Weather Reports are Redundant

Daily, "highs in the forties, lows in the thirties, mostly cloudy, chance of rain."

Foggy

This is why I always carry a little point-and-shoot.

Flat tire...

I managed to get a flat tire during the rainiest night we've had so far. The triple A guy said "it's nice to talk to someone who's not in a ditch!"

More snow...

First "real" snow of the year... It's so pretty! I've spent the day snuggled up with blankets and cats and the blinds open so I can watch. We've gotten about three inches so far. It's starting to slow down a little bit, but according to the satellite images online, there's plenty more comin'. The images below are links to more photos.

Guess what we got today...

When we got off the freeway, Caine yelled, "snow!" to which I replied "No way dude, it's just cold... that's just ice."

But I was wrong. It snowed in Everett for about an hour (we missed it). Snow! Once again, I know, I'll get tired of it, thanks for the warning. But right now it's still novel. Snow!!!

Woo Hoo! Yard Work!!!

No, I'm serious. I never knew yard work could be fun. When it's your very own yard, though, it's not so bad. Caine and I spent the day raking leaves and pulling weeds. It was awesome!

Thanksgivin'

Man, was it cold. Freezing, at least, maybe not much colder, but I'm a wimpy southern california girl, so I dressed up in about five layers before I ventured outside to view the morning.

That's my car. I'm SO glad I didn't have to go to work that morning. The sky was an unbelievable blue, and I took a photo, but the photo really can't describe how blue the sky was, so here's my frosty hedge instead.

Caine and I enjoyed a nice quiet morning with our secret stash of Kona Coffee and a beautiful sunshiny frozen day.
The cats enjoyed the sunshine.

And I have a new favorite picture of Beezer.

Caine and I planned and executed a fancy dinner all by ourselves. It was an attempt to distract ourselves from the fact that we're away from our families on Thanksgiving for basically the first time ever. Visit our food blog for the detailed synopsis, but on our menu we had lamb, green bean casserole, spinach-artichoke-brie stuffing, baked mac and cheese, sweet potato bacon biscuits, and berry crumble cobbler for dessert. MMMMMmmmm..... it was delicious.

Closed!!!

Meet the new house.

Caine and I couldn't be more excited about this house! It's 100 years old this year, and it's gorgeous inside! Click the pic for more photos.

Employed!

I worked at the mall for a while. (I don't want to talk about it...)

Now I work for a well-known portrait studio chain in downtown Seattle. The commute sucks, but everything else is great. There's a Whole Foods a block away, and their beer selection is phenomenal.

Oh, and Caine and I have a new house. Well, it's 100 years old, but it's new to us. I'll post photos and stuff once the ink is dry...

Pumpkin carving and the like

I bought a giant pumpkin from a lady on a farm. It was half green, but turned orange pretty quickly.

So I had the intention of carving it into something really cool. It was a big orange empty canvas, full of potential.

Lots of guts!

And slime!

This is as far as I got. I got off of work on the 29th of October at about 6:30, and it took me about two hours to prepare my gourd. Then I was too tired to carve further.
It never was carved, and we had to throw it away once it started getting slimy. Oh well. Stupid working too much.

Frosty!

Gee, I'm glad I don't have to go to work until later. This is what my car looks like.

But it sure is pretty.

Oktoberfestin'

I can't honestly describe why it's so much fun, other than if you get 50 of your favorite people together and drink a bunch of beer, you're bound to have some good times. Three cheers to Casey for being the only fool not related to me to have the balls and gumption to show up. Click the pic for the rest of the photos. Jeebus.

Oh, and California was on fire. That was lame. When I got home, the weather hung around 75 degrees or so for a few days, while california was in the triple digits. I would've bragged about it, but I felt bad that the state was on fire.

Explodey!!!

Word to the wise.... make sure which burner you're turning on. And make sure not to place your pyrex on the stove while it's waiting to go into the oven.

This evening as I was looking trying to look up directions, I heard the spectacular sound of exploding glass. Caine was cooking with our fish that Kelly got while fishing and rested the fish (which was in a pyrex dish) on the stove. He was trying to turn on the corn to boil, but instead turned on the burner under the fish. Oop.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. It made quite a mess and delayed dinner while we rounded up a bunch of broken glass, but it could have been worse. Caine was literally about to pick up the dish, he might have even touched it when it exploded.

As Merlose said, "haha, Dummy! Silly uncle Caine!"

neighborhood explorations

After meeting with our realtor, Caine and I tried some exploring of our own. We wanted to get an idea of how far away the areas that we're searching in really are. That, and I wanted to take some photos of the fall colors while the gettin's good. At our first wrong turn, we ended up at a pumpkin patch.


Our next stop was near Machias. Here we met a nice l.o.l. (little ol' lady) who sold me a gorgeous, huge pumpkin for $6 and let me take photos of her farm.


These last two are from the vicinity of a house we're interested in that's near Lake Roesiger. That's the body of water that's visible through the leaves here.

This little yellow spider flew down from the trees, landed on Caine, and waved for the camera.

All in all, we had a nice, relaxing day.

House Hunting

Due to circumstances that I'm not sure I deserve, Caine and I are basically ready to buy a house. The market is good if you're buying now. According to our realtor, there are about eight houses for every one buyer. Woo hoo! So today we had our first round of house-hunting.

