Steamboat…

Steamboat really is my happy place!  I just returned a few days ago from another trip to my most favorite place ever.  Although it wasn’t as great as it could have been, it was still an amazing trip.  I had been fighting a cold while I was there and everything recently just caught up to me so I was pretty worn out.  It was great to be in my favorite town though.  And better yet – it did snow while I was there.  I always seem to miss it actually snow, but not this year.  Even walked downtown in it.  Of course, now that I’m gone, they’ve been getting hit big time with big storms.  Much more than when I was there. And yep, I’m jealous!  How can you be jealous of people you don’t even know? :-). 

I decided that I’m going to try to make my blog more Steamboat focused.  As if anyone needs to hear me talk about it more than I already do!  But it’d be a great release for me since I can’t be there.  I seem to follow Steamboat related news much more than I do here in Portland.  I follow more Steamboat related sites on Facebook, more followers on Twitter, hashtagging like crazy on Instagram… yep, it’s safe to say I’m addicted to Steamboat Springs.  But still not ready to move there.

On this last trip, we took a sleigh ride up to the mountain for dinner.  It was great.  On the way back down, the stars were out – and they were out big time.  It was amazing and breathtaking (mostly from the cold, but the stars were pretty darn unreal!).

We were going to go dog sledding, but the reservations were full and I didn’t really want to do that the day I flew out.  So next winter we are doing that for sure. 

Back to work I go for a bit, but wanted to take a quick blog break.  Working on editing some pictures I took while I was in the Boat and will look to post those next.

 

Newtown

There aren’t any words that can even come close to explaining or describing one of the most awful, horrific tragedies I have ever seen that happened this week.  First, starting in Portland with the shooting at Clackamas Town Center and then the atrocious events that happened in Newtown, CT on Friday morning.  There are no words.  It’s incomprehensible.  Those innocent people, children.  CHILDREN.  What in the world could possess someone to act so horribly towards the most innocent humans there are?

The coverage has been frustrating.  One minute they say the shooter’s mom was a teacher and it was her class he started with, then it wasn’t – she was the one found at the home before he went to the school.  The number of casualties.  The varying reports on every single level.  The media has made this worse than it should be.  Interviewing the children.  Nice work exposing those children to the entire world.  That’s just great.

And now, the service that is being aired.  So far it’s, of course, been very moving.  Every religion is present, everyone is coming together.

But I’m sorry, I thought this was a service for the victim’s families and the community itself.   But yet CNN feels the need to keep focusing on the President sitting in the front row.  Even the podium as the Presidential symbol on it.  I’m sorry, but is this a PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH?  NO!!!  It’s about the families of the victim’s, so why in the hell isn’t all of the focus on just that?  I am extremely impressed with President Obama’s immediate reaction and thoughts to the tragedy – I was crying right along with him.  But I find it slightly disrespectful that the coverage has the nerve to keep focusing on him.  This night is not about the President.  It’s about the people who so senselessly lost their lives, all way too soon, too young.  I can’t even comprehend the entire situation.  I sit here and try to picture what had happened, but it’s too painful.  Yet, I can’t keep watching the coverage.

I’m one of the most patriotic people you’ll ever find and I’m always proud of our President’s, but I just wish that for one night, for this awful tragedy, that politics could have been kept out of it.

 

 

Holy Winds Oregon Coast…

I spent the last 24 hours in Lincoln City.  It was supposed to be a great night out of town, away from everything.  I’d never done this on my own before …  I booked a room so I could see both the sunset and sunrise from a balcony overlooking the ocean while remembering my boy as it comes up on the 2 year anniversary of his passing.  However, Mother Nature had thoughts of her own.  The weather was awful.  Absolutely awful.  80-100 mile per hour winds, downpouring – oh wait – horizontal rains… I didn’t get a chance to see the sunset or sunrise, but I was at the ocean.  But once the winds picked up, then I started worrying about my car.  The place I stayed had free valet parking (hold on – it’s not what you think – it had valet parking only because the parking lot was on the other side of 101 – more safety than anything else!) so I didn’t really know where it was parked at. 

I did get to sit out on the balcony – I had gone prepared.  I had my snowshoeing pants on top of my fleece bottoms, a fleece, a sweatshirt, and rain coat, and hat with scarf – I only wish I had remembered gloves!  And the balcony was so protected the wind wasn’t really an issue while sitting outside, which was nice.  But all I heard, all night long, was the howling wind.  Great waves though.

And then on the way home, the drive was horrible.  Downed trees causing closed roads causing delays… then once I got going, not too far down Hwy 18, I turned a corner and there was a car coming from the other direction that a tree had fallen on and smashed its windshield.  The scary part was just before that I had decided to not speed up slightly to get around the semi-truck that was in front of me as we were going from a two lane to a one lane merge.  If I had gotten in front of him, I have a feeling I would have been passing through/by as the tree fell!

