When I think of National Pie Day, I normally thing of National “Pi” Day, but there is a whole other day dedicated to pie without the math! Kim invited me out to Random Order, an awesome pie and coffee joint that also has a full bar. Post pie, we found ourselves strolling around Alberta, finding adorable animals and taking silly pictures.
I wish I could remember her name, but this adorable 3 legged dog was the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen and I want her.
Meet Ben! I think this is a great photo to meet Ben with.
Meet Molly, who I sneakily took photos of because I was too scared to ask to take her photo which is dumb because we had a photographer in our midst with Kim.
Kim at work.
I know this is lame, but it was a big moment for us. We have a sexy new mail box. Apparently it’s pretty common to have a slot outside that the mail person sticks the mail in, and it falls into a box inside our apartment…we don’t even have to go outside to get our mail now. The thing is, though, it scares the crap out of me from the little metal door being opened and slammed closed when the mail is delivered.
Our first piece of mail was our USPS mail forwarding packet.
I’ve been penpal-ing with a couple friends because writing letters is awesome. If anyone wants to penpal, let me know! I have my own little writing desk in my own little writing corner and it is begging to be used. :)
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention this!! Today is 3 years Kyle and I have been married. It’s also a year since we visited Portland and decided to move here. The last two years we went on little vacations to celebrate our anniversary (Asheville B&B at 1 year, and Portland last year), but since we love Portland so much we don’t want to leave, our gift to each other this year is getting our first tattoos together! We have said for a while that once we got settled and both had jobs, we’d get our first tattoos. They aren’t matching or anything silly like that (not that matching tattoos is bad, just not for us), but they are both totally nerdy. Kyle’s isn’t something he designed, just modified, but he designed mine completely from scratch and I’m so totally excited. Our appointments are at 3 this afternoon (6 EST) at Scapegoat, our friendly neighborhood vegan tattoo parlor. Our artist? Aron Dubois. Look for progress photos from sketch to skin soon! <3
We were told when we moved here that it never snows. Well, it snowed the first night we were in our new apartment. And it snowed a half a dozen times in the month after that! Nothing too major; if it did stick, it still didn’t make the roads dangerous and it was gone by the afternoon, but still…it was beautiful and nice and I’m glad we got to experience it. Here are some photos from me hibernating in the apartment before I had a job!
Funny enough, in the last week we’ve had a few days of all sun, 80 degrees…and I’m here posting photos of snow!
Since I’ve been getting my butt kicked at work, I’ve not been up for cooking much lately. BUT, I was cooking up a storm when I was unemployed! Enjoy these random food photos from the last month or two!
Eggplant fries!
My first time making popcorn not in a microwaveable bag! We don’t have an air popper, but this is super fun to make on the stove.
Homemade biscuits, mashed sweet potatoes, and zucchini.
I made some of my famous pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for our neighbors after we moved in. When they brought my plate back a few days later, they brought it back with these two German chocolate cake cupcakes from a vegan bakery up the street!
Alright folks, it’s that time. I have finally managed to wrestle some spare time into a corner and use it to get to a coffee shop. And I BIKED here. Wow, so many updates. Lets do a quick run through.
I got a job. I officially started on Leap Day, 2/29, with some corporate and safety training. My first day training on the job was March 4. I’m working behind the deli counter at a grocery store less than a mile from our apartment. I like the job and most of the people I work with, but it’s hard work. I’m on my feet for 8+ hours and my back, legs, and feet are killing me when I get home. The biggest downside, though, is that 90% of my job is working with meat. Frying chicken tenders, slicing sandwich meat (and cheese), and preparing raw, whole chickens to be roasted. I’ve learned to separate myself from it, but it’s still disheartening sometimes. Sometimes I’m sitting at home and can smell the raw chicken, or I have dreams about eating the very-not-vegan food that I prepare for the hot food display. But it’s a living for now!
Kyle started a new job! He was working at a call center, interviewing at other places looking for something better. He interviewed to be a driver for a company here and didn’t get it, but they really liked him and told him about another opening they had coming up. He started for them a couple months ago through a temp agency just to see how he’d do. As of a couple weeks ago, he is officially working for the company, which comes with a big pay raise. He really likes his job. He works from 4am to about 12:30pm (although he’s been working until 2 the past few days) during the week.
Now, because he works at 4am and has to take the car because the buses don’t run, I got a bicycle for my birthday to get me to and from my job! I had a bike before we moved, but not one appropriate for commuting, so I gave it to my mom. I haven’t ridden a bike in well over a year, and certainly not on a daily basis ever so it’s rough getting used to this thing. I can barely make it to to work without stopping to catch my breath even though it’s less than a mile away. I’m stupid, and haven’t taken any pictures of my bike, but I promise I’ll have one for you soon. I also got a helmet, which some of you may have seen already, but it’s adorable and I feel a little less dorky wearing it because it’s cute. Silly, I know. Haha.
Let’s see…that’s most of the big news. The apartment is a little more furnished and home-y now. Emily and Ben, who we stayed with when we got here, were forced out of the house they were renting and have moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. They had to get rid of a lot of stuff, and we reaped the benefits with some rad furniture and little goodies from them. Their apartment is awesome, but it’s the size of only one floor of the house they were in!
I’ve been working a lot and have lost touch with a lot of my normal blogs I read. Now that we both have jobs, we’ve sworn to get internet at our next place (the current place doesn’t allow animals, so we’ll probably only be here until July when the lease runs out and defaults month to month) so I hope to be in more touch then. I said I’d have my Etsy shop back up by now; I have a lot of things knitted, I just haven’t had time to post them much yet since I got this job. If we had internet at home, I’d have done it by now; it’s so hard to force myself out into the rain to go to a coffee shop to use wifi to do this stuff (but I did that today!). I’ve been in a bit of a creative slump because I feel like I’ve not been doing anything, which doesn’t make any sense, but I’m trying to work my way out of it. I have a lot of photos to post to catch you all up on my adventures. I take photos with my phone all the time, but I’ve whipped the big Canon out of a few times to document some things, like our volunteering at a local farm sanctuary. Other than that, I use the rain as an excuse not to lug the big buy around.
This post has gotten long enough, but I promise I’m working on some posts to introduce you guys back into our world here. I sense that the warmer weather will bring more desire to get out and hang out like I’m doing today in the cold rain!
(I’ve tried to post this post 3 times now and it hasn’t posted. I don’t know wtf is up but here the heck it is. I apologize this is so out of order and far apart from the first one! I even added notes at the top like this the other times, but they aren’t even showing up in my drafts. Lame-o.)
I just had to dedicate a whole post to the photos of the Washington and Oregon coasts. Firstly, this was our view on our way out of town. Mt. Rainier hid from me the whole time we were in Seattle, but he popped out just as we were leaving. And look! He even has a bit of a halo.
I’m so glad Emily suggested and decided to take us on the scenic route to see some Pacific beach (although it made the trip 7 hours long instead of 3!). I’ve never touched Pacific waters and was so excited! Our first stop was Long Beach, Washington. Fun fact, beaches in Washington are considered highways, so you can drive on them.
Touching the Pacific Ocean for the first time! It’s cold!!
Me running at Emily in excitement…
My frozen, but Pacific-covered fingers.
YEAH! DANCE!
Alright, before this post gets too massive, below are photos from where we stopped in Cannon Beach, Oregon to see Haystack Rock!! Any Goonies fans? Yep, it’s the same one! The sun was mostly down by the time we got here, so I’m glad I was able to finagle my camera settings into taking some decent shots.
Apparently PUFFINS LIVE ON HAYSTOCK ROCK. I LOVE PUFFINS. I can’t wait to go back when it’s warm and see them!!
Quarry Girl posted this on her tumblr Friday. I really can’t begin to put into words how ridiculous it is. I’m not posting this to rub it in anyone’s face not to drink milk, but it’s just funny! The milk industry feels so threatened by people trying healthier alternatives that they had to put out an ad against it. I don’t know what I would have thought about this video before I went vegan, but I’d like to think my thoughts wouldn’t be any different…that this is a ridiculous commercial and it would do nothing to make me want cow milk.
Is this really the best they can do? I don’t shake my milk at all. My husband does, but he shakes everything, even if it says not to. If I did shake my milk, I wouldn’t even shake it that much. Wtf!
