Catch-up Post -- June 15, 2008

Yet another post I never published.

We just got back from our weekend in Winthrop (this really cool old-westy type town) for my birthday as well as a bike race. We stayed in a realllly cozy cabin in Mazama (next town west of Winthrop), which was awesome (except for the fact there was NO JACUZZI since they were undergoing a major remodel of the main hotel)! 

Today was my actual b-day and the most special part of it was when Wes's bike team sang "Happy Birthday" as they passed me during their road race (I was camped out at the feed zone). It brought tears to my eyes! So sweet!! We drove back home via Hwy 20 and stopped off to see dad + the family, then home. Loooong day of driving! 

Favorite Turin Brakes songs of the moment: 

Feeling Oblivion + State of Things

Catch-up Post--June 5, 2008

So I wrote this but never posted it. 6 months later...

My sister intro'd me to Seeqpod awhile ago but it didn't dawn on me til recently to use it at work!! It's brilliant!

I had mostly a 90s kick today (with some 80s and 00s sprinkled in):

My playlist today:

White town--I could never be your woman
Kula Shaker--Tattva
Mansun--Wide Open Space
Jesus Jones--Zeroes and Ones
Blur--There's no other Way
Lush--Ladykillers
The Charlatans--The only one I know
Supergrass-Alright
Stereophonics--Handbags and Gladrags
Ash--Burn baby burn
Turin Brakes--Breaking the Girl (RHCP cover)
Aztec Camera--Somewhere in my heart
Split Enz--Message to my girl
Ozma--Battlescars
Gorillaz--Tomorrow Comes Today
No Doubt--it's my life

First Week of Wimbledon is Almost Over :(

Would rather be there than watching it on TV! But who knows when it'll be affordable to ever go to europe?!?!

My post is only quasi-related to its moniker. I was inspired by some other blogs I'm reading to make a "things I love at the moment" list.

1. Wimbledon. I especially love getting up in the morning, having it on in the background, watching 1/16 of a match over breakfast with my husband. Mmmm, now it makes sense why I've eaten so many strawberries this week!

2. Polyvore. I could spend houuuursss on this site, yet haven't had those hours to waste yet! I look forward to it. I've created some interesting (mmm, bordering on the very bizarre) sets so far. Check 'em out.

3. NY Times Real Estate Slideshows. I've always been obsessed with houses, especially with really interesting floor plans. Used to draw up my own floor plans as a young one. Yeah, and another secret I'm about to reveal: I used to watch Real Estate Showcase in my spare time as a child. "Just ring a Bell, Ben and Beverly Bell, 779-4333!" Mmmk, if you a) didn't grow up in the desert and b) never watched Real Estate Showcase, you have NO idea what I'm talking about!

4. The Time Traveler's Wife. It came out a few years ago, but I didn't read it until last week. I want to read it again, actually. I was hoping it would eventually become a movie, and sure enough I looked it up on IMDB and there it was, due out at Christmastime starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams (perfect!). Maybe I like to read love stories even more now that I'm married. Wow, that was a velveeta cheese moment!

5. Discovering new foods through the weird diet Wes and I are on that we wouldn't have found otherwise (ie red quinoa and millet). Or having to concoct new variations of old favorites--I'm actually talking about one recipe in particular: Hot C(oat)coa.

At first we were strictly following a rotation, which means if we had cocoa one night, we couldn't have it again until night 5. Oy. So we've been indulging ourselves and having it every night to make up for the suffering we experience throughout the day (buckwheat, no tortillas). Since Wes can't have soy or honey (two key components in our old cocoa recipe), we've had to replace the soy with oat milk and the honey w/ evaporated cane juice.

Recipe: Heat 1 mug water at medium heat. Mix in two heaping teaspoons of dutch processed unsweetened cocoa powder and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Stir in 1 mug oat milk and 4 teaspoons evaporated cane juice. Enyoy!

6. $1 sales. All sales at the gift shop at work go back to the hospital. They had an old inventory clearance sale today and I happened to arrive at the right time--when they announced the remaining items were ONE DOLLAR! I got Wes a pair of flip flops (retail: $30) and some other useless, fun crap!

7. My husband for surprising me with mountain bike shoes and pedals. I'm trying them out this weekend (practicing around our complex only...I know it's gonna be tough). Aren't they prreetty?? I don't want to get them dirty...

P.S. I'm tooootally overdue on posting about what we've been doing since we cleaned up our road (a lot, hence no posts. and it's been so long, our sign has been posted [recognizing Helen & Wes Wahlin as having adopted a slice of E. Lake Samm]). But some photos from our in-state travels might be kinda fun to check out. I'll try to post this weekend.

Adopt-a-Roadsters

Can you think of a better way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning
in the Pacific Northwest than picking up litter? Actually, it was quite a lot of fun! We found an interesting array of items from a fire extinguisher to a dead mouse to a tent! Of course there heaps of plastic bags, bottles and soda cans, but what I learned was that people snack a LOT in their cars and think nothing of disposing their nutrigrain bar wrapper out the window! I guess I never really grasped the concept of littering.

