Huzzah!!

I have finished a knitting project! For reals! Well mostly finished. I still needed to tie in the ends, etc but I was so excited that I finished knitting it that I immediately made HN try it on (it was part of his birthday present. His birthday was in Jan. ahem.) , and like the excellent sport that he is, he has claimed to love it and has taken it with him and been wearing it around pretending not to notice the loose thread hanging out of the bottom of it.

He did comment that it looks like a skater hat and makes him feel young (he's old). My knitting is like the fountain of youth! Or I have inappropriately selected a young knit for an old man. Either way, I am stoked to have finished something as it has been a while. I have been a bit thwarted with the cat separating a hat in progress from the yarn ball and hiding it (found it though! now have just lost the momentum I had going) and then losing a hat I made just before I could put the buttons on it. Found that too, but have now lost buttons.

Next up I have the seriously ambitious hope of knitting this bad boy. But do I have the attention span for it? I should have loads of work travels on the horizon, I'm hoping being shoved into a can in the air helps motivate.

A Walk in the Woods (the Kerry Smith version)

Off topic: I want this thing for Star. She would be like my little prisoner of love in a bubble. Every little girl's dream, no?
Now, onward. This post is the story of a hike I went on, in pictorial form. Enjoy!

First, the characters:

This is lady. She likes car rides, walks on the beach, dead stuff. She does not so much like smaller dogs, which gives her points in my book.

I like to call this one Special J. You can't quite see it, but her outfit was truly something to see. I can appreciate the style of dress, and I think I got to see a little bit through the eyes of my friends how I might sometimes look to them.

And of course me. I wasn't wearing this outfit this day, but I thought since I was in Portland a little WEST SIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE love would be appropriate.

Now, the Story of Our Walk, as told by Kerry Smith, B.S. in BS

First, we walked through a path in the woods, under the highway to get to the beach. There was a suspension bridge and a spectacular view:

We are going right down the middle there.

Then, we got to the beach and marvelled at it's hugeness. I've seen "cliffs" at beaches before. I've never seen Mountains.

surfer dudes for a totally inadequate idea of scale.

Then Special J and I set out over some streams, over some fallen (giant!) trees, and up a path she had read about in her guide book.

We eventually got to this place, and took a left.

as you see, left was really our only option.

Going on a bit, we ended up here. Someone had conveniently placed a park bench so one would know where to sit to appreciate the view, though it was a bit windy for my tastes so we didn't linger.

Glancing off to the side, we noticed a path less travelled, so we decided to see where that led. Good call us!

It turned out to lead to a completely wind sheltered little cliff thinger, with this view, among other things.

After we realized we were out of path (unless we wanted to risk grievous bodily harm, which we didn't because we had dinner plans), we decided to lounge for a bit and enjoy the scenery, the effects polarized sunglasses have on waves, and a frickin' evil snack break:

Having taken our fill of self portraits, ocean waves in 4D and assorted snacks, we went back to the windy side of the cliff and continued on up the mountain.

At the top of the mountain we discovered a geocache box, full of notes and other stuff (including treasure!!)

There is treasure in here! I know this!

After taking more rest, sun and water, we grabbed our booty and headed back into the land of the lost:

We sat here to enjoy treasure and delicious mountain sorrel

Then boogied back down the mountain so as to get to a place serving real food, and meet up with our surfer dude pals at the beach.

Lady would have liked to linger:

We got back to the car area, Lady and I zonked out while other people did more industrious things involving surfboards, a truck and some tie ropes. Sometimes being too short to reach things is a real blessing. Amen.

This is what Sundays were made for.

we need to talk

but I don't have time.

Things I need to tell you about:
-Oregon:
-Raw milk
-cleansing and living with Dr J
-Dr J is trying to kill me.
-Portland is f*cking beautiful.

more later.

Time off for good behavior

This post is long. I shall splice in random pictures without any connection to the stories at hand to keep you awake.

So when we last left our heroine she was screaming at pretty much anyone unfortunate enough to be in her vicinity. Ok, not really screaming, more shooting silent dirty looks but I was screaming on the inside. I was hateful Monday, it never got any better. It did work out a little bit though as I got to apply my nastitude productively towards the end of the day to a local LAN administrator who for 6 consecutive months has ignored what has been requested of her in regards to my project coming to her building.

So Monday she tried to tell me there would be emergency costs associated with my needing her work completed by Tuesday and I was quite uhh..."vehement" in my assertion that since I had a documented set of requests going back 6 months and there was no need for it to be an emergency that she should get out her checkbook for said emergency costs. I thought I might have overdone it when my very reasonable partner in crime from NSI suggested I go busy myself in the other room with anything other than speaking, but I was comforted by the fact that I was right, and what's she going to do anyway? Start not doing what I ask of her because I'm a bitch?

Please. We're there.

From my walk Monday night. Dog and I both needed to pound the ground for a couple of hours and this just cracked me up. The barricade they made was most impressive.

Anyhoo, later in the day I noticed that the 2 people I was working with, both married men, just started saying "Yes, absolutely" and "wow, that's great" to everything I said. I started to think I was even more obviously heroic than at times past when I realized they weren't even paying attention to me! Anytime I opened my mouth, practically before I was done with my sentence it was "Wow. Great!" They were PANDERING! Not offensive, since "that's great" just never gets old (and to be fair, my ideas were all great) but it occurred to me I must be giving off obvious danger signals if I was activating Married Man Danger Evasion Behavior- so I got out the calendar and lo and behold if PMS isn't blinking like a neon light on my forehead. Explains so much (tight fitting pants!).

