More upside-down than "Sideways"

Recently I was lucky enough to have my sister, Vanessa, come visit me for a week. Despite the fact that she finds wine barely tolerable, she really wanted to take a wine-tasting class (no objections from this side of the room). I found one at the Rex Hill Winery that wasn't too expensive and was supposed to help us cover the basics, so we headed down to the Willamette Valley to get our drink on. We were model students, eating all of the tasty cheese pastries that were placed in front of us, and drinking every last sip of wine. Observe our progress:

Lesson 1: How to Look Pretentious While Sniffing Wine:

Clearly, we nailed that one.

We also learned how to tell the difference between older wines and younger ones, between wines aged in oak and un-oaked wines, just by looking at them! We tasted, we picked out hints of chocolate and eucalyptus in our Syrahs (or at least other people at the table did), we played the "tannin-versus-acid" game (our job was to say which one won). By the end of our two-hour class, we were bona fide winos. We were so good, we dropped the pretentious faces and graduated to Confident and Classy:

 

Cheers!

(For those of you who are super observant, you'll notice we're not actually sniffing wine. I'm sniffing star anise, and Vane is nose-deep in vanilla beans.)

Reason #457 Why I Heart PDX: Roller Derby

Two years ago I hopped on a plane and flew out to Portland with my mom's credit card, a place to stay for the weekend, and a job interview. The stars were aligned in my favor. On Thursday, I was offered the job. On Saturday I found a place to live. On Sunday I moved in--and crashed the moving van into the neighbor's car, indebting myself to him for $700. On Monday I started my job (on the same day President Obama started his!). Two years later, I'm still paying off my Mom's credit card. Ugh.

I love living in this city. I had long suspected, since attending grad school in St. Louis, that Portland would be a good fit. The only downside is that my family is so far away. :( Otherwise, this city is simply wonderful--good food, great beer and wine, lively arts scene, lots of dancing, amazing natural scenery, quirkiness in abundance, and a "whatever floats your boat" attitude. There's always something whacky going on. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I came home from my West Coast Swing dance class and announced to Dylan, "Portland has a roller derby team, and this weekend they're playing Detroit!" Dylan immediately went online and bought tickets. I love him so much. :) And so we went to see the Rose City Rollers destroy the Detroit Derby Girls (sorry, D-town, Portland feels like home now. And it would have been so depressing to be rooting for you.) I only had my phone with me, so here's what I managed to capture:

 

The idea behind roller derby is that each team has one "jammer" whose goal is to pass the other team's players. The rest of the skaters play defense, trying to create pathways for their own jammer and to block the other team's jammer. 

What you end up seeing is tough women in spandex skating like demons, elbowing their way through packs of wide-hipped defenders. It was a riot to root for our favorite jammers and get caught up in the crowd's energy! Definitely planning on going again, but with a crowd of people so we can all drink PBR (j/k, j/k) and scream our heads off for "White Flight," Portland's baddest-ass jammer.

Living Up to His Name

Bailey's strengths do not lie in exploration. Or agility. Or grace. He is unable, for example, to jump onto our kitchen counters--which is remarkable, given his insatiable appetite and the scavenging opportunities available to him a mere three feet off the ground. But what he lacks in prowess he makes up for in cuddleability. Boo can out-cuddle any cat in the universes (yes, I said universes, but more on that later). He is, as we tell him daily, "the best lap kitty in the world" (alternately, "the cutest kitty in the world" or "the best. Kitty. Ever"). Once this guy settles in, there is no budging him.


Indeed, he cares not if there is a keyboard in the way of his target lap. Bring it, QWERTY!

I love the look on Dylan's face in this photo. It says, "I can't believe that I just let my W.O.W. character die because I couldn't bring myself to move Bailey! His cuteness hath bewitched me!"


OK, I don't know where the antiquated English came from. Dylan doesn't talk like that. (He's a different kind of nerd.) At any rate, he and Bailey eventually managed to work out a compromise,

 which clearly worked for Boo:

(You can just ignore Dylan's dirty socks.)

 

Christmas in... February?

No, actually, this is the first of a few retro-posts that will be popping up intermittently (though it's entirely plausible that I would still have a Christmas tree up, given my love of the holiday season... and my penchant for procrastination.). I have some pics from last year that I never printed, posted, emailed, or otherwise employed in a useful manner, and if I don't post them here, they will wither away in a digital wasteland.

First up: The Cutest and Best Christmas Gift Anyone Could Ever Want

Awwwwwwwww! How cute is that?