Stats: 3 hours and 8 bags of trash. We'll probably go out again later in the summer, in the early morning when there's no traffic. Hopefully by then our names will be plastered up on the sign so everyone knows who takes care of that really important 1.7 mile strip of East Lake Sammamish Parkway!

Wahlin Wahlin in Walla Walla

The rolling hills of Walla Walla.
Hey, isn't that my desktop photo?

Cucina Fresca

The only proof of the Cat 5 winners to be forgotten by the announcer,
until it was brought to his attention to announce them!

The Coochies take 1, 2 and 3 in the Crit!

Mr. Criterium Winner!

Community Supported Agriculture

I picked up our first box o' Full Circle Farm produce today, opened it, and started cookin'!

Shoulda done this a long time ago, but we were afraid a whole lotta fruits and veggies were gonna go to waste. We're starting out with the bi-monthly delivery and see if it's enough or too little (I'm thinkin' juuust right!).

I used all the carrots and half a bag of salad so far, but as you can see, there's plenty more to eat!

Strawberries, mangoes, spinach, lemons, green onions, ginger, apples, pears, capsicum, potatoes, sugar snap peas, green beans--we're going to be eating well for sure!

The grossest thing I've ever seen

I don't know if we heard about it elsewhere, but Wes and I were at Fred Meyer recently and couldn't get over how the air was filled the pungent odor of Krispy Kreme, and somehow the conversation meandered into -- I wonder if anyone has ever had a Krispy Kreme burger. Maybe I've been in the dark, but this EXISTS and is one of the grossest things I've ever seen.

I was on the Food Network site viewing the top 10 recipes of the day, and wanted to know what a "Lady's Brunch Burger" might be. So I click on the link and find out it's precisely the burger we had nightmares about--brought to you by Miss Paula Deen, of course. Eggs and bacon to top it all off? Early grave, Paula. Early grave.

Food Blogging

Mmmm Mmm! I have been making some tasty meals lately, most of them Italian-inspired. It didn't occur to me to blog about my dinners until my sister forwarded me a link to a blog I've been following for a few months now called Shutterbean, written by a gal in San Fran who uses all Trader Joe's products and makes inventive meals, snacks, desserts, etc. with them. No, I'm not turning this into a food blog, but if I have an inspiring meal, I'll share it. She has a kick ass camera, so my photos pale in comparison to hers, but typically all my ingredients are from the Joe's as well.

I never plans meals. I buy fruits, vegetables, cheeses, pastas, breads and some meats at the store and figure out something to do with them when I get home. For packing lunches in the morning to take to work, it's a terrible system, but for dinners I find it fun and a creative approach. It makes for super simple meals that usually take less than an hour to prep and cook. I don't always buy the same varieties; I try to mix it up, but as you'll see below, in the last few weeks I've been buying the same staples to make different dishes.

For lunch today I made whole wheat linguine with spinach-walnut pesto.

I didn't even really know if you could make pesto w/ spinach, but I did it anyway b/c I was craving it and I didn't have any fresh basil in the house. I did have a bag of pine nuts, but decided to use walnuts instead. I threw each of those ingredients into the cuisinart with a dash of chicken broth while the pasta was boiling. I took it out and mixed in some romano cheese (nearly nonfat and very tasty) with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. I added my linguine, fat free feta from TJ's, cut up some yellow and red cherry tomatoes and had the tastiest lunch I've had in a long time.

I made a pasta primavera of sorts a few weeks ago that went over well with the hubby that included fresh carrots, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, and the feta and romano again (but somehow I don't tire of it). I Another one he loved, saying it was the best he's ever had (really!) was a ground turkey and vegetable lasagna. I used the no-boil lasagna noodles from TJ's, their tomato basil marinara and layered with my 2 favorite cheeses again, ground turkey that I pre-cooked with italian seasoning and garlic, portabellas, black olives and 45 minutes later, tasty goodness.

How is it possible for 2 skaters' scores to be exacly the same?!

Nationals concluded today. No mention of Bowman's death. They did commemorate him there apparently, but no on-air message, which was a shame. Rightfully, the focus was on the melodrama of the Evan Lysacek/Johnny Weir rivalry, but just acknowledging it and doing a 5-minute celebration of his skating would have been nice.

Anyhow, on to the skating...I am so thankful American Men's skating has come back around; oh to be proud of strong, consistent, amazing skaters again! I do like both guys for different reasons, but must say I'm glad Evan won b/c Johnny's attitude and Russophilia are quite obnoxious AND even though Johnny's performances were perfect, he didn't have the quad in the short program and his "Love and War" long program was not as striking as Evan's Tosca (one of my favorite pieces of music). Evan's performances were clean, just kinda of bobbly on his landings, plus he had a quad in each program. Because they sensationalized the rivalry so much, it was so crazy (unbelievable really) that on top of it for them to have identical scores (Lysacek won b/c hen won the long program).

