Jonas, Dohnele & Emma

Oregon Stream Restoration: video from NPR

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:05:10 -0800

Here's a great eight minute video from NPR featuring stream restoration in Oregon. I'm not even sure where Knowles Creek is, but the work that the USFS is doing is really similar to work that I've done for the BLM. The only difference is that we make our fish habitat enhancement structures less permanent (i.e. we don't cable our structures to the substrate). The results are the same though. Check out the video!

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State Meetings, Oregon Driving & Yard Work

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:07:15 -0800

Watching movie with Gavin

Emmas portrait of daddy

It's been a really fun week! A week ago Sunday I picked up a rig from work and drove it home. I had a nine hour drive in front of me on Monday and I didn't want to waste time in the office, so I just brought the rig home with me. On Monday morning I took off. I had been checking the webcams at Santiam Pass and it looked clear and dry. I wanted to go the more direct route across Oregon as opposed to the longer way - even though the longer way was freeway.

So I drove up to Eugene and from there I drove up the McKenzie Highway which connects with the Central Oregon Highway. I'd never been on either of these roads and it was gorgeous! The weather cooperated nicely and the views were amazing. Santiam Pass yielded teriffic views of Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington and the Three Sisters. I'd never been to Bend before and it turned out to be a pretty neat place. Between Bend and Burns there was nothing but rolling hills of sagebrush and juniper. It really reminded me of Utah and was really neat in a remote, desolate sorta way.

After Burns the highway started following the Malheur River as it wound through some neat canyon country. Finally the highway popped out in Ontario where my conference was. The conference itself was interesting. Granted, I was meeting with a dozen others who all had huge egos, but overall the meeting was good, we got a lot accomplished and I volunteered for a bunch of other stuff. Hopefully I'll be sitting in on another state committee concerned with five-year personnel planning. I'm also going to be in charge of a statewide website for human resources. The highlight of the trip was hanging out with the associate state director for the BLM and other committee member who are all focused on furthering their careers.

I did get a chance to go on a hike one evening. It was a good break from all the meetings. Myself and a forester from Eugene drove a few miles out of town and hiked up Henry Gulch into the foothills of Tub Mountain. It was so nice to be hiking in an area like Utah and Colorado; wide, open, beautiful terrain. Really loved it!

The last day was a half day of meetings followed by a field trip to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City. Afterwards, most everyone drove back to Ontario to spend another night. However, I'd been looking at forecasts and weather satellites which made it look like a big weather front was moving in, so I decided to take off right for home. Plus, since I was starting in a different spot, I could drive back a different route.

I headed out of Baker City on the Whitney Highway. I followed that through the Blue Mountains, over Dixie Summit and down into the John Day River Valley where I got onto the Ochoco Highway. This route is a bit more north than the road I took over a few days earlier and so it was more mountainous. It was super windy and you could literally see the weather front moving in from the west. I saw a ton of deer and some really neat canyons before the sun finally set. After that I drove up and over Ochoco Pass, where it started to rain, and down into Prineville. I gassed up in Redmond and then reconnected with the Central Oregon Highway. It cleared up a bit and I was worried that would mean ice up on Santiam Pass, but as soon as I got west of Sisters, it started pouring down rain. It stayed rainy all the way to the top of the Pass and all the way down the other side. The next morning, after getting home, I checked the Pass webcams and saw where there were vehicle accidents and almost a foot of fresh snow on the Pass, so it looks like I timed it perfectly!

Now that I'm back and it's the weekend, I spent the day with Dohnele and Emma doing yardwork. We ripped up a rhodedendron and some other plants that were dead when we bought the place. We raked some leaves, planted some wildflowers and mulched a strip of ground along the street near the mailboxes.

It's raining again, so we're going to spend the rest of the day curled up by the fire watching movies!

Dohnele cooked a soup yesterday; three types of mushrooms in a sherry-shallot broth. Tonight we're making a chocolate red wine cake which sounds reeeeaaaallllyyyy good!

