Portland: Day 1

Lindsay and I are back from Oregon! We had an absolute BLAST! It's amazing how much activity we crammed into 4 days. SERIOUSLY. I'm planning on writing about each day on separate blogs. Let's see how that goes...

Portland:Day 1

I almost die from excitement is the basic gist: the airport, airplanes, traveling, knowing I get to be in a new city with my love, the Pacific Northwest is about to be OUR playground, and so on. Everything went well with getting to Portland (unlike our trip home...more on that later). The flights were on time and overall were smooth. As an added bonus we got a GREAT view of Mt. Hood, amongst other things.


Here we are being super excited to be in love and on a plane together. Oh yea, and happy as hell we were almost to our final destination.


Moving on. So, we get to the airport, get off the plane, get our bags, and head out to explore. First though, we had to buy (or we THOUGHT we HAD to buy) tickets for the TriMet. A girl has to be able to move around in a city. DUH. We opted for the 7-day pass at a whopping $22.50 each. $45.00 is not bad for a week of transportation for two. (Too bad we didn't need to buy the tickets at all. Stay tuned for that). Anywho, we find the redline train and head for the city. It was about a 40 minute ride, all of which was great for sight-seeing.

We arrive at our stop, Pioneer Square. As soon as we step off the train, we can tell that this place is bustling with activity: lots of people running around, live music, food stands, and plenty of entertainment. At this point, my sense of direction is completely shot, so I found this an opportunity to ask for some directions to the Marriot. Good thing downtown Portland has an over-abundance of safety officers and policemen constantly monitoring the area. I find a friendly looking fellow, Officer Ross, who is happy to oblige and sends us on our way.

A couple of blocks of walking and BAM! We are here! YAY! We step inside The Marriot to check in. The lady at the desk asks our name. We tell her. "I'm sorry, what was the name?" she repeats. "Briggs" Lindsay says. "Oh.....UNFORTUNATELY you have arrived at the wrong property. You need to walk here (shows us on a map), to the Courtyard by Marriot." UGHHHHHHHH. Okay...more walking, dragging bags, and what-not. So, we finally get to our hotel, which was actually WAAAAAY more our style than the first place. It's been completely redecorated, so it's modern and super cozy. We grab our belongings and head up to our room.



After a small amount of unpacking and resting, we decide to head out to the Saturday Market. This was one of the FEW things we actually planned for our trip to PDX. I had done some research online and decided this was right up our alley. This was the largest outdoor market I have ever seen in my life. NO JOKE. Imagine filling up a football stadium with vendors of all different sorts (food, artists of all kinds, clothing, magicians, musicians, etc..), add a double set of train tracks, a giant fountain, and several thousand people and VOILA! Lindsay and I were both so overwhelmed. I only managed to get two pictures of the place and neither one of them do it justice..but here you go anyhow.


We walked around gawking at all the goods for probably 2 hours. I bought a shirt, Lindsay bought nothing. Wait...we did have some shrimp nachos, some wanna be Japanese food, and an elephant ear. Sadly enough, the elephant ear wins the award for best food. After all of that, we'd both had enough and decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a little siesta. On our way to the train, we became acquainted with with this little fountain.


People would walk by and drink out of it, "wash" their hands, fill water bottles, etc. We were kind of weirded out by it, just wondering where the water comes from, if it is constantly recycled, and why there were no drains nearby. As we explored Portland, we discovered these are EVERYWHERE, but we never figured out our looming questions.

We wanted a picture of us waiting for the MAX. We snapped a few....and here is the best one at this particular stop. We were TIRED as hell and just wanted a nap.


We made it back to the hotel room and pretty much collapsed into bed. What a luxury...a KING size bed with NO DOGS to hog up all the space! I think we slept for about 3 hours, woke up, and decided we were famished. We ordered some local/organic pizza from a place called Hammy's and ate in bed. It was like pure heaven. Then, it was time for bed. HA. BIG DAY. I think we were both asleep before our heads even hit the pillows.

