Quiet time on this blog.

Matt's gone back to school and my school has started. Summer is most certainly over. I've still got vacation pictures to post, but looking at the planner, it doesn't seem like they will get up there quickly. I'll try and finish a post now and then.

The rains have started, the check book has dwindled a bit and so not only are we spending a lot of time at home, but the increased workloads have meant that we can't tell you regularly about our adventures, or lack thereof.

Things will slow down again, I think. If not sooner, then at least by next June. We're still here, just not here in the blog world.

Picnic Project. Northwest.

The Picnic Project.
Established 2006.

Each year, Patricia chooses five parks in Portland—one from each section of Portland: N, NE, NW, SE & SW. She plans food and invites people for a picnic, then records the festivities. By 2027 she will have picnicked in every park in Portland.
Date: August 5, 2007
Park: Wallace Park
Present: Matt, Linda, Patricia & Mary.
Food: Delights from Elephants Delicatessen.
Activities: Eating our very yummy food. Taking a walk around the edge of the park. Letting our mothers have time to socialize.
Comments: Because Matt's mother Linda was visiting, we thought it would be great if we had a Moms picnic. So my mother and I picked up Matt and his mother after church. First we went to the Elephants on NW 22nd. It is my favorite place to go when I want good food and don't care if I spend an arm and a leg to get it. After we sacrificed a few limbs for our feast ("No more picnics that cost more than if we went to a sit-down restaurant." I told Matt) we headed to Wallace Park. This park is famous for being next to Chapman school, where the swifts roost in the chimney each year during their migration. The swifts are a sight to behold, and if you are ever in Portland during September, I suggest you pack a picnic and tromp up to the school to see this magnificent spectacle.
We were there in early August , and during the day. So we chatted, shivered under the gray August sky (horrible summer here, just horrible) and hoped it wouldn't rain. Eventually the sun came out and our walk around the edge of the park was lovely.

New couch! And more!

Matt's mom Linda came to visit and she offered to get us a new couch as a housewarming gift. We looked at a few used furniture places, but ended up braving the crowds at our brand-new Ikea. There we found not only a fancy new couch, but also a chaise lounge.

There were a million people (this is only a slight exaggeration) at the Ikea. We had to park our Flexcar (a Scion this time) waaaaaay at the other end of the parking lot and hike down to the store. The Ikea is right on a Max stop (Cascades Station), and people were arriving by train, but they were a small percentage of the people arriving by car.

Once inside we found the couch area and began sitting. After much, "Nope," "Nope," "Too hard," "this one wasn't made for short people," this Ektorp sofa in Idemo dark blue was the winner. Here, Linda and Matt wait for the nice, but very busy sales woman to help us. I fell in love with this chaise lounge and we got that too! We ended up going with Bleking white for the cover, but I think we might be switching over to Toftaholm blue in the future. My clumsiness and white covers don't go together very well.

We've picked out our couch and our coverings, we've loaded the couch and cover onto a dolly, we've picked up the smaller chaise lounge and cover at the pick up area, Linda has paid, and now we are waiting for home delivery.
Delivery. Things are being assembled.
The lounge really wasn't this hard to assemble.
Matt and Linda relax on our new furniture. Our old furniture has been shoved behind the new, creating two circles of sitting arrangements. The white chase lounge makes me want to paint that wall behind it, but all in good time.
Thanks Linda!

Thanks, Powell's

Back in this post, Matt described waiting in line for the newest Harry Potter book. A nice lady from Powell's named Beth commented that she liked our pictures and wanted to send us a thank you gift. She did and we were thrilled that it was a $25.00 gift card to Powell's. That made our copy of the book essentially free. So Matt made her a thank you card. I thought it was pretty funny and illustrated both Matt's wit (though I'm the funny one in the relationship) and his good drawing skills.

Shower curtain, part duex

Our shower curtain has the top 500 SAT words on it. So we can review while we brush. When we first put it up, Matt read a few words and commented that all those words were easy. I reminded him he had already completed high school and should know them anyway.

Shower Curtains

For the past five years I've lived in apartments with showers with solid sliding walls, not shower curtains. My grandma was right, those sliding doors are a pain to clean, but they do have an upside. There is no shower curtain to stick onto you during your shower.

So I've developed a bit of a phobia of shower curtains. I don't like how they get kind of mildew-y and gross at the bottom, even if you do keep them stretched out all the time. I don't like how, once they get some mildew and come forward due to that hot air/cold air physics thing I don't understand, they stick to you.

Luckily, we live in the time of cheap shower curtains. Though wasteful, it is possible to buy something for a few dollars, hang it up for awhile and throw it out when it starts getting gross. However, I wanted a nice shower curtain to go in front of the cheap one and I didn't want to hang them together, because I would have to undo the nice one and the cheap one and then reload the new cheap one with the nice one and I didn't really see that happening as often as I wanted it to.

So I solved that problem. Here is my nice shower curtain:

And behind the nice shower curtain is another curtain rod with the cheap curtain. If I want to wash or clean it, I just have to undo one shower curtain. The result is that the cheap one has already been washed and my phobia is under control.

Such a modern world we live in.

Sunday Walk

Matt and I have been taking walks in preparation for a half-marathon in October. We've used these opportunities to explore North and Northeast Portland. This rambling walk we went on was chosen to take us by my co-worker Maureen's new house and to walk by a lot of parks. The neighborhoods we walked through had a lot of little vegetable gardens tucked here and there. I had a great time looking at all the growing vegetables.

Some highlights:

This house has groovy little gathering place in their carport. I love the string art on black velvet especially. Three things you see a lot of in Portland: A clothesline, a rain barrel and Tibetan Prayer Flags (visible as little daubs of color on top of the clothesline.)

This house is an island, surrounded on three sides by streets.
We came across Woodlawn Park, which had this great little water feature for kids. There were no kids around, so we took advantage. We turned it on, which you do by pressing your hand into a hand print on that blue post. There are four different water features and they come on in a cycle. Seconds after I took this picture, I ran through those blue hoops and got thoroughly wet. Such fun! Then I was a bit cold the rest of the way home. Curse this gray summer we are having.