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It's been a bit in coming, but earlier this month the data collection module got installed and is spitting out info.

And after a minor hiccup the inspector was back this week and the system got a pass from the city! There's still an Energy Trust inspection to come tied to their rebate, but things are basically done it looks like.

Make magazine's had a lot of interesting articles on coffee related topics. We haven't undertaken anything radical here, but have come up with a few simple things which have greatly improved the coffee experience with our middle to low end Krups 4050. It performs well IMHO for the price, especially with the following:

• Buy small quantities of Peet's Coffee: Maybe someday we'll try roasting/grinding our own, but this seems like a good compromise given the effort.
• Chisel off the plastic latch from the water/splash tray: We actually had to return the machine after nearly a year because we could not remove the tray to empty it. The plastic had slowly warped from heating over time and the little wedge of plastic on its bottom (which ostensibly keeps the tray from sliding out and making a mess) was simply too tight to disengage. The new machine had a tray of different type plastic, but it didn't seem worth the hassle, so first thing I did was trim off most of the nub of plastic. It no longer gives a positive click when slid into the machine, but wont get stuck again.
• Coffee ground guide: This idea came from Dave Hansen and isn't machine specific. Find a yoghurt cup with a bottom diameter size near that of the inner diameter of your portafilter. Cut out the bottom and enough of the sides of the yoghurt cup to fit into the portafilter (see picture above...Yoplait cup just visible on bottom right). This makes it really easy to quickly dump in grounds without making a mess, break up any hunks and get just the right amount (ie: slightly more than the height of the portafilter since the grounds will be tamped down quite a bit).
• Swap the Krups pressurized portafilters (double bottomed with only a single outlet hole in the true bottom versus the many holes in the false bottom): We are using pretty fresh coffee always and have gotten a nice crema with the standard Krups portafilters. This is supposedly a fake crema though and eventually we've started having a lot of trouble with the portafilters clogging, regardless of the size ground we use. Searching online we found a number of portafilters which would potentially fit our machine. Krups' own older non-pressurized ones were the first we tried and they work like a charm. The crema is not any more or less in volume, but it's notably different in consistency and taste. I'm not convinced it is notably better or worse, just different. And it doesn't clog which is key. The coffee is also coming out as a nice puck after pulling a shot now, where before the output was fairly random between over dry puck, good consistency puck and pure soup. (Pictured above the original pressurized portafilter is on the left and the new to us "older" Krups non-pressurized portafilter is on the right.)

Shovelled off the driveway and road during a break in the freezing rain. The side to which I shovelled is 2-3feet deep in snow.

The igloo building's on hold.

There was an inch to three additional snow last night, plus a good half inch of frozen rain of top of everything now. The snow's still too dry to build with. The air's too cold and wet to be out in generally.

The yard stick on the back deck (north wind plus roof runoff means more drifting) is around 14" currently. The front yard/road has 10+ inches depending on whether it had previously been shovelled or melted any during the week.

A few more random pictures here.

We'd had as much as 6" of snow over a number of days this week, much of which has melted. This evening in the areas I had not shoveled and that were bare 24hours ago, I measured 8" of snow. In the areas where the previous snow had made it to today I've got a ruler 12" under the snow. It'll be interesting to see if we still get the up to 8" that are forecast for tonight.

We started building an igloo in the front yard. But it's been so cold the snow is light and fluffy and has been hard to form into bricks.

I've been intending to get a TV stand (and someday a new TV) basically since I moved to Oregon. In the meantime the tiny, cheap-o TV was sitting on the floor all this time. I never found anything I liked for a stand, which was also well built and also not really expensive.

Saturday I decided to build one from an IKEA table top and simple poplar from Home Depot. All told it is extremely strong, reasonably built for my first real go at cabinetry/furniture making, and it cost about $250 in parts. I spent Saturday planning/buying, Sunday cutting/joining and Monday and Tuesday evenings on joining. Last night I finished it up.

Having a Kreg pocket hole set up made this work really well.

