Sunday, June 14, 2009

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!

Ahh...a weekend with no school! Last one for about 6 weeks.

In honor of it, my husband got himself a Red Ryder dual carbide-action range rifle with a compass in the stock.
No, not really. It's a Weatherby 12-gauge pump shotgun.
Then we went on a little Sunday driving adventure north, and saw this fellow. Don't worry, the Red Ryder wasn't with us. ;)
Everything is so green because of all the rain. Here's the mighty Payette.
And we even saw a little blue sky after a bit!
Alas, school's back in on Monday morning...Marketing Management, or some such nonsense...it was nice postin' with ya tho... :)

Friday, June 12, 2009

The Life-Sucking Project Delivers!

WELL. I've gone and fallen off the face of the planet again. STUPID life-sucking project at work. Between the Stupid Project and school, I've barely had enough time to sleep...at one point I was mostly a babbling idiot. Apologies to all I've abandoned...AGAIN.

The weekend before last I spent 31 hours in this war room. TOO MUCH!!

Buuuut....it looks like its on track to deliver! It arrives at the Federal Register in Washington DC today (Friday!) and then it will be official.

And I might actually return to being able to carry on a conversation.

The first 12 books arrived! 498 pages.


After a few days of downtime, I was FINALLY able to clean up my desk.
See ya back here for final submittal! ;)

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Pepsi Fun Center!

After some hotel room homework and a little nap, we were back at 'em... Destination: Pepsi Fun Center for stretchin' our legs, people watching, and of course, more corndogs. And curly fries. And corn on the cob. And elephant ears. And deep-fried Kraft macaroni and cheese. Most of these items were shared between at least two of us, but still...that's a lot of grease-laden festival fare...

While our pants still fit, we got our picture taken squashed into a photobooth.











Sister marvelling at the hanging mustard "bladder," and the ketchup one behind it in the picture. I had magical visions of a master race of hummingbirds that have evolved to eat only mustard from this ingenious device..
Wonder triplets powers, activate! Form of... temporary tattoos!
I'm not sure how I ended up the least tan in this group...
And for a brief moment before we returned to our room, the sun came out.

And with that, we bid adieu to another Rose Festival. So long sailors! So long carnies! So long bagpipers! See you next year!!

Ingredients for a Great Rose Parade

You gotta have at least one really great float. This one was my fave, celebrating Oregon's 150th birthday.

All those flowers and they passed up on the rare opportunity to use the word sesquicentennial.

Another one we liked was the Beauty and the Beast one...especially appropriate as Mom, Stace, Poo, and I all saw the movie together at the theater back in high school.

Happy sesquicentennial, our 33rd state!

You gotta have the Royal Rosarians...the official "ambassadors of goodwill for the City of Portland." I've always wanted to be a Royal Rosarian...but I look terrible in off-white...
You gotta have the Rose Festival Court. But do you gotta stuff 'em all into a carriage? She's the Queen of frickin' Rosaria, for heaven's sake. This isn't Central Park, people. They need their own float.

Way to go, Grant High School! Grant hasn't had a queen since...1966!!

The 1959 Rose Festival queen and her court were also in the parade this year...and time has been good to them... :)
You GOTTA have rodeo queens, and they were out in droves in this parade year. Here's the court from Clark County.

And sister didn't even make me do my "rodeo queen wave" once. And I've been practicing it since we moved to Idaho...in case I'm ever a rodeo queen. I'm getting quite good at it.
You gotta have some great pooper scoopers. I loved these merry-go-round horses on the "End of the Oregon Tail" wagon.

The parade instituted a funny D.B. Cooper promotion affilliated with the festival, and "D.B. sCooper" was another good one.

And there was a scooper done up like a pirate ship with Captain Jack Sparrow and "In Search of the Black Pearl" on the back. Hahahahahaha!


Lastly -- and my favorite part of the Rose Parade -- THE ONE MORE TIME AROUND AGAIN MARCHING BAND!!!! This is believed to be the largest permanent marching band in existence, and is over 500-members strong. Members range from 18 to 85 and at one time marched in a band or drill team or cheering squad before joining. Their signature song is "Louie, Louie," and I love them from start to finish!!

Shooting Kids

It's true, while kids are often noisy and rambunctious, they are so easy to shoot. This gang was sitting to my right, and mostly there were only a couple of true meltdowns.

Taline practicing for her crime-scene investigation skills.
I'm somebody's kid! ;) And I'm mostly well-behaved at parades...
Classic Rose Parade: butterfly wings and a raincoat. It's Parade Day!

The Parade Viewing Gang

Soon the rest of our parade-viewing gang began to wander in...
First Taline and Stacey arrived, decked in "Parade Day" gear, and quickly acquiring a squeaky horn and butterfly/fairy wings, a yard-long rope of licorice, and a chocolatey ice cream treat.

One can wear butterfly wings and have ice cream for breakfast when one has freshly turned six.


Next on the guest list, Poo's friend Jason and his friend Royden arrived to round out our viewing gang.
One can wear butterfly wings and have corndogs for breakfast when one is about to turn thirty-six.
All the parade-watching girls!

Parade Pre-Party

Up the next morning at the crack 0' dawn to engage in Rose Parade traditions! Get a cup of joe and go sit on the sidewalk in the wet muck for a good four hours of people watching and soggy newspaper reading.

As we were Hilton guests, we were able to sit in the reserved seating, but decided to go with next to reserved seating instead. Here's the early morning rain that attempted to soak my pantlegs.
"Bridging Communities" was the theme this year. Eh. They've had better themes before.

One of my favorite traditions is the Oregonian blazoned with the simple and colorful headline "It's Parade Day!!"
Thankfully Mom and Poo were well supplied with rain coats and hats, a bounty of blankets, a couple umbrellas, and a couple of sandchairs for the viewers in the front row.

It would have been hard to get a sandchair in the overhead compartment of the airplane.
Hey firemans!!

Some of the best pre-parade entertainment: the firemen looking to "fill the boot" for Jerry's Kids. These are the Portland firefighters, but Hillsboro came through soon after.

Oddly, it seems like they never have the 30-year veteran firefighters on the boot patrol...hmmm....
After much discussion, sister finally got her first corndog of the day. That tiny cup in her hand? No, it's not soda for washing down that delicious festival fare. Nope.

It's mustard.

A CUP. Of mustard. For dipping her corndog in. Well, "dipping" would be putting it lightly.

Off to Portland for Rose Festival!

Thankfully, I was wise enough to get e-permission from my project manager to take a well-deserved day off on Friday to travel to Portland for Rose Festival! Stupid Project got so out of control that it kept me from my earlier plan of road-trippin' over in the Cooper, by myself, with my freshly downloaded new Dave Matthews and Elvis Costellos. The flight was a lot less work though, and I do loves me the travelin'.

After Sister successful sprang Tiny Momma from Sunnyside Hospital, we three met downtown at the Hilton for our fun Rose Festival weekend extravaganza!

I brilliantly made reservations at one of my faves: the original McCormick and Schmick's on 1st. Not one day later I received an email from Mom and a call from the restaurant indicating that it had closed down. That day. From a rental dispute. Seriously?
So we went with a close second: Jake's Grill. It was deeelicious and fun!

Our Kristin: Don't be jealous that I'm having after-dinner decaf with others. ;)