April 2011 Archives

I added a little "widget" in the right hand side of the webiste that shows some of the more recent books that I've read, through the goodreads site. I've been listening to audiobooks in the car on my way to and from work.. you can really get through some books in > 1hr of reading a day!

Brett finally got around to updating the blog style to be less like the year 2000, we're at least up to 2009 now.. Whoa! Technology whiplash! This should also resolve the gross comment spam we were getting, so commenting is enabled again. I hope to keep it enabled with the latest spam-prevention technology.

If you have an old RSS feed link to the site, you may need to update to the new link (over to the right and down).

We hope you'll like the new format. Let us know what you think.

It's been so long since I've updated, whoops! We've been keeping our pictures on picasa up to date, but not announcing them here.

We had a great trip to Olympic National Park and thought you might enjoy some photos. We went to Lake Quinault, staying in the lodge and visited the Kalaloch area of Olympic National Park. It was sunny the entire time we were there - not a small feat for a Northwest rain forest in February! We had an excellent time hiking and exploring. Here are some pictures

We've been busy outside (in the rain mostly) doing some significant landscaping done, our neighbors must think we're crazy:

• Building retaining walls in the front yard on the slope and taking out juniper
  
• Building two garden boxes in the parking strip for vegetables
  
• Planting lots of blueberries bushes in the new retaining wall area in the front and even some tea plants!
  
• Distributing 7 yards of compost around the yard (that's a lot..!!)
  
• Moving the huckleberries to the shady side, planting honey berry plants instead.
  
• Pruning, planting vegetables in the boxes..
  

Here's an in-progress shot from the cell phone before we were done:

Lately, Debbie has been doing a lot of cheese classes with very good success. We've got more home-made dairy products in the fridge than is believable: One day I counted 17 different types! She's also doing some (flexible) contract work so our schedules have shifted back to busy-life again.

Brett just got some prescription sunglasses for the first time in his life and hopes to use them on upcoming bike rides. He got in his first "significant" ride of the season yesterday at Sauvie Island for a 25miler. He's currently got a very tasty Saison homebrew on tap, and is still enjoying the cider from last year.