So there we were.  Stuck on Hwy 18.  And too many times for comfort, huge wind bursts would pick up and all I could do is look through my sunroof at the tall, shaky, trees that were blowing over in the winds above – having this huge fear that a tree would fall and I’d have nowhere to go.  But thank goodness for good Samaritans and men with chainsaws!  Only in the country are you rarely without a man with his tools right?  Thankfully a group was able to move the tree out of the way and help the lady in her SUV.  Needless to say, it was quite the stressful drive home.  I’d never been so happy to get home and out of a car.

And then I baked mint chocolate chip cookies – I bought frozen dough at the store on the way home.  I caught up on my Dexter and Homeland.  Homeland has definitely taken over the Showtime favorite slot since Weeds is now done. 

I am so glad to be home.

I tried to take some video of the surf from my balcony, but I can’t seem to be able to upload it here – it doesn’t do it justice anyhow.  Neither do these pictures:

 

 

And then for some reason after I got home, I felt the need to try out a hat I had gotten from my sister awhile back. 

 

And now I’m just relaxing on the couch watching tv.  And hoping that the stress of today doesn’t make me eat every single cookie I just baked!

One year ago…

 

I had just wrapped up my first full day in New York City.  Thanks to a friend/coworker (we’ll call her D), I had the opportunity to stay in New York for a week and work out of our office there.  It was hands down, one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had yet.  Even if it started at Penn Station in NYC by witnessing a man attacking a woman and then having to run to catch the bus. 

The first night we went to Two Door Tavern.  A former coworker of ours owns part of it so we went to check it out.  There I had my first NYC beer.  After that we drove around the city – we hit up Times Square, drove past Rockefeller Center, the NBC building, and Dave Letterman’s show.  We were out and about until I think 3am and then turned around and started the first full day.

We went to Ebbets Field (actually, it no longer exists, but they have a sign in front of the apartment buildings that now stand there), drove through Brooklyn (I would definitely live there if I ever for some reason found myself in NY), walked along the Brooklyn waterfront, visited Ground Zero and the 9/11 memorial, the Fire Station, drove past Wall Street (the Occupy Wall Street folk were camped out so they had the street directly in front of Wall Street closed off), had lunch at Johnny B. Goode’s (yummy 50s diner), drove around the Meatpacking District, SoHo, Mulberry Street (drove past the front stoop that was Carrie Bradshaw’s in Sex and The City), bought some candy at Dylan’s Candy Bar (Ralph Lauren’s daughter’s candy shop), tried to take a cruise on the Hudson River, and then headed back to D’s to unwind.

Now, imagine all of that in some of the worst weather possible.  Rain, wind, freezing rain, hail, snow, icy rain.  You name every possible cold weather and we faced it all in a span of that one day, while doing everything mentioned above.  The cruise on the Hudson – long story short, but we were never notified it was canceled so we drove around the city to kill time… by the time we went back and parked (where it cost almost $35 in parking!!!!!), they had canceled the cruise..  Grrrrrrr.   By the time we were done walking around near Ground Zero, we looked as if we had just emerged from a bath, fully dressed.  I had never been so miserable in jeans before.  While we were working, umbrellas were getting turned inside out and we had ice chips falling off of us!  No joke.   Due to the weather, I wasn’t able to really experience Ground Zero as much as I would have liked to.  I didn’t have the opportunity to really soak it all in.  But I was still fighting back tears.

The following day was pretty darn great.  We backtracked a little bit and went back to the Brooklyn Bridge to walk over it, as well as walk along the waterfront there.  Stopped and had my first Starbucks in Brooklyn (I have to admit, that felt pretty cool! It was a Starbucks amongst a group of brown stones). 

After that we drove to Yankee Stadium and walked around a bit, had lunch at Serendipity, walked around Times Square, went up to the top of the Empire State Building, walked and window shopped in the heart of the city, went to FAO Schwartz and stepped inside Central Park, got my picture taken in front of the Plaza Hotel, and finally got to take that cruise on the Hudson River where we were up close to the Statue of Liberty and was able to see the city at night, on the water.  It was amazing.  And also unbelievably freezing cold!!!!!

I have a feeling I’m missing a bunch of things – we did so much in a 48 hour time span it was crazy.  I really wish I could go back.  I could, if I had the money for airfare.  I have a free place to stay.  One day again soon :).

 

 

 

Goodbye Blogger, Hello WordPress

So… somehow, some way, when Blogspot did an upgrade, my system decided it didn’t like it.  It no longer provides me the option to upload pictures, which is one of the main reasons why I like to blog.  I love photography and ever since I got the iPhone, I really can’t stop taking pictures.  I absolutely love the Instragram app and have been using that constantly.

So to kick off my first blog via WordPress, here are just a few of my favorite Instagram shots: