snowshoeing and moss hunting

Hello everyone!

I had a very nice weekend. Friday night I went over to Elaine & Dave's house. Wampler was down visiting from Trout Lake since he had played a show with Dave the night before. Dave & Wampler and I decided to go out for some dinner. We ended up at Hung Far Low, a Chinese restaurant just up the street. This place is a Portland institution and a zillion jokes have been made over it's funny name. It made the news when the restaurant decided to leave it's long held location in Chinatown in downtown Portland and move to 82nd Avenue. The rent there is cheaper of course and the area is rapidly filling with more Asian shops and restaurants than Chinatown itself. The food was cheap and arrived quickly on giant platters. Chinese food is not my favorite. I much prefer Thai, Vietnamese or Japanese but the food was good and we were all stuffed with plenty of leftovers to take home. We went back home where Dave read, Wampler did sudoku puzzles (a recent addiction for him) and I worked on "the world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle". It was a picture of Disney villains but there were pictures on both sides of the pieces with one side a flipped version of the same image. I got totally into it and ended up finishing the puzzle that night.

Later Elaine came home and the four of us watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm which I love!

Saturday I woke and quickly got ready and ran to the store to get stuff for a lunch. Jess picked me up around 10 and we drove up to Mt Hood to go snowshoeing. We first stopped at the trailhead for Mirror Lake but there wasn't enough snow. We drove just a few miles further to Trillium Lake and the snow was plentiful! When we first started off it was raining on but after a bit thankfully it turned to snow. It was so beautiful! We did the 4.5 mile loop around the lake. We came across an old gravesite from someone that died along the Oregon Trail. The tombstone was so weathered I could only read "died 1882". We stopped to catch snowflakes on our tongue and listen to the soft sound of the snow and take lots of pictures. It was really beautiful and lots of fun and I can't wait to go snowshoeing again!

Later that day I went to Elaine & Dave's to get my pictures off my camera. Dave had been planning a boy's night out but they were short one guy (they were using buy one get one free coupons for dinner :) ) so I was invited along. Terry came over and the three of us drove to my old neighborhood to meet Andy at Putters. We had a few drinks there before crossing the street to eat at Country Bill's Restaurant. I hadn't been there in a couple years but I was very familiar with it. Every time Ryan's dad came into town, which was fairly often, we went to eat at Country Bills. We sat in the lounge and we were the only people under the age of 40 and the place was packed. Even Ryan's dad referred to it as the geriatric club! The steaks were great though! We all got salads & baked potatoes too. I love when the waiter comes around with the caddy of condiments and gives you heaping dollops of butter and sour cream and crazy amounts of bacon bits and chives. I don't like bacon bits. ewwww

We rolled ourselves outta there after dinner and Terry & Dave & I went back to Dave's house. I dropped them off at Thatchers on my way home. I watched a documentary about the artist Ray Johnson called How to Draw a Bunny which was really fascinating!

Sunday I woke up and after showering I went to my local coffee shop and read the paper. From there I drove out to the Gorge to take some pictures. The waterfalls were really gushing with all our rainfall and they were back to their mossy, green splendor with the ice of a few weeks ago completely gone. At one point I had pulled over to take pictures of the stone railing along the road with it's great curves and green color from all the moss. There wasn't a shoulder on that side of the road and it was by a curve so after taking the photo I quickly crossed the road. While crossing I stumbled and my ankle rolled and I began falling. Oh how I wish someone was there to witness this graceful moment! It seemed like it took forever for me to actually fall. My only concern really was protecting my camera which I was holding. Like a mother falling while holding her baby I let my body take the fall and just held my camera up. I landed hard on my left knee but quickly got up and limped back to my car. I had scraped the palm of my hand and torn my jeans and my knee was bleeding and really scraped up. I decided then that I was done taking pictures for the day and went home to clean my wound and get my pictures off my camera. I know have the knee of a 9 year old girl...scabby and sore! I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching movies and reading my book. I finished that great book about Krakatoa and I'm now reading an Annie Proulx collection of short stories about Wyoming called Bad Dirt. Today is the first day of the winter term at the college so it's a little nuts. I also had my first PE class today. I've finally accepted that I need to wake up early to get in a regular workout and classes at the college only cost me $2! woohoo!

So that was my weekend! Please let me know what you did and how you are!

xoxo,
carolyn