Now, even more boring!

Don't worry, we're still here. It was an insanely busy week, with one or both of us working late or early a lot. I spent a lot of time at the office, which once Aaron is done playing bridge online you will see in a new post - we took some pictures last week. I had a huge report due on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I've spent a lot of time explaining to people what a community land trust is. I think I'll post some stuff I've written about it when I get on my work computer next.

Basically, I wrote a concept paper for the City's Housing and Community Development Commission outlining the need for a community land trust. I included an imaginary scenario, which I've been working on steadily since I began at CNHS. It's taken a lot of work, as we are constantly revising what we think is important blah blah blah. I made these sweet spreadsheets that I think I mentioned before, but now I have a billion of them. Anyhow, I included a little story and scenario of how a community land trust sale would work. When I presented this to the CLT task force, they ripped it apart - questioned my assumptions, my numbers (which, admittedly, I made up) and made some general corrections. This was good and bad - they are really on top of their stuff and have a wealth of experience in real estate, assessment, etc that I don't - but it sucks to have your stuff questioned. BUT then after I corrected it that afternoon and presented it to the CNHS board that night, I had far fewer questions and people seemed to like it, so that was way better. They approved its submission to the HCDC unanimously and off it went on Wednesday. Actually, I walked it over (everything in Corvallis is SO close, and everyone in local government/social services knows each other, it seems) and handed it to the guy myself.

So that's what I did for the first half of the week.

Today I spent tearing my hair out on how to assess the land inflation and home inflation separately in a futile attempt to keep housing affordable over the long term when piddily little lots here are going for $400,000. If you want me to explain this to you, I can - to make a long story short, I am trying to dig up my own statistics and do the analysis myself because I don't think anyone's done this before (why would they? No one else views land/homes this way - except for tax assessors for property tax, and that's the data I'm using.)

So you are probably already bored with my job. I'm not. I like it quite a bit. I love having meetings. I hate sitting at my desk. The internet is a contant temptation and I feel like a bum because I can't always focus on my spreadsheet or whatever, especially if I'm mulling over something. I try to vary my tasks, but I'm telling you I'm not cut out for this constant stream of slow progress. I'd rather work feverishly and then take a few days off.

What else did I do this week? Went mountain biking again, that was way fun. It's awesome when we get to the top of the hill in Chip Ross Park because we can see where we live way down at the bottom of the foothills and say, man, we biked ALL THE WAY up here. It's sweet. I also stopped by the Heartland Humane society to see about volunteering and I'll be showing up to their orientation on October 3rd. I then stopped at the Food Co-op (First Alternative Co-op) and got some molasses, buttermilk, and sunflower seeds to make some delicious bran muffins. We got a ton of bran for literally 27 cents the other day, so I used a smidgen of it for the muffins. Guess I'll have to make more. Aaron and I are still in full amazement at the wonders of buying in bulk.

Oh, Aaron introduced me to a delicious cheap eat: the fried egg sandwich. Although I gently teased him that a mentally deficient ape could make this, it is very delicious and extremely cheap while still being nutritious. Ingredients: one or two eggs, two slices of bread, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Fry the eggs. Break the yolks slightly, but do not scramble. Once done, place on bread. Apply condiments. Eat.

Sounds gross, but it's good, fast, and cheap. Three of my favorite things.

On that note, I'll give you a sneak preview of the wonders you may see in a few days. We've begun our dresser project. Since we couldn't find any actual furniture at garage sales or thrift stores that fit our budget, we're going to make some. With crates, wood, and some genius, we're going to make ourselves a dresser-type object. We're not too picky about hiding our clothes (although maybe with our messiness it's a bad thing...) so we picked up some crates on clearance at Staples, along with some cheap baskets for socks and underwear, and we'll go to the wood store on Sunday. I bet you are all on the edge of your seat with suspense, but you'll have to wait until then for pictures of our creation.

Wow. This was an unbelievably boring post. And tomorrow we are going to have a boring and early day - we are taking the Homebuyer Education class at CNHS to better understand what we offer there to our customers. And, we get to take a day off next week because this is "work". We miss the Michigan game (GO BLUE!) and have to get up early. Blech.

