Thanksgiving in Anacortes

Well, at the last minute, we ended up hosting a small and super fun Thanksgiving at our house! How exciting! Ralph and Hannah came up from Seattle (via their own fun in Vancouver the night before) for a big turkey dinner. I (Julie the vegetarian) had the day before Thanksgiving off - so I ended up shopping for a turkey. This was entertaining. I could not deal with the butterballs and other big brand name turkeys at all the grocery stores. So, I headed into the town's little local butcher shop. Can you imagine? I pretended like I knew what I was talking about and walked out with a small, free-range, organic, turkey. Ha! The omnivores were happy and Jay dealt with cooking the thing.
Want to know about our food? Once I passed the turkey onto Jay, I turned toward an exciting menu. I had just purchased a 50 lb. bag of local taters from the girls swim team (I got sucked into a swimming fundraiser), so we had mashed potatoes galore! We made teriyaki almonds, phyllo cigars (stuffed with dried cranberries, capers, almonds, and cumin seeds) and a lovely cheese and cracker plate for appetizers. Then the usual turkey, Jay's stuffing from scratch, mashed taters topped with roasted garlic cloves, homemade sourdough rolls with lavender flecks, and brussel sprouts sauteed with a dry Riesling and dried cranberries and shallots. Tasty stuff eh? Oh - I made an apple pie and a cranberry torte topped with a toffee brandy sauce and freshly whipped cream. We were full.

Here is the table pre-food

Here is the table ready for din-din

Jay, Ralph, and Hannah in Deception Pass State Park the day after Thanksgiving

Zeller's boletes we collected

Oyster mushrooms right found along our favorite backyard hike

Hiking in the Chuckanuts

View from the top....

Varied thrush

Birds and windows do not go together. We decided to head out on a paddle in some protected waters because of the gale warning for more open waters. But first we had to stop by Jay's lab to get his boots. We discovered a stunned varied thrush sitting by a huge window at the lab. I was out of the car instantly to see if it was O.K. The spot on the window where it had hit was obvious - feathers and some smeared blood? Why is it that introduced nasty species like starlings never hit windows? Instead, it seems to be the native, lovely songbirds - like this varied thrush - that have to hit windows. A fox sparrow (another gorgeous native songbird) flew into our home window and was killed instantly the other week. This resulted in me printing out a million hawk silhouettes and taping them to our windows. But I'm not sure a big marine lab will do this to their windows or not. In either case, we put some grass into a traffic cone that was around the lab parking lot and placed the thrush into the cone. It was freezing and we were worried that without this little fluff moving, it would get too cold. Then we went for a paddle. When we came back hours later, the bird was still there. But active! When I reached in to try and get it out - it flew away! We are not naive, and we realize it may still die. But at least it flew away to a tree and off the ground so it will not be exposed to ground predators.

Here is the beautiful varied thrush - you can see the spot on its head where it hit the window

Our freezing paddle

Lester gets comfy

Darwin dreams of life without the annoying collar

Darwin and the flicker

Well - our little fatty fluff Darwin had a strange lump on the side of his belly. We just had it removed this Friday. The good or bad news is that it could be cancer, and it might not be cancer. We could pay more money to find out - but the end result of finding out, or not finding out, would be to wait and see if another growth appears. For now, I'm alone this weekend while Jay presents his research at a conference. So, I've got to keep Darwin in his silly collar so he can't lick the stitches and deal with Lester who wants to be by my side every second of the day. But I have to keep the cats separated so Darwin doesn't get bothered too much. This separation resulted in Lester crying all night because he couldn't sleep with me. And Darwin kept me awake all night begging to have the collar taken off. Needless to say, I wish Jay was here.

Something nice did happen yesterday though - I was treated to an excellent view of two northern flickers right in our backyard. They were too close for me to even go outside to take a photo, I would have scared them away. So I took this shot right through our window.

I get to take the collar off of him when I'm around - much more cute eh?

Bolete land

We have entered into the world of mushrooming. Mike and Jennifer gave us an awesome guide to mushrooms for a wedding present, and off into the woods we went! Now, the weekend didn't begin with mushrooms. It began on the night of Jay's birthday in Newport, Oregon.

We were super lucky to not only be hanging out with Mike and Jennifer, but old friends from RI - Erik and Jared. Erik lives in Corvallis, OR and Jared was out visiting Oregon State University to check out a graduate program there. We met up at the Rogue Brewery because we heard that Jay could get free beer there on his birthday. Alas, you had to be a Rogue Nation member and you couldn't sign up the night of your birthday. Lame. We had a bunch of tasty beer anyway and a grand time.

Erik with a king bolete

After a super lazy morning with huge wild mushroom omelettes, we eventually pulled all our rain gear together and headed out for a nice hike. Before we even got to the trail head, we stopped to check out the huge surf from the big storm that pounded Washington and Oregon. The surf was so huge there was a massive amount of sea foam on the beach and in the intertidal. This monumental amount of foam was irresistible to Mike and Jay. I've provided a video, thanks to Erik, of what happened next.

After we pulled ourselves away from the foam, we hit the trail. What a hike! Not only did it rain, it POURED, complete with thunder, lightening, and then, (to make it even more entertaining) hail. But, it didn't matter. We were outside with good friends, relatively dry in our rain gear, and finding mushrooms!

Heceta Head Lighthouse

The next morning Mike and Jennifer broke all the rules of collectors and showed us a hot spot for king boletes. We hit the jackpot! Mushrooming is super fun, especially when you find TONS of these tasty morsels. Here is Mike showing off a biggie.

More photos can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/globalscents/November2009#

Jay's 30!

Hey peeps - today is Jay's 30th birthday! He probably doesn't want me to broadcast this to the world, but what the heck. I'm broadcasting! We are off to Oregon to play with friend Mike, Jen, Erik, and Jared!

It has been a year.....

Can you believe it has been a year since we arrived home? Tomorrow (the 4th) is the day we arrived back to a wonderful place, with a newly elected wonderful president, and wonderful family and friends waiting with open arms. I wish I had time to reflect back on this year as I write this blog. I have so much I'd like to write about. Our trip follows me everywhere I go. I think about it everyday, all the time.

On another whim, I submitted another photo to the National Geographic "your shot" and in celebration of our "one year" back - it was picked in the daily dozen! That was a nice present. I know it isn't a GORGEOUS photo, but it is a photograph that shows something you don't see everyday with neat, stormy, monsoon season light.

Tomorrow I"ll be giving a talk at the town library on our travels in Myanmar. I am hoping to focus a lot on the government so I can educate people about the state of the country, the wonderful people, and the horrible government (if you can even call it that). Because of this talk, I've been forced to finally go through our photos and pick out the best. The complete slideshow can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jdimond/BestOfMyanmar#

Here is the National Geographic shot!

Here is the caption I put with it: While tramping in Myanmar, we were able to watch these men playing a game of chinlone. Our Burmese guide explained to us that it was very similar to volleyball, except you use your feet and head rather than your hands. Now that's talent!

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/daily-dozen (you may have to scroll through the photos at the top to find this one).

And here is a sneak preview of some of the best shots in the album....

Evening paddle

There was a break in the wet weather today so we were quick to take advantage of it and go out for an evening paddle. This time we launched at Bowman Bay in Deception Pass State Park. We paddled out to a small island and were treated to a sighting of what we later determined to be a bunch of Heermann's gulls. They are very unique, dark colored gulls with red/orange bills. Apparently, 90% of the population of this species breeds on a single island group off Baja California. They spend the rest of the year anywhere from California to British Columbia. This is an exciting sighting!