Saturday, August 05, 2006

 

The Ripening

My various veggies are in the ripening stage. These Black Plum Tomatoes have a few that are almost ready:



And these romas turned out to be a beautiful golden color when ripe. Lokks like it's time to make some marinara:



My peppers are little farther behind. I have one Hidalgo just beginning to turn red and this pimiento is beginning to see some color:



I tried a new one this year. I've never grown tomatillos before. The plant has looked healthy and had lots of blossoms and bees to pollinate it. But the fruit is few and small. They look like little chinese lanterns:



And I am glad to say that I have found a replacement H2C runner for myself. So that should make my sister less mad when I tell her later today that I'm not going to run this year.

Well, it's off to some late breakfast, some gardening and maybe even a visit to Laurelhurst Park this afternoon for some Shakespeare in the Park. They're performing The Merry Wives of Windsor this year and that is one that I have never read nor seen.

posted by The Brooklynite 9:34 AM

Thursday, August 03, 2006

 

A Plea for a Replacement H2C Runner

I came to the momentous decision that I really did not want to run in the Hood-to-Coast at the end of this month. The problem is I've alredy committed to my sister's long running (so-to-speak) and extremely well organized team, The Generics. So I need a male replacement runner to take my place on the team. Time is running out (there is that word again). Please email me through the link at the top of the page or, if you are someone who knows me more than just through this blog, give me a call.

My sister is the master H2C team organizer and has been participating in and organizing a team off and on since the early years of the race in the 1980s. The team itself is an Open Coed team with a wide range of talent but always with a lot of fun, heart and support.

So, anyone out there interested?!?!? I need someone soon!

posted by The Brooklynite 8:00 PM

Sunday, July 30, 2006

 

"And she's buying a stairway to ..."

...my back porch. More on that in little bit. First, I started off the weekend appropriately at the Oregon Brewers Festival on Friday afternoon with A (Yes, Andy B. that is exactly where we were at!). We got there around 1 pm and left around 7 pm via bicycle. There were many, many great beers and lots of good company including three separate former ORU rowers (Scott, John and Megan).

The real weekend commenced on Saturday morning when my father came over to help me build some new stairs to my back porch. The old stairs were steep to begin with and rotting. Here's a shot of the old stairs:




They were rotting away. If you look in the background, you can see the outline of where they used to be relative to the side of the house. Here's a shot of he rot at the bottom of the stairs:




I'd worked on a design for the stringers prior to destroying the old stairs. Therein lied the problem in that I could not get accurate measurements to designe the new stringers. My first design on the stringers failed miserably becuase there is this particulary annoying concrete step down at the bottom that is at just the wrong location. Here's a shot after we took out the old stairs:




We flailed around on Saturday until we cut and destroyed two perfectly good 2 x 12's and figured out my design was flawed due to this stupid concrete step on the sidewalk. I went back to the drawing board literally and figured out how to go over and past this stupid step. After recalculating and buying two more new 2x12 stringer material, my father and I got after again today. It worked!! Here's a shot of the three stringers before we applied all the risers and treads:




Dad and I chopped all the risers down to length-size and then stripped them down to width size. Dad finally went home at that point and I decided to finish the task this weekend. I chopped the treads down to lenght size:




Then A helped me screw in the risers and treads. We eventually had to drill pilot holes in the treads even though we had really cool wood screw fasteners called "woodpecker screws" because the pressure treated treads were so tough. But we got done including most of the cleaning up right around 7 pm to produce this beautiful set of back porch stairs:




I'm physically and mentally beat. We had a wonderful dinner of bowtie pasta and pesto with some nice wine anbd a salad. I'm about ready to pack it in after I take a few ibuprofen.

posted by The Brooklynite 9:10 PM