Happy Thanksgiving!

Man, I've been feeling so lucky lately I should buy a lottery ticket! I remind myself of the things I'm thankful for almost daily, usually as I'm waking up and thinking about how nice and comfortable my bed is and that it's in this really safe, good house; then I think about all the other things I'm fortunate for. . . I have amazing friends, all of them kind and smart and funny; I can't believe how amazing they are. I have a great Dad. He's also one of the kindest, smartest, funniest people I know and we are having the best time hanging out together this week! So nice to have finally grown out of that young-adult-frustrated-with-your-parents stage where you butt heads and stuff. We really understand each other and get along so well and he's such a unique person that I feel so lucky to know him and have been raised by him. He really sacrificed a lot to raise me all by himself, plus he can design/build/fix anything on the planet!

And the rest of my family's pretty great too! (with a few exceptions, hehe)

Other things on my list are:

*Bicycle, and Portland's Bicycling culture
*Gainful Employment!
*Baking (especially Tassajara Bread)
*Cat, she's funny and doesn't pee on stuff
*Large computer monitor
*My new storm door
*Books, libraries, librarians
*Social workers
*Music and karaoke
*Carl Sagan
*Squirrels
*Homegrown produce
*Winter Squash
*Hand embroidered wool slippers from Poland
*Fancy underwear on sale at Marshall's
*Iced green tea
*SAS shoes
*Flannel sheets

I could go on for a while longer, but I have a pie to bake!

Hope you're all having a great Thanksgiving! I'm also thankful that all of you seem so happy and safe and well this year too!

Great Helicopters of the 80's

Red Dawn:




Magnum P.I:




Riptide:





Of Course there was Airwolf:



There were also lots of helicopters on Simon and Simon, the A-team, Heart to Heart, Charlies Angels, Miami Vice. . .the list goes on and on, in fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an 80's tv show that DIDN'T have gratuitous use of helicopters. I, for one, miss excessive helicopter use on TV, maybe I'd watch more TV if there were more helicopters. . .

squash

also, I bought a whole cookbook dedicated to squash. my cookbook collection is getting out of hand.

Jeez, look at that Moon!

The Moon looks really lovely tonight. I had a great time riding my bike back from the grocery store, and I thought, "Man, when I get home, I need to write a blog entry about how much I like riding my bike this time of year." Then the thought struck me that I've written blog entries like this about the spring, summer nights, Christmastime (I like riding around and taking pictures of Christmas lights with my old cameras) and like, as recently as the beginning of September (some cultures view the end of summer/beginning of fall as it's own fifth season!). So I started thinking, is there a time of year that I'm not totally stoked for bike riding? And the answer is "yes", the period of time between when people take down their christmas lights and when the first flowers of spring come up; so like most of January, February, and Some of March, and yeah, dark, cold, rainy nights suck pretty much year round, but right now is pretty awesome! The moon is out, the leaves are full-on gold and orange and yellow and people are making themselves ready for the long nights home with soup and flannel.

Also, someday I'm gonna have to own one of these bikes:

http://www.ahearnecycles.com/index.html