Prettiness in the parkage

Tuesday I was just busy which was fun-ish. It also involved a wet lunch, which might account for the majority of the fondness with which I recall the day. The local LAN lady isn't speaking to me but there were 8 new network ports activated and waiting for me at her building the next day. Not content to leave well enough alone, and not quite through to the other side of the nasty I completed one final steam blowing act of thanking her for getting that done so quickly, and then asking if it could be done so fast why it took six months and 100 points of my blood pressure to get it to happen. I've not gotten a response to that, but I asked her in email and cc'ed some key people so it's out of my hands. We were setting up one of the satellites of NSI to go live for Weds, and the fact that she didn't register my static IP address still screwed me, only I don't have time to wait because I'm off to Portland next week. This site is still using FILM people, I consider this an emergency and for 3 weeks now we have pushed it back because of this douche. I decided hell to the NO on waiting any longer. With some creative configuring and the help of the incredibly responsive and competent LAN admin at the main NSI site, I went through the MF'ing problem. As a result, Weds live came and went without a hitch as did Thursday, most of which passed in a fog admittedly. Allergies.

All the rain we've been getting has given the trickle of water at the park near my house the courage it needs to be a real river now. Complete with whitecaps!

So today, having decided that I need/NEED/deserve a new backpack, and having ordered said backpack in an "I must have this before I leave for Portland Sunday because I'm taking public transportation the whole 2 weeks I'm there and goddammit I NEED THIS" frenzy yesterday and paid in blood for expedited shipping, I am sitting at home waiting for "the package" to be delivered. I told everyone at NSI I may or may not be in at all, though I will indeed be going in now due to a run-in on the streets of Fells Point last night: HN and I decided to check out the Cat's Eye and see what was doing, and we ran into the brain trust from my company, who I knew was in town but didn't expect to see barhopping at night. Anyhoo, I've been promised some one on one time today with the CTO. 2 hours of sitting with him is like a semester class in 100 different subjects and I am unable to resist. He gives me just enough leads on things that I can look them up and work them out myself, and I'm very excited as I've just recently hit the wall of What I Know with a bunch of stuff at work. I am V nerdly excited.

I'm also excited about Portland because The Cleanse, while it continues here, has not made much progress. Still nothing worth writing home about, and I haven't had time or inclination to delve into what I'm missing so I decided to combine a bunch of birds with one stone and call in the Pros.
Notice Portland. Notice Cleanse. Through nefarious means I have secured some private time with Dr J and she is going to learn me, clean me, and poke me with needles (all of which I LOVE having done, sigh)
You might not even recognize me when I get back I'll be so clean and relaxed. And detoxed, which surely must be a first. ha.

There are also plans to take another, more serious stab the Mt they call Hood while I'm out there so I'll either have pics of that or awesome stories about rock climbing on Mt Smith. I'll keep you posted on the cleanse. This time shit's going to sparkle. Literally.

ugh.

So it's stupid Monday, which means I have to work. Not so bad in and of itself, except the torrential downpours that are taking place. Also not so bad in and of itself except that my car is still broken. so I had to walk to the bus stop. Run actually, because I forgot I was supposed to train my UK office. so I rigged up a plastic bag to cover my backpack to keep my computer dry and hit the road.

I forgot my lunch and my headset, which meant that when I got here I had to tell the UK office we couldn't use Skype to train today, we had to use the phone. Only they have no phone in the training room. So I ran here in the rain for nothing, because training them was the only reason to be onsite this early in the morning. and I forgot my lunch.

The West African Chicken stew came out fan-f*cking-tastic (I would post pictures, but it kind of looks like vomit- Tastes V delicious though), and I was looking forward to munching more of it for lunch, though probably actually before since I eat like a truck these days. So now I'm hungry, foodless, pissed off and working . A bunch of my least favorite things to be.

And what's the deal with single normal sized people and GIANT golf umbrellas?? If you don't weigh 600lbs, or are not escorting royalty, can you really not make do with the standard 2ft wide umbrella? Or if you insist on creating your own dry block by carrying around a king sized umbrella, could you at least be cognizant of the fact other people need to use the sidewalk, and since you are the one with the satellite orbiting your head, you need to make the room. I almost lost my fucking eye this morning because some oblivious tard was off in lala land, waving his stupid giant 10x bigger than any normal person needs umbrella around. That's the kind of shit that makes you want to kick a stranger in the shins.

/rant.

I'm off for more caffeine and an attitude adjustment. You hope.

Dinner on the Sabbath

Sunday is called the Sabbath right?

Anyhow, getta loada this sh*t. I've had it before, this is my first time making it. It's going to be hard to outdo the gourmet french onion soup I kicked out for lunch, but I have to try.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106049

how was tomorrow? I think you know what I mean.

Nothing exciting to report on the results front. I mean, there's results but still nothing I would call a friend about or photograph and send to a website. I'm going to have to step up my game.

Yesterday I had smoothie for breakfast, with extra stuff.
Lunch was vegetable (mostly carrot) based sushi
spinach salad when I got home
Chili and a huge pile of broccoli for dinner.

And not as much to show for it as I would like. And definitely nothing crazy. I think I must be missing a key ingredient for this whole detox via the exits thing. I'm going back to the drawing board.

Today I had smoothie for breakfast with a PILE of Psyllium, spinach salad for lunch and ethiopian lentils for dinner. It can not be humanly possible for a person to consume more fiber than I have today but now that I've got it in my head that I'm missing something, I'm wondering if this was all for naught. I *must* find something to add here, I simply do not accept that this is what all the fuss is about.

My mother says I'm a fecaphile. I deny this claim.