Now I just need to decide how to paint or finish it. Probably go for a reddish stain to mimic the cherry in the living room.

Madi and I made a cork board form recycled wine and champagne corks to store notes in the kitchen...

After coaching a First Lego League team last year and attending a solar power expo or two I've had my curiosity about solar electric piqued. As of today I've actually signed a contract with Gen-Con, Inc. and expect to have a 2.4kW system on my roof within about a month!

I need to pull cat5 to the garage, but apparently should be able to suck the inverter's stat's off onto the web even.

I put my foot in front of a shot in a totally routine defensive play but the shot turned my foot under as my weight was coming down on it. I haven't had a turned ankle bad in ages and ages. I'll know more in a few days as the swelling goes down more, but I think I dodged a bullet as the swelling's down a bit today and it's feeling much better already. It definitely looks nasty though.

Kauai. First day and only slightly sunburned, dehydrated and paradised.

We made a cat boarding reservation with the so-called Cat Care Professionals of Lake Oswego and it's gone bad in a hardly even believable way. I have rarely been so upset by a demonstration of utterly unprofessional behaviour. I've given them highly a negative review on at least five web sites now and have filed complaint #5863027 with the Better Business Bureau.

We made a reservation here for our cat for the week of Christmas. We called to verify drop off hours and were told they would be open 4-6 on Christmas Eve. We arrived shortly after 5pm and saw two people through the front window/door. They got up as we walked to the door, seemingly stowing cats so they wouldn't get out the door. But then we noticed a sign saying they were closed the evening of Christmas Eve. The two people proceeded to hide from us, crawl around on the floor and peek out windows rather than talk to us! For one hour!

Cara made Jenn and I these beautiful snowflake ornaments at school.

I'm looking forward to actually doing a tree next year for the first time. I've picked up a few cheap glass ornaments on sale this year and hope to find some more in the after Christmas sales. Plus my mom's got a number of ones that are "mine" which she intends to give me the next time I see them.

Quite some time back I'd seen Mike Libby's creations linked on BoingBoing and this year I decided to spend my Oregon state kicker check supporting artists and some favourite charities. I purchased the above dragon fly which to my great excitement arrived in the mail today. I was crushed though to open the box and find the tail split off and in pieces!

Thankfully the body and wings aren't damaged and Mike says he can fix it up. Even in its sad state it is a gorgeous piece of biosteampunkery. I can't wait to eventually get it up on my wall.

The FIRST LEGO League team I've been coaching/mentoring competed yesterday and did really well! I was a bit worried because they were seeming nervous and unenthusiastic this last week, but I think it was just nerves and being a bit tired after three months worth of meeting every Sunday afternoon. At the competition they had a lot of fun and were confident and proud to show the judges what they've learned and accomplished this fall.

And they won a trophy for robot design too!

Up until this weekend I've had a large rambling collection of computer hardware "that might be useful" but which wasn't getting any meaningful use by me. I'd been planning to recycle/donate it somewhere somehow and finally got organised, backed up a few things, wiped my hard drives, filled up the Subaru (to the brim) and drove over to Free Geek.

I am seriously impressed by their operation! They're way huge compared to what I expected, had lots of volunteers and a huge stream of people dropping off things. Their thrift store has gobs of reasonably priced recycled systems and accessories. And they're all about linux (Ubuntu specifically) and OpenOffice to keep prices down for their target demographic.

I was a bit sad though to see the genuine Hercules monochrome ISA card and amber monochrome CRT sorted into the recycle pile instead of reuse. But then there probably aren't that many ISA slot sporting motherboards in a chassis big enough to hold the card desired for use by some random nerd like me as a server console. A volunteer said their museum of old computer stuff has had to become picky as they get so much old crap that they'd run out of room.

But it feels good to know some of the stuff (5 computers, 4 monitors, 3 UPS's, and a lot more) should find new homes and if not be recycled responsibly!

