I’ve wondered for years how this restaurant kept going. It never seemed to have customers. At some point in my North Portland tenure, they added on a room for video poker, and that maybe kept them going? Someone at my gym implied that nefarious activity took place there, and that’s what kept it afloat.
But the Swan Garden is no longer occupied. It’s up for sale and will, I’m guessing, soon be replaced by a multi-unit. I wonder if it will include parking. There’s a parking lot behind.
I enjoy the badges in the Garman system. They are fun, and also a thing that I minimally participate in.
This one made me laugh.
I will never tire of the gray skies, sun, evergreens, and orange garage.
Though as snow goes, it’s more like “snow.” Mostly icy crystals.
Matt and I made a plan to do a neighborhood 5K on the fourth Saturday of every month in 2021. It didn’t end up like it started. The walk/run 5K gave way to a walking 5K probably around June. And Matt wasn’t always present. In July, my mom was in the hospital and it was right before the wedding, so I missed that one. But the 11 other months? I did that 5K.
In this case, I put on my hiking shoes, because we had some icy snow.
And that got me to my latest badge! I’m not doing this challenge again in 2022, because I’d like to branch out to other exercise, but this was a good motivator for 2021.
I love Kiriki’s different samplers and especially love this knit sweater one. I bought the kit with my birthday money. And now I have finished it.
It didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted it to. That cretan stitch was hard, as was the spider stitch. I learned that I should practice new stitches elsewhere before I stitch them on the main event.
Here’s what it should have looked like:
I feel pretty overwhelmed and unmotivated this Christmas season. My family is doing stockings only, and I’m glad my to-do list is minimal. I remembered this chocolate covered popcorn that a family at the Emerson School used to give the office staff each year. It was delicious and one year I asked the child who gave it to me how they made it. Here’s the recipe: Buy a bag or two of popcorn. (This is two bags. You can, of course, pop the popcorn, but see above re: unmotivated. Things I learned: though easy, bagged popcorn is very expensive in comparison to popping your own.) Melt chocolate chips. (This is one bag of milk chocolate chips and one bag of white chocolate chips.) Drizzle. Let set. Divide. Eat bits while you are divvying it up.
I also made these cherry pistachio cookies with dark chocolate. Mostly because I was trying to decide between a few cookies and Matt caught on to what I was doing and enthusiastically championed this cookie. So everyone who liked these can thank Matt.
Matt and I took the moms to see the Bakelite Santas. As they were last year, they were fun to find.
I enjoy their glow in the December dark.
This year, only one was wearing a mask.
Sara reports that they got this lovely set of postcards in the mail last week.
She also reports that they are in their usual timing for the holiday card and she’s hoping to get it sent in January.
To think that in 2012, I had no devices that needed regular charging. And now I’ve got a cell phone, a work phone, a tablet, and an ebike. Not pictured: an activity tracker.
