Thanksgiving Plans

Well, I fully intended to post about our trip to Seattle, but as luck would have it our internet has been completely spotty at home. I'm writing from work (on a break!) so this will be short.

I'm flying to Atlanta tonight, so Aaron gets to drive me all the way up to the airport and back, a total of 4 hours of driving. Then, he gets to come and pick me up on Sunday. The joy of living so far from an airport...and, he might spend Thanksgiving in Portland with some VISTA friends, so that would be another trip up there. Good thing the Golf gets such good mileage...

I'm excited for Thanksgiving. Work has been good, but I need a break. Aaron and I have both been working on finding grants, and it's amazing because our organization has done little grant work in the past, mainly using their developer fees from their affordable housing developments to finance our other programs. So, we're breaking new ground, which isn't easy in an fifteen-year strong organization.

My research on the CLT has also been slow going, but I'm finally seeing some results from my outreach efforts. I held a focus group, talked to other CLTs about their budgets, and saw the city council endorse the concept of the land trust. I guess those are all accomplishments in some sense...

So I'm off to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. I hope Aaron isn't too lonely here, though he seems sort of excited to have time alone. We do spend an awful lot of time together, so it will be good to have a little space. As long as he's not eating a PB&J on Thanksgiving, it'll be fine. Atlanta should be fun - I can't wait to see my family, especially my lil' sister, and the food will be delicious. I am trying Alton Brown's recipe for mashed potatoes this year. Innovation!

So, Happy Thanksgiving, and I'll let you know what I'm thankful for when I post next. That sounds like a good post.

Rain rain rain

It's been raining here for days. Now, I know this is supposed to happen, it being Oregon and all, but we surpassed our average monthly rain allotment by 2 inches...on the 7th of November. So, we're doing overtime now. Maybe we'll get all the rain out of the system and have a relatively dry winter...ahahaha funny Allison!

We're still riding our bikes, which makes me feel virtuous and slightly damp around the sock area. People at work think we're really hardcore, but in truth it's faster to ride our bikes and we're slow in the mornings. I mean, we are hardcore commuters (See our fenders! Look at our blinky lights! Note our liberal use of hand signals!)but seriously folks, it's easy.

This week was good. We had meetings for our upcoming development, titled in code "Boggy Flats". Wouldn't want anyone to Google the real name and find this rant, oh no sirree. Only 9 people showed up - we mailed out 700 letters and put two ads in the paper - and one quarter of those were pro-bog. See, the thing about this site is that there are 29 acres of wetlands and uplands. We are only developing 5 of them, concurrent with the city's directive of a few years ago, and the rest will be preserved as open space.

People seem to have a really hard time understanding that a) the decision has been made b) it's better this than have the city develop all of it c) we desperately need new affordable homes to buy in this town d)people are abusing the open space now by disturbing wildlife, dumping trash, and letting their dogs run all over it. It's not about preserving some unspoiled paradise. It's about building homes on 5 acres that already have streets, sewers, electricity, etc put in the ground. It's about restoring the remaining open space to something that is productive, healthy, and natural. Not irregularly shaped by humans as it is now - and not a free pass to trample on it, either. We can have many of the things differing forces in our community want - no one's going to get everything, but we can balance it out.

I'm a conservationist, an environmentalist, an anti-sprawler, a tree-hugger even. But I understand that this town is committed to these things in so many ways and I trust them to make the right decisions. I also know that now people work in Corvallis and live other places, dumping loads of fossil fuels into the air and contributing to a far larger problem than some resting place for some birds (not to discount the birds, I love you birds!)

In other news, Aaron and I are working on grants. We're definitely making progress. I'm also organizing a focus group about the community land trust for next Monday (!) and I should have 5 people show up. Crazy!

I can hear a party going on downstairs. Woo woo. Corvallis is a lame, lame town in the party sense compared to Ann Arbor. I mean, I'm glad of that because I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now that I'm old and working. But man, back in my day...

Applications are about 70% done. Three supplemental packets went off today. Only four left! My personal statements are almost complete for each school and ready to upload. I'm sure you all really care about this, but once it's done I will be SO HAPPY until I get REJECTED. Then I will cry.

Aaron just said I am a positive bear. Oh, sarcasm. I figure this way I'll feel happy if I get accepted somewhere. Better to set your standards low, right? Ha. If you know me at all you know that is the biggest lie ever.

I volunteered at the Humane Society again today. I took Penny, a hound mix, for a walk and then folded laundry and washed dishes. Penny was a big puller as she followed her hound nose into random places, but she was SO CUTE. She was also very wet when we got back (yeah, rain, remember?) and so I smelled like wet dog all night. Aaron and I met back downtown where he picked me up so I didn't have to ride home. Once it gets past a certain time it's really hard to see the huge piles of leaves in the streets, as he pointed out today as he offered to pick me up. We went out to eat before heading to the OSU library to poke around. He wanted to get some books for work, I just like to smell libraries.

Speaking of going out to eat, I'm going to review the precious few restaurants that we've been to here. We don't eat out much (and feel appropriately guilty when we do) but we've had two hits and one miss.

Coming in at #3 with a rating of 3 out of 10 is the Fox and Firkin. Appearing on the outside to be a quaint English-style pub, it turns out to be unbelievably crappy. The service was horrible (no one seated us and there were no clean tables), the food was overpriced and the fries were soggy, and the ambiance was, well, lame. Looked like they had good beer, but alas, I didn't feel like drinking beer in a place with such glaring lighting and crappy pictures on the walls.

We've visited #2 twice and our second experience brought it down from an 8 to a 6 out of ten. We went to American Dream Pizza our first week here with our co-worker Matt and his girlfriend. Our personal pizzas were very tasty, the beer was good and cheap (even for our microbrews!), and the rooftop seating was delightful in the summer evening. When we stopped in for a slice before our trip to Seattle last weekend (more on that next post once I get the pictures off my camera), the place dropped a few notches compared to my favorite campus pizza-by-the-slice place, NYPD in Ann Arbor. First of all, our two slices, pops, and order of bread sticks was almost ten dollars. Boo. Second, the crust was too crispy to properly fold like NYPDs but was too thin to be chewy and delicious like Cottage Inn. So, in all, the personal pizzas are worth it, but skip the pizza by the slice. And, we had to wait!! for the slices and they brought them out. AND no ziti pizza, the worst travesty of all. But I digress.

Coming in at #1 is a little hole in the wall bar that at first glance looks skeezy. Then, you notice its endearing name, and on an invitation from the above-mentioned co-worker to watch the Packers game, you decide to enter. You enter a world of happy hour pitchers of microbrews that are affordable and thirst-quenching. You order a cheeseburger and fries for $5.50 and are rewarded with the BEST burger you have ever tasted. We're not talking a Mickey D's burger here, folks. We're talking third-pound, on the grill, toasted bun, pepper jack cheese (my choice) and curly fries. Heaven. No wait, it's Squirrels.

So that's it for now. Boring Friday night in Corvallis. Tomorrow: more grad school apps, baking a pumpkin pie, watching Michigan cream Indiana, bike ride, etc. To read and to sleep!

Well hello there

Ok, so this has gotten bad, bad, bad. I had such high hopes for this blog...but there is an explanation! Aaron and I are both in the final phases of submitting our online applications to law school (him) and graduate school (me) so all our online time is essentially spent doing that, not blogging. It is not very much fun, especially since our good wireless source suddenly went secured...hmmm.

This weekend, we're off to Seattle to visit my stepcousin Megan and my stepcousin-in-law Drew. They also have a doggy. Yay for doggy.

We'll have pictures when we get back, promise, and an update on work.

Weekend, here we come!