Sidenote: someone knocked on the door at almost 5am. Lindsay was closest to the door, so she got up. I somehow managed to be awake enough to remind her to look and see who it was before she opened it. Ummm...yea. Pizza guy. After some back and forth about did we order a pizza and were we Mike Scallions and are the last four digits of our credit card 9394??? We convinced the guy that it wasn't us. GEESH.

Strange alarms....

I came home last night, took a shower, and laid down to wait on Lindsay to get done with her work. She came to bed about 20 mins later and had apparently decided I was making cookies tomorrow (today). No subtle hints about it, just a "how bout you make me some oatmeal cookies tomorrow because you love me so much???" I think about for about 1 second and am like "no." When all I really was thinking was do we have all the necessary ingredients to make them and how long will this take before work? Of course I didn't let her know any of that. She kept on with insisting I MAKE HER some cookies...and I stand strong to my no way answer. HAHAHA.

So, the first thing she says this morning is "are you going to make me an egg mountain sandwich?" Ok. Ok. Fine. I make us egg mountain sandwiches (2 pieces of bread with 3 eggs and one piece of cheese piled in between the bread) and then she starts with the cookie dreams again. I am diligent in my refusing to give in to her pressure (or at least she thinks). She even breaks out the old classic "if you loved me" line. PUH-LEASE.

Lindsay finished getting ready for work and I sat on the couch, secretly looking for oatmeal cookie recipes. She gets ready to leave and I remember my phone is still in the bedroom, so I kindly ask her to bring it to me. "UHHHHH!!!! I have to do everything!!!" is what I get from her, but she does it anyhow. She hands me my phone....and strangely enough...there is an alarm set on it. An alarm I didn't set. It slips my mind as I go on to do other things (move my car, take the dogs out). I come back inside...and sit down on the couch. RING RING! RING RING!!! OH!!! My alarm is going off! I pick my phone up...and what does it say???

make your girlfriend cookies 10:30am

What a sneak!!!! Geesh!

Anyhow...here is the recipe I found online. I somehow managed to scrounge up everything to make these, minus the vanilla which I substituted with honey. Oh...and I didn't use walnuts. i instead added a handful of golden raisins and a handful of craisins. Worked out great! They are tasty!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups quick cooking oats
• 1 cup walnuts
  

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in oats and nuts until just blended. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cookies should be at least 2 inches apart.
3. Bake for about 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

Or you can check out the link

AUGUST ROCKS!!!!

August is starting off to be a grand month, and will continue on the same pattern. Saturday Lindsay and I got up at about 0715 and got ready for our day of farmer's marketing and family unioning. We ended up going to two FMs (Zionsville and Broad Ripple) and found everything we needed. I even took the opportunity to talk to the hog farmers that I buy my pork products from and learned a little bit about what I am putting into my body. Turns out, it's all good! WAHOOOO! We brought all of our goods over to my house to do the weekly "house swap" and we were on our way to granny's house.

We arrived on time as always, and to Lindsay's surprise almost everything was already packed up and ready to go. This is a once a year event and the family spares no luxury to make all go over well, so we headed out to the rented shelter house, fully equiped with electric and bathrooms with running water. *In a later post, I will describe my family's version of a reunion in a shelter house.* Did I mention there were vases, flowers, table cloths, a sharpie to write your name on your cup, and bowls of chex mix/M & M's??? Cause yea, there were. We spent time with family, I met some out-of-towners, hiked, and then decided it was time to bail; we had later plans for another cookout/party (where my beloved Sony Cybershot died a horrible death). I had a great time with Lindsay's family. I remember when we first started dating I was so eager to get to meet her family and see what they were all about. I've spend more time with her family that mine in the past eight months, mostly due to my family is at minimum an hour away and her's is a ten minute drive from her house. It's a great to be invited and EXPECTED at family events, now that I am part of the family too. I fit in VERY WELL with all of them and have never felt more at home. I know that this is where I belong and I love that about Lindsay and I's relationship. I love her more and more everyday. She is my life.