Time for bed, kiddos. Peace out.

~Allison

They call it a "Saturday Market"

First off, let's give credit where credit is due: to the Michigan Wolverines for a fantastic game on Saturday. Three out of our four years at Michigan Notre Dame beat us - including in the Big House - and Saturday was at least a partial redemption. A crushing defeat of the number 2 ranked team. It's great to be a Michigan Wolverine!

Second, this weekend was great on top of the game. Aaron and I headed down to the farmer's market (aka Saturday Market) and got a bunch of stuff for pretty cheap - 11 apples for a dollar, almost a pound of green beans for 75 cents, 3 jalapenos for a dime - as well as actually running into a few people that we knew. Aaron then went home to get ready to watch the game and I checked out a few shoe stores (seeing if there's something besides the great but pricey Earth shoes I've been eyeing. There wasn't.)

Here are some shots of the farmers' market:





A shot of the street view.



Some of the members of the Corvallis spinning and wool club, or something.



The cute river front walk. It extends all along the downtown.



At one end there's this awesome fountain that is flush with the ground. When it's hot out, there are a zillion kids playing in the fountain.



A longer view of about half of the market. I was standing on the riverwalk facing the downtown.


One of the booths at the market.


After the game Aaron and I went mountain biking. On Friday night we took a walk and discovered a mountain bike trail just a few hundred feet from our apartment, so we went out and got ourselves pummeled. We are out of shape and I'm a scaredy cat, but we're going out for more next week. Mountain biking is addictive! I'll let Aaron share his impressions of the mountain biking later...

Today we went and played bridge in Eugene with a couple we found via Craig's list. It was really fun and we plan to go down some other time for dinner and bridge. A nice discovery.

Also of note: our spending habits have been quite thrifty. We're well on our way to keeping our grocery spending under $200 a month (our first budget goal) and our trips to Mary's Peak and the coast cost us $15 out of pocket (for the camping food and campground fee, which also got us into Cape Perpetua for free the next day). Gas will actually be covered because we will get reimbursed for mileage from our trip to Edgefield for training (at a nice rate, so we gain in the short run). So, we are doing well on our poverty wages. Cheap is good!

Tomorrow is another work day, so I should hit the sack. Peace out dudes!

~Allison

The Oregon Coast

Last weekend, after spending the night camping at Marys Peak, Allison and I drove to the coast of Oregon for more hiking and sightseeing. It was well worth the trip. For those of you with a map handy, we basically drove from Waldport south to Florence, stopping at Cape Perpetua for hiking. Cape Perpetua was awesome; essentially it is a 800 ft bluff that overlooks the ocean. On clear days you can see for 75 miles of coastline. Also (and this was my personal favorite), you can hike down to the rocky coast, and watch the waves crash, such as in the picture below.





Or in this picture...





It was a clear, beautiful day. A good day for salty ocean air and big waves...You can witness yourself with the following photo montage.














Of course, there were also sections of beach to hike along.





Allison enjoyed seeing duckprints in the sand





Consequently, she had the brilliant idea to leave her own mark, a mere "hello."





I, on the other hand, tried to get a better view of some of the waves crashing in...









Oops...






We also went to the top of the bluff, the actual Cape Perpetua. There is a rock shelter at the top built by the CCC in the early 1930s.








The view from the top was spectacular, but the most exciting part was that we saw a whale (or what we believe to be a whale) in the ocean below.





And with that, here is a final, obligatory self-portrait of us by the ocean.

Mary's Peak...now with humongous pictures!

This weekend was kind of up in the air for awhile. We debated about going to Crater Lake, but then decided we weren't prepared properly (which was true...our tent wasn't even here in time, let alone us having proper bear defense mechanisms). We ended up going to Mary's Peak for a Saturday afternoon hike and Saturday night camp. Mary's Peak is the tallest peak in this part of Oregon at about 4,100 feet and is only about a half hour away by car. It was an excellent decision if I do say so myself...it was really fun. We got to sleep in a bit and lazily get our stuff together Saturday morning and still have time for a good hike and campfire, complete with marshmallows. I shall now entertain you with pictures and narrative.





Our trip begins at the Mary's Peak parking lot outside the campground. We drove a few miles up the mountain to the tiny campground, which had 6 spots and an honor system pay box. Although we had the place to ourself at first, later our only neighbor was a guy in a trailer, who had a really cute dog and a spread of food and drink that was pretty enviable. We had a pack of hot dogs, buns, and some smore stuff. What more really do you need? But more on that later.




We didn't unpack our tent right away, though. When we first got there we didn't want to leave our nice tent and sleeping bags out unsupervised (since no one else was there) even though it probably would have been ok...I just got a brand new beautiful sleeping bag and I wasn't going to leave it be, no sir. Also, we wanted to get in some backpacking training, so we strapped everything on our packs and tramped about the woods. Above, Aaron pauses to take in the beautiful old growth trees.



After hiking for a few miles up the back side of the mountain through meadows and forests, we reached the open hill of the summit. There were few bugs, and it was actually quite cool as we hiked through the forest. Once we got to the top, it was fairly warm and windy.



Looking west off of the top of Mary's Peak, you'd see this mountain range - the Coastal Range - and beyond it the Pacific Ocean. We could also see the Cascade Range to the east, which was pretty sweet. There were some families up there with us, along with a guy flying a remote control balsa wood plane. That was cool. They walked up from the parking lot, which we would do later that night for the sunset.




Here we are at the top of the mountain, self-portrait style.




Our hike down was uneventful, except when I hugged this tree (it was satisfying), and when we got back we set up the tent.




Aaron demonstrates how big our tent is - not very big. It was tight quarters, but that is an amazingly light tent, and really easy to set up, and I don't mind Aaron that much so it works out. :)






We then scouted around the campsite and road for firewood. Although it hasn't rained in Corvallis for more than 15 minutes since we've been here, it definitely had rained recently on the mountain. Everything was green and lush...and the wood on the ground was soaking wet. But we eventually found enough dry stuff to start a fire and got it roaring enough to make some delicious hot dogs.






After dinner we realized it was almost time for the sunset and rushed back up the mountain, this time taking the car to the parking lot farther up. We raced up the gravel road to the summit on foot just in time to catch the last bit of sunset over the western mountains.






We sat up there for awhile, watching the sky grow dark and the stars come out. I was getting a bit chilly, but it was worth it when we saw the largest, orangest full moon I have ever seen come rising over the Cascade Range to the east. Once the sky was dark and the moon was out, the lights of the cities below came twinkling up to us. We could see Corvallis, Philomath, Salem, Eugene, Monroe, and Lebanon from up on Mary's Peak. This picture doesn't really capture how awesome it was, but you can imagine.





We then went back to our campsite, got the fire going again in the dark (it was pitch black except for our maglite) and had a marshmallow snack before crawling into our tents and sleeping bags. I had a great time and I was really sad to leave the next morning. Here we are, the morning after, looking exceedingly attractive:





And with that, I leave you. If this trip sounds romantic and cute, it's because it was pretty darn romantic and cute. And although we don't need a reason to be so sickeningly cute, we do have a reason this time: we are celebrating our fourth year of dating today, September 11th. (Freshman year I dragged him to a 9/11/2001 vigil and the rest is history.)

You'll see the rest of our adventure when Aaron posts...stay tuned...

****
P.S. It's been a weird day today talking about what I was doing five years ago when I learned of the WTC disaster. For those of you who were at MGSH with me, it's weird that that was five years ago. I remember vividly how I felt and how it was both a sad and wonderful time as America went through a transformation of self. (As an American Culture major, I love thinking about things like this.) But I also remember how scared I was that we were going to war, that my friends would be drafted or enlist, and be killed. Even then I suspected that our reaction would be militaristic and un-thoughtout, and I know many of you were and are with me on this. As I remember the important and tragic events of today, it makes me angrier still that we are to this day sullying the memory of those innocents who lost their lives in the WTC by killing innocent Iraqis and turning young men and women my age into killers.

