Mount Saint Helens - to the summit!

After seven months of training and over 100 miles on the trails, I was as ready as I was going to be for Mount Saint Helens. My friend Julie got ten permits (100 people per day get to go for the summit in the summer time) and there were six of us from Portland and four from Seattle.

Every hiking party has to sign in and out, so they know if they have to come looking for you.

I'd hiked with each person on Team Portland at least once, and it seemed like my pace was a good mesh with at least a couple other hikers. The other three were faster, but didn't seem to mind regrouping regularly, so we planned to just stick together for the most part.

View of Mount Adams

The MSH trail is an out and back, on a route called Monitor Ridge. It's under 5 miles one-way, and I knew that the trail was broken up like so:
 - 1/3 slight elevation climb along a forested trail
 - 1/3 "trail" in a boulder-strewn wall, with a ton of elevation gain
 - 1/3 trudge/scramble/two steps forward, one step back along an ashy slope.
The entire elevation gain is 4665 feet, with the peak at an elevation of 8280 feet. The vast majority of the climbing occurs in about 3 miles.

An idea of the terrain we had to climb - for hours.

The hike was super tough, both physically and psychologically. One person in our group has done the hike many times, but never in summer - only when there is lots of snow on the mountain. Then, he said, all the boulder field is covered by snow, so you just snowshoe on up! Of course, you also have to start a couple miles further away from the trailhead...

Fortunately I'd read a recommendation somewhere online to bring sturdy work gloves. I used my hands a LOT on the scramble up and down, and would have shredded my palms and fingers without my trusty leather gardening gloves.

View from lunch - we'd come a long way! 

We got lucky with the weather - it was warm but not hot, and we had cloud cover much of the time. We got one wind/rain squall, right after we cleared the boulder field on the way up, but it abated pretty quickly and I didn't even bring out my warm jacket, though I did put on a hat and long-sleeve layer for a while. We all had plenty of food and water - in all I drank nearly all the 5 liters of water I brought, but I didn't run out!

We still had a very long-looking way to go - that lighter brown is the rim, and there are people up there. 

It took us about 90 more minutes of uphill hiking to get there. 

I was most despairing when we stopped for lunch. We started hiking at 7am, and at 12:40 the top still looked impossibly far away. We (I, anyway!) had a tentative plan to turn around at 2pm - my logic was that we'd have been hiking 7 hours by then, and could spend nearly that long coming down, and I didn't want to get caught out in the dark if I could help it. Others on my group wanted to go for the summit no matter what, and I was nervous about the possible consequences.

It was a relief to get out of the boulder field, though the going was by no means easy!

At 2pm we weren't at the summit, and it still seemed a ways away, but at least we were out of the boulders and onto the steep rocky/ashy slope. We decided to go for it (summit fever is real!) and I made the summit at 2:10. Woooooo!

Dramatic summiting shot. 

One of my friends stopped about 20 minutes short of the summit, just feeling too maxed out. But she was close enough that she could hear our voices, and after some reflection and regrouping, she decided to go for it after all. Fortunately I spotted her attempt to join us, just before she was obscured by a rise in the ground. One of the fitter members of our group went down to confirm she was in fact making an attempt for the top, and kept her company on the way back up. I was grateful he was able to be so nice, because I did NOT want to cover any bonus ground myself!

Looking down into the crater. It was hard to get a decent shot!

We hung out at the rim for a while, taking pictures and enjoying the moment. Then, however, we had to face the fact that we were only halfway done with our hike! Going down was still super hard, and I was so so tired already... I didn't take a single picture of the descent!

Triumphant group shot (of most of us)

The last two miles of trail (the wooded, gradual grade) felt like they took forever...but I officially signed us off the trail at 7:21 - for a total of 12:21 hiking. What an accomplishment!!!! My body is still sore four days later, but I'm slowly getting back to normal.

This is how we all felt! 

I'm actually toying with doing South Sister next year... we'll see!

Mount Saint Helens - training hikes!

Earlier this year a friend came up with an audacious-feeling goal: summiting Mount Saint Helens on August 2nd. I guess it was a bucket list item for her, but it never was something I ever considered doing. However, I'm not one to back away from a challenge, and I do better with fitness activities if I'm terrified of some event I'm committed to doing, so I agreed to join!

Multnomah Falls - a classic for a reason

I'm so glad I had this event in front of me because it got me out on the trails way more than ever before. Ever since I moved to Oregon in 1996 I wanted to do more hiking (I told myself) but somehow I rarely did more than one or two hikes per year.

Springtime on Hamilton Mountain

This year I did a ton of hiking - at least 107 miles! I started in January hiking in Forest Park with friends, but then we started hitting the Gorge and got some real classics in:
Wahkeena Falls, Angel's Rest (twice), Cape Horn, Herman Creek Trailhead, Hamilton Mountain (twice), Dog Mountain, Herman Creek & Nick Eaton Trail, Multnomah Falls to Nesika Lodge, Forest Park (starting outside Linnton), Wahkeena to Multnomah Falls, Algonquin Park (in Canada), Mt. Defiance, and Eagle Creek.

Dog Mountain in wildflower season

My favorite was Dog Mountain - it's legendary for its beauty during wildflower season, and we went in May, on Mother's Day. I was stunned at the flowers - SO beautiful! I've been hearing about that hike since I moved here and I now know it's worth the effort.

Part of the trail on Mount Defiance

Mount Defiance is a legend amongst hikers - some joke that you summit Mount Hood to train for Defiance! It IS a beast - 12 miles round-trip, 4800 feet of climbing, relentlessly UP or DOWN, and the last couple of miles of trail were actually scary, they were so steep, slippery, and eroding. But, we persevered and felt like we were as ready as we were going to be to tackle Mount Saint Helens.

On the way down on Defiance. This part of the trail was super scary. 

Next post: Mount Saint Helens!!! (spoiler alert: we survived!)

One last weekend

WHEW. One last weekend of effort before Cycle Oregon is here. Tomorrow for the first time this summer I'm going to be in town and NOT biking - I'm going on a hike with some friends I haven't seen in months. Then I bike on Sunday and Monday. I think I'm going to ride to the library today so I'll pick up some miles, and with a ride next Wednesday I WILL hit an extra 250 miles before CO - bringing me to 1,250 for the season, before I do 400 on the ride.

Is it any wonder I'm going to be ready for a bike-break??

This whole summer has felt like one big event after another: awesome Hawaii wedding, trip to Ashland, family reunion, amazing long weekend at camp, and then of course the buildup to the ride. I was a bit surprised to look at my calendar and see that the rest of the year is still stuffed with activities! It looks like I'll have a breather in November, maybe. Of course, I think I'm going to sign up for a run, so I'll have to find one that fits around everything else!

I did it!

My goal this year was to ride 1,000  miles before Cycle Oregon - and I made it with three weeks to spare!

No rest for the weary, though! My new goal is to get another 250 in before we head out of town. That's a bit of a stretch, and I know it. Here's how I think it'll go:
     This week: Wednesday 15 miles, Saturday 86 miles (omg), Sunday 20 miles = 121
     Following week: Wednesday 15 miles, Saturday 50, Sunday xx, Monday yy = 65 + ?
     Final few days beforehand: Wednesday 15

If I do the miles as planned, that'll leave 49 miles for me to do that Sunday/Monday (it's Labor Day weekend already...!). That should be very doable - note there is an IF in the previous sentence, and a SHOULD in this one. We'll see how it plays out. I do have plans with my bike friends for a specific ride that Sunday, but I'm not sure about its mileage.

This coming Saturday will be my longest ride of the year (.4 longer than the longest Cycle Oregon day, though much much much flatter) - it's an organized ride, and I'm not going with any friends, so I hope that there are enough other riders to distract/entertain me as I slog it out. And I hope it's not as hot as it's been lately.. it's looking like high 80s which is ten degrees cooler than the LAST organized ride I did, so that's a positive sign.

In general, I'm nervous about my conditioning and stamina. I guess part of that is because it never gets easy, even if it goes faster! As part of a loop I did this weekend I revisited a hill I did this spring. At the time I remember I was in my smallest gears and going 3 miles per hour - my app thought I'd stopped moving! This time I was in harder gears and kept it above 8 miles per hour the whole time, so clearly I've improved! But I was sure happy when the light at the top of the hill turned red so I could recover.

I was talking to a bike pro today and she was impressed with my training - I've been doing just about 100 miles/week and running about 6 miles/week, usually with two days of little or no activity. She thinks it'll be sufficient for me to do okay on the ride. I sure hope so!

I also finally picked a bike seat. It is fine in the crotch and upper legs area (the woman I talked to today calls that area the blegs (butt/legs) - ha!). The seat makes my sit bones feel sore, but on the other hand I've been on a different seat every week all summer long. My butt has NO IDEA what "my" seat feels like. So, I bought the seat, have it on my bike and have a couple hundred miles to get used to it. Gulp.

Calories and fitness: almost six months in

On February 19th this year I started logging my calories using an app called LoseIt. It's free, but I chose it mainly because a couple of friends were already using it. In fact, I had it on my phone for at least a couple of months before I started using it. I've always resisted counting calories - because it's both hard, and honest! - and I haven't been in a place where I wanted to be really scrupulous about my intake.

There wasn't anything magical about the date I started tracking - I was staying with friends who were both riding a health/fitness wave, and it inspired me to get started. I'm still not remotely perfect - I don't really know how best to figure out calories when I eat out, so I've created a generic "restaurant meal" entry that I use, and take a wild guess about how many calories I actually ate. And when I spent two weeks in Hawaii for my brother's wedding, I didn't bother at all - just tried to make healthy choices and resumed my tracking when I got home. In fact, non-tracking has been my M.O. for all the various trips I've taken this year, and I think it's worked pretty well for me.  Fortunately I really do know how to eat pretty healthily, and I've been doing a better job about portion control, which is probably my biggest issue. (Also, I haven't bought ice cream to keep at home since at least the beginning of the year - definitely a help!)

So how's it going? Pretty well! Counting calories FINALLY imparted to me on a gut level why exercise is so important. If I'm limiting myself to 1,149 calories per day, it makes a HUGE difference if I go on a run and pick up 400 calories! There's no question that is an hour well-spent.

I had some medical stuff earlier this year that resulted in me dropping 5 pounds (I'm totally fine now), and since then I've dropped an additional 20. When I started tracking I was at a new all-time high (by just about 5 pounds but still... not the kind of records I like breaking!), so I'm still in a familiar weight range right now. And I've been training for Cycle Oregon, and cross-training by running. Once the ride is over (and it's coming right up!!!! eeek) I know for sure I will bike a LOT less. But I want to keep running, and intend to sign up for some 5k runs, and perhaps a 10k in the spring, so I stay motivated and engaged with exercise. And I can head back to the pool once the rains set in - that's a tough workout!

I use RunKeeper to track my running, walking, biking, and swimming. So far this year I've run 52 miles (!!!) and have biked 907 miles. My pre-Cycle Oregon goal was to hit 1,000 miles, and my stretch goal was 1,200. Since I still have three weekends to train (gah) I may even make it to 1,300 before we go ride 400 miles in a week. Yowza. I've set a goal to run 100 miles by the end of the  year, and I guess I'm on track to meet that goal too. To be honest, I'm way more wowed by the running numbers - I've done Cycle Oregon three times before, so riding 1,000 miles in preparation is significant, but at least a little familiar. Running ANY distance is a totally new experience for me!

As I said recently, this fitness/health stuff seems to come in waves, and I'm under no illusion that I'm suddenly magically a new person. But... I think I have the tools to do this. I'd like to drop a few more pounds before CO, but really, I'm focusing on being strong and active. We'll see where it takes me!

On being particular

I'm a decisive person, and have never understood people who spend lots of time doing research to make just the most perfect choice possible on the planet (or so it seems to me) - I like to come in, assess my options, pick one, and move on.

This comes in handy lots of the time - planning trips (pick a destination, pick a flight, book some kind of lodging, and go!), buying a used car (price is right, age is fine, let's do this thing), heck, even shopping for clothes or jewelry. I remember poking around at the Saturday Market with a friend who assessed every bit of jewelry, put stuff on hold to revisit it, and really pondered each and every bauble that caught her eye. It drove me insane, and I wound up buying way more than I ever normally would - in retrospect, I realized I was trying to show her how this shopping thing ought to be done!

The truth is, my way isn't the One True Way, however it is my default operating behavior and it's hard to remember/believe that people act differently for rational reasons.

Right now I'm living in the world of being picky. I'm trying to find a new bike seat, and it's not coming together easily! I have friends who say their bike seats never give them any trouble - yeah, you spend seven hours sitting on something and you'll be a bit sick of it, but they don't ever have any specific pain points or anything.

I'm now on the sixth seat I've tried this summer and still am not finding my perfect match. When you are testing a bike seat, there are three main areas of discomfort to consider: the sit bones (the contact point between you and the seat where most of your weight goes), the crotch area (which can't be blissfully ignorant of the existence of the seat, but hopefully feels neutral about the situation), and your upper legs/inner thighs area (which can chafe/pinch/bruise if the seat is too wide or in other ways too much present).

First seat: good sit bones, bad crotch, no notice of legs
Second seat: decent sit bones, fine crotch, leggy complications
Third seat: painful sit bones, fine crotch, no leg awareness.
Fourth seat: terrible horrible no-good crotch.
Fifth seat: probably much better but still sore from fourth seat. also didn't feel super well-supported in the sit bones
Sixth seat: This is the same brand as the second seat and so far I think it might be mostly okayish. Sit bones are okay, crotch is okay, not sure about the leg complications.

It's killing me that I can't just go, get a seat, and ride away happy, but apparently this isn't something I can force!

