Fidget

Well, it happened again yesterday. In conversation about what I do, a friend asked, so what’s your favorite web site? What are the best-designed sites out there?

uhhhh… no answer. How lame! Here I am, a web designer, and I don’t even have a few good sites to cite - let alone a “KT’s hall of fame” or “my top ten.”

So, I’m starting a search. For well-designed sites. What do you think? Do you know of any sites that you think are top-notch? I think my criteria is it has to be usable, useful, and all that, but also look good. Distinctive, creative, appropriate… Help me out, ok?

Well, it finally cooled down. Last weekend’s 105 cooled down to the seventies. whew. Our activity level was down this weekend as well - July turned out to be a a really busy month. But yesterday we just hung around and made special beef broth for Vietnamese Beef Noodle soup. Pho (”fuh”) is a wonderful treat and we’d been meaning to try making our own. I found this article and wasn’t surprised to discover it was from the SJ Mercury news - the south Bay Area probably serves the most Pho outside of Vietnam. So, the recipe at the end of the article looked pretty authentic, pretty in-depth, but not difficult. After a trip to the Asian market near our house (it rocks!) I was ready to begin.

We fired up our camping stove out on the deck and charred the onions and ginger as directed. That was fun! In they went to the stock pot along with beef bones, a few pieces of London broil and whole spices like star anise and cinnamon. It’s definitely important to plan ahead - the almost 6 quarts of broth were very hot and quite greasy - it needed to chill in the fridge overnight so I could skim off all that fat. By lunchtime today we’d worked up the usual Sunday afternoon hunger, so after I prepped the goodies, we assembled our bowls.

First, dipped the noodles briefly in the defatted, re-heated broth and put them in the bottom of the bowl. Added sliced onion, scallions, chopped cilantro, and pieces of beef - some cooked from the broth process, and some raw paper-thin slices from the market. Then, we ladled boiling broth over all, which cooked the beef on contact and softened up all the noodles and veggies. Just like the pho restaurants, we had our garnish plate with bean sprouts, lime wedges, sliced chilies and Thai basil. And, the all-important hoisin sauce and sriracha hot chili sauce. Yum!

If you’re up for a cooking adventure, I’d recommend this recipe. It’s more time consuming than difficult, and it seems that the main key to success is finding all the right ingredients at the Asian market. The broth recipe is huge (I’ll be freezing what’s left for a few future pho feasts!) and it’s a bit of a production so you want to get a lot out of it. It would make a great group/party supper, too, because it’s very basic and mild in flavor, and everyone can add what they like to customize their bowl.

It’s super hot today. I broke a sweat just making a salad for dinner (even using the toaster oven was too much cooking!!). It’s 8pm and it just became cooler outside than in so I opened up all the windows and turned on our tiny fan to try to move some air through the apartment. We sat in the dark all afternoon, reading and trying not to think too hard for fear of generating heat.

We spent last night in Portland, as a belated anniversary getaway. We had our 12-year-old nephew, TG, with us on our actual day (July 10th) and, though he was a wonderful houseguest, three’s a crowd on one’s anniversary. He didn’t even want a piece of the cheesecake that we were eating to celebrate, opting instead for the last of the ice cream, his reward for eating 3 tiny pieces of vegetable matter with his dinner. He promised to like vegetables when he’s a grown-up, but I figure those 6 years till he’s 18 will go by quick and he’d better start working on liking the goodies now.

So, anyway. We drove up to Portland yesterday and discovered that our motel was a bit farther from the city center than we’d thought. But it turned out fine, because we walked across the Willamette and checked out the sights (whew, the traffic! I’m glad we don’t live there)

and then on to downtown. We went to Powell’s bookstore, which is amazing – we didn’t explore the half of it. Next was dinner at PF Chang’s (score!) and a 7:45 showing of the newest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. It was entertaining but we didn’t like the occult undercurrents and the plot was darn confusing. The first one was better. Maybe they’ll wrap it up during Round Three – apparently on its way, since Dead Man’s Chest ended in a distinctly un-wrapped-up manner. Even though it was 2-and-a-half hours long.

When we got out of the theater it was just as hot at 10:30 as it had been in late afternoon. Whew!

This morning we had breakfast at Doug Fir, a very hip establishment that was log-cabin-meets-60’s-modern. We were across the restaurant from a log wall with a sleek, space-age shaped window cut out of it. It was pretty cool. And the food was yummy! Portland has good food. I like that.

Postscript, Sunday July 23rd : it got up to 105 today. Hope we get some relief tomorrow!!!

I’m kind of at a loss for words, so this post will be mostly pictures. Wow, Crater Lake is totally amazing. I’d heard that it was awesome, and I’d been wanting to see it ever since I became a resident of Oregon. We visited it on a beautiful day, and got a lot of good photos, but you’ve got to see it for yourself. The RGB spectrum on your computer monitor just can’t contain the BLUE…

We had some visitors from California, BN’s dad and stepmom. They’d brought our 12-year-old nephew TG with them (who’ll be staying with us until we drive down to BN’s brother JC’s wedding this weekend.)
We arrived at Crater Lake in the late morning, and we took in the views, had a picnic lunch, and checked out the visitor center. Then my in-laws left for their long drive home, while BN, TG and I staked out our campsite for an overnight. The next morning we went back to the lake and it was even more mirror-like and gorgeous.

Did I mention how BLUE the lake is? Well. Yeah… it’s pretty darn blue. The interpretive content explained to us that the water is very clear and pure, that’s why the other spectrum colors get absorbed. Not very much animal, vegetable, or mineral matter there for red, green, or yellow to get reflected from… just blue, blue, blue. The unretouched image below looks like a blue sky over a crisp January day, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not. It’s actually a view down the steep crater into the water of Crater Lake. And yes, there is still a lot of snow in July. It looks cool as a lacy edge to the lake. Big piles of snow in our campground, actually… which was bad because mosquitoes seem to breed in snow or something… we got eaten during our little campout. Nothing to compare to the National Antelope Refuge of course.

So, yeah. Go to Crater Lake. It’s definitely worth the trip, and you can visit us while you’re in the area!

I did it! The 10k was so much fun. The start is just down the street from us, and right before we walked out the door, a small but juicy rainstorm rained briefly down. That was bizarre but actually quite welcome because I’d been worried it would be really hot - we had record breaking high temps last week. So, I stayed cool, managed not to choke myself at the water stations, and just kept running! My finishing time was 1:10:40. That’s an 11.4-minute-mile pace, so I had a lot of people passing me, especially at the start since BN and I stood in the 8-minute mile starting zone. However, I was passing people on the hill, and not just the ones who dropped down to a walk. I trained on that hill 2 or 3 times a week for several months, and today I totally breezed up it. Rock on!

I enjoyed being in the festive, 4th-of-July crowd, though I wouldn’t want that many people around every time I run, especially since I’m slow and much of the route was clogged with the “4.5 mile mayor’s fitness walk” contingent who didn’t seem to realize that there were runners wanting to sidle by on the side of the road.

The city seems a lot smaller when you run across it rather than driving…

Can we do it again next weekend?