We had an awesome brew day at our apartment Sat. We made ten gallons of beer. Five winter warmer, five oatmeal stout. It was quite a party with 4 of our friends. Three girls knitted while three guys made beer, very gender role oriented. It was great fun. We finished with a nice supper of frozen pizza, salad, and cookies. Here's Christian and I by the brew kettle.

We have had a crazy amount of fog lately. Some days it is foggy the whole day. Others it burns off in the late afternoon. Last weekend there was a sunny patch, but as the sun was setting we watched the fog move in off the ocean fill the city in a slow, creeping glacier of fog. Very cool. Here's a photo.

While Emmy has wildfires threatening her house, we get rain.

Info HERE

And HERE

and cool video HERE

Snowshoe season is open

At long last, we opened up our season. We went up to Talapus Lake on Sunday with Keren and CJ. It's an easy 45 minutes from our house. My favorite part of snowshoeing is bounding down the hills through the forest.

As soon as we got home to Seattle, it started snowing. We got about 2 inches on Capitol Hill. Beautiful. By morning it was slushy and not slick (phew- easy bus ride!). Brian predicts one more layer of snow in the city before Snowpocalypse 2008/9 is done.

Happy New Year!

After a restful New Year's Day filled with food and friends, I'm ready to start blogging again.

We spent the holidays in DC, Maryland, New York (Alicia) and MA (Brian). Thank you to everyone who could come out in DC with us. We had a fabulous time.

In Hagerstown, my grandparents and my cousin Max were able to come from Belgium! Brian has renewed his resolution to learn French.

As promised, here are photos of some knitted Christmas presents.

Hawaii was awesome.

Stories and more photos to follow...

One week to go...

Is it over yet? I'm on every Democratic and environmental email list possible. Some funny person also put me on the McCain/Palin and Maryland Republicans lists too.

This is a snippet from one of today's "funny" emails.

The McCain health plan builds on the employer-based system.
Employers will have the same incentive to provide health insurance as they do today since they will continue to deduct the cost of health insurance they provide to employees.
For example, a 25-year-old employee in the 25 percent tax bracket with a $2,500 tax credit could purchase a policy in the individual market for the same amount. Why would people choose fewer benefits for more money?

Really? Because last time I researched health care plans in WA, they're at least $350/month for basic coverage. That's $4200/year/person in a small business. I don't think health care companies are in the business of working with individuals to ensure the best care at the lowest price. And employers are jumping at the chance to pay for their employees' health insurance. I guess we'll continue with the stellar rate of 35% of Americans under 65 as uninsured or underinsured.

Seahawks game

Someone from work had two tickets to the Seahawks-Packers game a few weeks ago. And gave them to us! The Seahawks lost (predictably). It was our first NFL game.

We're huge baseball fans so we brought sandwiches and knitting for the quiet moments. Silly us.

The energy in Qwest Field is amazing.



Not, like, say, sugar plum, amazing.

Like blood-crazed mob at a gladiator bout, amazing.

Danskin Triathlon!

I did my first triathlon last weekend. Even though I heard thunder when I woke up (rare for Seattle), the weather was perfect for the event (70's and sunny). For our women, it was an amazing event. All but one woman finished adn they were all smiles at the end! For me, I went in my age group (not the survivor wave) and thought I'd catch up with some of the women. But most of them beat me! The swim in Lake Washington was beautiful but my goggles kept filling up with water. The run was way easier than I thought it'd be.

I did it in 1:30:25.

Alrighty. You asked for embarssing photos. Here they are. The bottom photo is a training photo. We often swam in Lake Washington off of Seward Park.

We had an adventure filled weekend!

We headed up to Mt. Baker on Saturday in the rain. We arrived at the trail head with all of the climbers and gear. It's a beautiful hike with waterfalls and dicey river crossings. It's about 3.8 miles one way to base camp with 2400' elevation gain. Christian loves his GPS unit! Above tree line, the wildflowers are out and the glacier was blue-blue. However, also at tree line, the rain turned to sleet. Brrr. We were sopping wet from head to toe. We didn't stay there for long for fear of hypothermia. We hiked down to the car, talking of warm drinks. When we got to the car, we realized that there was still one bag of gear to carry up, including two sleeping bags and climbing gear. It got lost in the shuffle in the morning. We had to take it up. Christian and Brian decided to make the second trip up to base camp. They raced up the mountain to stay warm and made it back before sunset (phew!).

Cold, wet and tired, we decided not to camp in the rain and instead drove home. On the way back to Seattle, we stopped in Bellingham at Boundary Bay Brewing for some burgers and fries. Yum yum. After hitting the evil Everett traffic (at 12:30am on a Saturday!!!), we made it home really late.

On Sunday, we slept in and relaxed and cooked and watched the movie "21" (not as good as the book, Bringing Down the House).