Last night we did the pay-per-view over the web thing from usllive.com so we could watch the Timbers play the Atlanta Silverbacks in the first of their two game playoff series. We've listened to the Timbers many times and our local commentators sound like any other sports commentators, if not bit better than average given the state of soccer commentary in the US. The Atlanta commentators though on the pay-per-view....horrible! They didn't know players names, they didn't call the game as it happened, they droned on about the ref's calls in a completely one-sided fashion. Similar for what parts of the game they did call, it was all about Atlanta. And they even referred to the Timbers as "Seattle" once. One of them had their little kid in the booth and was talking to them during the game with their mic open.

We got so fed up we put on the Timbers radio to get a less biased call, but it was something like 6 or 7 seconds out of sync ahead of the video which made things very confusing.

I know "our" commentators certainly show some bias to the Timbers, but they at least are quite professional about that and about calling the game evenly. If this is the norm for the USL broadcasts, I'm not so inclined to pay for them unless I also get a delay to pipe the radio audio through.

Last month Jenn and I did the Team Oregon basic motorcycle training and earned out motorcycle endorsement from the DMV. Since then we've been researching different scooter options and test riding different bikes around town. Today I finally kicked down and bought a Vespa GTS 250ie.

The ride home was uneventful outside of getting lost trying to get through all the construction and onto Barbur. I need to get a feel for how accurate the speedometer is, but assuming it's accurate I easily got it up to 70mph on the way home.

I think it was already last month that we got the wood delivered, which we must've ordered the month before nearly, then let it acclimate a while and then earlier this month we started slowly laying it all, which was a learning experience. Yesterday and today the sanding/finishing was done. It's still drying but I sneeked a litle peek and it looks really good. I can't wait until this weekend when I can actually look at it closer!

I've got more pictures of the whole process (not taken on a cellphone like this one) which I need to post later.

After nearly a year our lemon tree has given the first of the three lemons we've had growing on it. I think I'll make a lemon merengue pie this weekend.

Jenn got us the best Valentine's present ever...a hands-on Indian food (breads in particular) cooking class at In Good Taste. We learned how to make naan, batura and paratha and a number of other things. I've got some shopping to do for a few extra kitchen tools, but in general all the preparation was quite easy. And it tasted great!

After a _lot_ of work on my complicated stool design, it is close to completed. It dry fits, but is a bit too tight and needs a little cleaning up and a handle hole cut in the top. Then probably a clear lacquer or some light finish.

It's been great practice getting me more up to speed on my tools and gear and techniques, since I haven't done much woodworking since junior high wood shop.

Seems like I manage to get some new stitches every three or four years. After an afternoon of woodworking I guess my hands and arms were tired. I knicked my left middle finger while chopping for dinner...something I rarely do. But that wasn't enough warning to be careful. A bit later I was cleaning up and sliced my right middle finger after putting the knife in the sink.

I just missed the only local Kaiser urgent care and spent nearly 5 hours downtown at Kaiser's overnight urgent care which was super busy. For something that is just going to take 10 minutes of doctor/nurse time I wish I had a reasonably priced option to pay for service. But the last time I paid for stitches at an uninsured urgent care facility it cost something like $500 for the suture kit, numbing shot and 10 minutes of a staff member's time. Health care is a crazy industry.

Our potatoes got harvested this past weekend. The haul (almost 15 pounds I think) is a lot bigger than last year although still not quite what we might have hoped. With the raised boxes done and another year's worth of composting hopefully next year will be even better.

I also finally posted some pictures of us making apple cider at my neighbour's house a few weekends ago.

After a full day Sunday and another hour tonight, router table is almost done. The fence just needs a little work.

And I'm not happy with the feather boards. The holes I drilled were following the instructions (admittedly vague at this point because the layout would really vary with the specific commercial featherboard one has) but I don't think they're likely to be very function with the fence I've built. But that can be changed pretty easily I think.

In pretty much every other regard though the instructions and design seem excellent. I'm extremely happy with Carol Reed's Router Joinery Workshop book. Great descriptions, hints and guides and really useful explainations of the why's associated with those how's. Unfortunately it seems she may have retired...I bought the book via www.routerlady.com and it was seeming to indicate that was happening, but now the site doesn't even seem to be there at all?

