Nice Weekend!

As I posted yesterday, I had a wonderfully relaxing Saturday at home while Shawn was off playing in a rugby tournament. Once he got home, we both headed off to downtown Seattle.

Shawn spent his evening with the ruggers. I'm not exactly sure what all went on; I simply know that the team held a Kangaroo Court and then went out together afterwards. If you're not familiar with the tradition of Kangaroo Courts in the sporting world, here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article:
For example, many Major League Baseball teams have a kangaroo court to punish players for errors and other mistakes on the field, as well as for being late for a game/practice, not wearing proper attire to road games, or having a messy locker in the clubhouse. Fines are allotted, and at the end of the year, the money collected is given to charity. The organization may also use the money for a team party at the end of the season.[2]
This type of kangaroo court is common in Rugby Union teams and clubs in the western world where fines are given at the end of a tour or season. The fines are dealt with either by forfeits or tasks. This usually entails large amounts of alcohol as punishment.
In 1975, the Cleveland Indians of the American League had a Kangaroo Court where players were fined one dollar for silly offenses [3], and the New York Yankees players have held several such mock "courts" in their clubhouse throughout the team's history.

Considering the article excerpt mentions Major League Baseball, the Cleveland Indians, and the rugby tradition, I figured it was fitting to include it here. :)

While Shawn was busy with this, I got to have a girls' night! I thought ahead and contacted two other girls whose boyfriends play rugby with Shawn. Since all three of us would've otherwise spent the evening at home alone, we decided to go out together. We met up first at an Irish pub close to where the boys were starting their evening. We then went out to dinner at Gordon Biersch, where I had a very yummy pulled pork sandwich. It was also in a part of Seattle that I'd never been to before, and to which I'll definitely need to return! It's a huge complex called Pacific Place, and according to their website, it is THE place in Seattle for fashion, food, and film.

After dinner, the three of us went and saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. It was rather cheesy and predictable, but I did laugh out loud a number of times. And frankly, I got to spend 100 minutes watching Matthew McConaughey. Although I probably would've appreciated it more if I hadn't spent $10.50 to see it, there are worse things I could've done with my evening.

From what I can tell, Shawn had a good time with the ruggers Saturday night, and I had a great time with the girls. We're already starting to plan our next girls' night out. :)

And as for today...it's been nice and lazy. :) We slept in and went to a late Mass. Afterwards, we headed toward the mall, where Shawn took his suit to get altered. We just bought him this suit a year ago, but he's lost so much weight in that time that Men's Wearhouse has to take in his pants 7 inches at the waist! It'll be done just in time for the End of Season Rugby Banquet that we'll be going to next weekend. We've been spending the rest of the afternoon just hanging around the apartment, watching baseball, reading, making dinner (beef stew in the crock pot), and playing video games (that would be Shawn). Hard to believe that today is the last day of May already!

Beautiful Saturday!

This morning, Shawn went to go play in a social rugby tournament. I decided to stay at home. I just figured that since it's a social tournament, the outcome doesn't really matter. And being a tournament, there would be plenty of games played that wouldn't involve Shawn.

So he got up around 6:30. I kept sleeping. He woke me up to say goodbye at 8:00...I went back to sleep. I ended up staying in bed until almost 10:30, and it was wonderful!! There was a bit of a cool breeze coming in through the window, and it was just about perfect. Just would've been nicer if Shawn was still there. :)

Now I'm sitting out on our porch with my laptop. I'm thinking this is where I'll spend most of the rest of my day...just bring out a book, some food, a beverage. Perfect. I don't think I could ask for nicer weather! I took a few pictures. :)

This is what I'm looking at right now. I'm actually just a little surprised there are no kids playing out in that grassy area right now. Maybe they're all at the apartment complex pool.

I also thought I'd post a couple pictures of our "garden." Remember what they looked like just a few weeks ago? I took these pictures on May 9. Look at them now!

We need to get stakes for the pea plants. And frankly, I need to thin them out...we have too many plants in that small pot. Hopefully we'll get that taken care of this week! Maybe tomorrow, actually.

Crab Cakes!

