Bike Ride to Beaverton Library

I had a book on reserve, but I forgot to stop by the library on my way home from school today. I decided to dust off my bike and take it for a spin. Our local library (not the one I work at) is only 1.5 miles from our house, so it was a perfect little ride. The Beaverton Farmer's Market starts in a couple weeks and is held right beside the library, so I'm glad it's such a nice and easy trip.

Thank You Sopan & Keren!

Orchid - Phalaenopsis

Sopan and Keren gave us this beautiful orchid for Sami's birthday. It is by far the most elegant thing in our kitchen.

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Other News
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I have no class or work today because the Rock Creek Campus is closed. There has been a gun or bomb or some sort of threat. Unfortunately I didn't know about it until after I got up and drove there. At a gas price of $3.19/gal, thats rather annoying.

Road Trip to Ikea

Sami has been designing his home theater setup and he realized that the existing light fixture in the room would interfere with the picture from the projector. Plus, it was ugly. Last weekend we went to Home Depot and looked at all of their fixtures, but he didn't find one that suited his criteria. When we got home we looked at a ton of different websites looking for various types of low profile lighting. Finally we found one he liked at Ikea. Of course the one here in Portland isn't opening for a couple more months and this fixture is one that the store doesn't ship for some reason.

So... Road trip to Ikea Seattle. It's been a long time since we went geocaching and we were expecting more good weather so we decided to combine the two. The first geocache we tried was called "Quack Islands" It sounded great. Ducks, islands, a fountain and a garden. Unfortunately we found ourselves in the parking lot of a medical center. There was a fountain, and a small garden, and a lake, but no ducks! The "islands" were small bits of greenery scattered around the parking lot. We must have spent about 40 minutes following clues around and never found the cache. And it was only supposed to be 1.5 stars out of 5. Not a good start.

Then it started raining. We decided to keep driving towards Seattle and see if the rain would let up. Sami got hungry and I told him to stop whenever he saw something he liked. We drove about 20 miles without passing any food places. Finally, in the middle of nowhere we saw a house with a giant English flag on the roof. We were hungry so we decided to stop. It was kind of an interesting little place. Tons of postcards and teacups and English flags everywhere. The locals all came by to sit and eat and catch up on all the gossip with each other. Sami read the paper and educated himself on the going prices of various dogs, horses and pygmy goats. I tried to order the Cornish pastry but they were all gone already. We ended up getting chicken and fish and chips instead. It was pretty good, but it took a while and we had actually gone to a non-fast food restaurant intending to get non-fried food. I should have ordered some tea. It would have been nice on a chilly rainy day and fitting for a British restaurant. But I forgot until we were getting ready to leave and we had a thermos in the car full of coffee anyway.

We did a couple more geocaches, a quick one at a rest area where we saw these beautiful wildflowers (Western Trillium - Trillium ovatum and Pacific Bleeding Heart - Dicentra formosa) an another on a road running parallel to the highway. In that one Sami found a duck dressed like a soldier in the cache and a garden rake just laying in the ditch. We took them both.

Finally we got to Ikea. It was really crowded and we had a hard time staying focused on what we really came to buy - the light fixtures for the home theater. We ended up buying a bunch of other stuff too. I got a shadow box frame for my leaf fossil I found when we went to the town of Fossil, Oregon and John Day Fossil beds last spring. I've been meaning to make a box for my find, but I've just been so busy I haven't even put the photos from that trip online or gotten them printed.

When we got home we watched "Notes on a Scandal". It's a different type of movie than we usually watch (action or comedy) and a little disturbing; but wow, really great acting. We completely forgot that Cate Blanchett had been the elf queen and that Judi Dench had been queen of England.

Sami's Birthday - Observed

Yes, Sami's Official Birthday was April 19th. However, it was inconveniently timed, so like a president Sami's birthday got moved around the calendar to Friday the 20th. We decided to have a barbecue at home and show off our house and backyard now that the weather is getting nicer.

Sunday the 21st was Sami's friend Edris' bithday, so we decided to make it a double celebration. Sami ordered the rhubarb pie shown in the previous post and Edris requested tiramisu. Neither Sami or I had ever made tiramisu before so it was kind of scary. I didn't think lady fingers were supposed to be so hard, they were crumbling everywhere. Anyway, Sami did most of the work for the tiramisu, I just brushed coffee on the lady fingers and put them in layers.

Everyone said the tiramisu was good. Both the rhubarb pies we made and most of the tiramisu was gone.

Sami rolled out the ground beef with a rolling pin and made uniformly round burgers, perfectly sized for the buns. Unfortunately, burgers shrink when they get grilled, so there was a bit of a "where's the beef?" moment.

Anyway, there was a good group of people, some friends from my work with at the library and Sami's usual group from Intel. Edris had requested a "competition", but wasn't specific. I set up the badminton/volleyball net in the yard, but it got dark soon after everyone arrived so we didn't end up playing. We all had a good time and we're looking forward to more get-togethers this summer.

Rhubarb Pie

Sami has requested rhubarb pie for his birthday. This is one of our favorite recipes. Right now we don't have enough of our own rhubarb growing to make a pie, but we're hoping to have lots later this summer.

Crust

1 Stick margarine
1/2 cup sugar*
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Filling

4 cups rhubarb pieces (peeled)
1/2 cup sugar*
1 tablespoon potato starch
cinnamon
ginger
mint

Preheat oven to 400 F

Whip margerine and sugar. Add egg to mixture. Mix the baking powder with the flour, and add slowly to wet ingredinets. Pour/spread in pie dish, shaping dough into a piecrust.