Tonight was the last game of the Timbers season. Even though missing the playoffs was a disappointment, as fans we had a good season.

Last week I stopped over in Toronto after a week of nerdly brain overload at OLS to meet some DB2 people for more nerdly brain overload, but this also gave me a chance to see some of Toronto. Naturally I did the most nerdly thing I could and paid Roger Wood of Klockwerks a visit.

He gave me a tour of his studio which is full of all sorts of neat recycled and retro stuff. I drooled over the various clocks and we chatted for almost two hours about all sorts of things (politics, art, tech, open source, nixie tubes, Make, circuitry, &tc.) before I finally settled on the above clock for my living room mantel. It was an amazing experience to visit an admired artist in his studio and feel a resonance to him.

Oh and candied ginger and peanuts. Roger's trying to convert the world one person at a time. They make a delicious snack! Very complimentary flavours.

The bubble wrapped and boxed clock went through the airport security in Toronto and Vancouver and elicited much confusion amoung the x-ray screeners. But two thorough swabbings by the bomb sniffing machines and pointing to pictures of Roger's clocks got me on the plane home...and the clock made it in one piece!

The long weekend allowed me to finally get my raised beds framed in. It was a fun project. Next is the more tedious task of putting in the irrigation and later in the summer/fall rotatilling, putting down some top soil and grass seed.

I've been a bit busy since we got back a week ago, but finally uploaded my pictures. We had a wonderful time. The kids were troopers. It's not too hard to coax them through museums and churches and many miles of walking with gelato and bakeries and play grounds here and there.

We were centered in Chiusi, Tuscany and did an assortment of trips from there. Our first day we explored Assisi and drove south to Spello and Bevagna before heading home. Next was a day in Florence including David and the Duomo. Then came Sienna, the Chianti region and just about running out of gas in the car and not making it in Brolio Castle. Then we went back to Florence for the Uffizi, Ponte Vecchio and some shopping. We had a rest day and explored a bit around Chiusi before setting off (via Bologna and Ravenna) to Venice for three days. There we explored the main town and Murano, but didn't quite make it to Burano or Torcello. We had a brief day in Rome, missed the Sistine Chapel (closed) and St. Peter's Basilica (closed for a special mass), but got our feet cooled in Trevi fountain briefly before the police yelled at us.

Italy seems like a place that I just can't get enough of. I think now I've spent about 7 weeks there over 3 trips. Bologna was fascinating (were only there an hour for lunch) and I have a list of other places I'd like to see or spend more time (Speleto, Montepulciano, Chianciano Terme, Chianti, Cinqueterre, Torcello, Palermo and Sicily in general).

I have a few rolls of film to be developed, although I accidentally exposed one roll to light, had the camera set wrong for most of another and had no tripod/flash so probably lots are underexposed with real image. As a consolation I have a bunch of digital images. This is the first time I've really had my digital camera out of its comfort zone...The huge tall buildings and geometric shapes really show off how badly the tiny lense distorts the image. I think I've justified to myself an upgrade. I almost bought a Coolpix S4 before the trip and wish I had, because I'd have better pictures and my current one's pictures wouldn't have me thinking digital SLR! In the meantime the dollar was extremely weak and my credit card bill will keep my from spending money on new toys for some time...

We're having a sunny week and I decided to dig out where the water is seeping into the house. I was hoping the rain gutter to sewer pipe on the side of the house there would be low enough to just put a drain right into that, but turns out that's not the case.

I guess I'll do what I'd originally thought: put something there to try to seal around the inbound water pipe (obviously a large-ish hole) and lay a drain pipe below it to carry off any water that would otherwise collect there.

It appears that the gravel laid in between the rain gutter pipe and the foundation is actually bringing water to this point. On the positive side, the french drain I'd been deepening periodically is only a few feet away from this point and at a similar depth. So I've not go much digging to do in order to quickly lay a proper drain.

And if I leave it exposed for a few months it wont be much more digging to run irrigation from the front mains/controls out to the back yard. Just in time for a garden this year...

