Off on my next great big adventure...

At lunch last week, I opened my tasty lil' fortune cookie to behold a prediction that would soon turn to reality (though not on the weekend the slip of paper indicated).

For this weekend is Tour de Bohrer: Redux!

Shaz and I left Portland last night at 6 and made our way thru the Gorge, the Blue Mountains, and past the Scary Factory in Lime, OR without incident before finally rolling into Shelb's house at around 2:30 am. We considered it an excellent sign that Motley Crue's "Dr. Feelgood" came on the radio as we crossed into the Boise city limits. (Note to Shelb & Lori: this does NOT mean I'm down with the four-hour detour to Minot to see the Crue play at the North Dakota state fair tomorrow night).

The first leg of our journey takes us from Boise to Billings, MT via Yellowstone National Park. I'm excited. I've never been to Yellowstone before - but I've been told to beware of the buffalo. I'll consider myself to be on full alert for the giant beasts.

Better that I take on the spottin' task than Shaz, anyway...last night as we drove into Hood River, I saw two Lab doggles running against traffic on the right shoulder of the freeway. I yelped "Holy shiz, Shaz! What are THEY doing out here?!" She didn't notice them truckin' along at all. I told her I was immediately rescinding her wildlife spotting responsibilities.

Oddly enough, I think she was okay with that.

Now, onto Yellowstone!

A Plethora of Portland Bikers

Nice weather in P-town signals a dramatic increase in all kinds of 2-wheeled rides on the roadway. For the most part, out here in the 'burbs we see the motorized bikes. But one thing I don't believe I've EVER seen is a guy wearing flip-flops with socks while riding a motorcycle. Is that even legal? I mean, at a minimum, it's a bad freakin' idea, right?




I deffo preferred these other biker types a little ways down the road. Mrrrowww and stuff. But is it just me, or do these fellas look like they've only recently shed their white shirts, black ties and name badges? Hmmmm?

Stormtroopers, Vegas, Nature...and The Cure?

I saw on the tee-vee the other day something about a website called Portwiture. Essentially, you go to the site, type in your Twitter username and a bunch of photos are pulled from Flickr that match up with the words you tweet most frequently.

I've been chattin' it up recently about the upcoming roadtrip, so I get the nature and travel pics - the last big road trip was to Vegas, and we're going to be seeing some amazing mountains and rivers and such - but the creepy dude with the passport? The stormtrooper getting off the train? What's up with that? And speakin' of creepy dudes, what on earth could I have tweeted to warrant a photo of Robert Smith and his smeary lipstick'd mouth?

And most importantly - is it weird to be freaked out by a visual representation of the nonsense I ticky-type into Twitter? 'Cuz I totally am...

Got The Funny?

My girl Renee and I realized a few months back that we share a love of the Octagon. As in UFC. As in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. As in...you seriously didn't know that? Then I don't believe I have anything to say to you, so-obviously-not-a-cool-kid.

A week or so ago, she and I planned a big ol' shindig centered around the pay per view airing of the UFC 100 program. We ordered the show in all its high def glory at my house and invited our husbands, Shaz and her man to join us for blood, guts and BBQ. When I mentioned the upcoming funtivities at my place to my Knuckle Len, he couldn't believe I was into such barbarism. He asked me "Haven't we grown as a society enough to not see two men pummeling each other as entertainment?"

My response: HELLS TO THE NO.

Now, I'm not a fan of most sporting events on the tee-vee...I can't stand televised baseball (I blame my dad's frequent question of "Isn't there a ballgame on?" for interrupting my very important cartoon viewing as a child), I only watch the Superbowl for the commercials, and I really have no taste for professional boxing.

But from the moment I turned on Spike TV and watched my first UFC match, I was hooked. These weren't just giant Ivan Drago-lookalikes beating the hell out of each other. Well, sure - they were beating the hell out of each other, but they were doing it in tons of different ways...and really excitingly.

On July 11th, Renee and I were ready for the action. Her very favoritest fighter, one Georges St. Pierre, was up to defend his welterweight title, and we were all pretty excited about the heavyweight match up between Frank Mir (he of the terrible D--k in a Box hair) and that ginormous monster of a man, Brock Lesnar.

