Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Blog

  • Back from vacation

    Yep, home again, home again. Actually we got home yesterday (Sunday), but it’s taken me two days just to get started catching up on email and stuff. Anyway, it was one hell of a vacation! Internet access was spotty to none for most of the trip (you could pay 50 cents a minute for access from the ship that was little better than dial-up when it worked), so it turned into an offline sabbatical.

    I imagine I’ll post some pictures and stories in the coming days. Right now though I’m still catching up, and decompressing. It was back to work today, which always sucks after a long vacation.

  • The Vacation

    Wednesday (today, even though it’s only 12:30 am) is the start of our big vacation: 12 days worth. It’s the longest vacation we’ve had in… ever, maybe. So my offline status may extend a bit, even though we’re taking the laptop with us. Though with internet access, who knows…

    What are we doing? Well, prepare to be jealous: We’re going on an Alaskan cruise. Yep! It’s my in-laws 35th wedding anniversary, so they’re taking the family on a cruise. Nice, huh?

    Told you you’d be jealous :).

    We’ll be stopping in Seattle first for a couple of days, to visit some old friends (we’re driving to Vancouver, B.C. for the cruise itself), so all in all it’s going to be a very busy vacation. If I have time to blog, I may do so. Or maybe not! It might get really quiet around here if I’m gone for nearly two weeks.

    If I’m not around, try reading some of our other local blogs. Or check out Wikipedia, they’ve got some good stuff there.

  • Going offline

    Starting tomorrow (er, today… Friday), I’m gonna be offline. We’re going camping for the family reunion all weekend. It’ll be nice to unplug for a while.

    And nice to be camping, too. It’s one of those things I really like to do, but only ever do it once a year—yep, at the family reunion. Which is fine, but it always turns into such a production… it’d be nice sometime to throw a bunch of gear in the car and just go, maybe take more time than a weekend, and just… I don’t know, decompress maybe.

    But I’ll take what I can get. We’ll have a great time, we’ve got a really good campsite this year, it’s gonna be good.

  • Bluefish Bistro

    We ate at Bluefish Bistro (no website that I see; instead here’s a link to The Source’s dining guide entry) in Downtown Bend last Saturday (my wife and I), and yes, I’m just now getting around to writing about it. Bluefish is one of the newest restaurants in the current trend of upscale, fine dining experiences in Bend (others being Merenda, Cork, Zydeco, Ariana, for instance), and it’s also one of the most expensive. More on that in a bit.

    Located downtown on Franklin, on the corner of Drake Park and Franklin basically, it’s kind of an unassuming place from the outside. I don’t know if that bodes well or not because that location has generally seen more turnover than other places downtown; I can think of two previous establishments there in recent memory. Inside is nice, more character; I particularly like the water fountain dividing the entry area from the dining room.

    One nice touch: the water had a fresh sprig of mint in it. My wife wasn’t sure how well she liked that, but I thought it was refreshing—we grew up with a lot of mint growing in the gardens, and there’s nothing quite like being able to pick and eat fresh mint leaves.

    The bread was very good, but it was the butter that stood out. There are three kinds: a sweet butter, a honey almond butter, and a tangerine butter. They were, frankly, amazing.

    A note to beer drinkers: they apparently don’t have any beer on tap, it’s all bottled, and at four dollars a bottle, you’d probably be better off going with a glass of wine (which is what I did).

    The food was good, but expensive: all the entrees were in the mid to upper twenties, the heirloom tomato salad was $12, glasses of wine tended to run seven dollars and up. The food was excellent—I had the halibut which was tender and moist and flaky, along with well-chosen root vegetables (beets and turnips, I want to say), and the vanilla cheesecake was stunning—but I think it’s the most expensive of restaurants we’ve been to lately. Sad to say, this will be the limiting factor as to how often we visit Bluefish, I imagine.

    Overall, a very good dining experience. If you can afford it, it’s worth a try at least once.

  • Central Oregon dinosaur

    This article in the Bulletin Monday caught my eye: Dinosaur discovery. Part of a plesiosaur was unearthed over near Prineville last summer:

    The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest.

    It is also thought to be only the third vertebrate fossil uncovered in the area so far from a rock formation that dates back to the Cretaceous period, the last of the three periods of the Dinosaur Age….

    When South Dakota paleontologist James Martin excavated the site in May on behalf of the BLM, he found at least two nearly complete teeth, tooth fragments and a 3-foot-long lower jawbone of a 90 to 100 million-year-old plesiosaur. The pieces may constitute 80 percent of its lower jaw.