Phew. You can go look at the pictures again and be happy. :) I am :)

Firestorm

Ok, ok. This isn't meant to be a poor us post. But today, we've realized that our money-saving technique of not renting movies from Blockbuster subjects us to unknown horrors. First we stopped at the Corvallis library (yes, the site of our previous adventure) to see what movies they had. Nothing was left except French and Japanese foreign films. I passed on those and picked up The Corporation and an instructional guitar DVD for Aaron. However, we decided to pass on The Corporation in lieu of trying to find a TV movie. Unfortunately, we turned on the TV and the first thing we saw was on A&E. We really didn't want to watch it. We wanted to turn it off. But we couldn't. It was so bad...and yet, so good.

The beginning was compelling: two hikers, clearly college frat guys, are out in Yellowstone. They see some wildfires and start filming with their video camera. One guy says, dude, they're getting closer. Other guy says, no, this is sweet and keeps filming. Of course, they end up running from the fire, slow motion and all, until the fire takes them and they end up toast. Complete with Big Government-doesn't-want-to-fund-parks, young attractive fire expert and his smoldering (hehe) relationship with perky ranger, and the jerk park director who turns out to stand up for the park in the end, Firestorm: Last Stand at Yellowstone is REALLY BAD. But we've been watching it for two hours, making snide comments the whole time.

Oh wait, there's swelling music! The plan is working! Yay! (I won't give it away. You'll have to watch it yourself to see how they do it. Of course, they drew on some Boy Scout trick mentioned briefly in the beginning of the movie. Oops, sorry.)

I just don't understand how every movie can be so formulaic. I've found this before with every natural disaster movie I had to watch in Mr. Gordon's World Geography class junior year (the man thought Twister, Vertical Limit, and Dante's Peak counted as teaching us about geography).

Don't worry if you missed it, though. Even though tonight was the last showing, you can buy it online.




***

Well, this was a fitting end to another work week, I guess. I had some meetings today that went well. I don't even know how much I should post about my job here because it's very political (haha, right) and I wouldn't want someone to Google and find it. Really, though, forming this land trust is going to take a lot of work and talking to people. I'm quite excited for it. My next tasks are to prepare a report for the city's Housing and Community Development Committee to review for a resolution. I'm also preparing information for our Board of Directors on the options for the CLT. I've started contacting other CLTs around the country to ask for information and guidance and hopefully build relationships and networks that will help us out in the future. It's going to be especially important to talk with land trusts that didn't work to figure out what we can do to mitigate the possible barriers. Man, I'm using housing development language already. And it's the weekend!

Next week we have OMEN training in Troutdale, so that'll be a nice break. However it will make next Monday crunch time for me to put together the stuff I've got for the report so far.

Not sure what we're doing this weekend. Our loose plan is to camp tomorrow on Mary's Peak and then drive to the coast on Sunday morning, check that out, and come back. It all depends on whether we can get our tent which is currently sitting in a box in our manager's office.

Hopefully, there won't be any forest fires. Because God knows, according to Firestorm, the national parks service is horribly inept and has about 10 firefighters in all of Yellowstone who go out and dig ditches to try to stop the fires. I really hope that isn't true. Camping, here we come!

~Allison

Library adventures

Already it appears I've become a bad blogger, considering I haven't written a post since last week. I'll do better, I promise.

Last night was an interesting night, to say the least. Allison and I decided to go the Corvallis Public Library downtown. We both wanted to get library cards, and I had some research that I needed to do for work later in the week. So we hopped on our bikes and rode to the library around 7 or 7:30 PM.

After spending about an hour perusing the library, we decided to pack it up and head home, stacks of books in hand. We checked out (after listening to the very nice Corvallis librarian tell me all about the many benefits of being a library member for a solid ten minutes) and went outside to get on our bikes and leave. We found the bikes, untouched, locked to the bike rack outside. We put our helmets on, chatting about the books we borrowed, chuckling about the kindly library lady, and sighing with contentment as we were about to set off.

