Categories
General

2014 Summer Solstice

Today Kelly, Max and I went to the Oregon coast for a few hours to meet up with some good friends at Fort Stevens State Park. The weather was fantastic. The beach was windy, but the ocean was warm enough to wade in with Max and not freeze. A rarity this early in the summer.

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We returned home with time for me to grill some veggies and have a few beers while enjoying the warm summer evening.

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And here we are at 10:00pm with it still light enough out to enjoy the evening. This is my favorite time of year, when it’s light out late, roses and other flowers still (barely) in bloom, and warm enough to be out this late in shorts. I wait all year for this night.

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Happy solstice to everyone in the northern hemisphere!

Categories
Beer Food Science Work

The past month (a slacker’s recap)

I have once again managed to ignore my blog, this time for a whole month. Oops. I was going to post-date a bunch of individual posts, but I’m too lazy to do that, so in true slacker form here’s a recap of the events from the past month.

July 17, 2009 – Portland International Brewfest

Like the past 3 years, several coworkers and I kicked out of the office around 3:30 PM to walk over to the Portland International Brewfest to sample some of the finest beers from around the world. It was very hot that day, so we tried to stick to the shade whilst sipping our beers. I had a couple delicious Belgian ales, German lagers, and an English ale called Combined Harvest which was light and tasted really good for the hot day that it was.

July 24-25, 2009 – Seaside, Warrenton, Fort Stevens

Kelly and I joined our good friends A & R and their two kids for a night in Seaside. They have a timeshare deal, and we got to stay in the new-ish Worldmark resort hotel right at the end of Broadway. I hadn’t been to Seaside in about 10 years, not since the hotel had been built, and it was a very nice place to stay. We went to dinner at the Goose Hollow in Seaside (which is also new since I’d last been to Seaside), and had a delicious reuben sandwich. Later, we all went swimming and hot tubbing at the hotel, and spent the night out on the balcony of our room, sipping drinks and chatting. Spent saturday doing the things you do in Seaside, like eating elephant ears, playing some skee ball and other video games at the arcade, walking down the beach, and driving bumper cars.

We left Seaside and drove to Warrenton to visit my Mom who was out at the coast the same weekend. Kelly, Mom and I spent a few hours wandering around historic Fort Stevens. I hadn’t been there in well over 10 years, and had a really fun time at the museum, exploring the forts and batteries. Loads of info here, if you’re curious.  Had dinner at a local restaurant called Bouy 9 (delicious fish & chips, btw) before driving home and back to the heat. The short vacation was a welcome break from both work and the heat.

You can see all my photos here.

July 29, 2009 – Holy fuck it’s hot!

Heatwave strikes Portland, and holy crap is it hot! I don’t like it one bit. It doesn’t get this hot in Portland very often, but the last couple weeks of July were pretty much unbearable. Fortunately my friend Snooks lent me a window-mounted AC unit, which allowed for the upstairs to be tolerable for sleeping. Glad that shit’s over. At least, I hope we don’t get much more of that nonsense.

Today

Spent my day doing yard work, washing the car, running over to Belmont Station for an assortment of English, Belgian and German beers, and finally blogging. Having a nice relaxing day around the house. As I water the lawn and grill chicken burgers, Kelly is preparing a delicious potato salad that contains loads of onions and peppers. Going to eat well tonight. Hooray!

Misc bits

Got to witness the International Space Station zip across the sky on July 24th, pretty cool, and amazing how fast that sucker moves.

My friend and coworker Icontra found this jem, (and yes, the voice work is none other than Patrick Warburton). All I can think about are delicious hamburgers now.