Boil half of the rhubarb pieces with sugar until soft. Remove from heat and mix potato starch with 2 tablespoons water and add to filling. Add reserved rhubarb pieces to mixture and bring to boil. Remove from heat, add cinnamon, ginger and mint.

Pour filling into crust, brush with egg if desired. Bake for 20 mins at 400 F.


*1/2 sugar may be replaced with splenda. Or additional sugar may be added if a sweeter pie is desired.

So Cute!

Look at the view from my hammock today!



Bushtit - Psaltriparus minimus

The results are in...

...and the winner is Sara's desktop PC! Sara's (AMD-based) PC consumes 147 watts (10-day average); almost three times more than our fridge. At our current 9c/kWh that's about $115 per year.

Next I'll test my own PC... scary...

Google Says What ?? !!

Sami sent me the following forward today. His coworker Carol always sends truly funny forwards. Don't read any of the comments before trying it. They may give away the surprise.

Take 60 seconds to do this. I guarantee you will show someone else - it's too funny not to.

1. Go to www.google.com

2. Click on "maps"

3. Click on Google maps then at the top of the page click "get directions"

4. Type " New York " in the first box (the "from" box)

5. Type " London " in the second box (the "to" box) and hit search maps

6. Scroll down to step #23

Boxwood Birds

I stopped by Home Depot on my way home from work today to find some boxwoods. There weren't any 18 inch ones, so I grabbed a few of the small ones since they were a good price. Making the shrubs into birds wasn't quite as easy as the article suggested. It said "part the boxwood in the middle..." There was definitely nothing saying "...sometimes your plant will break in half. " I'm sure I would have remembered it. Anyway, I made two birds - hopefully they will look better as they grow and I'm able to shape them a bit more. I do have a third boxwood, but I'm going to try growing it for a while before I work on it.

P.S. - Please feel free to suggest names.

Happy Easter

Lilac - Syringa vulgaris

I've been wondering what this plant was (not too hard, I probably could have ID'd it by the leaves if I'd tried) and today when I went out to check on the garden it was quite clear.

One of our apple trees has started blooming and the crocuses we planted late (because of the move) are coming up as well.

We also found two lonely asparagus stalks growing in the big planter behind the garage. Something else - garlic maybe - is also growing there.

Better Ducks and Pasta

Yesterday afternoon Sami and I were going through the mail. I was ripping up my magazines pulling out pictures of kitchens and bathrooms and cool hardware and stuff when I found an extremely cute project in Better Homes and Gardens. Duck topiaries. Normally I'm not a big fan of such artificially shaped plants, but these seemed quick and easy and fun (and I think Sami's love of ducks is rubbing off on me).

Then, as I continued through the magazine I found a recipe for homemade Spinach Pasta. Neither Sami or I had ever made pasta before, but we did have a big bunch of spinach in the fridge, so it seemed like a good idea. To go with the pasta, the magazine suggested Chervil-Chicken Saute (made with baby portabella mushrooms and balsamic vinegar). We used parsley instead of chervil... I think we planted some chervil seeds a few weeks ago, but I don't actually know if we like it or not.

Anyway, the pasta turned out ok. Not very spinach-y and a little chewy. I think our flour is too glutinous, maybe I'll use whole wheat next time instead of white. Also, I think if we cut the pasta bits smaller they might cook more evenly. The chicken was very good. Sami actually licked his plate...and mine too. We'll definitely make it again, hopefully with chervil next time.

I also cut out a recipe for a Beer Rye bread made using a Belgian-style ale. The picture looks great and the recipe doesn't seem too difficult. I don't know if we can adapt it to work in the bread machine, but we'll probably try that later this week.

See a watt, Kill A Watt

I never should've watched that movie... One of the scariest movies I've seen - it ranks right up there between "The Birds" and "Hannibal". I'm talking about the Inconvenient Truth, and it freaked me out. So, with the new house, we've been planning all sorts of energy saving renovations (new windows, heat pump for heating/cooling, insulation). We even had our Energy Trust of Oregon Energy Review. The guy told me that getting new windows would be idiotic, but our wall insulation sucks, and the electric furnace needs to be dumped (oops, I mean "recycled"). Also, water heater temperature should be turned down, incandescent lights should be replaced with compact fluorescent lights etc.

As part of our energy saving mania, I got a new toy, Kill A Watt. It's nothing else but a power meter you plug in series with your whichever electrical gadgets, and it tells you how much power they consume. Tons of fun. One surprising discovery: our coffee maker burns about 900W when it's brewing! I guess it makes sense; I just never thought about it. Gotta have my coffee fix, though - do I have to start going to Starbucks now?

The energy review guy also said that, in regular houses, there are three items that consume most of the energy: heating/cooling, water heating, and the fridge. So, Kill A Watt had some work to do: I had it plugged in with the fridge for almost a week, to figure out how much that #3 energy hog is actually hogging. The result: 57.4W (6-day average)...?! A single incandescent bulb, left on somewhere in the storage shed would burn more than that!

I'm pretty sure our computers have claimed the bronze metal in this race... or have they? Does our house fall into the "regular" category at all? More data is needed... so, Sara's computer is now plugged in with the Kill A Watt. We'll see how it goes.

I Must Be a Ninja

Excellent advertising.

If I didn't already have these, I think I'd have to buy some.