The Olson's invade P-town

Since I work in the retail business, the holiday season is a really difficult time to take time off work. And when I say "difficult", I pretty much mean impossible. REI does most of their business between Thanksgiving and Christmas and they need all hands on deck. I totally understand this and really, I can take time off any other part of year, so it's not that bad, but it's still kind-of a bummer not to be able to go home for Christmas.

So, home came to me this year. My parents flew in on Friday and spent 4 days with us. We're always looking for new things to do when they visit so we took in a Blazers basketball game on Sunday (win #13 of their hot streak), visited the state capitol in Salem, and we drove to the coast on Monday to see the sights in Newport:
It was so good to have them around-- I think parents always get a bad rap and visits from them seem to be stressful for other people, but not for me. I couldn't wait for them to come and even though they flew out this morning, I already miss them. I love you Mom and Dad!

The Navy docks in Portland

My "little" brother Craig is in the Navy. My 6 foot 4 inch tall little brother is assigned to the USS Wyoming, a submarine. You'd think there would be a height limit or something. Anyway, little Craig just got back from tour in the Atlantic right before Thanksgiving so the Navy was nice enough to give him leave over the holidays. So he flew in the day after Christmas and as usual, it was great to see him.

He gets funnier and wittier (is that a word?) as he gets older so the wise-cracks just keep coming when he's around. We made the customary visit to REI to stock up on any gear he still might actually need (a lot apparently), took him to John's Marketplace so he could bask in all the good Oregon beer, and he headed to Mt. Hood on Friday with Bryan and his posse for another epic ski day. Gosh, I miss that kid already.

It's snowing? Really?

So, it snowed on Christmas Day in Portland. It actually snowed in the city. I thought it was great, sometimes we didn't even have a white Christmas in Nebraska. Apparently, the chance of a white Christmas in Portland is less than one percent. 1%! The last time Portland received any measurable snowfall on Christmas was in 1937. 60 years! It didn't stick around long, but it really made it feel like Christmas.

We were out on a walk with Keisha, Travis and Jody's dog (we're dog-sitting while they are in Nebraska for a couple of weeks) and snapped a few photos:

Ski Day #2

It has become our own tradition to go skiing on Christmas Eve and this year did not disappoint. Not only did we not have to wait in a single lift line, we were treated to about a foot of fresh powder. I got in some deep stuff and face-planted a few times, B wiped out and had to dig his ski out, and it snowed ALL DAY. It was epic. Yeah, that's right. Epic.

O Christmas Tree!

Since I have moved to Oregon, I have had this want, no, need to cut my own tree down at Christmastime. When I was younger, we just went to the local tree lot, which was probably the hardware store or the grocery store, and picked out a pre-cut one. Then we got an artificial tree and I never really thought about it much after that.

Well. Oregon changed all that. I'm pretty much obsessed now. Last year? Last year, I made Bryan drive for what seemed like ever, past tree farm after tree farm until we got to the one I had seen a cute sign for. Just for the record, B has the patience of a saint. Anyway, we ended up picking out one that had already been cut so my plan was foiled.

This year? This year, B and I found a small tree farm about three or four miles away from our apartment (we live really close to the countryside, pretty much over the hill from the countryside) and the tree farmer man said, "Any tree you want. 30 bucks." Let me tell you what a great deal that is. A freshly cut noble fir for 30 big ones? Folks, it just doesn't get any better. So, I proceeded to cut down this year's tree. Next year? Next year, I want to kick it up a notch and ski into the woods with a sled, a thermos of hot cocoa and an axe.

Holiday Photo Booth

Ski bunnies

So we went skiing yesterday. FINALLY! For a girl raised in the flat lands of Nebraska, who first learned how to snowboard when she was 20, you wouldn't think that I'd be absolutely nuts about skiing. But I love it. There is something about being out in the cold, brisk air, hurtling yourself down a mountain that just gets addictive after awhile.

Yesterday was a great day. If you ever want to experience having entire ski runs to yourself, or being able to ski right up to the chair, no lift line, just come visit B and me and we'll take you skiing on a Wednesday. It's delightful.

Sure, it got really cold once the sun went behind the clouds, there were rocks and trees still sticking up that normally aren't there, and you really had to pull yourself up to the lifts instead of just glide in, but it was Day One of what hopes to be a great season.

Itsy, bitsy Etsy.

Through all of my blogging travels, I've discovered a little place called Etsy. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it, but it is an online marketplace for buying and selling "all things handmade." It has an excellent, very unique, art section so I made the suggestion to B this week that he should try and sell some of his prints in an Etsy online store.

So, ta-da!

I present to you: www.bryanhoybook.etsy.com.

He has put some of his photos from his "viewfinder" series up for sale. Much more to come. So, tell your family, tell your friends! I think the one thing on everyone's Christmas list this year, is a Bryan Hoybook original.

