violetismycolor

Illustration Friday...Fresh...

*click on illo for a closer look*

I'm getting my Illustration Friday in just under the wire, but I just had to try.  When I think of the word Fresh, I think of fresh bread, hot from the oven and smelling oh just so yummy!

pictures are up...

Pictures of the Cousin's Weekend are in an album HERE.  Pictures from Judith's visit (esp. check out the pictures of the Oregon Garden) are HERE.

cousin's weekend...

Cousin's weekend 2005 is officially over. 

San Diego was absolutely gorgeous.  The temperature hovered around 75 degrees the whole time.  Perfect.

We started out on Thursday afternoon, after checking into our hotel room (complete with a ghost!), going to Old San Diego...where the original settlement of the city was.  Very interesting historical venue, which included a wonderful Mexican restaurant with an outdoor seating area, fantastic Margaritas, and delicious food.  Excellent first day.  At least till we got back to our hotel room and Roger the Ghost wouldn't let us in the room.  No matter how hard we pushed (on the unlocked door), we couldn't open it.  After nearly giving up, we tried the door one last time and it opened up easily.  We were laughing so hard, we could barely stand up.

Friday, we got up and headed down the street to Cafe 222, and sampled their famous waffles.  The pecan waffle was so tasty, I had it again on Saturday.  Drove through the UCSD campus, then went down to the beach and watched the surfers and walked in the surf.  Bonnie called while I was walking and gave me the scoop about her upcoming weekend.  We headed out to La Jolla, and shopped and ate there.    On to Mission Bay, where we rented bikes and rode around the Bay for the next hour or so.  Later, we went to a tango show, complete with dinner, at a place near our hotel in the Gaslamp district.

Saturday...back to Cafe 222 and that yummy pecan waffle.  Then out for massages and other decadence at a local spa.  After that, we drove over to the Hotel del Coronado to have lunch.  We had a wonderful table with a perfect ocean view.  I had the Rock Shrimp Quesedilla and salad, accompanied by a Long Island Ice Tea.  I can't think of a more perfect afternoon.  We did more beach-strolling there, after wandering around the hotel and snooping in all the 'Registered Guests Only' areas.  For dinner, we picked an Italian restaurant in our Gaslamp District. 

All along, we were checking CNN to get our disaster fix.  We were happy to see that this  hurricane didn't match Katrina...but we were somewhat addicted to keeping track.  We realized how lucky we were not to be in the midst of a natural disaster but instead, to be in the midst of so much natural beauty. 

I will post pictures tomorrow...

visits from abroad...

We sent Adam off to Scotland on Saturday morning and on Saturday afternoon, our friends from England flew in.  We have been having a wonderful time, doing all the Portland highlights like...sipping martinis at The Kennedy School, seeing the Oregon Historical Society exhibit of the 1905 World's Fair that was held here in Portland (called the Lewis and Clark Exposition), shopping in the Pearl, sipping mojitos at the Paragon, going to the Oregon Garden(actually we're doing that tomorrow), sipping margaritas on our deck....well, you get it...

Adam arrived safely and is trying to find a bike to buy in St. Andrew's...one of his friends said she would buy him a pink one if he would actually ride it around town and he said he would if it were free...but she seemed shocked that he would assent to this.  Don't know what the result will be.

I go off to my Cousin's Weekend in San Diego on Thursday...

update...

It's Adam's last day at home and we went out to REI to get him a new Leatherman tool and a Nalgene bottle...two must-haves for his life in Scotland, apparently.  We went out to lunch, too, and though that was fun, I came back with an upset tummy...which stuck around all day.

We went out for dinner, too...the whole family...a sort of last hurrah for us. Adam chose Mexican, not good for my upset digestive system.  I had quesidillas.  Not too hard on me, I guess, though I wasn't up to going out with Adam and John to see The 40-year-old Virgin. 

Adam leaves tomorrow and my friends, Judith and John and their dtr Sarah, come from England to stay with us for most of the next week.  Trading off U.K.'ers, I guess.  I am happy to have our wonderful friends here, though.  They are loads of fun and some of my closest buds.

We enjoyed our time at Tu'Tu'Tun Lodge.  It was gorgeous, and we got to see some more of the Oregon Coast.  Maybe we will explore somewhere else next year.  I think we have seen all there is to see in Gold Beach and surroundings.  John would like to go to a (swimmable) lake, like he used to do growing up.  I vote for Maine.  We'll see...

IF...escape...

*click on the illo to see it better*

I wanted to get this done ASAP, since I was gone all of last week and missed that IF assignment. 

I like the thought of escaping to wherever in my personal, pink helicopter.  Wouldn't it be cool to have one?  Of course, that means that I would have to learn to fly one, and that sounds kind of fun, but scary...

message from afar...

We drove down here on Monday.  We stopped in Florence and had lunch with friends, then got to Tu'Tu'Tun Lodge at about 5pm.  The dinners here are fabulous and fun.  The food is wonderful and the people that you meet are so interesting and from all over.  We sat with a couple from Hamburg, Germany and then another from Connecticut. 

