Tree Before & After

Today is an exciting day because today is the day that Leo's tree will be trimmed. Leo's tree is a very old beech tree that shades the North side of our house. Let's look at before and after photos.

From inside the house:

Before

After

From the front porch:

Before

After

From the street:

Before

After

Looking back at the house:

Before

After

Overall, the area feels much lighter, both in terms of light and in terms of things dangling down from above. It's a big improvement.

Warrior Dash 2011

It's time for that obstacle course bit of muddy fun known as the Warrior Dash.

Here, Matt readies himself for the race.

A look at bag check.

Some pre-race granola. The promotional people asked what the energy was going to be used for. Matt said, "Rocking" and they wrote it on his bag before handing it over.

Matt at the starting lineup.

Some starting lineup photos.

This year, I saw remarkably fewer Celtic/Scottish/Viking/caveman style costumes. Here we see men in pink fuzzy bathrobes.

I do appreciate the massive lot of port-o-potties at this event.

This woman was the "Mistress of Mud."

What does it take to make a great fire jumping photo? A lot of practice.

This year's result:

Sliding down the mud slide. At this point, I accidentally turned off the camera (I was using Matt's camera) and so missed the final slide down the mud hill. I can, however tell you that a person near Matt threw up as he was sliding down the mud pit. The announcer gleefully announced this.

Ribbons at the ready in mud land.

A muddy Matt. With injury!

Emerging from the mud area.

Drinking a bit of water to wash down that mud.

My favorite mud picture.

Path to the "showers" which again this year was a pond.

Also new this year (I think) was a place to donate your muddy sneakers. There was a man with a megaphone saying the following in a monotonous tone: "Please remember to tie your sneakers together before placing them in the pile. Please take as many as you want, but less than an entire box of sunflower seeds. Thank you for your donation. Please remember to tie your sneakers together..."

You can read more about the organization here.

Post shower/pond.

Still a bit muddy.

Our walk through the parking lot. Driving in and out what much improved this year. There was very little idling in the car, which I appreciated.

Undressing at the car. Matt remembered clothing to change into this year.

We could see one of the obstacles from where we were parked.

The Tomato harvest begins

It's September, but we in Portland, land of the Arctic summer, will take our home grown tomatoes any time we can get them.

Seven down, four to go. Or: Roman Shades Finished!

They took a lot of hand stitching, and a lot of movie watching, but I have completed the Roman Shades!

A "before" photo.

A bad "after" photo of the shades in the raised position.

Completed shades!

I purchased the material for these shades in 2008. I started on this project by practicing for the front room by making shades for Matt's room. Those were completed in January of this year. I was then ready to begin these shades.

My friend Heidi had extra backing generously donated it to me for this project. That not only helped, it saved me about $35.00. A big thanks to her.

It feels good to have these shades done. Next project? Purchasing curtains for the French Doors in this room and sewing a border onto them using the leftover material from these shades.

Driving through the fires

There were several lightening strikes the previous night which started some fires along our route home.

Matt calmly drove...

...despite the blazing inferno on the left side of the road.

Okay, it wasn't a blazing inferno that was close to us, but he still drove quite calmly while we watched the airplanes drop the fire retardant on the fire.

High Desert Museum

The next morning after the show we ate a delicious breakfast at Corey's Bar and Grill in Downtown Bend. We had one of those fabulous waitresses who did not take any guff, and at the same time when I was trying to decide asked me what I was after and made a completely different recommendation that got me exactly what I wanted. If I were weathly, she would travel around with me and be my forever waitress.

Having eaten, we headed out to the High Desert Museum. Here, Matt gets his picture taken with Snowshoe, the resident Lynx. You can read Snowshoe's story here, though it will probably make you mad. Thank goodness he has a good home now.

A turtle wants to say, "Hi."

We toured the Miller Family Ranch and Sawmill, checked out Thomas the otter in the Otter exhibit. Thomas was sleeping. We also learned about Scat and visited the Spirit of the West exhibit. It was a fun museum.

On the grounds, I really liked this shrub.

But sadly it had no ID.

Driving towards home, we saw smoke. It's fire season.

Summer Love Tour

We're right now taking this photo in Sisters, Oregon. What are we doing in Sisters?

Did you guess that we are on our way to Bend, Oregon to see A Prairie Home Companion Summer Love Tour 2011? You guessed right!

The Les Schwabe Amphitheater did not earn our love due to the chair issue. Reading the web site of the amphitheater the night before we left for the show, I learned that only short chairs are allowed, with legs of no more than six inches. Or you can sit on blankets. We do not own short legged chairs. I called Mom and Aunt Carol first thing in the morning, knowing that Mom wouldn't want to sit on a blanket for hours, and she promptly ran off to see if she could buy short legged chairs. It being the end of the season, they were in short supply, but she located a triple folding lounge chair that fit the bill and off we went.

What did we see when we got there? Tons of people bringing in full sized chairs. Mom complained, security nicely asked people to move, 95% of the people moved but not this guy sitting in front of us. Security asked nicely, I asked nicely (Excuse me sir, but we did not bring our tall chairs because they are not allowed and instead we are sitting on this blanket. Could you please move your chair so we can see?) Nothing. He just shrugged and said "I didn't know" as if that rendered him invisible. So this was my sitting flat view of the show. The leaning over to the right got me a view of the stage and a very sore half of my sitz bone the next day.

Sun going down.

Pre-show pictures. We played the card game Citadels while we waited to see if the tall chair people would have to move.

It wasn't a full show (which I found a bit disappointing also, and a bit of un-truth in advertising) but we got lots of segments with the sound guy. I love the sound guy. There are two on the show itself and we had Fred Newman. He did an excellent whale, among other things.

Garrison spent a lot of time walking through the crowd and singing while hoards of people took pictures. These are the ones that Matt captured.

Fun things about the show: the sound effects segments, the sing-along, the sing-along through intermission. Not so fun things: the amphitheater's inability to enforce their own policies, the fact that we didn't get a full show.