We had an absolutely wonderful Memorial Day weekend! On Friday night, we just stayed at home, and then we left first thing on Saturday morning. Due to a slightly later start than we originally intended and then to some heavier traffic (probably others getting out of the city for the weekend), we didn't get to Seaside until about 1:30 or 2:00 on Saturday. We actually did a quick explore of Seaside, and then we drove another 8 miles or so south to Cannon Beach. After getting a quick snack, we checked in at the hotel and took a nap before heading out for dinner.

I'm going to hold off on the actual beach info until I have pics to put up...and the camera is currently in the car (which Shawn just took to rugby practice). However, I can tell you about our favorite meal of the weekend. :)

If you ever find yourself on the northern coast of Oregon, go to Cannon Beach, and stop at Cranky Sue's. Shawn and I stopped here on Saturday afternoon, thinking it was just a snack-type of place...the kind of place where we could just walk in, order something at a counter, and walk out. We were wrong, and that's okay. :) The sign outside the restaurant talked about their "famous crab cakes," so we decided to split an appetizer of "crab bites." When they came out, they were literally teeny tiny little bite-sized crab cakes, and they were really good! After scarfing those down, we asked the waitress to bring us a "real" crab cake (which we learned also came with french fries). It was to die for! It was obvious that the crab was very fresh, and there wasn't much in the way of filler in the cake...basically it was just seasoned crab meat with a very light breading that was fried.

This crab cake (and the fries...which we think were homemade, too) was good enough that Shawn and I decided to go back to Cranky Sue's for lunch on Monday before we headed back home. On Monday, we each got our own crab cake and fries instead of splitting it. :) Shawn also got clam chowder on Monday, which was also incredibly fresh and good. I don't even like clam chowder, but this was something I would gladly eat.

It's definitely worth a visit! Oh, and like I said, we didn't take any pictures at the restaurant, but here are a couple pics I found online.

Headed to the Coast!

Shawn and I decided to take advantage of the 3-day weekend, and early Saturday morning, we're heading for the Oregon coast! Shawn has briefly visited it once before (mainly just driving by, I think), but I've never been. We're going to stay in the town of Seaside, and we'll probably explore a couple other coastal towns and parks while we're down there.

I'm really excited for this trip! We've realized that, other than our honeymoon, this is the first multi-day trip Shawn and I will have taken together that doesn't involve friends or family! Hopefully, it's going to be a fun, relaxing, beautiful weekend. We'll take lots of pictures, and I'll be sure to post when we get back!

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006 (331 pages)

I have no idea why it took me so long to read this book! I feel like I've been reading it forever (when, in fact, it's only been about 2 weeks...which I guess is long for me these days). I had heard a lot about it over the last couple years, and I finally decided to give in and try it.

The author, Elizabeth Gilbert, spent a year traveling, and she describes her experiences in this book. The subtitle is actually "One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia." After going through a very painful divorce (and a few other things in her life), she literally spent four months in each of these countries. Therefore, the book is divided up into 3 sections, one for each country.

My favorite section was the first one, Italy. This is probably because I've been to Italy (and love it), so I could more easily relate to the cultural things she was experiencing and writing about. When she was in India, she lived at an Ashram, studying yoga and meditation. I wasn't sure I'd relate to that section because of religious views, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how often she incorporated Christian (and often specifically Catholic) ideas in her meditation and in her writing. When she went to Indonesia, she quickly was able to find a town she had visited before, and it was very interesting to learn about the Balinese culture and society.

Overall, I liked the book. I know some people who have said that this is one of their all-time favorite books, but I definitely wouldn't rate it that high. It was nice to read a little non-fiction for a change...especially to read a book that incorporated travel and other cultures. Although I certainly didn't find it life-changing, I would say that it's worth reading.

