Schmap!!

Last month I was contacted by a representative of Schmap!! Guides regarding a photo I had taken while in Philadelphia last May. Though I had never heard of them, Schmap!! Guides are free online city guides, and use photos from Flickr to supplement their maps. They asked permission to use the above photo in their listing of Temple University on their Schmap Philadelphia Guide. I just wish they had asked to use one of my better photos... perhaps the one below of a recent Temple Grad...

Planting pumpkin seeds... in my tummy

This evening I roasted all those lovely seeds from our recent pumpkin carving adventure. I decided to try a new approach/recipe, which involved boiling the seeds in salted water before roasting them. I think the idea is to get the salt to soak into the seeds, and while they don't taste too different from the non-boiled variety, I do believe they're a bit saltier. Regardless, they're quite tasty.


Toasted Pumpkin Seeds (from Simply Recipes)

• One medium sized pumpkin
• Salt
• Olive oil

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut open the pumpkin and use a strong metal spoon to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.

2 In a small saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a half tablespoon of salt for every cup of water (more if you like your seeds saltier). Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.

3 Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan, all in one layer. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 10-20 minutes. When browned to your satisfaction, remove from the oven and let the pan cool on a rack. Let the seeds cool all the way down before eating. Either crack to remove the inner seed (a lot of work and in my opinion, unnecessary) or eat whole.

An Idle Mind meets Ichabod's Fate

Mike and I enjoy celebrating the fall festivities. We aren't much for costumes, but we do love jack-o-lantern carving and any excuse to eat candy. Because we've been so busy on the house this fall, and the end of October really snuck up on us, we didn't get a chance to drive up the gorge and pick our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. We did try to pretend though, as we pulled our pumpkins from the bins at Fred Meyer.
This evening we broke out the old, trusty Pumpkin Masters® carving tools and templates and went to work.

To Serve & Protect

Mike and I have a pretty solid routine for workdays: alarm goes off the same time every morning, we go through our rituals for getting ready (hair, teeth, breakfast, deodorant - check), and we head out to our respective jobs. In the evening we again follow another routine. Boring? Staid? Predictable? Some days we wish for a little something to shake it up. Yesterday, our wish came true.

We awoke yesterday morning to a police car, a fire truck and an ambulance next door at the park. Apparently there was a "sick" man down at the baseball diamond bleachers (we figure that's code for a guy overdosing on drugs). An odd way to start the morning, to be sure, but we were out the door on time.

To double the oddness, last night, as Mike is watching a football game in the living room and I'm in the kitchen on my computer, I hear the sound of our aluminum ladder being moved in our backyard. I peek out the blinds and catch sight of flashlights moving around, and a dog - in a vest. I yell to Mike that somebody is in our yard, and as we look out the backdoor, we're confronted with the Police telling us to stay in the house while they continue searching for somebody.

Two very weird events, made weirder by happening in the same day. We still don't know who they were looking for, or whether they found him, but we did check the locks twice before heading to bed.

Baby Gunter Shower

Last weekend Katie's friends threw her a baby shower, for the secretly-named-bun-in-her-oven. It was a ladies-only affair, with lots of presents, food and even some dispensing of advice (such as, "one diaper can last a week - if it's slimey, it's still good".

Katie, examining a baby photo of her husband Jamie, and determining that her unborn son will indeed have large cheeks.

Everybody was asked to bring a baby photo of themselves to share, and the guests were all meant to match names to the baby photos.

Katie Jean, herself (also contributing to the "large cheeks" genetics).

4 more weeks to go...

Stuffed bear wearing the wool booties I brought, and guarding the pee-pee tee-pees.



Joey, Jamie's "first" doll, as described by his Mother & Sister.


Katie & her Mom

Katie & her Mother-in-law

We wrapped up the weekend by sorting baby clothes, drinking tea and catching an 80's Soft Rock variety show at the Triple Door in downtown Seattle. It was a great time - not only the 80's soft rock (duh) but also catching up with Katie - can't wait to be back in a couple months to meet Baby Boy.

Quack!

It's that time of year again...

Last weekend Mike and I headed down to Eugene for our annual UO Football game. We were pleasantly (as in down-on-our-knees-thanking-the-heavens) surprised with a clear, sunny day instead of the torrential downpour that we faced last year. We are also quite pleased with our seats, both for the view, and for the fact that we weren't surrounded by any flaming assholes disguised as "football fans".

The "DUCKS" Horizon Air Jet buzzed the stadium a couple of times. It was fun to see, but would have been a really cool sight if we were in the jet looking down.

Clear and dry... but chilly!

(U0) 52 to 6 (WSU)

Headed home