On the recommendation of a random friendly stranger we met at the wine store, we're looking in the area known as Snohomish. To get a better idea of what the area is like, we showed up an hour before we had to meet our realtor to explore "old town snohomish." Well, they made a bar just for Caine and put it in this town. The sell EVERY kind of scotch that you can legally procure in Washington state, and about a dozen and a half microbrews on tap.
The two top rows are all scotch, and that long line of taps at the bottom aren't all of them. There's more of each that you can't see in this photo.
Oh, and they have food, too.

The actual house-viewing went well for a first time run. Of course the one we really like is in the boonies, but it may be close enough to make the beautiful drive worthwhile.
I'll keep ya posted. :)

Trip to California

Last Monday, my father in law called and said, "hey, do you guys want to come over for dinner this weekend?" Well, shit, sure! So, sorry we didn't inform you friends, but our recent trip was strictly a family affair.

Our visit, which was prompted by a big Cunningham family dinner, was also a surprise for Caine's mom. The party was to start at three, so we planned on getting there a little bit late and just mingling with the crowd until she noticed it. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. The Cunninghams are notoriously late, and when we showed up at four, we were the first guests to arrive. We snuck in the back anyway, and when we were spotted, Carolyn let out a loud, sustained scream, tackled Caine, hugged him, and then walloped him across the arm. Good times. The party was great. We got to see a good portion of Caine's family and old family friends and eat a lot of good food and drink a lot of good wine.

It was almost weird being back in California. It was very easy to slip into the "home" feeling, but there were things that we definitely did not miss. For one thing, it was pretty hot (well into the 80's), extremely smoggy, and my allergies went nuts.

We also got to do some of our favorite things in CA, like attend a wine tasting at Vin de Pays, and spend some good quality time with our families. Oh, and I got my Del Taco fix. I have honestly never had better chicken soft tacos (from del taco). I don't know if it's the abstinence that made me feel that way, or if they were genuinely superior tacos, but I was in heaven.

And the puppies. Oh god. My mom just adopted a pair of miniature dachshunds, who arrived the morning of the day we left. My head almost exploded from the cuteness. The rest of the photos I took that day are posted here.

Yeah, I know, but she's so cute!

I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. My littlest kitten likes to drink from glasses and it's so endearing.

All Hail!!!

Dark and Stormy. I love it. It's still summer, but this is what we got.

Hail stones are actually pretty hard to catch. They bounce right off of your hand.

Our cars were pelted for about a half hour, then we just had really hard rain for a while. And then it got very cold. I had to get up in the middle of the night and get another blanket. The storm is due in California next. Enjoy the cold!

Gone fishin'

For the first time since I was small enough to not really remember, I went fishing. On Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. we got up, drank coffee, packed some lunch, and headed out to the wildlife park. It's a considerable walk from the parking lot to the river. It was overcast and not very cold.

About five minutes after I dropped my line into the water, I caught a small rainbow trout.
Seven hours later, our party of four still had just that one fish. Except for the fairly large crowd (haha, I call THAT a crowd!), it was a very relaxing time.

washington weather

From the news anchor: "Another day over 73 degrees. How long will the hot streak continue? News and weather at eleven."

Miscellaneous Debris

So I have some photos that are no more than a few days old, but I have nothing in particular to say about them.

Sunset from our front door.

Silly cat! I found her sleeping with her ass hanging off the couch like this.

I call this one "with sleeping baby and kitten."

Stray Dog

We have a boarder for the weekend. She showed up on our front lawn at about three this afternoon. Snohomish County Animal Control finally returned my phone call at about 3:45, and all of the officers get off work at 4:00, and they won't be open again until Tuesday because of Labor Day. Well, at least the pup found some sympathetic souls to feed and house her for the weekend. We made "found" posters, and really hope we find her owners, rather than shuffling her away to a shelter.

UPDATE
I got a phone call from Ginger's owner. He came and picked her up. Hooray for happy endings! He saw one of the posters that I hung in our neighborhood. He was VERY happy to see her.

Full Moon

Shot on 28 Aug 2007 at 10 pm

Wildlife Park

Another day of perfect (gorgeous) weather. It was a little warmer than it has been lately, with the mercury topping out at about 82 degrees. The breeze made it feel much cooler. We decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and go to the Wildlife Park that we missed last week.

We wandered around first to Shadow Lake where we picnicked on PB&J and listened to the noises that the city doesn't make. Which is basically crickets and ducks. We sat around, Merlose threw rocks into the lake, Kelly tried to catch some fish, and I took some photos.

When we got bored with the gorgeous serenity, we walked to the river and tried to catch some trout. Look at us, in the sun, getting exercise!

Pike Place Market

So that's a link. Click on it to see the rest of the photos.

Caine and I decided to go explore the Pike Place Market today. It's a giant conglomeration of vendors... lots of food, of course, in the form of fresh seafood and produce, and lots of handmade goods. There are a bunch of stores, too. It's the height of the tourist season, and it's Sunday, so we probably picked the most crowded time to go. In all, it was a pleasant experience and I want to go back, but I want to go with a few hundred bucks worth of spending money.

Gone explorin'

We decided to get adventurous and went for a drive on Thursday. I'm not sure of our route, but the road and the drive reminded me a lot of the Road to Hana in Hawaii, only instead of tropical, it was deciduous. We ended up getting a little turned around and stumbled upon a park. It (like many parks in the area) just happened to have a lake.

And blackberries grow EVERYWHERE. They're delicious.

all you need for cool photos is a top hat

garden creatures