As for the next week and a half, I'll just be working. I made a deal with the devil to work a million hours pre-vacation, so here I am. Speaking of vacation, god..I cannot wait! I've already told Linds that she CANNOT make fun of me if I maybe get a little teary-eyed on the plane. Ya see, I get a little emotional sometimes (maybe all the time) and going on a vacation, let alone going somewhere on an airplane IS NOT something I get the chance to do very often. So....no making fun of me! I can't wait to get to Portland and be so in love!!! We'll be there from Saturday-Wednesday, so I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about. We actually don't have anything planned other than we want to explore EVERYTHING we can and take lots of pictures. Several people have asked us WHY we picked Portland. Well, it kind of just happened, really. We knew we wanted to go somewhere that has public transportation so we didn't have to rent a car. The destination also had to be gay-friendly. Lastly, we wanted to go somewhere that neither of us had ever been. So, we literally googled a map of the US, did some looking, discussing, researching and BAM!!!! Portland jumped out at us! I'll be blogging on it when we come back, so stay tuned!

As for when we come back, it's back to school for the both of us. After some financial crises, breaking a foot, surgery, changing jobs to fix the financial crisis, moving 2 times in one month, and then ANOTHER surgery...I decided enough was enough with trying to finish medic school. I completed all of the necessary classes for the program, not to mention I did it with a 3.4 GPA. Not the best, but hey...I was ecstatic about it! Anyhow, I had an internship left and I would be done. The only kicker about it, was that my instructor gave me about 3 months to do so. REALLY??? 3 months to do 400 or more hours on an ambulance, in Bloomington...all while working 5 days a week? No can do, sir. So, I cordially announced my decision to quit the program. It was just too much to be complete on time. I have 8 days off a month. Even if I worked 12 hour shifts all 8 of my days off, I would have been at least 100 hours short. So, here I am now, going back to school! I can't imagine wasting all of the time, money, and effort I have put into school and just letting it go. I decided (with a little bit of motivation from Lindsay) to go back to school, finish my associate's and then from there I can make more decisions. I know I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE working in healthcare, so I will definitely stay here. I just have to take it one day at a time and make smart decisions about what to do! Wish me luck!

Mocha Monday...

First of all, McDonald's is the devil.....they serve nutritionally deficient food, pay their employees poorly, and use beef flavor on their french fries...all while targeting small children with the majority of their advertising.


However, they have offered up something so IRRESISTIBLE that Lindsay and I decided to take advantage of them. I like to think it is a little revenge. For a limited time only, the world's largest purchaser of french fried potato products and chicken is offering a COMPLETELY FREE mocha sample...on Monday's only, until August 3rd. (I just told Lindsay the news about said deadline and I heard a wince).

Anyhow, we didn't start out thinking about ABUSING the free mocha Monday promo, it really JUST HAPPENED. Since there are 26 Mickey D's within ten miles of LB's house, it quickly spiraled into "how many mochas can we get???" Then we decided we should keep all of the cups to show off our coffee/caffeine/chocolate chugging abilities. The picture shows the damage (which actually has a bit of digital enhancement due to the fact that we trashed our first three cups before this fiasco started)...and if we weren't such wimps, we probably could have downed some more, but as it stands....we drank 3 samples a piece...and some how managed to score a free regular size mocha in the process (and tummy aches). Props to Lindsay for the Photoshopping.

So, this is what they get for smothering a ten miles radius with 26 establishments (even though we only managed to make it to three of them).

Nature's gifts...

Look what mother nature gifted me in my front yard!!!

Eating consciously

I recently borrowed the book "Animal. Vegetable. Miracle." written by Barbara Kingsolver from Lindsay's GIANT LIBRARY of books. Excellent read, incredibly educational, motivational, and has driven me to a new height in not only healthy eating, but also buying locally grown, organic produce and meat, all of which is raised on sustainable farms. (For a quick update on how it has changed Lindsay and I's lives, you can read her blog).