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Total number of books read in 2009: 24

Total number of pages read in 2009: 8785

Weekend Hike

Shawn and I have been "planning" on going on a hike for a few weeks now, but things keep coming up that make us change our mind. So this past weekend, we decided that we were, for sure, going to go on a hike. We didn't really do anything Friday night so that we could be well rested, and I even convinced Shawn to let me sleep until about 6:00 on Saturday morning. Shawn used one of his books to pick a route that looked pretty interesting, hiking up a trail on Mt. Pilchuk.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny! It was just about perfect hiking weather. We left the apartment around 7:15, but then were delayed for about 20 minutes when Shawn and the guy parked behind us both decided to pull out of their parking spaces at approximately the same time. Both bumpers were dented/scratched, and info was exchanged, but I don't think we're going to do anything about it.

We drove about an hour away to get to Mt. Pilchuk. We drove up the first forest service road a few miles before we noticed a few cars parked on the side of the road. When we turned the corner, we saw why....snow! The road was completely snowed in, as far as we could see. We decided to just park the car and start our hike a few miles further down the mountain than originally planned. Shawn was feeling pretty confident that the snow wouldn't cover the entire road, but it turns out that we really should've used snowshoes. We did hike up the road a few miles, but we were walking through quite a bit of snow (probably a couple feet) almost the entire time. It was still beautiful, but it was definitely a workout! And poor Shawn was wearing shorts, so his socks and hiking boots got soaked.

We eventually came to a place where part of the forest service road had washed out at some point over the winter. (Note to self...we need to contact the forest service to see if they know about this yet.) This is where we stopped to have lunch, and this is also where we decided to turn around. See, Shawn was also pretty confident that the road would be pretty much in the tall trees the entire time, so he thought we wouldn't need sunscreen. Turns out, we were in the sun almost the entire time. So once we had lunch, we knew that we'd be getting pretty sunburned if we kept going. As it is, Shawn decided to wear my fleece shirt on his head to avoid burning his face. It was awfully sexy. :)

Overall, we had a wonderful day on Saturday! The hike was both harder and shorter than we were expecting, but we're looking forward to getting back to this trail during the summer. We've learned our lesson...bring snowshoes in May, even at this relatively low elevation! After the hike, we stopped at a great little produce stand that had amazing prices, and then we stopped off for an early dinner (where it was happy hour, so dinner cost us a whopping $9).

Job Update

Wow...I've been a bad blogger lately! Sorry about that. I was a little busy last week, trying to get things graded in time to do mid-quarter reports last Friday.

The sub job has been going pretty well. For the most part, I'm enjoying it. Right now, we're doing Romeo and Juliet, which I really do enjoy teaching. I've also done it enough times that I don't really need to spend lots of time preparing for any given lesson. I always enjoy seeing the change in kids' perceptions of the play. When I first tell them we're going to read Shakespeare, they usually whine and complain. They assume it's going to be too hard, and many of them worry that this famous love story is going to be too sappy. I enjoy watching them realize that A) they can understand Shakespeare's words if I help them a little, and B) there's a lot more to the play than just a sappy love story.

I do have a handful of students who drive me nuts just about every day. I'm trying to figure out what I can possibly do about them, but I'm at the point now where I think I might just have to put up with them for the next few weeks. Originally, my job was supposed to be over on May 29th...so just two more weeks. However, the teacher I'm subbing for (her name is Meg) asked me a little while ago if I'd be okay with extending the job. Basically, Meg suddenly realized that she has some childcare issues (namely, her arranged childcare fell through). Personally, I'm thinking that she just doesn't want to have to be away from her baby yet. :) Regardless, she was able to talk the HR department into giving her two more weeks off, so I'll now be there until June 12th. Meg will actually come back on June 12th, too, so we'll have one day at school together to figure out how to transition easily. Basically, I'll be more or less finishing out the school year; the kids are done June 19th. Meg will just have to keep the kids busy for one week and submit their final grades. I was looking forward to being done at the end of May, but honestly, I didn't have a good reason to say no to two extra weeks, and it will be a good little chunk of extra money I wasn't expecting.

So...that's where I stand with the job. Because of budget cuts, I sincerely doubt that I'll be able to find a full-time job for next year, but I'll be applying for whatever I find (including some part-time jobs and some online-teaching jobs). We'll see what happens.

Oh, and we did have a wonderful weekend this weekend, so I'll post some pictures and stories in the next day or two!