Due to recording issues, I wasn't able to see the pairs, but heard about the proposal of Baldwin to Inoue (can probably check this out on you tube, however). Not a fan of ice dancing, I was hugely impressed with the couples. They made it look less like, well, ice dancing. And the women's (girls), was OK. There were some good performances, but I just wasn't as impressed as I was with the quality of the men. I think it was overshadowed by the fact that the rules aren't aligned with that of the world championships, so b/c the winners of nationals are so young, NONE of them are going to worlds (well maybe the 3rd 4th and 5th place winners). How anticlimactic is that?

Happy Australia Day!

Tsonga (Tsonger, like Killer Cahill calls him)

The Jokester

In the past year, I honestly haven't had much interest in watching tennis on TV, more than likely because I'm tired of Federer, of Americans not doing very well and the lack of coverage. The start of this year, however, has re-piqued my interest in tennis. There were some really exciting matches--I was actually watching the matches nearly from beginning to end, not surfing the web simultaneously. Roddick/Kohlschreiber's high level match with insane stats (Roddick serving 42 aces [his personal record] and the astounding number of winners over unforced errors); Tipsarevic taking Feds to 5; Tsonga steamrolling over Nadal in 3; and of course history that was made yesterday--Djokovic ending Feds' hard court streak, beating him in straight sets.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention the women. Err...uhhh...happy to see someone other than Tylenol (ie Justine Henin; if you recall her giving the match to Mauresmo 2 yrs ago at this very tourney b/c her tummy hurt due to taking too many Tylenol) or Serena win a major. Good for ShaRAPova (they're never going to pronounce her name properly), except here's my beef w/ her: why doesn't she just play for the USA? When she talks you wouldn't even suspect she's Russian b/c she's spent the majority of her life living and training in the US. The second issue is actually with her mom--"too nervous" to watch her daughter play. Yeah, I get that it would be nerve wracking, but how selfish--shouldn't she be thinking of her daughter before herself? She should be there for her, supporting her.

Tomorrow should be exciting! Someone other than Feds and Nads! I love Tsonga's demeanor. He's so relaxed and confident. The way he plays reminds me a lot of Safin, he's just not a hothead. And everyone says he looks like Mohammed Ali. You know how the French version of Vamos! is Allez? Well, if I was at the Aussie Open I'd have a sign for Tsonga that said "Mohammed ALLLEEEZZZZ!." But Djokovic--the Jokester, as I call him--is also a likable character (save for his 15+ ball bouncing prior to each serve). His rise to #3 has given him a solid chance at winning a slam. May the best player win!

December 2007

the fahzha w/ a bowl of spicy peanut soup. i had the same. We bopped around the neighborhood of fairhaven (below), which is in bellingham. super cute!


On a rainy walk up to the highlands. We found a huge park called Grandview that must be true to its name, but it was too overcast to see anything. We could only hear the Grandsound of I-90.


All I wanted for Xmas was a new 'do. And I got it!


All Wesley got was pleepleeus.

Kazakhs Who Hunt With Golden Eagles

Wes and I watched a show about Kazakhs who hunt with golden eagles. It's amazing how they obtain, train and hunt with them.

You Know How I Love Cats...

Well this could be the most disturbing, yet funniest pet accessory I've seen in quite some time. What I really enjoy are the descriptions about the "bashful blonde" who only needs a Swedish accent to finish the look...

Ok, now is your cat really going to keep this on its head? And perhaps it's just to highlight the wig, but if you're going to wig your cat, why wouldn't you also dress it? I almost feel like these are pin-up girls. I mean, I'm not a cat owner, so maybe they don't dress 'em up as much as dog owners...but I feel like these are more like nude feline models...ICK!

Our New Art

This was our 2nd annual visit to the Vashon Island Studio Art Tour and here's what we got!

On our first stop to Brian Brenno's glassblowing studio. Well, the glassblower was out to lunch but his wifey sold us her art (she uses his glass remnants to create mosaics). We were just going to get one fish, but decided to create a scene instead (sun, crab). The crab is my fave, and although the photo doesn't represent them too well, the orange and pinks in the glass are really beautiful.

[photos are missing, sorry]

Our second stop was to Dreamtime Studios, where we bought a fish (yeah, I know, I think this is the last bit of fish art we'll buy) painting last year, which hangs above our couch in our living room. The artist, Marcus Fellbaum (see post December 2006 for our 1st Vashon visit), remembered us! We were so amazed! He's a really cool guy and we're very impressed with his imaginative body of work. He brought out a piece Wes remembered from last year, but we decided not to get it (a lighthouse from Whidbey Island). Instead we chose the fish (again, I know we have a lot of fish) triptych, which now resides in our dining room. We only have a few walls left in the house to fill, but I guarantee they'll be filled with sailboats or my sister's art! We've reached our fish quota :)

Sanna Annukka

I really enjoy this artist's work. She's from Finland and did the last Keane album's design. Check out her Web site.