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2009 Ashland Halloween Children's Parade

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:47:28 -0800

Ashland Halloween 2009 Parade2

This parade is sooo awesome! This is the third year we've gone and we've never been disappointed! This year was probably the best we've seen - even though Dohnele and I didn't dress up this year. It didn't hurt that this year there was a zombie Michael Jackson rendition of "Thriller" which was VERY entertaining!

As always there are literally thousands of people that show up. And even though the parade is technically for the kids, just as many adults show up. The best part is that everyone just has fun.

After the parade we went to Harry and David in Medford where they were giving away free pumpkins! I got dropped off at a Halloween party that an old co-worker was hosting while Dohnele and Cindy went shopping and trick-or-treating at the Mall.

It was good to catch up with friends and gossip from Medford. We stayed the night at the Rogue Regency which was really nice. Cindy and Juleah took off this morning, we did a Costco run and then drove home. Beautiful day in Medford (sunny and 65), but it was and still is dark and cloudy over Douglas County.

Ashland Halloween 2009 Parade

My big news came in the middle of last week; that state committee that I was trying to get on... Well, I got the position!!! My supervisor, another manager and the District Manager all came over to congratulate me. Apparently the vote was unanimous in my favor! That said, I leave tomorrow for Ontario (located in eastern Oregon) for my first week-long meeting. These meetings happen every three months in different locations around Oregon and Washington. I'm driving to this meeting; it'll take most of the day to get there and instead of going over on the interstate, I'm going to drive over Santiam Pass, through Bend, Oregon and right through the middle of the state. There was snow on the passes a few days ago, but it's all cleared up now.

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Beautiful day... Plus ice cream

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:51:09 -0700

We had a beautiful day today; got up to 70 degrees and was nice and sunny. I spent the morning weeding the lawn, pruning trees and bushes, raking leaves, mowing the lawn and then edging the lawn. Yes, I am mowing the lawn in 70 degree temps at the end of October! We LOVE living down south!!! Emma and Juleah did a lot of helping (playing). They spent a lot of time with maple seeds; tossing them in the air and watching them helicopter down. We also saw a praying mantis which was fun.

Yesterday Dohnele made an awesome dinner; creamy carrot soup with scallions and poppy seeds! It's such a beautiful soup (bright orange) and is (was) really tasty. Tonight we're breaking down a whole pumpkin and making soup out of it. It's a recipe we've been making for the past few years and is delicious!

When everyone else went to town to go shopping today (not sure what they do in town every day, but the still go) Emma and I stayed home and built an IKEA foot stool to match an IKEA chair. Emma had ice cream and I had Gorgonzola cheese with a ripe pear. Mmmmmm!

Ice cream cone

Have a nice night!

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So much going on!

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:21:34 -0700

We've been soooo busy these past few weeks that it's hard to figure out where to start. And unfortunately, I've only got a few pictures from work to post. I'm going to try and be brief since I need to get to bed.

I finished up a big restoration contract at work; at least the tough work is done. The only thing left is to plant a thousand willow saplings, but I'll probably try and do an "office planting day" or something like that in order to get it all done in a timely manner.

I ripped up the entire front garden which was planted with crappy little one-bloom-wonder plants. I split apart a huge cluster of day lilies and made four smaller day lily clusters and still had enough bulbs to bring and share with a guy from work. After ripping up all the crap, I tilled and mulched the soil and then planted 75 daffodil bulbs and 32 iris bulbs!

Yesterday I ripped up two of the back gardens and tilled and mulched the soil. I planted 15 Tahitian daffodils and 15 pink daffodils back there. I also drained the fountain for the winter since all the fall leaves were starting to plug the filter.

I figured out that the underground sprinkler system isn't pressurized, so I'm not going to worry about insulating sprinkler lines or flushing the system. I've talked to some neighbors and they don't worry about it either.

With Dohnele's help, I hung a peg board in the tool shed for all of our gardening tools.