The fights were pretty fantastic (the notable exception being the Mir/Lesnar one - we weren't happy) and the following Monday, Renee and I were busy comparing our notes on the event and discussing our favorite fighters. We realized another of our shared faves is Forrest Griffin, and as we searched the innerwebs for information about his upcoming match with Anderson Silva (OMG - this one's gonna be crazy, yo!), we discovered that he's a recently published author.

Renee tracked down some sample pages of the book online and after reading just a few, both of us were in stitches. STITCHES! That Forrest Griffin is one funny motherscratcher, right there. Renee ordered the book with a quickness and ran it over to me after picking it up at the post office...


Here she is, doing her best MMA tough guy pose with the book. I have to admit that this is the fourth take - she looked like an elf in the first one, the second one was blurry because I was laughing too hard and she was laughing too hard in the third.

Yeah, we're not so hardcore. But we're workin' on it.

Underbite Guy Impersonations...

...are sweepin' the nation, yo.

My coworker T.P. Hercules (The Pocket Hercules) is one of a select group of colleagues that are aware of this here bloggity blog. And he got quite a kick out of Jay's impersonation of the Odd Underbite Guy wearing Ladies Glasses at my little brother's graduation ceremony last month.

So when T.P. rolled into my cubey last week and saw my sunnies sitting on my desk, he immediately grabbed 'em and put them on, saying, "Look, I'm wearing lady glasses!"

I was glad I had the wherewithall to grab my cell phone and snap a couple of pics as he sported the sunnies around...

...but I really had to laugh when he mimicked Jay mimicking Underbite Guy. I can't explain what's going on with the clip thing on his ear (maybe he just wanted to feel pretty?), but I think he truly captured the essence of the odd Underbite Guy wearing Ladies Glasses. Don't you?

Leaves of Three...Let Them Be. Unless Your Name is Jay.

Over the 4th of July, Jay and I took a quick trip down to Roseburg to ring in the holiday with our friend Brant. Brant's parents own a house up on top of a hill south of town complete with a pool, off-road vehicle trails, valley views for firework-watchin' and plenty of space for target shooting, so it was a pretty easy decision to spend Independence Day down there.

The day was fantastic. It was super hot out, but having easy access to a pool and an abundance of G&Ts kept it tolerable. For the most part, my day went like this: cocktail, target shooting, trashy magazine, dip in the pool, cocktail, trail-ridin', dip in the pool, cocktail, dip in the pool.

And it was fantastic.

Probably the worst part of the day was when Jay took off for a little bit in Brant's (relatively) new RZR S 4-wheeler dealie and brought it back full of leaves and branches and crap.




Brant didn't seem to mind very much that Jay had put his ride through some paces across the 120-acre property, but he was none too pleased about the fact that his RZR was now FULL OF POISON OAK.



And the thing is? The menfolk in Jay's family are notoriously allergic to poison oak. Seriously, you get those boys within 20 feet of poison oak, and they become big ol' itchy scratchy messes.

Which is exactly what happened to Jay once we got home. The next few days, the poor boy kept finding patches of poison oak on his body - but the worst area was the back of his right leg. And added to the already bad sitchy was his complete lack of will power in the knock-off-the-freakin-scratchin' department. I mean, damn. Despite the hydrocortisone and the Benadryl spray and the ice pack-applying, he was miserable. And the back of his leg started looking horrific. Now that we're a few weeks out, he's almost back to normal.

But I know one thing...the next time he goes on another trail ride adventure in Roseburg, I'm putting him in a freakin' HAZMAT suit.

Eat Something Ewwwy: June

I kinda dropped the ball on my Eat Something Ewwwy Challenge in May. The last you heard from me on the ewwwy front was April, when I relayed the tale of gettin' down on some oxtail soup at an all-night diner in Las Vegas. I managed to try something new in June, however, when I met up with some chickadees for happy hour last month. And I've gotta go ahead and give this particular meal a couple of great big THUMBS UP.

Okay, so maybe you wouldn't classify this meal as "ewwwy" exactly...but you've gotta agree that it's a bit, umm...unconventional.




Looks pretty normal, doesn't it? Well, that's where you'd be wrong, my lovelies. What yer lookin' at right here is The Original's Voodoo Doughnut Burger. It's a Tillamook Cheeseburger and all the fixins nestled inside a glazed doughnut from Voodoo Donuts. It may sound a little oodgey, but believe me - it was delightful. The well-seasoned burger and gooey, melty cheese was a perfect contrast with the sweetness of the doughnut.