Merry shopping!

P.S. Etsy is neither itsy, nor bitsy. I just liked how it rhymed.

Goodwill Superstore. How I love thee.

So, we did it again. Found more furniture at our friendly, neighborhood Goodwill Superstore. We seem to stop by there so much that B and I now have a system. We go in, cruise the book section together and then we usually split up. He checks the cameras, I look at the fabric and purses and then we both, independently, check out the furniture.

It's funny. We'll both look at the same grouping of furniture and see something with different potential. On this most recent trip, B saw a table. A really great, solid oak dining table. I saw these chairs.Probably only because the chairs were $12 and the table was almost $100, we decided on the chairs. B cleaned them up and we're now on the hunt for new fabric for the seats. They are perfect for our apartment because we only had two chairs at our dining room table. Now, we can actually invite another couple over for dinner and not have to use every chair in the house.

Anyway, here's your before photo. I bet you can't wait for the "after."

Hello, you can turn the rain off now.

It has been raining since Friday night. Non. Stop. The Oregon coast has been experiencing hurricane force sustained winds, over 100 mph in some places. All of the roads west from Portland to the coast are closed, blocked by landslides and trees. It's a mess. Apparently, we are getting the tail end of two Pacific Ocean typhoons-- a "Pineapple Express."

I'm majorly bummed about this on two levels. First, all that snow I've been wanting? Well, it snowed A LOT last week, about 14 inches or so. But, since the temperature at Timberline Lodge was a balmy 37 degrees today and the freezing level was 8,000 feet, all of that snow is being melted by the buckets of rain.

And second, the Sitka Spruce fell. You know those cheesy tourist attractions that pop up along the interstate? The biggest porch swing in Kansas somewhere, that weird tree that grows out of a rock in Wyoming. Anyway, this tree was the largest Sitka Spruce (by mass, I think) and was along the main highway to the coast near Seaside. It was over 700 years old and the storm snapped it in two. That tree was older than this country. Guess I'll just have to drive my kids to see Wall Drug instead.

My roommate is back!

That's right. Jen came to visit. My very first Portland-made friend. We met at REI about 4 years ago when we were both hired as "seasonal employees" for the holidays. We had about 2 minutes of training and then were scooted out to the sales floor to provide North Face Denali jackets to the teenage masses of Lake Oswego. Next thing we knew, we were roommates and Jen was tap-dancing in the hallway of our duplex.

You know how people always say, "Oh, when you meet that one person, you will just know." The people are usually talking about couples, soulmates. I think it works the same way with friends. Something between Jen and I just clicked. It worked. Did you know that Jen once called in sick to two of her jobs so she could go to the beach with me for my birthday? Well, she did and that's how I knew. Knew we'd be soulmates. J-pup was in town for the weekend and we got to spend a lot of time together-- mostly eating and drinking time-- but lots of time. And nothing has changed. Maybe distance does make the friendship grow fonder.Jen, I already miss you! Move back!

Saturday

No, it's not snowing in Portland. But we want it to. Everyone has their own version of a snow dance (at REI, we hold an annual twinkie roast) and posting a photo of a snowy tree on my blog is my offering to the skies. Bring us more of the white stuff! I have Wednesday off and I want to ski!

Friday

Ooo, it hurts to be a Husker these days, doesn't it?

Thursday

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. My reasons are three-fold: 1) It's probably the last holiday that hasn't gone completely retail and all-corporate and really, seems to me to be the only holiday that is truly about spending time with those you love. No presents, just family. Family and food of-course, which brings me to 2) the food. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, yams, cranberries, the green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, apple crisp, etc. I could go on for days. It's positively the best food ever. Ever. And 3) Thanksgiving usually means that I get to see my family and we get to play games.

I love my family and I love that I grew up in a family that likes to play games. Board games, chinese checkers, battleship, "bunko" (that weird game with the dice), cards, etc. My mom's family, the Von Seggern side, plays this fantastic game that we call "cantelope." Just imagine 10 people sitting around a table all trying to play solitaire at the exact same time, using the exact same aces. And you have to shout out "cantelope!" when you win. It's a riot.

Last Thanksgiving, B and I met my aunt, uncle, cousins and their friends at their cabin in the Wallowa mountains of Eastern Oregon. When we get together with this particular bunch of family and friends, sometimes the meal starts to become this thing we have to endure before we can play cantelope. We get fierce, we get competitive. Claire, you are hands-down usually the winner (only because my mom isn't there) and Judy, you always sneak up on us and win one out of the blue. How do you do it? Here's a photo from the game last year:
See my uncle Tim standing up at the far end of the table? Yep, that's blatant cheating right there. And everyone is blurry because everyone, right at this second, is trying to put a two of spades on the same ace in the middle. Oh, the drama.