Christmas 2010 was our first Christmas as a married couple (me and Dylan, that is--not me and Bailey). We (well, OK, more like "I") like the idea of creating new traditions together. We came up with the idea of buying one new ornament every year, so that someday we will have a tree decorated with the memories of our years together (have I mentioned that "Cheesefest" was a close contender for the blog title?).

Here is our first ornament:












Yes, that's right. There's nothing there. So much for traditions. Maybe we can make it a tradition to plan to buy, but not actually buy, an ornament every year. At least it'd be easier to take down the tree.

The Aforementioned Cat

Bailey. Given that he served as my muse for the title of this blog, I may as well introduce him early on. Here's his professional head shot:

Notice the smushed nose and freakishly large eyes. Dylan calls them "Disney eyes." I say they're alien eyes. Whatever--they're freaky.

Classic Boo. Loudly begging to be fed. He is the most food-motivated creature I've ever met.

Lickin' his chops. This is how Bailey would prefer to look at all times.

















As I lazed about on a glorious, rainy Saturday in Portland, I decided to put out a yoga mat to see if I could get Bailey to stretch on it so it would look like he was doing coga (cat yoga). No such luck. He'll do anything for food, though. So I put one, tiny treat inside a laundry basket to see what he would do. He toppled the basket onto its side, nabbed the treat, and trotted off triumphantly. A while later, as I pondered my template design options, I noticed Bailey peek into the basket again (hoping for more food?). This time, he didn't quite manage to escape the basket's clutches, unwittingly imprisoning himself beneath it. (Hilarious). Witness his escape attempt:

I'm happy to report that he eventually succeeded. The laundry basket now lies unpawed in the middle of the living room floor.

Oh, Yummy Burger

That phrase, delivered as if it were the first line of a Nerudan ode, was what came out of my mouth last Wednesday when I finished licking the burger juices off of my fingers. Followed by a deep, contented sigh. Dylan accurately assessed the situation, saying, "I have a happy wife." How well he knows me.

I've lately been on a quest to find The Best Burger in Portland (or rather, Jess's Favorite Burger in Portland. And Possibly Ever.) I'm certainly not the only one to undertake the task (and I'm way out of this guy's league), but I'm very happy to weigh in on the matter. Riding on the shoulders of those who have come before me, I've been working my way through some of the known "greats" in PDX. Gruner's burger, widely hailed as one of the best (if not THE best) around, had long been in my sights. After months of longing (and one failed attempt to secure a spot at Gruner), I finally found this beauty within--indeed, in--my grasp. And oh!, what a glorious eating experience it was. I've been replaying it in my mind ever since.

To give you an idea:

I simply must return to Gruner--if nothing else, than to confirm this burger's #1 spot on my list. For although I have a few more to try, I suspect I may have (prematurely) hit my burger climax. Much like eating fish 'n chips in Ireland has forever ruined the experience of eating them anywhere else (they just don't compare--Dylan and I agree on this), I fear that all other burgers will now be unfavorably compared to this one, mourned for what they are not, rather than celebrated for what they are. Damn you, Gruner! I hate you. I love you. Agh! I must have you again!

Lacey Made Me Do It

Why in the world am I doing this? I have one previous attempt at a blog, and it was (almost) a total failure. The five times I did manage to post were pretty good, but the blog now resides on the Island of Lost Blogs along with the other five million blogs that were birthed and quickly abandoned by overambitious (undercommitted?) bloggers. So why I imagine that I will be able to post more regularly now that I have a full-time job and an apartment to keep up is beyond me. All I can say is that I caved in to peer pressure when Lacey (a fellow member of the Coolest Pseudo Book Club on Earth) showed me how shiny and pretty her own blog was, and convinced me that blogging was, fell, fun. For her to read.

And doesn't blogging imply that I'm conceited? Conceited enough to think that my life and thoughts are interesting enough for other people to follow? Maybe if I was living in a foreign country (as I was during the previous blog attempt), or I had a super cute baby (like Melissa does), or I was a witty and seasoned writer (like Lacey is), it might seem more justifiable. As it is, my only hook is Bailey. Given that he is the least curious (and laziest) cat I've ever encountered-- despite what the profile picture may suggest--he's not going to provide much material. (Well, he at least ought not to provide much material, but that probably won't stop me from exhausting my readers' interest in him.)

So that leaves... my random (and, most likely, infrequent) musings, and accounts of my everyday adventures in Portland. I suppose I'm keeping the blog as a personal diary, more for my own pleasure than anyone else's (a radical concept in this day and age). If you happen to enjoy the blog, either because you know me, or you know Dylan, or you like fat, lazy cats, read on. But be forewarned: I make no promises!