White elephants & tofu

We were invited to Weihnachtsfest 2009 at Christiane & Bill's place, where we learned about the White Elephant Gift Exchange. Being deliberately obtuse, I made a white elephant for our contribution (it went down rather well with Elena).

One of the best moments, however, was when someone loudly referred to the pavlova Mort made as, "that famous Kiwi pie".... In front of an Australian. The room became perceptably warmer, I can tell you.

We spent the week leading up to Xmas cat-sitting/nursing Minnie, Johanna's cat in acute renal failure. She's the sweetest thing, and extremely forgiving of all the poking & prodding. It was really nice to have a cat around.

Because we're living with a vegan, I've been keen to try making tofu. This was our first try - first we made soy milk, then coagulated it with gypsum:

The finished product - 500g of soy beans (about $US 0.80) made 700g of soft tofu. A bit firmer next time, I think - I want to be able to fry it.

Yay for new glasses

I finally got around to going to the optometrist and now have new glasses and fewer headaches - all good! They're pretty similar to my previous glasses, but a little pointier.

The weather is finally warming up after a cold, dry week. The downside of this is the pipes thawing and bursting a hole throughout the garage wall. Another downside is an interesting phenomenon called "freezing rain", where the rain falls as liquid but freezes as soon as it hits anything. The ground just looks wet, but it's actually covered with an extremely slippery layer of ice. Here's what it looks like on rhododendrons:

Thanksgiving

Lindsey and her parents were kind enough to invite us to spend thanksgiving with them and their excellent cooking, at her parent's place in Black Butte Ranch, East of the Cascades.


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It's extremely pretty out there, all conifers and snow and mule deer eating the community golf course:

There was also plenty of other wildlife to keep our noses pressed against the windows - I think this is a Hairy Woodpecker (or possibly a Downy Woodpecker, but it's probably too big):

We had a little tour around the town of Sisters - a cute little tourist-trap, with bylaws stating shops have to look "Old-Westy". No such requirement for the cars passing through, though.

Unfortunately, this picture is a little blurry, but you can get the general idea of the awesome hideousness of some of the articles in the second-hand bookshop there:

On the upside, one of the shops there had RJ's liquorice from Levin *nompf*

Belated Halloween

Yeah, I'm extremely slack and some of these pictures are blurry, but we still had a cool Halloween with Patrick & Elena, the ghouls of 30th & Jackson Sts. We didn't dress up, but we'll have to next year since there's actually going to be a party.

This year the decorations were so successful several small children came to the door in tears (but still wanting lollies).

Mort carved another pumpkin:

And I actually carved one too, this year:

In unrelated photos, here's a branch of the 24-hour Church of Elvis that Mort found in Portland:

Minneapolis

Last night I got back from a conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, learned a lot and met a bunch of great people. Instead of going to the business meeting, I took off to see the Mall of America, across the road from the hotel where the conference was held:

It's pretty insane, with an indoors amusement park:

The hotel itself was pretty flash, here's a picture of my room:

On a completely unrelated topic, a cute treefrog was visiting us the other week, to my entertainment:

Portland the second

In other travelling news, Mort & I went to Eugene last week to have Mort's wisdom teeth out. The surgery went well and he has been recovering quickly, although somewhat tired of mashed potatoes.

More pictures from our Portland trip:

I can't really explain what these trucks are doing....

The statue, Portlandia (not actually crouching in a tree):

The world's smallest city part, Mill Ends Park is 60cm in diameter, between the two posts:

Mr. Whippy is a bit more hard-core here:

Portland, the first

The other week Mort and I spent in Portland. I was seeing the Oregon National Primate Research Centre, and Mort saw some of the city. We were kindly put up by the Oregon Humane Society in their tidy dorms for vet students doing practical work:

Our neighbourhood also consisted of trucks

And trucks

And trucks

And concrete pumps with the worst names ever:

Luckily, we were surrounded by a variety of fine-dining opportunities: