Vacation, continued.

Running short on ideas for great summertime activities? I can recommend installing a transmission as quality family fun for a weekday morning.



Plus, when you go shopping in the afternoon and you still have a bit of grease on your arms, you won't look so prissy buying that cute new purse and shoes.

:)

Oregon tours, home improvement, and big plans to import cars

Well! As usual, the lack of bloggage indicates a rather busy schedule. This time you can thank Lukas for prodding me to post something. I've had a busy couple weeks at home catching up with family and friends, attending my cousin JoAnna's wedding, and convincing mom to undertake a variety of home and yard improvement projects (most of which she was already considering in some form anyway. I just affirm where affirmation is due: "YES! New flowers and a new patio would look GREAT there! Let's go buy stuff right now"). Today, for example, we agreed on a location for a firepit ring (which I fully intend to make, because good grief! those things are overpriced!), and we did some scouting for free brick on Craigslist for the new patio areas we are now planning to build. Furthermore, we've assessed a variety of options for keeping bugs off one porch and making it a more user-friendly "outdoor living space" for the future. We'll be paying Ikea a visit next week to investigate their curtain options.

In the midst of all that planning, we're also working to make our bathroom more fabulous and coordinated than it already is. We're painting an old brown spice rack white to serve as shelf for small things, and since foreign European words make everything seem more sophisticated, we want to put some word on the face of the shelf. Unfortunately, the most obvious option, "BATH," translates to "BAD" in German and "BAIN" in French, neither of which sound one bit sophisticated. The German is out for obvious reasons, and I for one couldn't look at "BAIN" without thinking "BANE of my existence."

As fun as all that has been, certainly the highlight of my time home so far has been showing off Oregon and toodling all over this Northwest corner with Raphael, who was here for a week and a half. You're just going to have to wait for more pictures, cuz I only have a few to show you at the moment. We camped a few days at Trillium Lake near Mount Hood, caught trout from the canoe and fried them up for dinner, went to a rodeo, climbed Multnomah Falls and drove up the Columbia River Gorge, visited Cannon Beach, and ate a humongous, hot, gooey, glazed cinnammon roll at Camp 18. I love American food. We also went to the Auto races, drove some fancy pants cars (I didn't; he did)...hmm. This would all be much easier to talk about and more interesting with pictures. So I'll tell ya more about my Oregon tourism later.

Raph's first catch of the evening. He got another one too.


On the way to Cannon Beach.


Driving nice cars. Woohoo. :)

Finally, about importing cars: Raph and Brian and I have been discussing the possibility of importing old, hard-to-get American cars to Switzerland. Will keep you posted.

That's it for now I suppose. Laters!

Good, wholesome Oregonians.

(Church bbq picture--thanks Gina!)

Annnd...she's home. It's funny coming home after so long. It doesn't feel like it's been 11 months since I've been here, EXCEPT...I went for a drive today (all the way to town, in fact, for the express purpose of buying hazelnut coffee creamer and root beer--yay for cars!), and there are several new houses and a new park! I hate finding new things like that popping up all over the countryside. I'm not sure which is worse: driving by it every day for three months and feeling irked each time until it's finally finished, or finding it already done in concrete finality, thereby rendering useless all forms of passive aggressive resistance (muttering as I drive, for example). Anyway. There's a park on Thatcher road. I'm over it. really.

In other neighborhood news, my parents got an invitation this week to attend the wedding of a very lovely neighbor girl. The invitation is handmade. The gift registry is at Walmart, and the driving directions are provided from ACE Hardware. The wedding is in a family-owned park up the road. I think that's all refreshingly unassuming.

Oh, and speaking of married. The customs officer in New York was so busy asking me about my marital status and then about whether I have a boyfriend that he nearly totally forgot to ask about my recent contact with livestock! (which is what he was supposed to be asking me about all along). Thought you'd all be pleased to know your border officers are so diligent about containing the flu pandemeic. Not five minutes later, a guy also making a connecting flight struck up a conversation and found out that I'm from Oregon. "You look like a good wholesome Oregonian girl," he said. I've been wondering ever since exactly what good, wholesome and Oregonian look like, because when I stepped in a ladies' room a few minutes later, all I could see was that I looked like I'd been up 16 hours, on a plane for half of those, and not wearing any makeup. That doesn't say much for Oregon, if that's an identifiable look.