We haven't gone cold-turkey and stopped buying goods from food stores and what-not, but I will say this: if it CAN be bought at a Farmer's Market, we get it there. In the past week, we've spent a pretty fair amount of moolah on our FM finds. This is what we purchased on week one (all from Zionsville Farmer's Market).


A pretty good selection for our first outing. Included in this fantastic food purchase is one dozen eggs, 2 ears of corn, a red onion, squash,tomato, zuccini, garlic, green pepper, thai basil, one pound of bacon, one pound of bacon pork burger (that are to absolutely DIE FOR), one bag of freshly popped kettle corn, a loaf of sourdough bread, one 4oz. jar of basil MOUSE oil, and I'm sure I probably left something out. Click the picture for a better view. We got all of this for about $40.00. The quality of every product we got was unbelievable. There wasn't anything that went to waste.

With all of these goods, I was able to make us this fantastic vegetarian pizza. The only thing I didn't have a hand in making was the crust. We ended up getting that from Trader Joe's and it turned out to be some of the best pizza crust I've ever tasted. Also, I got to try out my new pizza stone from Pampered Chef. I was definitely impressed with the cooking quality of the stone, and if you bake anything I'd recommend getting yourself one. Totally worth the $30.00.


Along with this pizza, I was able to make a huge pot of cheesy potato soup that was out of this world, some basil eggs with farm fresh bacon, grilled veggies, and some grilled bacon pork burgers. It's incredible how much better EVERYTHING tastes when it is fresh, organic, and locally grown. Also, meeting the farmers who grow the food is an added bonus.

So...this weekend we made an effort to get out to more Farmer's Markets. Friday night we started out at Trader's Point with LB's BFF Heather and her kiddos. This place was great. They had a wider variety of goods, especially meat and dairy products. Since we were already out and about we meandered up to the creamery, where I sampled whole milk, cottage cheese, and yogurt all from grass-fed cows. We bought the milk and yogurt, but the cottage cheese was just a little too much for me. The texture is much thicker than what I am used t0. The taste is.....that of fermentation. Adjustment in process.

While we where there, we had to check things out so here's a couple of random pics for ya.


What a cute little place!!!



Lindsay somehow managed to sneak us into the milking barn...just in time for the tour guide to show up. HAHAAH! We watched this little lady getting milked for a few minutes and then moved on.


Next stop: baby cows!!! This little calf was pretty much my best friend. She had the longest tongue and was seriously H U N G R Y.



This is me trying my hardest to convince Ava that the cows WILL NOT BITE.



Noah didn't need any convincing, clearly.

After it was all said and done, we came home with LOTS of goodies, as you can see below.


As preciously mentioned, whole milk and yogurt made their way home with us, along with a variety of cheese, ground lamb, pork loin, spring mix, eggs, and whatever else is thrown in there.



Minus the dog biscuits, it's all fresh and was picked earlier that day. FRUIT!!!!!! YES!


A view of all of our goods. We even brought along a cooler to keep the cold goods cold. We are learning.

As if this weren't enough shopping, we made it out in the rain this morning to see what else we could get our hands on. Turns out, that was a lot.

As exhausting as it is, running all over the city (we went to 3 more Farmer's Markets this am), it is worth it for the quality of ingredients. Thus far today, we have eaten the most flavorful nectarine, a salad I made with spring mix, fresh onion and tomato, garic and herb cheese that I grated, and I also cooked up a good-sized pot of broccoli cheese soup, recipe compliments of Heather.

I have to say, it's only been a little over a week that we have been eating like this. I used to have the worst gastrointestinal issues in the world, to the point of taking a daily medication to control it. Since we started this adventure, I've stopped taking my medicine and my stomach has been fine. Coincidence? I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. Last night we ate at some Italian restaurant (Macaroni Grill??) and the GI issues were back within an hour.

