clouds

A few weeks ago I went up to portland with my mom and curti-p. As much as I love the coast, I have to escape pretty frequently as the seasons typically consist of:
-cold-ish & wet (November to March)
-less cold & wet (April to June)
-warmish & foggy (June to August)
-warmish & sunny (August to October)

Seriously though we rarely see 80˚ around here & consequently I wind up wearing my trusty black fleece year round. With that said it was a huge huge gift to be sleeveless in portland walking around washington park with some cool kids followed by an afternoon happy hour at the kennedy school patio. Apparently Jack Mcbrayer's cousin was our waiter and he let us know that Jack is a huge fake after mentioning his special appearance at the conan show in Eugene. Oddly enough this guy was as much of a creeper as Kenneth the page. In the end I savored the sunny patio sunburn, pint of ruby & good conversation. The sun quickly left and the drive home was filled with good cloud photography.





which brings me to this:

I know I know it's been a while, but things are generally crazy as usual. Settling in has been nice in the new place, but a few boxes remain unpacked/undecided and a few frames remain on the floors. They are starting to become fixtures in the sparsely decorated flat. I'm also slowly figuring out what exactly my new job is. It's fun and challenging, but I'm really excited to start piloting the education modules we are putting together. I'm working with some fabulous teachers :)

Here are a few updates with photos:
New plants from an very large spider plant that found a new home in my mom's library. I got it during my freshman year of college.

I love this place!



My new $20 dollar chair!


Okay so the flowers have come... where is the normally pleasant weather???


Eugene in the Spring! Curtis got a new place as well. I love the little tiny stove and general man presence. The floral couch remains but will get a slip cover soon or make a move to the donation center.




My first setting for a piloted field trip! The essence of this project is that each coastal watershed education module/unit for the project has a meaningful field experience. We are going to do some marsh plant surveys, exploration of the tideflats through digging, water sampling and looking at some flora/fauna. The sixes river pops out just north of cape blanco so we will be doing some wrack line exploration as well. When I was there a few weeks ago not only was it beautiful but we found subtidal sponges, spruce cones, neat rocks, algae and of course plastic. All in all an interesting exploration of a local small estuary of Oregon that can hopefully shape any estuary field trip in Oregon along with a student field journal and corresponding classroom activities.

Obviously I could talk for a long time about the project's aspirations :) But for now I have pretty photos.




A little trip to Bandon on the same day with lots of heavy winds, poking, photography and watching some awkward windsurfing with southerly winds.
I love these sunglasses!


my dad going out for that sweet "double dip"

I did make it!

Now to update about two weeks later. My mom got me the most fabulous chiton-esq lei & I made my dress which came out fabulous.

The whole family

plus curtis
and hillary!

Buddy of course was happy for sun and me to be home.But he was not happy when I packed up later that day for a summer at the marine lab.

Here and there

A few shots from Half Moon Bay and a very cool old wall in Santa Cruz

late eighties classic

I need to get back to my roots and back to the shoreline...

cottage life

For those of you who did not get the chance to visit this last term here are some tid bits of cottage #2. Before this I lived in a tinnie tiny dorm room with walls that did not reach the ceiling. In other words, I lived in a cubicle with 16 other people's cubicles. That's another story for another day...

cottage #2: second one from the left

my room...

Charleston sunrise

Cocktail parties every week with a classy dress up party for my birthday
22!!
Kenta is the king of uno... Sara & I are the queens of G&Ts

5 minute walk...

"heey brother"

fall fluff

Charleston lacks the type of Fall the rest of Oregon sees this time of year. November is one of my favorite months...

One of the overlook parks in North Portland...


Jeff post birthday/halloween.
Peninsula park rose garden
My brothers house has a huge garden full of interesting things, like this mimosa tree.
Back in Eugene it was time to find some Ginko leaves changing from their lovely green to yellow