    Martin thinks it was from a large-headed, short-necked plesiosaur that was 25 feet long from head to tail.

    Pretty cool stuff—it’s a long article (for the Bulletin), gets into detail about plesiosaurs. And, there’s another first that I’m aware of: using Wikipedia as a source (and citing it in the article). That seems to me to be pretty clueful. Have they mentioned Wikipedia before?

  • Walla Walla

    I’m in Walla Walla tonight, on the road for work. My company purchased a house up here and needed to get a computer and WiFi set up. It’s kind of a cool deal, the house is available to employees spending time up here—business takes a priority, but it’s open to anyone who wants to take a weekend in Walla Walla also.

    So, in addition to getting the stuff done I came to do, I also stopped at Three Rivers Winery and bought some wine to take home, and had dinner at the Mill Creek Brewpub (and wrote a review of it on The Brew Site).

    Back home tomorrow. In case anyone’s wondering, it was a five hour drive from Bend, counting a few reststops. I’ll have more to write about the drive and Walla Walla tomorrow night, probably.

  • Deschutes County Fair

    Spent half a day Saturday at the county fair, which was both good and bad. The bad part was that it was hot—damn hot—and expensive. The good part is that it’s the Fair and we had fun—and we got there when they opened so we didn’t have to deal with the crowds and lines like Chris did.

    You know what I like best about the fair? The livestock and the crafts. The stuff the fair is actually supposed to be about: showing your animals, or your goods, and the competition between those things. I particularly like the poultry exhibit, probably because we raised chickens growing up. I enjoy viewing the rest of the livestock, some more than others (the sheep are just “eh”), but the birds are the best.

    The canned, prepared, or grown foods are highlights, too. I particularly like the beer and wine showings; there’s never many anymore, but it’s still cool. I remember when I entered my homebrew in the fair some years back; I brought home several ribbons. That was cool.

    The kids loved the rides, of course. I could personally do without: they’re expensive and you have to wait too long in the heat. I remember liking the rides well enough when I was younger, I think; at least, the “boring” stuff I described above didn’t interest me. I wonder at what point that changed…

    All good fun. I even won some stuffed toys for the kids at the midway games. Know the secret to winning those games? They’re easy; the secret part is how much each individual game costs! That’s how they get you. If you want to win a big prize, you basically need to shell out $16-32 per game (assuming you win each “throw” you buy). That’s some crazy economy of scale, right there.

    All in all, a good, tiring time was had. Maybe next year I’ll brew some beer to enter in the fair; my wife is convinced that if I’d entered my pumpkin ale, I would have won first prize. Possibly. But that’s what next year is for.

  • Trump/Bend on Google

    It seems I am the number one search on Google for “Donald Trump Bend Oregon“. That’s awesome. I think I should win something :).

    Even more amusing is reading the comments I got on that post, with the variations on the rumor people have heard.

    How about this? Start a weblog called BendRumors.com (the domain is available! Grab it up quick!) and run just this sort of thing… (Actually, Shannon’s boy suggested something similar, doing “BendTabloid.com.” That one’s available, too.)

  • One year ago tomorrow

    A year ago tomorrow, I had a photo shoot with the Bulletin (along with Jake and Chris) for a big article on local blogging that ran a week later. Amazing, that was a whole year ago.

  • Sheepherders

    A coworker emailed me this today. It’s a classified ad that appeared in the Bulletin on Sunday. Anyone looking for a career change? Want to get out of the high stress, tight deadlines and sedentary lifestyle of the technology industry?

    Sheepherder with 3 months of experience. Immediate Openings Available. Attends sheep grazing on range or pasture. Herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flock from predators and from eating poisonous plants. May examine animals for signs of illness and administer vaccines, medication and insecticides. May assist in lambing, docking and shearing. May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production. Large flocks with single/pair herder. Free food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. May be on call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Maximum of 11 months employment. Employment for -3/4 of workdays guaranteed. Workers compensation provided. Transportation to job and subsistence provided, deducted from wages until 50% of employment contract completed, then paid to worker. Return transportation provided at end of employment contract. A reference is required. Employment is available in several Western States including: NV, AZ, CA, OR, ID, WA, CO, UT, MT, WY, Minimum salary varies according to States. From $650.00 to $1200.00….

    “May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production.” The mind reels.