On the note of veganism…as Quarry Girl said in her post about this video, I think the boy would have much worse nightmares if he knew what really happened to dairy cows.
Emily decided to go up to Seattle a few days before the new year to see some family that didn’t come down to see her for the holidays. Being from Seattle, most of her friends are there, too, so she decided to spend just 2 short days trying to see everyone! Since I’m still unemployed, I decided to go with her! We left Thursday morning and arrived in Seattle around 2pm after a 3 hour drive. After dropping our suitcases off with her family, Emily took me on a little tour of Seattle! Since it was mostly dark by the time we went out, I don’t have any pictures of the first day. However, on Friday, we went out to lunch with her grandparents outside of the city. On our way out, Emily took me to one of the best views in town.
As we left and re-entered the city before and after lunch, I was able to get some great shots of downtown. Later, we went to the famous Pike Place Market with Emily’s mom. Parking rates were atrocious, so we just made a quick run through of the area, grabbing gigantic vegan cookies on our way back to the car.
I’m pretty stoked about tomorrow’s photos! Instead of the 3 hour trip home on the highway, we picked up a friend, Kim, on the way out of town and took the coastal route! It was B-E-A-utiful!
We’re moved into our apartment! Yay! It’s pretty empty; we don’t have a dining table and there is nothing on the walls. No side tables, lamps, or bookshelves yet. Luckily, though, we have a crapton of storage so we don’t have anything on the floor (like books since we don’t have book shelves yet). We went on quite the shopping trip on Sunday to pick up some things we needed and MAN that stuff adds up. I’m so glad we came here with a good little savings account to account for having to furnish an entire apartment.
I was hoping there would be a free wireless connection that would reach our apartment so I could upload photos and video and make blog posts from home but there isn’t one. To save money with me not having a job yet, we’re not going to pay for one for now. I figure we’ll probably go hang out at a coffee shop or something once or twice a week to catch up on the web. I am posting right now from my phone, but man this is tedious. At least I have my phone to keep up with facebook, email, twitter, and 9gag. Haha.
The weather has been frigid. Every morning since we moved (3) we’ve woken up to snow. Sunday while out shopping, it finally began to stick. We stopped at a pho place for lunch. There was no snow when we got there, everything was covered in white while we ate, and by the time we left you couldn’t even tell it had snowed. It’s crazy! Yesterday and today it snowed sporadically, just a few minutes here and there. It’s not sticking but it’s still beautiful. I took a couple short videos from our front door and I can’t wait to share them.
I’ve got a few posts already made, so I’ll post one tomorrow. It’s easy to post an entry from my phone when it’s slready made. ;)
I’m interrupting your regularly schedule photo post with an update about our little lives here in the city.
We finally signed a lease yesterday for our own apartment. I know I’ve mentioned the apartment before after we paid to secure it, but that was a month ago. Now, the lease is signed and we’re picking up the keys today when Kyle gets off work in a few hours! We also opened a savings and checking account at a local credit union yesterday! We couldn’t do it without proof of residency, so we had to have the lease to be able to open accounts.
We’ve paid for a couch, coffee table, dresser, and bed to be delivered tomorrow. We’re going to take most of our stuff to the apartment today after we get the keys and eat. That way, we mostly just have to wait on furniture and then we’re all set tomorrow. We are still missing a lot, but after we get a microwave, we should be set for a little while until we recover from all the furniture we just bought. then, maybe a little dining set and some bookshelves.
So yay! I just wanted to share that. Our next step is to study the Oregon Driving Manual so we can take the written test to get our Oregon licenses. After that, we can start the long process of getting Oregon plates for the car; I’m told it’ll take a while because we’ll have to send paperwork to the bank through which my car is financed, then wait on them to send the paperwork back to the DMV. Oy vey.
If anyone needs my updated address, let me know. I’d love to start up some pen-pal letters again! Weee!
YAY I can’t wait for my PILLOW TOP BED. AND MY HUGE OVERSIZED COMFY COUCH. AHHHH. TOMORROW.
About ME
Short. Punctual. Cheesy. Romantic. Insecure. Loving. Faithful. Vegan. Unique. Open-Minded. Stubborn. Gregarious.
Life is still filling in the blanks.