Anyway, we spent this Thanksgiving with our good friends Travis and Jody. They hosted all the Nebraska orphans at their house this year and Jody cooked a feast! The best part? We got to play games. We made our way through a rules-and-regulation-laden sports trivia game and then the boys retired to the backyard for some games of another sort.
This is what they call Polish Horseshoes. I'm sure it has evolved over the years. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Poland, but I can definitely see the horseshoe connection. The object of the game? Throw the frisbee so it knocks the beer bottle off the other team's pole. Oh, did I mention this game involved beer? Yep, it does and really, therein lies the problem. Because it's probably only about 45 degrees out, it's windy and you have to hold a really cold beer. No problem!
Jody, Travis? Thank you so much for being part of our family. We had a great time with you on Thursday and we are so thankful to have friends like you in our lives. Oh, and B thanks you for the glove.

Wednesday

I think I've mentioned before that Bryan is a great cook. A fantastic cook in fact. And it's no lie that I let him do most of the cooking around our house. I mean, if he likes doing it and he's really good at it, who am I to deny it from him?

Anyway, B may be the chef, but I'm definitely the baker. Wednesday was baking day-- a pumpkin spice cake for Thanksgiving day and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the little REI elves on Black Friday. Here are some shots:

Tuesday

I'm sure you have heard of the website Flickr. It's straight-up awesome. It's great for you because you can store all of your digital photos. It's great for me because I can then sit and pore through all of your digital photos.

I get lost on Flickr. I could spend hours just clicking on images that catch my eye and then looking at that person's photography and then their "favorites" and then the photography of their favorites, and on and on and basically, it's a circle that never ends with me. Anyway, what I like to look at most is pictures of other people's homes. It seems to be a trend in the blogging/Flickr world (at least the part of the blogging/Flickr world I seem to belong to) to show off your home through a series of photos. Little corners of your life, on the web, for anyone (me!) to look at. (Go to my Flickr page and click on Favorites to see what I mean.)

B and I thought we would put ourselves out there and try a little mini tour to spice things up a bit. Keep in mind though that these people, these photographers, these artists, seem to have very immaculate homes, always super clean and everything is so neatly and artfully arranged........ Ours on the other hand, is purely shot the way we found it. Heh, heh.

Here's my sewing basket:Cameras from B's collection:And my favorite, a very, not-even-close-to-being-staged, photo of B's breakfast this morning. I found this woman on Flickr who has published a book of photography of her breakfast. Check her out here. She's making money off shots just like this. Looks like we're on our way to a healthy, wealthy retirement, eh?

Monday

B is really the "professional" photographer in the house. I always say I want to learn and then he offers to teach me some tips and tricks and then I say (usually, with my sassy little hand on my hip), "No, I want to learn on my own!" And he chuckles, " Heh, heh, well ok, here's the camera, go have a good time."

The following shots are what happens when I get the camera. Monday's sky was so beautiful with all the layers of clouds as the stormy weather passed through. And the leaf with the water droplets? That was me messing around with the "macro" lens. It lets you take super close-ups and makes everything in the background look blurry and mysterious. B, the professional, would say "Oh, look at that, it has great depth of field."

Yeah, whatever. It looks awesome with a capital AWE.

Sunday

So, it has been raining for three days. Three days of non-stop drizzle, showers, and pouring down rain. As you can probably gather from the following photos, I didn't leave the house.

Still just a tourist

When I first arrived in Portland, I thought I would be able to blend in fairly seamlessly. I didn't have a crazy southern accent or sound like I was from the Bronx. Even though B says I talk like I lived in Minnesota for five months (which I did), I thought that I looked like the locals so no one would really know that I just moved here. And that theory worked, for awhile.

"Yeah, we were down by the Willamette river," I would say. (Willamette pronounced wil-la-met-tee.) Or, "just take Couch street." (Couch pronounced like couch.)

Then I realized that everyone I talked to started saying things like, "where are you from?" or "did you just move here?" I couldn't figure out what was giving me away. Finally, I was clued in.

The Willamette river? It's the wil-lam-et river, like "the Willamette, damnit."
Couch street? It's coo-ch street. That one I'll never figure out.

But the hardest one yet has been Champoeg. Cham-poo-eg? Chaum-pey?
Nope. Sham-poo-ee. Maybe it's French or something.

Anyway, you don't have to pronounce it right to enjoy it, so B and I spent a gorgeous fall Sunday afternoon biking to Champoeg State Park south of Portland last weekend.

Junkies! All of you!

So, word is that you are wondering when I'm going to post something new. Everyone's itching to read some new Hoybook adventures. It's as if you all got a little dose of some gayle crack and now you're back for more. Anyway, to give you junkies another fix, here's two photos of me from the top of Tom, Dick & Harry mountain after a hike last week. That's early season snow on Mt. Hood in the background. Once that snow line gets down to the trees, we can go skiing. We can't wait to go skiing. I will crush you. I will crush you like bug.