Halloween

This is my neice and i. must be around 1991 or 1992. and yes, i seem to be wearing a bike reflector as a witch necklace. when i was a kid i liked to make witch potions in the wheelbarrow in the backyard. it got color from piracantha berries and whatever else i could conjure out of the yard....no snails or worms...that seemed cruel.

Hope you all have a safe and happy halloween...:)

weekend mis-adventures

Hello from the land of rain. Here's how i feel about today: 

Yes, you are right, those are my AMAZING rain boots. They were one of the first things i bought when i came to Seattle and had illusions about how much fun puddle jumping would be.

I no longer harbor such silly thoughts.

So, this weekend (after A's birthday and bowling adventures) we went to a charity auction for an organization called Homestep that combats homelessness here in Seattle. Our organization hosted a table and i conned my co-workers into coming. The theme was FIESTA!

Brooke and Justin. Brooke works with me in Admin and Justin is a glass blower. His website is: http://www.justinbagley.com/  In fact, he made the earrings Brooke is wearing in this photo.

(see brooke.....i can plug shamelessly, too)     

Tizzy and the Sombrero...she was good enough to buy into me saying that she should move her head just a little to the left without understanding quite why she was doing it!!

Doug and his 50/50 raffle tickets. Doug is a curler (yes the big rock and the ice and the broom thing) who i tried in vain to convince to wear a Utilikilt to the auction. In the end he didn't wear it but some other guy did!

Judye and her kiddos: Danijela and Patrick. They were the winners of the pinata below and it was really great to have them there!

Raptina, the female dinosaur (so assumed for the fringies on her tummy). Adam had to play auctioneer. Some people's pinatas went for hundreds of dollars...ours $35. I guess being a lawyer is a better game plan for him than auctioneer. Sorry, Christies.

Then, there was Sunday and its nine hours in the library working on a Summary Judgment Motion that is due tomorrow. UF. Hope your weekends were fun and dry....and warm.

Oh, almost forgot...best part of the whoooooole night on Sat: The LEMON CAKE

Adam's birfday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Today is Adam (my angelic boyfriend)'s birthday. So i thought i should do a birthday post where i say a lot of nice stuff. The most important is that A has put up with a lot of my &$*(...which most of you know there is a lot of to contend with. For example, he has accepted that dessert will always be eaten first, that i will never make a decision about a restaurant unless i want steak, and that i will stomp my feet and pout if i don't get my way.

Truthfully, he's my rock and i am very grateful for him, his constant spiritual influence, and his ability to rise above and take the high road. Here are a few pics that sum it up:

Adam and Matt (one of his best friends) on a hiking expedition in Hood River, OR















 With Quddus when we were stuck for two hours on 1-90 coming back from the John Legend concert and an RV burned to the ground on the side of the road and started a brush fire.

Us at Heidi's wedding recently

Adam backpacking in Alaska Summer 2008

I love this pic.















And finally...this creepy little guy, who bears a mysterious resemblence to Adam!

Fabulous quotes from my class

Talking about the 4th Amendment (search/seizure):
"consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"

Refering to our ability to go around in circles about thermal imaging violations for an entire hour:
"It's a 4th amendment hamster ball"

Following some hypothetical question
"ok....wait, did you just say a ninja?"

Backpacks...

First, i have an obsession with bags and luggage. i love them. Second, REI's having its massive sale---it ended today so sorry if you missed it. So, to conbine my two loves, Adam had a 20% off coupon which we had decided it was okay to use on buying me a proper hiking backpack. The one i had from back in the day (an Eagle Creek) was really a rolly bag/carryon that happened to have pack straps on it. It is heavy and awkward to carry.

Every time we've gone into REI over the last couple months i've tried on different packs. Mostly, the point has been to convince myself that the cheap packs (the REI ones) felt comfortable. For anyone reading this who hasn't met me in person, before i start reviewing backpacks, let me tell you that i am tiny. I'm barely 5'3, my torso is pretty short, and usually weigh between 100 and 105lbs. I'm also obsessed with not having ugly stuff.

when we started looking at bags, the first thing i tried was a Gregory pack. It has all this lumbar support which i thought would be good---but it ended up not sitting right and pushed the bag off my back making the weight feel like i would fall over backwards. boo. boo gregory and your pretty backpacks that don't fit. I tried on a couple of the REI bags too...but they also had interesting problems. it took a lot of work to get the frame down to the right size for me, then the padding in the back was like i could feel the outline of everything that was supposed to be soft pushing into me, and again, the weight felt like it was pulling backwards. More annoying than anything else though, to be honest is that fact that if i put the waist strap actually around my waist, because it was so fat the top of it was nearly at the bottom of my sternum. Not comfy and really awkward.

I had tried on an Osprey 50 bag on one of our previous visits---but Adam was pretty sure what i should get was a 65 so we could do longer trips. The Ospreys have this neat design where the back isn't padding but mesh (check out the pics of my bag below). that meant that it contoured to fit my shape...the weight felt more like it conformed and wrapped around me. The waist thing was flexible, so it could wrap over the top of my hip bones. I kept switching between the Osprey Aura and the other bags as we went. Nothing felt nearly as good. The only thing that came close was actually an external frame pack. i would have gotten it considering it was way cheaper had it not bonked the back of my head evertime i moved. Alas.

So for all you short girls out there....try Osprey bags!!

Friday.

Its pouring down rain....like the powers-that-be are attempting to wash away this past week. It's the dark kind of rain that makes you want to wrap yourself in an old blanket, grab your steaming cup of tea and your novel that the pages are falling out of because you have read it so many times and go sit in the bay window and read and sip and watch the cars drive by. i'm planning to combat this rain thing by making sweet potato soup and beef stew in the crockpot (not together) and wear big fuzzy slippers. I will mull over reading Harry Potter 7 or Twilight 4 again for the millionth time, then, in the end i will just grab the huge Che biography i am grinding through 10 pages a night and stare longingly at the shelf with the trash books. the books are consuming my room...just in case anyone wondered---there are two full cases and i have covered the whole top of my mother's red desk.

