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Category Archives: pamily
Vintage
I have a situation so I don’t have time for a normal post.
Here’s another sister goofy face and Mom with tiny waist and me in the background. Plus applied Photoshop tutorial.
I originally typed that “tiny waste.” I need to do a post about my lost ability with homonyms. I also find myself mistaking its and it’s on a regular basis.
Haven’t even hit 50 yet and the brain cells are a’shriveling.
Turkey Day Is Here
In honor of Thanksgiving. Lefty was my great-uncle, my grandfather’s younger brother. I’d like to point out that none of the get-up in that photo is traditional to our tribe. I think Aunt Genie was a Montana Indian so we can cut them a little slack.
Meanwhile, I drank the Kool Aid! I’m spatchcocking.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Goofy Face
It’s been awhile since I did a sister goofy face photo.
This photo has so much awesome stuff going on it in it, I can hardly stand it.
Both my and my sister’s faces. My socks and no shoes. The woodpile. My cousin Kathy in my Mom’s lap. My Mom’s Carol Brady hair. Norska, the dog. The antenna on the lawn.
I talked to my sister this morning and I forgot to warn her that the “Twelve Days of Christmas with the Rentz Girls”™ is happening next month.
I think I’m going to start with the youngest. And on Xmas Day I’ll get a photo of us in our awesomely mature advanced state. Stay tuned!
Posted in goofy face, Orleans, pamily
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California Girls
1973. Me and my sister on the slip and slide.
This summer, the kids across the street got a similar thing and I heard them out there squealing and laughing one afternoon.
This morning I bought 150 bulbs, half tulip and half daffodil. Take a second to jot down your guess for how long it takes before I whine about buying all these bulbs. When I do that post you can see how close you were.
One of the problems is I need to do some major excavation out front to make space for the bulbs. I don’t mind yanking the old dried up stuff out but the problem is that as soon as there is open dirt, all the cats from miles around shit there. The past couple of years I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving all the dead stuff in until spring.
But also, 150 – yikes. Then I have to wait all winter before I can enjoy the results of my work. Worse case scenario I’ll just dig one big hole and dump them all in.
Sixteen Years!
Here Bob is pretending to drop cake in my face. He didn’t really. And there was no cake smushing.
Guess what I’m doing for my wedding anniversary?
Going to a Timbers game. My honey gets to sit in general admission while I sit in my reserved seats with ticket partner. Romantic, huh? This is a huge game against our rivals the Vancouver Whitecaps.
You might be wondering why I haven’t been talking about the Timbers as much as I used to. You might have thought I’d grown bored with it or moved on to other interests.
Nope. I’ve got a post in draft talking all about the Timbers. You’ll know it all soon.
Last night we went through our photo album and guestbook. Lots of terrific memories but we’ve lost a lot of people. Every time we turned a page we were reminded of someone else. Here we are with our Grandmas. Both gone.
Here’s how I found my car when we left the wedding site. As I recall I went back to work that week and then we left for our honeymoon at Labor Day. We went to Bumbershoot and then to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC.
This is the guestbook. For the inside we took Polaroids of all the guests and had them sign.
My cousin Jennifer (she’s the one in this photo) was very persistent and walked around during the reception to make sure she got everyone in there.
This is us on the first page.
It fun was fun to go through it. People we don’t see very often. Little kids who are in college now. All our favorite people together.
Great day. Now let’s go Timbers!
New York City
There’s not a lot to tell about this trip. It was pretty straight-forward NYC stuff with tons of walking around. We hit almost all the high points and had a terrific time.
Guess where this is.
Portland has a big food cart scene and recently a cart like this showed up. My thought was that they didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t understand their market. You really need a niche and you need to be good to succeed in place with something like 450 carts.
Then I saw these everywhere you look in NYC. They may know better than I do. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will.
Here I am on Mars.
At the Natural History Museum we went to the space exhibit. There was a bit about foods to take and foods to avoid in space. Things to avoid: foods that make lots of crumbs, stinky foods. Foods that are good in space: meat, vegetables, recycled urine.
Yes, it really said that. We did not agree that that sounded good. Also the sample food: chicken and pineapple salad looked nasty. Annie still wants to go to space. I still do not.