Hopefully I mowed the lawn for the last time this season a few days ago. Dohnele and Emma have been madly raking leaves trying to stay on top of things.

Dohnele's mom and youngest sister have been visiting for the past couple weeks during which time we've spent a day in Medford, a day in Eugene and two days in Portland shopping and seeing the sites! Portland was especially fun; we got together with Dohnele's brother, Josh, and we went to Voodoo Doughnuts and a few other great places to eat. The shopping was good, but exhausting. Among the highlights was a marble rolling pin that I bought for $9.99 (should have been closer to $40!) We also finally got to the zoo which was OK; not nearly as good as the Seattle Zoo, but still fun for Emma and Juleah. We also went to the Farmer's Market at Portland State University which was fun to see since all the fall squash were on display.

Fall weather has started in earnest; lots of rain and cool nights. Tonight the snow level is actually supposed to drop to 2,000 feet! I doubt we'll see anything around here though. While we wait for the white stuff, we've been spending plenty of evening snuggled down around our fireplace enjoying its warmth while we watch movies!

We've been having fun cooking lots of tasty gourmet meals for everyone, but really can't wait for Thanksgiving in Spokane. Personally, I can't wait for time off. I've got a lot of assignments due at work, so I've been spending a fair bit of time in front of the computer typing up reports. It's not a bad bit of work, but tedious at times.

Last Thursday at work, on a field tour, I managed to lock the keys in the rig. It's one of those new, fancy rigs that automatically locks the doors of the vehicle after you close the door. I had left the keys in the ignitions and only walked 20 feet away to look at a culvert and the truck locked us out. Fortunately, one of the guys had his cell phone and was able to call dispatch and have a second set of keys driven out to us. That particular field tour was originally to show a bunch of soil scientists and hydrologists the recovery of a big landslide that happened about 15 years ago on steep, unstable ground that the BLM had clearcut. It was a great day, beautiful scenery as we were high above the North Umpqua River, far from any paved roads. The whole area was very unstable and there were lots of landslides originating at roads and in clearcuts.

Things are also looking up that I may get the position of statewide representative for the Roseburg BLM and a human resources development committee. Only a dozen people from across the state sit on the committee and I'm trying to represent Roseburg. There are two other people who I'm competing against, but I heard back this morning from my supervisor that he and another manager put in really good recommendations to the district manager on my behalf, so I'll keep you posted!

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Dessert at Papa Haydn

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:20:53 -0700

We rustled up some pictures of Emma having and immensely enjoying dessert at Papa Haydn in Portland last weekend.

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Fun with house, dad and grandparents

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:03:14 -0700

Dohn and his new bike9

Dohn and his new bike13

It's been a super busy past ten days! As soon as the grandparents left, Dohnele's dad showed up for ten days of riding his Harley all over the state (well over 1,000 miles in a week). When he wasn't riding his bike, he was helping around the house. He and Dohnele painted the garage floor, him and I installed two new shop lights in the garage and hung an eight-foot section of peg board. He patched an old outlet opening in the garage and changed the lights in our ceiling fan (we literally looked everywhere for the right lightbulb). Seriously, try finding a 25-watt nightlight-style bulb!

The day that Dohnele's dad flew out of Eugene, we had to leave the house at about 4am in order to get him to the airport on time. Since it was so early and we were already an hour north of town, we just kept driving to Yakima to visit my grandparents. Of course we hit Portland right at lunch hour which was lame, but didn't completely stop. Since we had all gotten up at about 3am, we had to stop along the Columbia River to take a nap which was nice.

We spent a couple fun days with the grandparents - mostly because it was Grandpa's birthday! Hopefully Emma didn't exhaust them too much. In the highlights of that trip we went to lunch at Poochies which is the tastiest hot dog stand in the world! We also went to a few produce stands which had amazing corn, peaches, apples, pears, tomatoes, onions and pumpkins. We filled the back of the car with that stuff. On the drive back to Sutherlin we spent some time at the Columbia River Gorge south of Goldendale investigating the mass quantities of new wind-energy mills. There were so many more that have been built in just the last year; many are being built right now. It's amazing how big these things are when you're up close and personal. The bases of each tower are about 12-15 feet in diameter! I convinced a security guard that I needed to get right up to one to take pictures which was really neat.

