Woo beer

Finally we've begun to accumulate brewing equipment, and it feels great. Some of it is begged, some borrowed, and some we actually paid for.


The outcome this weekend was our first US brew, hopefully it'll turn out ok. It certainly smells good.


It's the season for gourds in the local supermarket, they're all so pretty.


Also, there are tiny pumpkin things:


Of course, the Halloween candy is awesome to look at, although I haven't tried any yet....



But there's always something a little wrong with portable yoghurt that looks a bit like an Olympic torch...



In other news: I'm donating my hair to Locks of Love.

Gordon Lakes trail

Sunday was a really great day spent hiking (tramping is something else here, it seems, and it's not something the nice girls admit to). We went with the Sierra club (the local Mary's Peak crowd) to Gordon Lakes. We started/ended at the yellow star and ate lunch at the red star.




We saw Soapgrass Mountain, which is actually identified on Google Maps (below), so you can see where we were, relatively. Note the cool interactiveness of the embedded link....



View Larger Map


On the trip we met a bunch of really great people, learned lots of scarey things about poison oak (although it doesn't grow at the altitude we were at), and scored a dinner invitation.

Here's the trail-head, not looking at all like we're about to head off into foggy doom. The weather was misty and cool, pleasant for walking in but a bit chilly for waiting around in. Of course, mad Kiwis who insist on wearing shorts when everyone else is in long pants don't mention things like that.



These cute little plants are "Bunchberries" according to the locals.


The lakes were spectacularly calm.



Lichen ruled the forest, which was eerily silent for most of the hike, except for when a tree fell, which certainly makes a sound even if you can't see it.





This is an awesome little myco-heterotroph, a funky plant that parasitises fungi. I don't know exactly what it is, though.



This is a puff-ball of some description. Even though it's only the beginning of the fungus season (I think), there was a great variety about.



We sat in a large naturally-formed meadow for lunch (not thinking about ticks at all).


Dessert was "blue huckleberries", looking suspiciously like blueberries... And tasting like happy.



And for those of you who may have been concerned... Manfred attended and judged lunch worthy, if a little damp.

Septembeerfest

Septembeerfest last weekend was great fun, we only got around about four of the beers, but they were all great.

Here's how the Keg-bar unfolded:



With the inevitable result...


In keeping with the harvest theme, there was free pumpkin-beer on tap (the kegs in the background were to refill the pumpkins as required, and yes, the guy who brewed the beer also grew the vessels):



Here is an example of pure brilliance: the ultimate in simple, functional, bare-bones mobile pubs, can't have a festival without one.




The harvest season and impending Halloween (which is apparently a pretty big deal here) is becoming noticeable throughout the town. While pumpkin-carving kits have been in the shops for a few weeks, this last week the pumpkins appeared in earnest:



On a totally different topic from harvesting stuff - Mort finally got a picture of a snake, although it was a dead one. That's the lens cap as a size reference, which is only really useful for those of you who know how big our camera is.


All that talk of dead snakes makes a nice segue into the following contradiction in contraception:



See the problem?



Also, we just bought waterproof pants that claim "... the size of a Gaseous Water Vapor Molecule is much smaller than the size of a Liquid Water Molecule... ". Awesome.

The promise of beer

I've had a pretty full-on week on necropsy, and have seen some interesting diseases and spectacular lesions (and maybe getting a reputation for being a bit tin-arse at finding cool brain lesions). A tip for people who think their dog might be rabid and want it tested: if you euthanase it by shooting it in the head with a high calibre pistol, most of the brain goes bye-byes. Not ideal.

We finally have a TV.... Our neighbours were getting rid of their 27" TV and cabinet, and thought of us. They even helped move it in. I think that was about the third TV we've been offered - people here really like to give stuff away.


Some of the beer packaging here really cracks us up - you'll probably need to click on these to enlarge them to readable sizes:



I've yet to find a beer that truly whitens as it cleans, so it's refreshing to finally find an example of honest labelling...



We decided to have "ethnic" food the other night.... And what can beat "Irish O'Garlic" for a sausage flavour?



Mort spent all day today helping set up for the Septembeerfest tomorrow, I think there will be 63 different beers, and at least one keg of Hoegaarden.... Check out this amazing keg-bar:



With bottle-hub-caps - totally awesome.