We discovered Steve’s Ice Cream. And it became our feverishly looked-forward-to snack each evening. We loved the Blackberry Honey and Salty Caramel. We also tried: Strawberry Ricotta and Sunday Morning. Here, Annie and I go through every single tub in the freezer to decide on a flavor.
Coney Island for 4th of July. Insane in the most perfect way. We loved it.
Not New York. There was a dumpster fire in Northwest Portland when Annie and I were waiting for the street car. The flames climbed up a utility pole. Exciting.
There is a brief photostream at flickr if you’re interested in more photos: NYC Trip 2012.
Posted in doing it wrong, pamily
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FAN APPRECIATION DAY!
Just got back from Fan Appreciation Day at Jeld-Wen Field home of the Portland Timbers. More photos to come. Here I am next to the players bench. The coach stands in front of the bench here. I said a bunch of bad words and kicked it in his honor.
Also, this is happening. I think I’ll do a lap around the block on the way home from work tomorrow and turnover the magic number. This is my second time turning 100K in my own car and I remember doing it once in a car with my family. I remember us driving around and all watching the odometer and shouting: 99997! 99998! 99999! Very sweet memory. I wish we could do it together tomorrow.
Graduation
Today Sinéad graduates from high school.
This is a me holding her when she was one day old. Wow.
I have a million notes here for stuff I want to write about but the EuroCup started today! Team Germany!
For some reason I thought the tournament started tomorrow so today was to be my day of amazing productivity. I was only productive until I realized that the Poland v Greece game was on. First impression: Poland has the cutest goal keepers. Other revelation: Michael Ballack is doing commentary for ESPN!
Already I love this tournament.
I’ve got thirty soccer games to watch this month on top of my usual Timbers duties plus the US Mens National Team has its first World Cup qualifier game tonight. I’m going to be busy.
The River at the Center of the World
Klamath River, February 2012
Did I mention I was sneaking off to California for an extra long weekend to hang out with my family?
It was brilliant. Every bit of it was great except for the long drive home. And even that wasn’t so bad because the weather was decent.
No time for more comprehensive update until this weekend.
No Carb Left Behind
Earlier this month I wanted to do 12 Days of Christmas with the Rentz girls but I could only find 3 photos. I just picked up another giant bag of photos on this trip so next year, watch out. I love this one because of the lederhosen and also the delighted expression on both our faces. We always had a really cool swing set in the backyard when we were little.
This morning I tried on my test pants. You know the pants you use to test how far gone you are? If you can zip them, you’re still okay.
I could zip them. Whew.
I think what saved me is the 10 lbs. of Fisherman’s Friend I’ve eaten in the last 2 months for the never-ending cough. They keep me from coughing and I can’t say they kill my appetite but they don’t do it any favors. It also helped that no one ever got around to making cookies.
Christmas was all good. California was great. I’ve enjoyed my time off. I accomplished about a third of the things on my list which is pretty good.
I even did the thing that’s been on my xmas vacation list for about 5 years that I always put off. I cleaned out my pantry. I took everything out and scrubbed down all the shelves and tossed all the outdated stuff. It’s always funny to find something that says Best By 2005 and you can’t imagine it’s been there that long.
Here’s a question: why do baking mixes come in goofy quantities? The instructions for making will call for 2 1/2 cups of mix but the package will have 3 1/2 cups of mix? What do you do with the extra mix? Yeah, duh, you could buy another mix but I’m not falling into their trap. I’m going to combine all our leftover mixes and make date muffin-cornbread-12 grain pancake something.
Bob and his new friend Shyboy having a Christmas nap.
I also finally tried that recipe for Ocean Rolls that I’ve been sitting on since summer. As usual I biffed it up a bit. I guess I need my recipes a little more hand-holdy than that one. After it was too late I found a site where someone had posted feedback and said that it was too much flour. My dough was pretty dry.
Then I couldn’t understand the instructions for shaping them so I wung it. When I opened the oven door to check progress, they’d all come unrolled and it looked like Medusa’s nightstand if she takes her snakes off when she showers.
They tasted terrific so I will definitely try again.
Tonight I’m having my favorite New Year’s Eve — the one where I stay home and reheat leftovers then go to bed by 9pm. I woke up at 5 this morning so I might go to bed earlier.
Happy New Year.
Posted in baking disasters, doing it wrong, pamily
Tagged eternal overachiever, getting stuff done
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