And a few more

I'm tired. But I'll be back.

Portland is awesome.

Some photos to prove it.  Well, they aren't awesome, but Portland is.  Hopefully I will have energy to say more soon - and hopefully will have some nice photos from the Boy's collection to share :)

Portland...ia

On a quick vacation to Portland, land of beer, hipsters and coffee - very good coffee, I might add. And the hipsters are a surprisingly friendly and attitude free bunch, unlike their Vancouver counterparts...but I'm jumping ahead here.

We drove down with pals A&J, through some pretty crazy snow squalls and rain storms. I would have been white knuckling through most of it, jut J calmly soldiered along behind the wheel. We stopped for some very good Mexican food In the North end of Seattle - somewhere no non-Mexican would know about unless they were a slightly crazed chowhound, as A luckily is. Also lucky is her command of Spanish, as there wasn't a whole lot of English being spoken. And even more lucky? The super tasty eats (see snap of happy munching Boy below).


We arrived in Portland, and stopped at Ristretto for a cup of house roasted coffee, and a chat with the cheery baristas about coffee in Portland - something taken very seriously in these parts.


We got to the hotel (Paramount - nice place, good deal), then went for cocktails at Teardrop - I had the awkwardly named Artistaint (gin, Cynar, elderflower and lemon - lovely arc of sweet to bitter, so very good), then we headed to Deschutes where i had a gluten free elk burger and GOOD gluten free beer (oh how I miss good beer)....followed by more drinks and snacks at Clyde Common. What has struck me the most is the friendliness of the people here - everyone seems willing to provide suggestions of good places to go in their fair town. Such a different vibe than Vancouver.

So - so far, loving Portland. More later:)


Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:SW Taylor St,Portland,United States

The Christmas of the Swedish Licorice

Christmas is over, and it was much closer to the relaxed Christmas of my imagination than most.   Christmas day, The Boy and I opened presents with Miss Mags in the morning, then headed to Mum's to get ready for the family - and in The Boy's case, set up Mum's wireless network and iPad (she's hip to the technology, people!)

I could talk about how once again I was spoiled, about how delightfully (?) odd my family is when you get them all in one big room.  About how we missed Kerry and Tui at the table, but enjoyed the extra elbow room.  Actually, scratch that re Tui - she made her presence known through a box of xmas goodies sent to us from Edinburgh.  Lovely home made ornaments, soaps, candies...it all seemed so uncharacteristically NICE.

dip dabs and flakes - oh my!

 

 

 

 

And then her genetic link to the family was revealed through a bag of Swedish Licorice she picked up in a recent trip to Stockholm.  So kind of her.  Her uncle appreciated it - as did I.

We enjoyed the challenge of the salty outer shell of the licorice, leading to the sweet inner chewiness.  We are not put off by the UNBELIEVABLE, fragrant nose of cat-pee that wafts to the back of the palate and cleans out the sinuses with each chew.   We are not afraid of the cat-pee Tui, your evil game DID NOT take us down.

It did, however, take down Grandmere and The Boy

A closer look perhaps?

Such kindness from afar, Tui.  Such kindness.

It's Tree Time again....

Yes, that's right.

The Boy and I headed down to my favorite tree lot (ok, a parking lot with trees stacked in it) to pick out another example of the beauty of uncultured trees.  It was, of course, the first one we picked up that we ended up stuffing into the car on top of a camo-pattern tarp that made the whole mission feel a lot more military and precise than it actually was.

I do look forward to decorating.  It is something I started on year two of life in the Bunkle, and this will be year two of having the Boy assist with carefully placing felt birds on the branches, for which I am grateful.  I love the charlie brown tree, the little decorations, the sparkly white lights, the string of pudding carrying cats that make it all feel like Christmas.  It will also be the second year Thomas won't be around to hide under the tree or decapitate unsuspecting wooden reindeer - maybe I shouldn't be surprised at how much I still miss him, but I really do.  And though he had been missing from the celebrations at home for a few years now, this will be the first real year without Dad.  And without Tui - who is too busy frolicking around Europe to bother with her family *sniff*  (There is no thinly veiled jealousy here.  None.)

The holiday season is always a weird ying/yang of happy and sad, relaxation and stress, calm and frustration.  This year I've decided to try and take a little bit of time off after the holidays, instead of before - which I have come to realize never ends up being relaxing time off, it ends up being thinly veiled chaos.  And this year, time off after Christmas will be dedicated to starting the process of transforming the basement in preparation for the Boy's impending addition as a household fixture in the Spring - this will include the creation of a man-cave for his man-stuff, and more useable storage space for the mass of stuff we have both collected.  Hopefully I will have the energy to track some of that process on the blog for those that are interested.

In the interim, I will continue to try and keep Christmas what it should be this year.  Or rather, what I want it to be.

And I will leave one tiny decapitated reindeer at the bottom of the tree, just in case the ghost of christmas past drops by.

cat heads!

 Tui is once again complaining about my lack of blogging.

She requested a picture of Maggie - so here is a picture of her in the bath (?...), followed by the results of Grand-mère's attack on a dark chocolate cat.

And that, Miss T, is all you're getting tonight.

But I will try and do better next time!

Tui's complaining....

...that I'm not blogging.  So here is something brief.

Here are some photos from my weekend with Tui in London.  If you are having troubles identifying which of these photos is of her - she is the one with the wide-set eyes and expensive handbag.

We had a great weekend, despite the Shining Hotel Experience (the problems continued but I'm not going to go into it here - serenity now!)  The weather was awesome, we did a ton of walking and poking around, meandering up through Regents Park and Marylebone.  I fell in love with a cheese shop - not unusual for me really.  And with Cath Kidston bags - this one came home with me and I love it.  For those that are interested, a more detailed account of the weekend can be found on Tui's blog if you poke around and look for it.

It was great to see Tui and to know that things are going well for her in Edinburgh.  Time goes so quickly, she will be back before we know it.  Hoping I have one more work trip to go bug her before her time there is done.