But back to today, today it is pouring...and it's national bosses' day. Its been a day of trying to bring cheer. I got little plants and made sugar cookies for my bosses with add your own, brilliant, pumpkin-orange frosting and sprinkles (which i am now doling out to the whole floor so that Adam doesn't consume like 20 of them later. Mind you, he did glare at me and ask where i was going with HIS cookies when i headed off with them.) And i spent half my morning making a poster to cheer up our marketing team because they have a couple super high stress projects going on. and between the stress and the rain, no one can be happy. I suspect all this niceness and domesticity may be a result of PMS....but for now it seems to be making others happy and that is the goal of rainy poury fridays.

so here's to posters, sprinkles and the prospect of my blanket in a couple hours.

Lake Chelan, WA

This weekend, I fled the city and went with some friends out to my friend Paul's family lake house on Lake Chelan. This is Lake Chelan and for the record, i didn't mess with the colors. I'm sure you all know this, but you get the big pics if you click on the medium size ones here.

We spent a lot of the weekend lounging around the house, but--as Chelan is wine country--we visited a couple of vineyards. Everyone else sampled wines while i took detail photos. There's one from each winery below:

The first vineyard we went to (i forgot the name) was having grape smashing---but i was more intrigued by these boxes. They just felt like a painting to me. Plus, the light was great and i liked the movement.

The second was called Benson Wineries. It felt Tuscan---very Italian style decorations

Last was the "Hard Row to Hoe" where there was ladder golf that the boys played while they drank wine on the lawn:

Its fall here...so on the way home we saw everything starting to change colors as we went through Stevens Pass. But, there was also the start of a wildfire...when we first saw it, it was just a trickle of smoke, but by the time we got beyond, it was a full on fire and we could see trees burning. In case you've never seen a wildfire, it burns an amazing orange color---almost the color of Thai iced tea.

Crock this.

I'm the proud owner of two crockpots. Yup, seriously. One hella oldschool one that was my parents and i think is from before i was born and another acquired from an old flatmate, Heidi. So along the lines of yesterday's giving things up to be healthier---i have a couple of goals (albeit a little ethereal at this point):

1. Learn to eat better. Given my lack of time--this is where the crockpot comes into play. I figure i can manage to throw something in there and just let it do its thing all day. this is a pretty cool website: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/. I'm an especially big fan because she's honest about how things turn out.

2. Learn to make time for the gym---at least once a week--and develop a quick easy home routine.

I already take some pretty heavy duty multi-vitamins, Pro DHA oil, and the aforementioned on the old blog 3000-whatevers of Vitamin D a day to ward off pale, pasty, brittleness. I also have recently acquired a sleeping bag and sleeping pad so that camping and hiking are actually viable options. YIPEE.

If you have crockpot recipies you like, email me or post um up on here. I prefer non-fishy things. :)

5/6th and reviewing

This last year has been about letting go of addictions. I think i subconciously figured that since i am about to leave the 20s behind i should let a few other things go along their own way too. so here they are:

1. cigarettes.
I had a love affair with my little cancer sticks. they were my go to, stand by, make everything alright buddy for the better part of 14 years. at the height of it, i was a two pack a day smoker---lighting up everytime someone around me took a drink or did some illegal drug. they were my excuse, my safeguard. i tried to quit in 2001ish by going on Zyban. Unfortunately, it had a whole series of side effects--heart palapatations, halluginations, and general lab-rat on speed issues. after that, my efforts became less intense. 3 weeks here, 3 weeks there. no such luck really. anyways, i finally quit through a program at work--had a quit coach who enthusiastically called and was so positive that i hated him---so i quit smoking (in the middle of finals) just because i didn't want to talk to him anymore.

2. he-who-shall-not-be-named
five years of off and on--growing intensity everytime. wow. how did i not realize that addiction when i was in the middle of it. the highs were really high. the lows i spent miserable and in tears. in the end all it comes down to is: that i am absolutely sorry for having hurt him so much and absolutely not sorry i love(d) him and absolutely not sorry that i finally walked away. i'm sure it was right for both of us. it was an abusive cycle---and i appreciate experiencing it not only because i truly believe he is a great man (just not great with me), but also for teaching me why so many other women stay. i didn't understand before. i get it now.

3. biting my fingernails (somewhere, my mom and quddus jump up and down cheering)
yeah...not sure how this one---the most recent--occurred. i ripped off a set of acrylics--yeah, ouch--and then painted nail stregthener on the pathetic flimpsy, wax paper like things below. somehow they survived.

i could go into a long metaphorical thing about how i feel like the nails are really just a metaphor for me in all this---the first two things on this list left me super flimsy, perpetually on the edge of breaking. luckily, i've had some people bolstering me the whole way along and it looks like i might just make it to 30 most addiction free.

A new home.

I've been mulling over the move for a bit...but here we are....in our new home. It felt like it was just time to move on from marthateresa.spaces.live.com. Part of me feels like I sold out a little on a nearly 5 year project, but maybe this one will last for the next five :)


I tried in vain to get a picture, but there's this stairwell in my building at work that has the propensity to collect rolly-pollies. No, seriously. I can't figure out how they get in there, but this one little sterile area is always full of the poor little guys in various stages of death and insanity from being stuck in a small 3 by 8 corridor they can't get out of. 


If anyone knows how to save the rolly-pollies, or just wants to welcome me over--feel free :) i moved over here because its easier to comment.