I had similar issues when getting a mattress.

My first was a latex mattress that seemed great at first, but after a few months I realized it was too soft - and they did not take returns. When I left the bay area I sold it to a soft-mattress-loving friend who is super happy with it still.

When I got to Portland I did some research and read that people were pretty happy with IKEA mattresses. So, I got one there. And it wasn't comfortable. And then I found out they had a terrible return policy: you have to buy a second mattress, then they will take the first mattress back, but won't refund your money - you'll get a store credit in the amount of mattress #1. So basically you're out the cash for TWO mattresses. This seems so insane as to be impossible, but that's what several store employees told me. So when I got my second mattress I chose one that felt comfortable and was not super expensive. Fortunately for me when the store employee called to talk about giving me the store credit for the first mattress, she asked why not just refund onto my credit card? I was very happy to let her!

Unfortunately that second IKEA mattress was also sub-optimal. I was going to just live with it, but a couple things happened: my sister moved in and could benefit from a decent mattress in my guest room, and some friends gave me mattress money for my housewarming present. SO back to the mattress store I toddled.

This time I chose a locally-owned shop that sells regionally-produced mattresses. They too have a pretty strict return policy: you get one return and it has to be done within six weeks. I got a mattress, they delivered it, and after about six weeks I realized it just wasn't working - much to my deep chagrin. They let me swap it for another, which is the one I have now. To be totally honest, it's good but not great. If I could exchange it again I totally would! But I can't, I don't need any more mattresses, and I am NOT going to go back through this process if I can help it! I have considered setting up my guest room bed and rotating between the two to see if I prefer one mattress over the other. But I can't (yet) bring myself to be quite that picky just yet!

....and I am definitely focusing on my seat first!

Headwinds, tailwinds

Woo-hoo: it's time to buy a pair of shorts one size smaller! Since February I've been tracking my calories for the first time in my life. I love that various apps make it so easy to do that! I don't do well tracking when I eat out - I made up a "restaurant meal" entry and then take a wild guess about how many calories I ingested. I eat out maybe four times a week, so this isn't an ideal thing, but it's working okay for now. I've also been exercising a lot, and I have to say it's motivating to be able to get caloric credit for the exercise I'm doing!

Last week was the first time I tried running intervals. I did six 6-minute cycles; each cycle consisted of 3 minutes of running fast, and 3 minutes of walking/staggering/trotting. It was really really hard but gave me some payoff immediately - the next time I ran (two days later) I cut a minute off my average speed, and I cut another minute off this week! Now I'm down - temporarily, anyway - to an 11:30 mile, and it's still hard but it's starting to feel like I'm actually running. Crazy!

All in all it's been a great spring/summer for me on the health & exercise front, but I'm realistic and know it's not like I'm suddenly a new person. I typically go long months with little to no exercise, and then may have a biking season or something before resuming my slothful ways. Right now it's feeling pretty natural and good to get out there and exercise, and it's likely it won't always be that way.

A billion years ago I subscribed to Utne Reader, which is a magazine that compiles interesting stories from other media sources. This was in the early 90s, and I remember reading an article about time and how we perceive it and how we cycle through it - sometimes we are sluggish and everything is effortful and takes forever, and sometimes we are a whirlwind of productivity and everything comes together and time is our magical friend. I picture it like a sine wave of effort with the uphill and downhill chunks not really in our control, but hopefully ours to recognize and seize upon.

So, right now, I'm in the downhill curve of the sine wave, in terms of exercise - for the most part it feels good to get out there, I enjoy the activity (even when it's hard and I'm tired and sore and... I swear, I DO enjoy some element of it!), and I look forward to the next round. One of these days I'm likely to encounter the uphill, headwind, don't-wannas and I will have to deal with them when they come.

Also: I'm not giving away my bigger shorts just yet! In truth I'm just at the bottom of my typical twenty-pound average weight range, and chances are I'll bounce back up and my new small shorts won't fit. Maaaaybe I'm really going to keep losing and stay down... or maybe not!

Summer recap

The rain has set in here - unexpectedly, but I should have known it would happen since I've had out-of-town visitors! It's an unmistakeable reminder that summer is wrapping up. We should get a good month in September, but I view this rain as my nudge to consider what I've done this summer, and make a short list of things to do before the rainy season arrives for keeps!

I've been good on the social front - one highlight was when a friend visited a couple weeks ago and we had a potluck here, complete with twelve or so adults and an uncountable swarm of kids running around screaming happily (okay, maybe 8 kids).

This past weekend I had friends in town partly for my birthday, which was lovely. I had a couple of birthday gatherings, one of which included bubbly, appetizers, and cake. I sliced the hell out of my thumb making this app, so my friends finished assembling: bread, peach, tomato, mozzarella,basil, olive oil: all super fresh and so yummy.

My sister made cake:

Other summer highlights:
Making a dent in the billions of berries by making crumbles, cakes, smoothies, and even blueberry syrup:

Hanging out with several thousand of my people at a live-action Trek in the Park:

This year was the fifth and final year, and has become quite a Portland institution! They did The Trouble with Tribbles:

Sound quality wasn't great, but it was a ton of fun anyway.

Biking has slipped by the wayside, and I haven't gotten to explore the area quite as much as I'd like, so my goal for September is to get a couple of weekend rides in, do a day trip to wine country, and go camping. It's ambitious with everything else that's going on, but I'm willing to try!

Fun with tagging

Now that I'm working with a designer, sorta, I'm looking at some of the many (so many!) pictures I've taken over the years. I'm thinking about printing and framing a bunch and making a hallway gallery or something.

I started by going through my flickr albums and tagging anything I was considering with the tag "print" - this will let me then look at all those photos together.

Of course it was like a billion too many pictures, so I started adding tags, like wood, fire, water, nature, landscape, beer, stone, train, transit, bike, flower ... you get the idea. Then I can look at all the pics that are grouped by a particular tag. You can click each group below to see a bigger screenshot.

 Tag = art

  

  Tag =bridge

  Tag = graffiti

  Tag = landscape

 Tag = red

It's been fun! I don't think I'm a LOT closer to picking what I print, but maybe I really am. 

I'm so hoity toity

So, I seem to have acquired an interior designer. Sorta. Kinda.

A friend had a brunch a couple of weekends ago, and when she was pulling together the guest list I asked her to include the aunt who helped pick out her color scheme when she repainted her house. The house looks terrific and uses colors I might not have chosen. My friend had said in the past that her aunt would be happy to help me pick colors, so this seemed like a great way to finagle an introduction.

To backtrack a bit: I moved into my house in January, and it had been flipped over the previous two months. I got what I wanted - a solid house that didn't need work, and it's got terrific light, but it is rather.. beige. I do plan to sell this house in about 20 years...but I suppose I can paint in the interim!

Move-in day; yes, I've decorated some since then!

 However, I've never picked colors before. I am a decisive person, but when there are a ton of options, and one of the options is NON-choice, I'm likely to take the path of least resistance and go with doing nothing. So I picked up some paint chips my first week or so in the house, but pretty much dropped the idea thereafter.

Fast forward to the brunch, and I find myself making a date for Laura to come over and look at my house and talk about colors. She came over on a Sunday morning and spent nearly two hours hanging out, admiring the light, and getting a feel for the space and my thoughts about color.

Then she came over a couple days later and we spent 45 minutes going over some design pages she'd bookmarked with me in mind, looking at ideas for colors and space and contrast and decor. Apparently just painting isn't enough: I also have to do things like curtains, pillows, wall hanging - it's exhausting!

Anyway, she also brought me paint chips for the various rooms. We talked them over, and now she's going to go buy me samples of the paint so I can try them on for size. All this is free, mind you - she's doing it because it's fun for her! She did at least take money to pay for the paint samples!

So, I'll definitely take some before & after shots, because I think this painting thing is going to happen. August is nuts for me, but September is looking good.

My assignment this week: start getting a feel for wallpaper; also go through my flickr albums and look at photos I might like to have framed to hang in a gallery in the hallway.

Eep.

House hunting: first offer - check!

Now that I've established that I'm looking to buy a house, let me tell you all about my first foray into the market.

First of all: as soon as I knew I'd be moving back to Portland, I applied with my credit union to be approved for a mortgage. Then I did some emailing with a friend and he recommended his mortgage lender so I also applied with that bank. In both cases I was approved for up to 250k. So, yay.

Of course personal finance 101 tells us not to max ourselves out on housing costs, and I don't intend to borrow that much, but it at least gives me a framework. No surprise: my frame is the very bottom of the real estate market in Portland.

I did start poking at the market a little bit: I loaded the redfin and realtor.com apps on my ipod touch and started doing searches... all the time. As I feared, my price constraints limit me to a ring well outside the close-in parts of Portland, but one of the approachable areas is near houses owned by three different friends, so that's kind of awesome.

The real estate searches I've been running are helpful, even if they make me feel silly. Last Wednesday I saw a listing that really made me sit up and take notice. It was an adorable beautifully-finished house just over a half-mile from my friends' houses. The location was otherwise crappy - extremely close to the highway and a freight train line. However it was just so amazingly cute I couldn't stop looking at it.

Long agonizing story short, I used miles to book a flight to Portland and arranged to see four houses with a randomly-chosen agent. I liked the agent quite well. One of the houses was a nightmare pit that is going to be on the market a LONG time; one had a fussy yard and an icky inside; one had good bones but was going to be a pretty big project. The fourth house, the cute one, was every bit as amazing as I thought.

My agent said they were reviewing offers that night (after a whopping 3 days on the market) and that it didn't hurt anything to offer if I wanted to. It costs nothing and takes ten minutes. She said if I thought I'd regret not making an offer, then I might want to do it. She also said it was going to go higher than the list price.

So after futzing with a calculator a bit, I decided to make an offer for 10k more than the list, with a 10% down payment. We offered 45 days to close and free week to get out of the house after that. The agent and I parted ways, and I went to my friend's house to sit by my emailbox.

About 15 minutes later an email came in; the link in it took me to an electronic version of the offer letter. I had to click to initial 11 times and that was it! (Yes, I did skim it before sending it in.) By 3pm I'd made an offer; by 9:40pm I knew I was their second choice, and by 8:30am I knew I didn't get the house. The winner(s?) had a bigger down payment and had offered the same price as I had, so it's nice to know my guess was decent.

It was disappointing but I'm mostly glad. I've decided it was an A+ house in a D+ location. I think I'll shoot for a B location and a B house and hope I can make that work. But I should probably stop monitoring the real estate sites because I can't fly up for another weekend jaunt! I can do this in earnest starting in five weeks.

House hunting: why I am considering buying

I'm starting what may become a saga of house hunting, so I thought I'd begin by stating why I'm pretty sure I want to get into the market. I may need this for moral support in the future!

Financial picture: 
I'm moving back to Portland in about a month. Since I left six years ago I've paid off all my debt (car + credit + moving + grad school all came to approximately 25k; it was never at scary levels but it certainly took a long time to become and stay fully debt-free), have continued saving aggressively-ish for retirement (18% + 4% match, fully vested now that I've passed my six-year anniversary), and have started saving for a house down payment. I've also managed to do quite a bit of travel and a lot of local exploring as well. In short, life's been good.

Why I didn't buy already:
When I lived in Portland before I didn't think I could afford to buy. With retrospect...maybe I could have, if I'd gotten in before things got crazy. But my head wasn't there and it's just as well I didn't buy, given how my life has been more mobile than I expected!

I've known that as long as I was in the Bay Area, I wasn't interested in buying: anything I can afford would be in a pretty rough neighborhood, would be pretty icky, or would be very far from work. All that and it would cost a lot more than my apartment! The final factor was that I never had any intention of staying in California permanently. So that's been a non-starter (though I have looked, and despaired, occasionally).

Buying for retirement stability:
A few years ago I had a conversation with a friend that was pretty illuminating. She was looking at her retirement plans a few years down the road and was despairing. As long as she keeps working she can live a great life, but once she retires, she can't afford anything like her current life. Her rent alone will take most of her social security check, she doesn't have a pension, and I inferred that her retirement savings aren't that robust. So that was certainly food for thought. If I didn't have to pay rent, my retirement might be smoother.

On the flip side, property taxes and maintenance are no joke. It's impossible to know if the monthly outlay post-mortgage would be equivalent to or even more than rent would be. There's also the responsibility involved in owning a home. That tilts me toward a condo, but then you run into HOAs and the possibility of special assessments in the future if problems crop up. So in short, it's certainly not a given to me that buying is the right and only choice.

What I'm looking for:
I had my eye on a particular condo development for a long time, but their HOAs and taxes are so high - nearly $800/month!! - that the sales price is going to have to come down a lot before I can be tempted into it. Honestly I think they're going to go into foreclosure soon for the 40% unsold units, and then they'll likely be cash sales, and therefore not for me. That's all a guess though.

At any rate, I definitely want 2 bedrooms. I would prefer low- to no-maintenance requirements for the yard. I very much want to be near friends and would also like to be near a neighborhood center: library branch, coffee shop, perhaps a small grocery store. I want my mortgage/interest/taxes/insurance to be about what I'm paying for rent now, since I know that leaves me breathing room. I want the place to be move-in ready - I do NOT want to have to manage and finance projects in the first few years of ownership. Finally, I view this as a potentially lifelong commitment - it's not an investment but a home.

Why I may not be ready: 
I do have concerns about being the responsible party if anything goes wrong. I have currently saved enough to cover a 10% down payment and closing costs, if I pillage my savings accounts. My parents have offered to lend me some money, which is great, but I wonder if I should buy if I need to borrow to make it happen. At this point I'm thinking I will try hard to buy without assistance, and will keep their offer in my back pocket in case something goes awry before I've rebuilt my savings. And of course being the lone earner is scary. I'd want to keep the mortgage low enough that I could recoup it in rent if I lost my job or took a big pay cut at some point. But life just keeps happening, and if I'm going to retire with a paid-off mortgage, I've got to get started.