If it weren't for reading Kingsolver's book, I'd surely still be continuing my previous diet. Which, actually...was not bad. It just consisted of produce and meat purchased from large corporations that don't really care what goes into your body. If you want to read more on this, I suggest picking up a copy of "Fast Food Nation."

It's the greatest feeling knowing you are providing support to local farmers and their families, all while enjoying yourself and spending time with loved ones...and maybe even making a friend or two along the way! It's easy to make conscious choices about food, it just takes a little more planning. I encourage you to give it a try. I promise, you won't be disappointed!!!

Happy eating!!!

Growing up.

Last night Miss Cass and I went to see No Doubt and Paramore at Verizon Wireless Music Center (a.k.a. Deer Creek, duh!). What an experience, to say the least. I've been a fan of ND for many many years. In high school, my friends and I followed ND and BUSH for a couple of weeks, and eventually ended up meeting the 4 members of BUSH and Gwen Stefani. Currently, I am not the world's biggest ND fan, however...they still kick ass AND it was fifteen bucks for some (what I thought would be) good ol' Friday night fun. So what the hell, right? NO.

Irritation central comes to mind when I think of this concert, and not because of either of the bands. We had tickets for the lawn (of course) so we scoped out a place to sit and planted ourselves on the ground. Not long after that, a group of 7 or 8 incredibly intoxicated women (all aged 35-45 years old) came crashing into our world. I say "crashing" because literally....they did. Everywhere they stepped, they were swaying, spilling beer, dry humping each other, dancing violently, and basically acting like 19 year old sorostitues. SERIOUSLY. At one point, we look over and one of these women has apparently made up her own dance: we called it "the penetrator". Feel free to let your imagination fill in the blanks.

We try to watch the show and not pay attention to these fools, but as their beer consumption increased, our patience decreased. Not ALL of them were acting like assholes, just a couple at this point. After a number of several beer spilling/cigarette burning incidents from "the penetrator creator" I look over and suddenly feel a bit like Eminem at this year's MTV Music Awards...which if you weren't lucky enough to see, here ya go.






Involuntarily having another human's junk in your face is not a pleasant experience. Trust me.








Clearly the woman wasn't suspended from the ceiling, however her ass was RIGHT IN MY FUCKING FACE. I couldn't hold back any longer and shouted at the woman.

"REALLY!?!?!?! REALLY?!?!?! YOU HAVE TO DANCE WITH YOUR ASS IN MY FACE?!?!?"

Needless to say she moved. Her co-drunken friend came over, apologized to me, mumbled something about the number of kids she has and the years it's been since she's been out of the house. Are ya kiddin' me???? Cause I could give two shits less about how many kids you have (other than the fact that they will probably grow up to be wastes of flesh like yourself, drinking madly and annoying the entire human race). Unfortunate.

As you can imagine, their persistence for apology attempts only annoyed us worse with each word. Finally, I'd had it.

"Just get away from us. Keep your friend away from us. Go away, please."

They backed off but kept yammering on about this and that. Eventually, they found some real-life 19 year-olds to console them. Whatever. Just get away from me. We stayed for about half of ND's set, but ended up leaving the show early to A. beat the crowd and B. go get some tasty morsels.

That's really the biggest annoyance about the concert, but I do have one more. Why the hell do people find it necessary to dress in the most hideous clothing known to man? Many of my fellow concert goers were dressed similar to Cindy Lauper, circa 1982.


Plastic bracelets. Crazy hair colors. Skinny jeans. Aviator glasses. Chains. Mohawks. Shirts that are waaay too tight. All ANNOYING. Pre-pubescent teen annoying. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all about self-expression (even though this blogs seems otherwise). Maybe 24,000 people expressing their weirdness is just too much for me. I dunno. It just seems like the majority of these people were trying to be different, but in that, were being just like everyone else.


This leads to me to the title of this blog. Growing up. Maybe that's what has happened to me over the past few years. I mean, inevitably of course it has. But now I'm THAT person who is annoyed with teenagers. I remember being a teenager and thinking "man, I'll always be cool with everyone." So. Not. True.