Hmm, unfortunately the lock seemed to be, well, a bit stuck. We set the combination a few times, tugged gently, but the lock didn't budge. I decided to pull harder. I began to yank. Suddenly, I was panting heavily, cursing, and making a scene outside of the library desperately trying to undo the lock that enslaved our poor bikes (especially my Trek 5200), while Allison looked on helplessly. Needless to say, I got mad. At this point, I don't remember much, but I decided in my fury to jog/walk the 3 miles home to get the car so I could go to Home Depot and get some bolt cutters, all the while resigned to the fact that my bike was as good as done for at the hands of some clever, but lucky bike thief.

It took me about 45 minutes to get home, carrying my bag loaded with all our books. In the meantime, Allison had gone back inside the library, called the police, and cajoled them into freeing our bikes. She called me to let me know that the lock had been cut just as I walked in the apartment door. I felt a little better, but I was nevertheless irritated about the whole affair.

In all honesty, I didn't really want to blog about this event, but Allison said I should, since we're not cataloging only the good things that happen while we're here. Reflecting on that, I concede that she's right. It's a struggle at times, I suppose, not knowing very many people in Corvallis to bail us out if we're in a bind. But, in retrospect, last night wasn't too bad. Well, ok, maybe I overreacted and didn't think too clearly. At any rate, I'm buying a new lock.


(Click on the picture to see all the agonizing detail in a larger format.)

Labor Day Weekend

Boy, was it nice to have this weekend off. My first week of work was loooooong. Ok, that probably sounds stupid to those of you who have been working for awhile, but it's a huge transition from college, where you are kind of working all the time and don't really have weekends to 8-5 with real time off. Working that early in the morning isn't SO bad, really...especially since it's only a 10 minute bike ride to work on great bike lanes. I didn't really do too much this week except have a few meetings, create a few spreadsheets, and do some research. I spent a lot of time wandering the internet, learning about mortgages, and trying not to fall asleep in the mid-afternoon lull of drowsiness. I'll write more about my job later I think, because this wekeend was reallllly busy and worth writing about.

First of all, on Saturday morning I rode my bike down to the Farmers' Market, which was really cute. Better than Ann Arbor's, I have to admit. For one thing, there's a wider variety of things just given the environment/growing climate. Also, there were three different folk bands playing, a cool fountain set into the ground so that little kids could play in it, nice benches in the shade along the riverfront walkway. I wanted to take pictures but I forgot my camera, so I'll take some when I go back in two weeks.

The next afternoon we headed up to Portland for a potluck dinner with our other VISTA friends. We ate some good food (we brought cookies) and played Apples to Apples so that was really fun. The next day Aaron and I and two other VISTA-types Kris and Becky went hiking in Mount Hood National Forest. We drove 6,000 feet up the mountain to the Timberline Lodge, parked, and hiked a little bit up the Pacific Crest Trail.






For the first part of the trail, it was pretty desert-y and rocky. There was smoke in the air from wildfires on the east side of the mountain. Mount Hood is only about an hour outside of Portland, but it was pretty desolate once you got up there.















Kris and I hiking down the little Zigzag Canyon.





Here I am at the actual Zigzag Canyon, with Mount Hood in the background. You could actually ski at Timberline Lodge in the summer - we saw lots of people with skis and snowboards getting hauled way up the mountain to ski. It wasn't quite as far as the snow you can see in this picture, but it was pretty far away.









Hike hike hike across part of the Pacific Crest Trail.












So, here's the whole Mount Hood, in all its snowiness and tallness.
















Kris and I hiking down into Zigzag Canyon.



A view of Mount Hood from down in Zigzag Canyon.
Zigzag Canyon from up top.

Fuzzy trees! All the trees had this fuzz on them.


Thanks to Kris, we also have proof that Aaron was there. Here we are, filling out our card to enter the wilderness area.

The obligatory cute couple shot with breathtaking view.

Well folks, it's time for bed. Aaron and I just finished watching "A Fish Called Wanda" - great movie. Work tomorrow and only a four day week!