Homebrewing

This weekend I checked another activity off of my Portland bucket list. My friend Mike and I have been talking about brewing beer together for a while now and we finally coordinated our schedules, got all the ingredients at the local home brew store, and Mike dusted off all of his brewing equipment. We decided to make a nice dark porter that will be ready to drink just in time for the holidays.

It felt like we were working on a science project as we sterilized pots and carboys, mixed and heated ingredients to a very specific temperature and then added yeast for fermentation. The beer will ferment for about a month before it is ready for consumption. I can totally see why Portlanders are so into this. It’s a science and an art. And after you’ve experimented with it enough, you can get creative with it and really make some tasty drinks (such as pumpkin ale). We’ll see how this first batch goes and then who knows… we might be opening up our own local brewery (as if Portland doesn’t have enough of those)! Prost!

mixing the malt extract with the mulling barley

Cascade hops

filtering into the carboy

topping it off at 5 gallons

the hardest part... waiting.

 

and when we weren't busy in the lab/kitchen, we got to play with this little chunk! Mike's 5-month old daughter, Eleanor.

Fall Weekend

Fall is definitely here! This weekend was full of fun fall activities.  Saturday morning, I harvested grapes at a local vineyard. This party was sold at the auction last year, so this was part of my job: hanging out at a vineyard with great people, eating great food and drinking wine all day. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it!

After I left the vineyard, I met up with some friends and headed out to the pumpkin patch and corn maze at Kruger Farm on Sauvie Island. We ran around and got completely lost in the corn maize. Then when it started down pouring, we went undercover and enjoyed fresh corn on the cob and caramel apples.

 

 

We headed home to enjoy some nice, hot chili (thanks, Ben!) and watch a scary movie, What Lies Beneath, in preparation for Halloween. I just love a good thriller.

Laura and I finished off our fall weekend by turning on the heater in our house (it's cold outside!) and cuddled up on the couch with some good books. After a long, busy summer, the fall hibernation season is here in Portland!

Great Adventure Auction 2012

This past Saturday was the 7th Annual Medical Teams International Great Adventure Auction - the 4th that I have been a part of.  "Auction season" is always quite a whirlwind, but it's also one of my favorite times of year.  Volunteers fill the office, phones are continually ringing, emails are received and sent like rapid fire, candy and carbs lurk around every corner (which I love/hate), pumpkin spice lattes flow like the Columbia River, and delirious laughter fills our office where you can usually hear a pen drop.

 

Our auction team which includes Deb, Chiqui, Katie and I spend lots of time together during the weeks leading up to auction night.  We start reading each other's minds, completing each other's sentences and Katie and I creepily started dressing alike and causing people to believe that we are actually twins.

 

This year, my parents were able to come up to Portland to see the auction first-hand.  They've heard me talk about it for years and now they've actually experienced this huge part of my life.  I think they win the award for Longest Distance Traveled for the Great Adventure.

 

Our goal for this year's auction was $1.4 million.  And the total raised for the 2012 auction is $1.43 million!!!  All of the hard work paid off and we were all amazed at the generosity of our wonderful guests.  What a blessing to be a part of such an amazing event for an incredible organization.  Just think of all of the people around the world who will directly benefit from the generosity of 600 people gathered in Portland on October 13th.  It really is quite miraculous!

our MC - weatherman Matt Zaffino, our auction chair - Phil Lane and our amazing auctioneer - Johnna Wells

our new CEO and his wife welcoming everyone

a glimpse of the live auction

The Swifts

Tonight, Amber, Debbie and I met up at Chapman Elementary School to watch the swift migration.  The "Chapman Swifts" are a group of thousands of birds that come to Portland every year in September and nest in the chimney of the school in the NW area.  There are reportedly upwards of 30,000 birds who are a part of this group every year.

 

Every September you hear people talking about how the "swifts are coming" and family and friends bring picnics and blankets and gather on the school lawn at sunset every evening to watch the bird show.  It really is incredible to see thousands of birds swoop in all at once and swirl around the chimney for about 20 minutes before they finally dive into the chimney for a good night's sleep. The finale of tonight's live performance included a large hawk disturbing the the swifts' well-rehearsed act and actually taking the swift population down a few.  The crowd of people "ooh"ed and "aah"ed throughout the show and applauded at the end.

 

I was enjoying the peaceful evening... until one of the swifts pooped on my head.  True story.  I guess that's what I get for laughing when a bird pooped on the girl-in-front-of-me's head.  I suppose it's inevitable when you're sitting underneath thousands of birds.

 

the swifts flying around as the sun sets

the finale - the swifts swooping into the chimney

as pre entertainment, kids bring cardboard boxes and slide down the hill... yes Portland has some odd traditions

Waste Land

Tonight I watched the documentary Waste Land about artist Vik Muniz’s project with the garbage pickers of Brazil’s Jardim Gramacho landfill. This particular landfill is the largest landfill in the world in terms of volume of trash received daily. The ACAMJM (Association of Pickers of Jardim Gramacho) is a group of people who collect recyclable materials out of the landfill and sell it to companies that can use these materials to make products such as tires, buckets and PVC pipes.  Muniz is renowned for creating art out of unusual materials. When you combine this artist with this garbage group, you get incredible art out of garbage.

 

Muniz himself grew up very poor and started this project as a way to "change the lives of a group of people with the same materials they deal with everyday." The work he did was inspiring and he made a direct impact on the community by creating this art and then selling it and giving the money back to the association. But the documentary made me realize how much the way we live and the little things we do (or don’t do) make an impact on people like this and what they are working for as well. A little less directly, but an impact all the same.

 

One of the ladies in the documentary, Magna, who is a very humble, poor picker as well as a very beautiful and wise woman said, “It’s easy for you to be sitting there at home in front of your television consuming whatever you want and tossing everything in the trash and leaving it out on the street for the garbage truck to take away. But where does that garbage go?” That is a very real statement.

 

I know that we don’t live near Jardin Gramacho, but the garbage that we put in our trash bins in Portland, Dallas or Waco ends up in a landfill somewhere. We don’t see it every day (or ever), so we don’t think twice about where that garbage goes when it leaves our home. But somewhere it is creating a heap near someone’s home and is a dirty and smelly reality in their life.

 

Easy solution? Recycle everything that you can! Portland pretty much forces us to reduce our waste by picking up our recycling and compost every week and our trash only every other week. It may sound crazy, but it’s actually doable!  Dallas provides an easy way to recycle here.  And so does Waco. It may not seem like much, but every plastic bottle or cardboard box that goes into the recycling rather than the garbage really does make a difference for our world and the people living in it.

 

Crater Lake Camping

A few years ago I started the tradition of going camping for the long Labor Day weekend which always happens to be right around my birthday.  This year was quite an epic camping trip as we went to Crater Lake, which has been on the top of my Oregon bucket list for a long time.  I ended up being an all-girls camping trip which was completely awesome!  I've never gone camping without some guys who always end up doing a lot of the planning, cooking, fire-starting, tent-pitching, stuff-carrying.  But this weekend it was just us girls: Megan, Mollie, Melissa, Kathy and me.  And it was so fun!

 

We packed up the car and drove 5 hours south to Crater Lake National Park.  We checked in at the ranger's station, got our permit and some tips on good backcountry camping spots, put our heavy packs on and hiked into the woods.  The first night we hiked 2 miles into the Dutton Creek area and set up camp.  Kathy cut some wood, Megan started the campfire and we made a yummy quinoa and veggie dinner followed by smores.  It's funny how much better everything tastes when you're out in the wilderness.

 

We woke up at 4:45 the next morning and hiked out to a viewpoint to see the sun rise over Crater Lake.  It was absolutely beautiful - definitely the highlight of the trip for all of us.  We took naps after we hiked back to our campsite then did a bit more hiking and exploring when we woke up again.

 

The second evening we hiked 4 miles into the Red Cone area which is actually part of the Pacific Crest Trail.  We set up camp and started another campfire.  That night we had a very delicious chili soup dinner topped off with a surprise birthday dessert that Megan came up with.  We individually wrapped a banana, chocolate chips and marshmallows in tin foil, put them in the campfire coals for a bit, then opened it up and dug into the gooey goodness.  It was delicious - especially paired with a nice bottle of champagne that Megan carried in with her.