Also on the drive back we stopped off in Portland to visit a friend of mine from high school who know runs an optometry clinic in the Alphabet District. We'd never been to that part of Portland before and it was amazing! All sorts of small, but upscale boutiques and eateries. We went to Moonstruck Chocolate which was expensive, but amazingly delicious. I would highly recommend the Mayan Truffle (check out the lineup)! Then we went downtown to Romano's Macaroni Grill which was one of the nicest restaurants we've been to. An excellent balance of affordability, kid-friendliness, quality service and dang good food! We finished up at Papa Haydn - a fantastic dessert shop where we had some incredible cake. Emma was having sooooo much fun, but we were disgustingly full by the time we were done (in a good way).

Then last night we had a handful of friends down from Portland and Corvallis for a BBQ which was really fun. We cooked a ton of food on the grill and slowly ate away at it all night long. We cooked up Swiss beer bratwurst, smoked beer bratwurst, jalapeno-mango sausage, corn on the cob, beer-can-chicken, potato salad and a mushroom-squash medley with a teriyaki marinade. After our loooooong dinner we spent the rest of the evening playing cards and catching up (we all went to Utah State University together and worked together up in Alaska for a bit).

Today we're just relaxing and doing little indoor projects since it's only 50 degrees outside and has been raining off and on all day. Back to work tomorrow. Ick. OK, not really "ick," but I'd still rather be enjoying a weekend! Fall colors are starting to show, there's always fog in the morning and I can see my breath at night! Here comes fall and winter I guess!

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Weekend with Grandparents

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:45:17 -0700

Grandma and Grandpa Newbill drove down to spend the weekend with us which was a lot of fun. We spent most of the time just chatting and catching up and playing with Emma. One thing Grandpa wanted to do was see if we could find a gravestone of my Great, Great, Great, Grandfather who was supposedly buried in Lookingglass, Oregon. Amazingly enough we found the gravestone after only a bit of searching. Kind of surprising and coincidental that we're living now in nearly the same spot that my relatives were living nearly 150 years ago!

Spent the rest of the weekend painting the garage (Dohnele did most of it), mowing and edging the lawn, cleaning the fountain and mapping out the sprinkler system. We also hung a magnetic knife strip in the kitchen which is really handy.

I've got one day of work and then I'm taking Tuesday off to drive to Eugene to pick up Dohnele's dad and motorcycle.

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This Past Month

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:02:26 -0700

Things have been pretty hectic around here - in a good way! We're all moved into our new house and out of our apartment! We also had Dohnele's family down for a visit. And then there's work and all the extra-curricular work that comes with owning a house! And we've been up to Portland once and up to Eugene twice!

In any case, there are FIVE blogs below this one. Just keep going down until you get out of the blogs that are titled with dates. Lots of good pictures! Enjoy!

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August 29th, 2009

nobody@vox.com(The Parkers) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:59:29 -0700

By this time we were entirely moved into the new house and needed a break. We took Dohnele's family to Elkton and to Tomaselli's for brunch which was scrumptious. Then Dohnele's mom and I sampled a few local wines from Brandborg Winery. The two different Pinot Noir's that we tried were both delicious.

We drove a few miles to Little Wolf Creek where I did a lot of work earlier this spring. We picked a ton of blackberries!

Then we drove a few more miles to Lower Garden Valley and to Sterken Farm where we picked about 30 pounds (no joke!) of fruits and vegies before it got too warm and we headed home. The peaches and pears were the highlights since the nectarines had passed and the figs had mostly been picked.

It had gotten up into the 90s and so playing in the sprinkler was necessary when we got home. Emma and her Aunt Juleah had a blast playing T-ball with the new toy that Dohnele picked up for them!

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