And the best thing of all? It was s'posed to be $7.25 on the happy hour menu, but for some reason, the server only charged me $2 for this tasty lil' number. WIN!

First Trip to the 2009 Tuesday Market

Jay and I strolled on down to our local farmers market last week for some dinner and people watching. The dinner - lumpia and pancet noodles from the Filipino shop near our house - was fantastic, and the people watchin'? Fuggedaboudit. My head was practically on a swivel checking out the weirdness that was all around us.

Exhibit 1: The giant inflatable soldier walking down the street, stopping every few steps to hug strangers and pose for photo opps. I swear on everything holy that I had flashbacks to the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters when I saw this guy. Creepy.



Exhibit 2: The use and abuse of mustard products. To be fair, this is my friend Tiffany and I love her to pieces...but I have never seen anyone consume as much mustard in one sitting before. I swear, I thought she'd reached toxic levels of mustardy-ness.



Exhibit 3: This guy. Yup, the one with the balloon hat. This fool was manic. MANIC, I say! He rode into the market on his bike and almost immediately hit a group of people standing on the sidewalk. Then he tucked his bike away and began weeding one of the planting beds along the street. And then he started boogie'n down with the lil' hippie band sitting on the curb. It was fascinating. We simply could not look away!

Tuesday Market = good times indeed

C.A.T. Walk? No thanks, I'm heading to the pool.

Last year the Portland Based Girl Gang (PBGG, natch) did the Cancer Awareness & Treatment walk for the first time. We had a blast making the 5k circuit around downtown Hillsboro, even without our pally Jax. Fortunately, we were able to talk mah mans into joining us for the walk and subsequent parade-watchin'.

Shaz, Dee and I planned to do the walk again this year, but I just haaad to be the party pooper. I mean, I enjoyed the walk, but this year it would be held right smack dab in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, and I could think of lots of things I'd rather do with my Independence From Work holiday.

But maybe we should have done it, since, as Shaz pointed out to me...we are THE FACE of the event and everything. That's right, that's us right on the cover of the brochure advertising the C.A.T. Walk, powering right out of the starting line at last year's walk. You can totally tell from my balled fists and pursed lips that I'm on a mission, huh?

My coworker B told me today that there were close to 1,000 people at the walk on Saturday, breaking the previous record for participation. That's pretty cool, ain't it?

I think it must have been the brochure. Most definitely.

Cows in the Burbs!

Mah mans and I headed out to the Trader Joe's last night to secure some vittles for the week, but when we prepared to turn out of our lil' suburban development, we saw something odd.

We saw this:

That's right, we saw a couple of bovine young 'uns rollin' down the street right in front of us. I believe our first response was HOLY SH*T! But then, being the faithful blogger-eress-er, whatever...I grabbed my cellie phone and snapped this shot.

Then called the non-emergency dispatch number for the local police.

We followed the moo cows down the street a little bit as I explained to the dispatcher that she might want to get the mounted posse down here right away. I told her that they were headed down to the quad and through the gymnasium - and that somebunny needed to wrangle 'em, STAT. She told me that someone would be arriving in my neighborhood directly.

Meanwhile, we slowly followed the cows as they ambled down the middle of the street towards the construction site for the new middle school a few blocks away. They hung a roscoe into what will one day soon be the front lawn area of the school, but now is simply home to a few errant weeds. A few old timers in a beat up pick-up truck pulled over to the side of the road to keep an eye on them, and with that, we were on our way to discounted organic produce at TJ's!

I emailed the picture around to my coworkers today to demonstrate this interesting crossover between urban and rural areas. Though I live in a tidy lil' suburb with well-tended yards, there's a field just beyond my neighborhood on one side and a cow pasture on another side. We're fringe-dwellers is what we are. My coworkers had some interesting comments...

That's really good for a neighborhood for a couple of reasons. One, it brings nature into the community. Two, it lets people be closer to their food. Plus, if you're feeling squirrelly, hop on and see if you can ride the 8 secs.

Load your shotgun shells with slugs and have lots of steak; you must, however, have room in your freezer!!!

I don't even get that out in my neck of the woods. I thought you lived in civilization!

And my favorite:

Hard to find work these days as a Merrill Lynch bull....