Madison and I made a bird house following various spec's we found online and recycling some scraps of wood I had laying around. I forgot to take a picture before we put it up so this isn't the best picture...it turned out pretty nice though. It may end up coming down in the coming weeks for reattachment before any birds more in as I'm not entirely convinced I got it attatched perfect and I'm curious to see if the squirrels try anything with it.

I'm just glad to have made it up on the ladder to do a bunch of hammering and nail-gunning and made it back down all in wet weather on sloped ground without any trips to the hospital.

Next project is putting up a light at Jenn's house and then Cara and I will probably make a wooden foot stool for around the house.

Got home late from Jenn's house after breaking out the Scotland Yard game I'd given Madison for Christmas. Went to move the beer into the crawlspace after reading the lager info finally and realising we were supposed to just get the primary going initially at a normal temperature and then go cool (had it in my head from the brew book that primary happened completely like normal). After only five days the primary fermentation seems to be going quite slow already so hopefully we haven't messed anything up. But I have more major worries on my mind now...

Popping the hatch to the crawlspace I noticed I have a puddle! Looking around I've convinced myself there is no internal leak in the plumbing but rather that exterior run-off and rain from the last week of storms has the northwest corner of the property extremely saturated. I think this is "just" water percolating up under the house. I got soaked but spent quite a while cleaning out the french drain I'd hastily added on the west property line when my water main burst on my birthday.

The ground out there is extremely wet on the surface and wasn't really flowing anywhere. After my new digging in the dark it seems like a larger portion of the rain is now flowing and away from the house. But still the whole north side of the lot is very wet and while sloped away from the house on the surface, I don't know what the fill is like. There could well be layers in it that slope towards the house. The spot where the water is seems to have seeped from the northwest towards the center of the house and I'd guess is 3-4 feet below the ground surface level outside the northwest corner of the house.

I might need to do some major digging out back. I've never been quite clear on whether the rain gutters for the north side of the house drain into the sewer system or if they're just leech lined into the back. I've assumed sewer given the super clay fill dirty used and the amount of rain here. At a minimum I need to do some reading to see if and what I can do about underground water movement.

This afternoon we were thinking of going for a little drive, doing some shopping and maybe grabbing a coffee before hitting the grocery store for something for dinner. The weather had been saying freezing rain starting around 6pm, but then around half past one it started almost hailing. We decided to just make a quick trip to the store as it was getting a little slippery and drivers here don't know what they're doing in this weather. I have never in my life been at a grocery store that was soooo busy!

Saturday we went by Woodcraft drawn in by a one day only 10% off some powertools deal and I left with a benchtop that was on clearance. Sunday I went by Lowes for some lumber and a few bits of hardware and thought I'd just whip together a stand for the benchtop. Turns out my toolchest is still a bit lacking in a few departments and I needed a few different bits of hardware to boot.

It's finally mostly all together though. I've got some scraps of stuff that I'll use to put a shelf on it and I need to figure out where exactly I'll put it and decide if it needs any levelling.

Jenn's sister came to visit this week for a belated birthday present to see Madeleine Peyroux. The show got changed last minute-ish from the Schnitz to the Aladdin and Susie Suh was added to the bill. Both were great, but Susie's performance really stole the show for me. Plus when she was chatting during the set and said something like, "Nobody probably knows me..." I whistled and she laughed and said, "Well maybe one person." It's always cool when you can see an artist in a small venue and get a little interaction with them.

I actually got Susie's signature on her "CD" (crippled Sony fake-CD) and Jenn bought one of her t-shirts and got it signed too. Chatted briefly and told her I was "the one person" and she asked where I'd heard of her...told her KCRW. I'm not sure if I'll actually send the disc into Sony for a non-crippled rebate one or what since it's now autographed. It's just the booklet, so maybe I can hold onto that much?

Anyway, the thumbnail is Susie and the big picture is Madeleine. Yes cameraphones take sucky pictures. They record even suckier audio (terrible clip of awesome trumpet player in Madeleine's backing band). I should say though that cell phones are great when you need to google for Wesley's phone number which isn't in my phone for some reason so I can ask him how the Sony "cd" return program works (ie: will it work if I have no receipt because I bought the disc for cash at the show).

It's been clear and sunny for a while and I hadn't seen any steam or ash over Mt. St. Helens in a week or so and was starting to wonder if either it was so hot in the crater that all the recent snow had melted or possibly that the eruption was slowing down. But around three this afternoon a fairly large cloud of ash rose up and mushroomed out over the mountain. On the news they say it was just a regular rock fall as the lava dome continues to grow and is unstable.

This weekend we finally got a pressure cooker. The garden's been putting out tomatoes faster than we can use them in other things so I filled up the crock pot and made a batch of sauce.

It's not the best sauce I've ever made (though not the worst). Something was just missing from it. I diced some pepperoni into it and maybe put too much? I need to write down the proportions sometime when I make a better one.

We've been buying Classico brand sauce as it has some lower sodium varieties that taste good (and some high sodium that tast really good too), but also they come in mason jars. I packed six of them with the sauce. One was not sealed this morning, so it went into the fridge to be used right away.

Next up, we have some plum juice/pulp frozen from August of last year which needs made into jelly.

We got up early this morning and went out to watch the Livestrong riders and hopefully catch a glace at Lance himself. I think we barely saw him...From across the street the riders mostly all look the same!

...or they'd have to be dead to not have felt this show! I'd say it was the best show I've been to in years.

The Bell Orchestre was very cool. Kinda of like band geeks jamming with drums, stand up bass, violin and horns. They kind of reminded me of In The Nursery. Very cinematic.

Not sure what to make of the Wolf Parade, but almost liked them though they weren't quite all there. Judging the crowd I might have been the only one who thought their mix of Talking Heads and Rancid almost worked. There was something slightly Canadian about it though...slightly overdone and forced, trying to hard, not quite smooth and natural.

The set change before the Arcade Fire was torture. It may have been the longest set change I've ever endured...even longer than the one I endured between Underworld and The Chemical Brothers at the Civic in SF and that wasn't worth the wait (I was there for the prior anyway, so no major loss). But was this ever worth the wait!

The Arcade Fire took the stage with members of their two openers and proceeded to _rock_out_. They played most of their debut album and some other stuff as well. We picked up a copy of their first EP so maybe some of the other stuff will become familiar now. Given the length of the set change and their relative lack of material to draw on, I was wondering which would be longer, the set or set change. But they hit it until almost 1am.

After hearing about their Coachella set and listening to them on KCRW (and getting their cd thanks to KCRW) I really wanted to see this show. I'm very glad Jenn scored tickets earlier this summer. It was absolutely packed. Tickets were going for crazy sums on craigslist and those tickets were probably worth it...

We dug up the first of the potatoes last night. There were three of the 25 or so plants which were ready to dig up (tops had died off). We didn't get a huge amount, but for the first time I can't complain. Judging by the remaining plants there should be a pretty large harvest by the end of summer. While small in size and number, they look very good.

Glaze isn't probably the right word as it was a thick pile of stuff on top of the chop. We got bacon, pork chops, potatoes and green beans at the farmers market. The green beans were steamed with a bit of diced bacon and some fresh black pepper. I trimmed a bit of the fat off the sides of the pork chops and threw that in some foil with some baby blue and yellow potatoes, some rosemary and some greens from the tops of my garlic plants and threw that on low heat in the bbq. For the pork chops I mixed something like five tablespoons each of diced bacon and cilantro paste (from a fresh frozen tube), about a table spoon of minced garlic greens and a teaspoon of crushed red pepper. I seared one side of the pork chops, flipped them and put the sauce/glaze stuff on top and left them to cook slowly. The topping gave some extra juices to the outside of the pork which carmelised a bit. To keep the meal light and summery I put out a side of pineapple cubes and opened a bottle of Oak Knoll's Niagra.

As always the stuff fresh from the farmers market is just perfect. The blue potatoes had a great flavour and the pork chops were really tender and juicy.

