiped down the aquarium surfaces until they shined.

...returned the aquarium.

...returned the rocks.

...took many small trips from the sink to the aquarium, adding fresh water at the right temperature.

...added the plants.

...treated the water for chlorine.

...added plant growth solution.

...transferred Flitter.

This is a task done out of love.  So there are no complaints.  I am, however, seriously startled by the ammount of time and effort it took two people.  For Chrystal to do this all the time for Flitter is just amazing.

Tomorrow: Clean and put away all the transfer aquarium materials.

Monkey See

Susan does this thing

she posts it on each Tuesday

I thought I'd try it

P.S. Vegetarian Sunday: Thai Peanut Noodles

Kim's Birthday '08

Kimberley turned a little older last week and the family came together to celebrate on Saturday.  For presents, we went shopping at Fred Meyer and bought Kim things she needed.  Chrystal's package from Denmark arrived and was opened with much fanfair.  We journeyed to P.F. Chang's in Hillsboro for dinner.   The food was excellent, the company was great, and Kim seemed to have a fun time.  

Our Fortunes

Mr. Cachew: A wish will be granted after a long delay.

Mrs. Cachew: Generosity and perfection are your assets and they show.

NPR Music

Betsey and I were listening to ATC on the way home.  We were listening to a story about giant pumpkins that explode.  Towards the end of the segment they invited us to go online and view video of a gentlemen chopping up his pumpkin.  The outgoing musical interlude was "Today", and I guess I was a little bit slow, because out loud I wondered, "Really NPR, Smashing pumpkins?".

To which, Betsey responded with incredulity, "Duh."

To which, I understood my folly and smiled sheepishly.

Thanks NPR for a wonderful car moment.

Beautiful Sky

Leaving work today, the sky was too beautiful not to photograph.

I was rewarded by being pelted with rain when I otherwise would have made it to the car dry, but I think it was well worth it.

P.S. Vegetarian Sunday: Veggie burgers and homemade potato salad.

Update:

So today is Thursday, it felt like Friday, then I get home and I'm watching all new SNL.  What the heck?

September Wrap-up

October is starting and I don't want to get too far behind, so here's a good effort to play catch-up.

Visiting the Folks

The second weekend of September, we traveled down to visit my mum and dad. On Friday night, I managed to get quite drunk all by myself (well the entire bottle of wine to myself helped). We all had fun, but I was wiped for pretty much the whole rest of the weekend. Saturday, after I recovered a bit, Betsey and mum went out for girl time, and dad and I moved a water softener to the water pump and pulled wiring out of the attack. After we finished grunting, we cleaned up and relaxed a bit. Mum and Betsey came back a little later and then we all went out to dinner at The Brewery (map). We were treated, because they're great. The food was excellent. Sunday arrived all too soon, but there was no hurry to go anywhere, so we stuck around and had a late lunch. Before leaving, I grabbed a box with my old yearbooks in it so I could finally accept those facebook names I just couldn't put a face too. The trip home was uneventful, and we looked forward to the next two weekends; our first weekends without plans to see anyone in about two months. Seeing mum and dad had been fun, but we needed time to be us with just us.

The New Things

When the third weekend rolled around, there was one simple date. Go have dinner Friday night with James, his wife, Kayla, and their just 1 year old daughter, Chloe. This was kind of new for us. Being adults and having dinner with adults our age. They made us a great dinner with fresh vegetables from their garden and garlic rubbed pork cooked on the barbeque. It was an amazing dinner. After dinner, the five of us went on a nearly 2 mile walk (baby in stroller) through the neighborhood on a fine end of summer evening. We finished up the evening with a movie and marionberry pie, taking home a jar of homemade pickles, the best pickles we've had in quite some time.

Saturday afternoon we awoke. On the way home the previous night, I'd told Betsey I was thinking about cleaning out the office for when her new school year started. Well we woke up, and went on our usual walk to the local coffee house. Walking home, I was surprised to find myself still motivated. The office has never been clean since we moved in, so cleaning it would be no small task. The main bit was emptying, cleaning, and moving Molly's habitat. I hadn't wanted to do anything with it after she died, and the habitat had sat there, silent and full of bedding and toys and food, for several months. With the 50 gallon aquarium and stand in the garage, there was a huge space left in the office. Betsey and I decided new furniture was in order to fill up the space and provide shelving and organization.

Sunday morning we decided to make good on our thoughts about furniture. We still had a ton of Target money from our wedding, so we went shopping. We picked up a short cabinet that Flitter's 10 gallon aquarium would fit on and a modular cube shelving system that we already had one of and knew we liked. As an added bonus, all our wood furniture in the office is from the same Target line and is the same pattern "maple", so things look quite coordinated.

Flitter is Chrystal's fish we're looking after while she's in Denmark. Her blog is full of great pictures of the places she is visiting. There's a link to it on the right called "Crossing the Atlantic".

Sunday evening I finished building the furniture and moved it into the office, while Betsey started cooking for a new household tradition we're trying to start up: Vegetarian Sunday. She made Southern Italian Ratatouille. The only thing Betsey did different from the recipe, as I understand it, is not salt the ingredients. We tend to prefer to add salt to taste after the meal is cooked. After dinner, we moved Flitter and thus his aquarium from the floor by the television, where he had lived for over a month, to his new home on top of the cabinet in the office. His aquarium fit perfectly.

Last Weekend before School

Knowing how Betsey becomes school Betsey, I surprised her Thursday night with the news that I was taking Friday off to spend some quality time with her. After she canceled all her dates with her myriad of boyfriends, she was pretty pleased about the deal. We did spend a lot of time together, which was nice, but we picked up on the tasks from the previous weekend and continued the great office effort. As I sorted through probably over a decade's worth of bank statements and miscellaneous documents and separated the few keeps from the many other papers, Betsey became an extension of the shredder. As a team, we eliminated from our life several cardboard boxes, two full garbage bags of papers that did not need shredding, and six full bags of fairly well compressed shreddings. The process was very liberating. It took all three days to make it through the papers, and we're still sorting things out now. I imagine, in a couple weeks when everything is as we want it, there will be a photo or two to share. Until then, admire the trash; please.

We did reach a milestone of sorts that weekend that's worth a picture. In August, we bought a cheap little white board from Dollar Tree and started tracking our budget. We set an ambitious goal of 100 dollars a week. Those 100 dollars do not include fixed costs like utilities, rent, and loan payments. Well, the cheap board fell apart by the end of the first week, but we kept at it and we learned two things: We liked having our budget on the wall giving us feedback, and we had set the budget aggressively. So in September, we bought a better white board, set the budget to 150 a week, and went for the gold. We beat our budget each week. As a reward, the money not spent, goes into the play money (Christmas gift) fund. If we go over, it comes out of the play money. I think it's visually interesting to see how the budget came out, and I hope you will too.

The budget also doesn't include food, because in July we bought 1200 (Tax Relief) dollars of FredMeyer gift cards (that's 4 cards). FredMeyer gave an immediate 10% gain in value for every 300 dollars. We knew our bank couldn't beat that, so we picked up the extra 120 bucks. Our food doesn't enter the budget until the cards are empty, and then we'll bump the budget to adjust.

Capitol Idea

As a member of Salem YoungPros, each month I have the opportunity to go do something pretty fun. September's event was a tour of the Capitol building. I didn't get to go in grade school, so, camera in hand, I intended to make up for it. The building is quite impressive. We had a full tour, including the statue at the top, but due to the fire in August, we did not get to see the governor's office. I had a ton of fun with Dan, Scott, and Nick, some of my friends from work.