More acquisitions

We picked up a dryer for $40 last week - this was a necessary evil since when the weather turns we will be unable to dry our clothes on racks inside without violating the "don't promote mildew" part of our tenancy agreement. We have a nook hidden away in the hallway which contains hookups for a washer and dryer (no sink, alas). Once we got the dryer home, however, we learned that having hookups doesn't mean the power plug from the dryer will fit in the socket available. The dryers here all run on 240V (shock, horror!) and high current, so they have funky plugs kind of like electric ovens do. There doesn't really appear to be a standard plug for dryers here, so when you get a new one there's a good chance you'll have to wire a new power cord onto the beast.




The top left plug is a NZ plug (lying on its side), top right is a normal US plug - these are for a size comparison. Bottom left is the plug that came with the dryer (2 phase, 1 neutral, 1 earth) - I think this is the newer kind, and is probably safer than the bottom right plug, which is what we needed for the dryer to go in our place (2 phase, 1 combined earth-neutral). As to the wiring itself: thankyou to the internets for providing dryer installation instructions.

Mort made a start on some garden this week - we're going to grab some herbs etc. from some friends who are rearranging their garden. The soil doesn't seem too bad, but it's all incredibly dry since noone was watering it over the summer. There's some drainage gravel or something under there, so hopefully our plants won't drown in winter.



After some days of threats, the other pathology resident hauled me out to buy shoes. I tried on several styles of shoe that I've never tried before, in the interest of experimentation, of course, and was reminded that I have deceptively short, wide feet. I settled on these Dr. Martins:



Don't mock the shoes - they meet my "could I walk all day in them?" criteria. Secretly though, I suspect I only got that colour & pattern because the shop was out of my size in black. Johanna, on the other hand, has scored quite a bit of cred about the lab for converting me from shoes to shoes, at least a little bit.

In technical news, it looks like some more genotyping will be done on the DNA from dwarf Texel sheep I left in Ames in 2006. Next year someone is interested in running some snp-chips, which could generate more information about where the mutation causing the disease may lie.

I shall go and continue coughing now, which I have been doing all week to the amusement, disgust, and infection of the entire building.

Somewhat batty

This week we had an awesome little batty visitor - which apparently isn't too common in this area:



We stayed up and watched the rugby last night (kickoff at 2.45am) - it was totally worth it. I think I was only able to make it due to sleeping away half of the previous day (I had lurgy/fever resulting in a lot of weird dreams about lymphocytes).

In the last week or so I finished off a vest I've been working on for a while - the object was to get my knit & purl stitches the same tension, since my purls were a lot looser than my knits. It worked out pretty well, I think I'll make another like this since I have the yarn.




I've also become a little carried away making these little "yarn cake keepers", which stabilise a centre-pull yarn cake that you can make with a ball winder (which I now have) or a Nøstepinde (a.k.a. Stick!!!!)



In pharmaceutical news: I guess someone took that saying "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down" a little too seriously...





Still, it's been useful stuff over the last couple of days.

I see snakes

It's kind of hard to write much at the moment, I'm having a great time but it's all quite absorbing and it's so easy to come home and zone out until 6.30 the next morning...

Mort & I made use of the long weekend the other week (Labour weekend) to visit the wetlands that are about 2km from us:




They are very different from the wetlands we're used to. Entering the reserve, we were surrounded by wild roses, apples and pear trees. And blackberries, of course. The bullrushes (cattails) were quite a sight.




The little loop track through the wetlands is on a boardwalk, and even though it's pretty dry at the moment, I'm really glad - I'm pretty sure this is poison oak:




Leaves of three - let them be; leaves of four - eat some more, right?

The highlight of the day had to be the snakes. We managed to spot three or four garter snakes, but they were a bit too quick for us to get a picture, unfortunately.

In food-travesty this week: Bunny-Luv brand carrots:


This concept of "Luv" confuses and infuriates us

Who doesn't like being sold carrots by a skanky anthropomorphic rabbit holding said vegetable in such a provocative manner?



We also got patriotic and tried the official Oregon State University ice-cream:



Chocolate coated footballs collide with a thick band of chocolate fudge in a mild peanut butter flavoured ice cream. GO BEAVS TM.