Yesterday we finally did our first mountain bike ride since moving to Portland. I haven't even ridden my bike in a year! We rode about six miles into the Lief Erikson trail in Forest Park. If we actually lived in Portland that would be the perfect occasional after work ride...decent gravel pave for most weather conditions, very moderate first two miles uphill then mostly flat for as many miles as you'd want to go.

I'm curious though if there's any legal single track in the park.

On Friday night we saw Rilo Kiley, Feist and The Brunettes at the Roseland. It was a good show. Rilo Kiley didn't do a sound check earlier in the day and it really showed. The first few songs had pretty much no lyrics audible and lots of feedback. Eventually they got it sorted out.

We bought some ladybugs this weekend at the Beaverton farmers market. The last two days we forgot to let them go at dusk, but tonight pulled them out of the fridge after dinner and let them go. They've definitely taken to the potatoes. Hopefully some stick around and breed and add to my garden's little ecosystem.

I bought a gallon jug of "compost tea" there as well. It was supposed to contain thousands (of species?) of fungus, bacteria and nematodes. The mostly clay fill dirt in my back isn't completely sterile as we've found lots of earthworms and other criters as we did the terraces and planted the garden, but I figure it could use all the help it can get towards being more diverse and healthy.

I've been thinking lately that we haven't been getting the kids on their bikes much and that we've not been doing our jobs if Cara heads to her dad's for the summer still on training wheels. Today we managed to get a bit of time and I remembered to try to take off the wheels before she actually got out of the garage.

It took a bit of convincing, showing her that she's in control and able to put her feet down so she doesn't need to fall and a pinky promise that I wouldn't let her fall. She's made and broken a few promises pretty lightly lately, but as she grabbed my pinky with hers there was a very noticable and different urgency and legitimacy to it.

I finally got some trellis and secured it. One of the clematis root balls finally died, so I replaced it with a three year old plant and am training it up onto the trellis. I still hope the other root ball gets going, but if not will do similar with it. The end of the deck is going to look awesome covered in green and with flowers in the summer too.

Over the long weekend I finally finished the last rock wall. Jenn, Madison, Cara and I turned the soil, added compost and planted the strawberry and zucchini starts. We also planted the pumpkin starts, but this morning they were attacked by birds. The cucumbers are about to come up and the corn is all up. The tomatoes are starting to grow with the warmer weather and the potatoes continue to look really good. The peas and beans I transplanted earlier in the week survived the hot spell and are looking good.

We bought four blueberry bushes and planted them on the side of the house. I also started a bed of random stuff along the side of the house (currently mint, poppies and sunflowers).

I've put milk jugs around the baby pumpkin plants' remains and planted a few additional seeds just in case. I think maybe I need a scarecrow!

Three weeks to the day and I have at least three potato plants showing in the first row. Later in the week it's supposed to warm up and today they're getting a good wetting down of rain, so I should know pretty soon if the other twenty or so took or not.

We'll see if I'm saying that in a few weeks...But in the meantime, the rocks and gravel I ordered arrived today. All 11tonnes and 2 cubic yards respectively! I'm excited to be one step closer to having my garden.

Now I've just got to move it all into the back where my terracing awaits.

I'm hoping to have it all moved and the walls built by June. But this pile is bigger than the picture would have you believe. I'll take pictures periodically as the pile shrinks and the walls start coming into form.

Jenn was wanting to paint a mural for the kids last summer and at some point I'd volunteered I guess. For Christmas I formalised it by giving Cara a coupon for a tree on her wall. And now I've finally gotten around to doing it.

We were in Sonoma and Napa earlier this week for a couple days R&R and I forgot to put up the pictures last night. so here they are.

For Christmas I got Madison a gift certificate for the kids climbing at the Portland Rock Gym. We finally got a chance to use it this weekend.

Looks like a major eruption of Mt. St. Helens has started this evening. First picture from the back of my house with my cameraphone.