Calendar: August

Last year I visited a good friend in LA  - and it's a good thing, too, since he's now moved on to Tucson. Hey, just one more place to visit!

Anyway, we visited Venice Beach and while we watched the skateboarders, I practiced using the burst mode on my camera. Confession: no clue if it's called that. But you know, you set it a certain way and it takes multiple shots. And it did, and I caught this kid in flight.

Recipe: Birthday muffins!

It was my birthday last week (yay!) and I made plans to go to Yosemite with some friends. I had my birthday-morning free and wasn't working, so I whipped up some muffins to bring along.

I used the crumble topping from 101 Cookbooks' Oatmeal Muffins - as she warned, the ingredients for the crumble make more than double what you need for those muffins, and in fact I still have a bit of the topping in my freezer. Therefore if you want to make just enough for one batch, I recommend the following proportions:

1 oz / 27 g flour
5 oz / 15 g rolled oats
.8 oz / 22 g natural cane or brown sugar
pinch fine grain sea salt
.8 oz / 22 g unsalted butter, melted

After you've melted the butter, stir in the rest, and scrape the resulting rather firm goo into a flat patty and freeze a bit. I think the idea is that it's then easier to break it up into bits to put on the top of the muffin batter - but I had to hack at it since I froze it too hard. So, be advised.

The muffins were based on the genius recipe called Muffin Madness in the invaluable cookbook Moosewood Restaurant Cooks At Home. Then I modified it - of course.

Combine:
2 large eggs
1/4 c vegetable oil
1/4 c plain  yogurt
3/4 cup or a bit less brown sugar
1/2 tsp or a bit more vanilla extract (I used vanilla paste because I lurve it)

In another bowl, mix together:
2 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Stir the dry into the wet. Then add:
about a half-cup or so pitted sour cherries
about a half-cup or so toasted almonds - I buy them already chopped somewhat roughly. In fact they look about like cherry pits which can be a bit disconcerting as you chomp into the muffin.

Pour the batter into muffin cups - makes about 12. Be sure to top with some of the crumble topping! Bake at 350 for 20 or so minutes.

Current obsession: Bluegrass

Allow me to share my latest enthusiasm with you. Over the last few years I've slowly been getting more into bluegrass. For the last three years I've volunteered at the San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Music festival (SFBOT to those in the know). It's a super easy gig - I show up, hand out programs, maybe staff the CD-selling table if they need a hand. Then I enjoy free music! Sweet!

Two years ago I was really struck by a group called Huckleberry Flint - to the extent that I bought both of their cds. I particularly loved the performance of the song "On and on" - here's a video of them performing it, though it's not the performance I saw which was completely mesmerizing:

At this year's SFBOT I volunteered at a show that featured multiple bands, all of whom I really liked. My favorite was Windy Hill who finally released a CD a few weeks ago. I was checking their website for CD news when I saw they were playing a festival in the area called the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival (aka GOF). So I went!

It's held in a park and everyone camps out overnight. The stage is small

and so is the audience:

And it was a gorgeous couple of days:

Based on the shows I saw I've added a couple of bands to my to-follow list: Jimmy Chickenpants, the Alhambra Valley Band, and OMGG - which stands for Obviously Minor Guys and Girl. This band is comprised of some seriously talented kids - the oldest is 15!

And now I'm learning more about some of the more-famous players and groups, starting with Chris Thile and Michael Daves.The video on this site is NUTS. Such amazing music, and these guys are so freaking young - they've got years of awesomeness in front of them. I've been listening to the 23-minute performance video non-stop all morning.

homestretch

Wow, it's been a busy spring/summer.
- work a conference
- parents visit
- go visit friend in LA
- go visit sister in Florida
- learn to scuba dive
- spend two Sundays driving to the coast to finish the scuba-learning process
- go to Honduras
- go to Greece
- go to Portland
- go to Ashland
<--- we are here --->
- go to bluegrass festival
- have a friend in town
- go to Yosemite

On the one hand it's been nothing short of awesome...but on the other, wow am I tired!

Add to that a pending Zero Birthday. And my sister quit her job and moved to Germany. And a friend died extremely unexpectedly leaving a very devastated wife behind. And another friend is getting treatments for cancer... and I really feel very up in the air about, oh, everything! Am I where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing, living the life I want to be living? If I dropped dead tomorrow would I have regrets?

I don't feel bad, just muse-y. But there's a whole lotta musing goin' on!

2011:08

I took this picture almost as an afterthought - I spent a weekend camping and hiking with two friends in glorious Big Sur. We'd had an amazingly lovely (and butt-kicking) hike, covering ground I'd previously visited a few years prior. In the intervening years there'd been a lot of fire activity and the new growth was threatening to choke off the path altogether! So I assure you that sitting down and enjoying a beer together felt like a bit of heaven:

Only as we were leaving did I look back and see the sunshine on the glasses and think that it represented a lovely piece of time.

WIP Wednesday: me!

It is Wednesday, and I realized the perfect topic for my Work-In-Progress Wednesday post: ME!

My birthday falls on a Wednesday this year. I'm one year away from a so-called "zero birthday" so I've spent more time thinking about that than thinking about this one.

I'm pretty sure that if you asked me at 20 what I'd be like now, what would be going on in my life, where I'd be, who I'd be with, I'd never have guessed anything correctly. Software barely existed waaaaay back then, I never expected to live in California, and of course I assumed I'd be married with kids.

Then again, I wouldn't have guessed I'd be interested in hiking, biking, camping, cooking, baking, canning, photography, libraries, cities, personal finance, alcohol-infusing, gardening, and knitting. I'd have been glad to know about the decent amount of travel I've accomplished, and I'd have been quite surprised (but gratified!) at my sociable self.

I thought a while to see if I've got any life predictions, but honestly, my life has been so changeable in the big picture that I really don't. Fifteen years ago I was living in Boston, planning my big move to Portland. Ten years ago I was in Portland, recently laid off from my first software job, thinking about grad school, and planning a trip to Italy for summer 2001. Five years ago I was a librarian at a suburban library, still living in Portland, without an inkling about all the changes coming at me in a mere nine months.

I'm super lucky to be healthy, have a challenging job, stable and excellent friends, and a loving family. I might be officially middle-aged (am I?? I'm not sure!!) but it's been a fun ride!

Tonight I've got friends indulging my refusal to grow up. Ice cream for dinner!

Nocino: now it's time to wait

This will be the last nocino update for a while. After six weeks (and four days) of benign neglect (with the occasional shake), I decided to strain the solids from my infusion. It was a little messy, and I definitely stained my hands a little, but I now have three quart jars, each 2/3 full, of aging nocino.

As a reminder: recipes call for green walnuts, often not specifying if they intend that you use black walnuts or English walnuts. It appears that either will work, but since I was presented with both types of unripe walnuts, I made three batches, all based on this recipe:

1. approx. 26 unripe English walnuts, 2 cinnamon sticks, 5 whole cloves, 1/3 vanilla bean, 2 1/2 cups sugar, and just under 1 liter of vodka.. all steeped in one jammed-full jar.

2. approx 30 unripe black walnuts, 2 cinnamon sticks, 5 whole cloves, 1/3 vanilla bean, 2 1/2 cups sugar, 1 liter of vodka, divided into two separate jars (resulting in a lot more oxygen exposure, I think, which may partially account for the extreme inky-ness of that batch, but that's probably more a result of the nature of black walnuts)

3. approx 24 unripe black walnuts + 5 unripe English walnuts, 2 cinnamon sticks, 5 whole cloves, 1/3 vanilla bean, 1 star anise, 1/4 tsp grains of paradise, 1 liter vodka, and 1 1/2 cups sugar (because I simply ran out of room. I may add more sugar after it's aged.. I assume that's doable.)

The English walnuts were far easier to cut; the black walnuts were hardening up and quite challenging to work with. The black walnuts ooze a clear liquid that rapidly darkens to a chartreuse green and stains whatever it touches. Yes, including my fingers!

So, the photos:

Before straining. English walnuts on left, black walnuts center & right.

Strained black walnuts; nocino below! 

Strained English walnuts.

Black walnut nocino, left; English walnut nocino, right. 

The color isn't that different without the sun's help! From a distance they are both very dark.

Left, black walnut nocino; right, English walnut nocino.

Left, black walnut nocino; right, English walnut nocino.

Naturally  I tasted both. Eeuuuggghhhh. They smell good, and start off okay, but are NOT ready for prime time. I hope that a few months will mellow them out; one article I read indicates that they infuse from end of June to end of August, but don't actually drink the nocino until Christmas. So, we'll see.

To be honest, no matter how this batch comes out, now that I have access to unripe walnuts, I've got my eye on this recipe for next June! I like that the sugar goes directly on the quartered walnuts for a day or two before the rest of the ingredients get added.

you so wish you worked with me!

All bake sale proceeds go to the American Cancer Society; I take requests, and I do believe I owe a few people who donated already! Let me know if you want to collect.