 

It seriously couldn't have been a better weekend.  Definitely one of the best weekends I've had in Oregon.  It was an amazing group of girls - everyone was very laid back, easy going, super fun and fully capable of holding her own out in the wild.  Thanks for making my birthday camping weekend so amazing Firefox, Flo Rida, Honey and Scout!  You girls are the best.  Love, Trillium.




Camping Weekend Highlights
- cuddling with Megan in the tent
- dance party around the camp fire
- enjoying a cup of coffee as we watched the sun rise
- watching my friends from different groups (work, old roommate, new roommate, home community) get to know each other
- early morning yoga
- never knowing what time it was
- finally finding the trailhead marked with a tiny handwritten note
- great conversation

 

Hood to Coast 2012

This is my favorite weekend of the year.  The weekend where 12,000 of us crazy runners throw all comfort out the window and pile into vans, forget about sleeping and run from Mount Hood to the Oregon coast on extreme adrenaline (and a little training, too).

Our team name was Return of the Flies - last year we were Droppin' Like Flies and next year we'll be Lord of the Flies.  The team included several coworkers, my roommates, guys from last year's team and a few other friends.  I was in Van 1 with our awesome driver Bruce who owns a 15 passenger van and has driven Hood to Coast for 15 years.  He was the best!  I ran Leg 6 with a total of 17.33 miles which I ran at an average pace of 8:15.

My first leg was 6.75 miles along Hwy 26 in Sandy.  It was a long and hot one on Friday afternoon.  My second leg was 5.23 miles along Hwy 30 in St Helens.  I ran this one at midnight and was grateful that I didn't fall asleep in the middle of it.  My third leg was 5.35 miles out in Astoria.  I ran this one at about 10am.  It included a lot of downhill which was good because I didn't have a ton of extra energy but it was pretty rough on my already sore and tight quads.  Our star runner this year was Justin who ran leg 5.  Not only is the the #1 ranked most difficult leg, this year there was a 2 mile detour added to one of his legs due to a fire out in St Helens.  He dominated and didn't complain once.  Seriously, way to go Justin!

I love the craziness of the weekend event that runs directly through Portland and the encouraging spirit of the 1,000 teams.  I love spending lots of time with the other people in the van (despite the lack of any personal space).  I love being surrounded by others who simply love running as well.  I love not taking showers, not sleeping, and using port-a-potties.  Just kidding - that is definitely not the highlight of the weekend.

Speaking of the highlight of the weekend... I don't know if any of you have seen the Hood to Coast documentary.  It's very well made a gives a good picture of what the weekend running weekend is all about.  The film was made 4 years ago and follows 4 different teams.  One of those teams is Dead Jocks in a Box.  In the words of one of the team members, "Being on Dead Jocks is kind of like being on a select but really irrelevant fraternity."  They are "over-the-hill" athletes.  I think the team is awesome and really hilarious.  Yesterday after I had finished my last leg and we were headed out to the Coast, we came across one of the Dead Jocks vans (literally right after we were talking about them and I said I was hoping we would see them on the course).  So we pulled up next to them, I rolled down my window and said, "Hey guys, I'm your biggest fan!"  They invited us to hang out and talk with them.  I got a picture with them, got an autographed coupon for a Dead Jocks massage (as well as a little shoulder massage right there on the spot) and even got sprayed by one of their infamous water guns.  They were as hilarious and crazy as I imagined them to be.  And I ran into the whole team at the coast and got to meet Larry, my favorite team member.  That was definitely the highlight of my weekend!

After partying at the beach for a while, I made it back to Portland and crashed.  Getting out of bed was difficult this morning - not only because I'm exhausted but because I'm so sore that my legs nearly gave out under me.  Going down stairs feels having small knives poking my quads.  But I'll take this soreness anyday (well at least once a year).  I've now completed my 4th Hood to Coast relay and hope that our team makes it in again next year!

 

the whole team at the coast

 

just hanging out with the Dead Jocks