Yesterday, we drove down to Jedidiah Smith State Park in northern California (about an hour south of here) and went hiking in the redwoods.  How lovely and peaceful an experience it was.  We packed in our lunches and sat among these majestic trees and in the almost total quiet (where were all the birds, we wondered?), and enjoyed it so much. 

Today is pretty much a lazy day.  We may do a little hiking.  Sitting here,  overlooking both the lovely garden and the Rogue River, is a treat in itself.  I might like to go into town and go check out the book store and coffee shop that I saw there. 

radio silence...

see you Thursday...heading for beautiful Tu'Tu'Tun Lodge, while the boys will be holding down the fort...hope the fort will still be standing when we get back...

penguins...

We went to see The March of the Penguins tonight.  As everyone said, it is really a great movie.  The photography, the narration of Morgan Freeman, and the story of the penguins themselves were all wonderful.  Of course, when it was over, I said, 'Glad I'm a human.'  The walking, the freezing wind and temperatures, the regurgitation...let's just say, the penguins have a less-than-perfect life. 

Best advice, though...go see it!

IFriday...roots

*Ya, click on the illustration to see it in all its' glory*

Roots:  My roots are Dutch, 100%...I am a first generation American.

This photo is of the zomerhuis (summerhouse) on my grandparents' farm.  The house (at the left edge of the photo) wouldn't fit in the picture. 

This is my mother's parents' farm near Voorschoten, Holland.  It no longer exists...after the big flood of 1953, this area was turned into a lake, part of the system to control future flood events.

When my grandparents moved into this house in the 1910's, it was already about 150 years old.  During WW2, my grandparents hid a Jewish teenager here, in a secret room above the attic in the main house.  It was a dairy farm and they held back milk from the Nazis, made their own cheese and hid it, so they would have more food.    They had an orchard on the property and grew all sorts of fruit.  The land was fronted by the Oude Rijn River.  The farm was on the north side of the river and at the end of the war, the Nazis came in and occupied every house on that side of the River.  They had a whole bunch of soldiers who had taken over the barns till the Allies came too close and then they fled.  My mom remembers eating tulip bulbs because they were so hungry.  She remembers when the Americans dropped boxes of food, which included American chocolate bars, and how they all ate themselves sick. My mother was in her mid-teens when the war started and she was the 3rd of 11 children!

This is what I think of when I hear the terms 'roots'.

living in a bubble...

I spoke with Bonnie on Thursday and was commenting to her about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and was speaking harshly about our government's response, when she told me that she really didn't know much about it.  She said that they really do live in a bubble at Colgate because NO ONE was talking about it.  (Not even the professors?)

She said that earlier that day, she had been at the gym and had been watching the news, without hearing the sound...and she saw all these people mostly black, and all this flooding and she just assumed it was a Caribbean country.  She couldn't imagine that it was the United States.  When the words flashed that it was New Orleans, she was shocked!  She finally got hold of a newspaper and did a little reading about it. but she was surprised by all the things that I was telling her about the desperation of the situation, how people were dying because of the slow response, etc.

I remember being in college and really not paying attention at all to what was going on in the world for most of it.  I think that it isn't all that unusual.  What got her attention the most seemed to be the fact that a school like Tulane wasn't able to offer their students a Fall Term.  That hit too uncomfortably close to home.

Portland is going to get at least 1000 refugees.  We might be in a position to take a person or even a family in to our home.  Details are still really fuzzy here, so it's unclear. 

Adam and I spent a good deal of the day together, shopping for stuff for him to take back to Scotland mostly.  We also went to the Art in the Pearl...there were many wonderful artists represented and it was fun to see what I liked, what Adam liked, and where our tastes intersected. 

We also had some fabulous fresh-squeezed lemonade there, which brought back memories of my childhood.  We had a couple of lemon trees in our front yard and I used to make fresh-squeezed lemonade every summer.  It was always a true highlight.  I always wish that I could have a lemon tree here, but it would mean rolling it inside for the winter months, which seems like a hassle...plus I am not good at keeping indoor plants and trees alive, so I have so far resisted the urge to buy one.  Not that I'm not tempted...

IF...dreams...

***Click on the illo to see it a little closer***

I just love to dream...I have all sorts of crazy dreams and I write them down when I can remember them.  Sometimes my dreams give me advice to questions I have about my life.  Sometimes I see people that I know in my dreams and I wonder if they are dreaming about me, too, at the same time.

Years ago, we had a French exchange student that I felt an instant bond to.  It was as if I had known her before...that odd sense you sometimes get about someone.  While she lived with us, we became very close.  She felt much more like a friend than she did like a 16 year-old-daughter-like person.  We went to visit her and her family in France about 2 months later.  Only a couple of weeks after that (mid-October), she was killed in a car accident.  I was so terribly sad.  Every time I thought about her, I burst into tears. Then, on Halloween night, John and I were in New Orleans, and I had the most vivid dream of her.  She told me to stop feeling sad for her, that she was all right and not to worry any more.  I woke up immediately and felt as though I had really seen her and had spoken to her.  Though I was still sad, it wasn't with that incredible sense of heartache any more.  Whenever I have thought of New Orleans, I have thought of Sarah and her night-time, dream-time visit to me.