I miss pumpkin spice lattes. Starbucks has taken them off the menu and Jenn says a barista told her they aren't allowed to sell them even if they still have syrup on hand. Multiple baristas have admitted they were popular even after the holiday season and they were really popular then (they were out of the syrup a lot at first).

I've been trying various things on their menu but the PSL really became my favourite lately and it's not hot enough out yet for a mocha frap (although it's nearly shorts weather).

I don't see why they'd have peppermint all year round but not pumpkin spice.

Looking at their corporate site to file a comment got me looking at the nutrition info. I wish they had lower sugar options also. I'm surprised the PSL has the same amount of sugar as a mocha frap.

Last weekend I started digging some in the backyard. I've spent one to two hours on four days and on most of those had a few people (Jenn, my parents, Jenn's kids) helping out.

Two weeks ago I pruned the plum branches that were hanging over my deck. I brought some of them in and forced them. Thanks to the warm weather I think they're at most a few weeks ahead of the rest of the tree.

And the fig tree from Patrick has a pretty good set of leaves now.

I bought some bulbs this summer at the Beaverton Farmer's Market and planted them in me flower beds. Last night as I drove in I was a little surprised to see them pushing up through the barkdust already. But it was sort of cool in a way because yesterday my grandma died. Kind of a nice reminder of the cycle.

The first really wintery weather for the year has hit. A warm/moist front has moved in from the south on top of some really cold air. It's been between 28 and 30F most of this morning so the rain's coming down and freezing on everything.

Just an office sunset. It seems like my office window faces south, yet the sun's going down almost straight out it, so I must be facing southwest at least a little.

I got a housewarming/Christmas present from Patrick...a fig tree branch freshly rooted. Perfect since I'd mistaken the walnut fruit in the back yard for figs when they were green! The leaves are impossible to mistake for one another, so hopefully soon this fig will put forth a few.

We were in Redding for the weekend and I cameraphoned a few pictures of Mt. Shasta as we headed north back to Oregon.

I should have taken a picture of the remains of my left-rear tire that blew out in between Eugene and Salem. Looks like I had a puncture and slow leak, so the tire got low and was wearing fast and then failed completely. I needed new tires anyway, especially with the snowy/icy/wet weather coming.

One thing I knew I needed to do regarding my heating bill was look at how my doors were sealing. I bought some foam tape to touch up a few gaps I knew were there, but noticed that the bottoms had a huge gap. I could see the neighbour's house across the street if I laid down on the floor inside the door!

I've not been happy with a number of details in my builder's workmanship, so I gave him a call. And this time do I ever feel dumb. Those screws on the threshold are adjustment screws. A simple turn and up comes the threshold.

The doors seal nicely now!

I was playing with Jenn's video camera and bought a cheapo firewire card to see what iMovie's about. Seems like it would be fun and easy (technically at least) to do some video making.

This is just a random snapshot pulled of the camera.

Took two days off work and we went to the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. Snow cover wasn't great, but it's early in December. Managed to do some snowboarding, snow shoeing and relaxing all the same...was a nice break.

The picture is a Mt. Hood sunset from our hotel window. Untouched and unedited, right off my cell phone. It's surprisingly good...most of the pictures I've taken with it are washed out. I want to set up a photoblog sidebar or something on this page so I can snap random pictures of things and post them here easily.

Just some fall leaves laying on the side of the road as I walked to Fred Meyer from work for some lunch.

We were at Smith&Hawken in Portland and just around back was this amazing hunk of random metal things welded together to make a giant goose. If you're interested, it is roughly here.

Hard to tell in the dark but this was a pretty mean looking witch pumpkin with the stem used as the nose. The stem started to get broken off though in transit from the patch so there are some band-aid's holding the poor hag's nose on.

When I went to the Oregon DMV for my registration and license another 2003 silver Subaru WRX with a set of Yakima bike racks on top parked next to me. Pretty funny.

Just historically populating some random old things and trying to get the template and style sheet set up right to have a little sidebar photoblog.

This one is a shot of my server in a rack at HE.net in Fremont. Yes...I am a nerd.