A new era....

On August 24th, our year of VISTA came to an end. As you could probably tell from the lack of blogging, it was quite a busy time and involved me finally giving my last board presentation, Aaron working to prepare stuff for Paige-the-new-VISTA (I did that too...) and work on marketing materials, and oh yeah, driving hurriedly back across the country before school started.

So, now I'm in New Haven. I like it quite a bit. Classes start tomorrow, and I'm not sure which ones I'm taking yet, but that's ok. We get a bit of time to shop around and visit classes before formally deciding. I do have a meeting with my potential advisor tomorrow, so that's pretty cool.People here are cool, I love my neighborhood, and I can't wait to get going on academic stuff.

Aaron's in Ann Arbor and had his first day of law school today. He survived, and I believe is currently working on his reading for tomorrow. At least I don't have class every day...I get four day weekends and only 7-9 hours of class a week! He's supposed to call me soon, but I did hear after his class got out and he enjoyed the content quite a bit. Maybe he'll actually like this law thing, who knows?

Other news, relevant to the academic discussion because it provides much fodder for procrastination, is that we've set a date for the wedding: August 23, 2008. We've put a deposit down on a place and we're working on all the other important goings-on that a wedding entails.

I'm not sure that we'll keep blogging now that our year is over. I may start a new blog, go back to my LiveJournal account, or just keep this one for simplicity's sake. I doubt Aaron will blog since he totally gave up on the blogging this year. Anyone want to read a blog about grad school? I probably won't have much time for any other content...

News

So this trip

Led to this note from Aaron to Allison on the white board (part of the prior grocery list)

Led to these

We'll keep you updated.

I promise, just this once

I'm not going to be a political blogger. But this blows my mind.

Supreme Court decides public school desegregation plan not allowed, cites Brown v. BoE

Ugh. This is why I hate the law sometimes. Pick and choose your precedents, whee!

This is why I want to study legal history. It matters, goddamnit. It matters to schoolkids in Seattle right now. So don't tell me how nice it is that I'm "going to be a teacher" or that I'm
"wasting [my] time with a history PhD".

Schtuff

Man, things are flying around here. Big news all around...so a brief update, in order of occurence. Blather to follow.

• I went to LA last weekend to see Lauren, a friend from history-nerd-land, in a much-anticipated and long-planned weekend of frivolity. I plan to update with pictures and more details later, but suffice it to say I had a great time in civilization, having much-needed stereotypical girl time, and flying first class (only frequent flier tickets available...but free wine!)
• THE BIG NEWS: Aaron was accepted to the University of Michigan Law School!! I don't know if I'm really supposed to tell people, but oh well, I am. I'm really proud of him. His work this year as a VISTA really paid off, I think, because after he sent in a letter listing all his accomplishments that occurred after he submitted his application, he got a call from the dean of admissions offering him a spot for this fall. So, he'll be in Ann Arbor and I'll be in New Haven, but we'll both be at our top choice schools. He really wants to do the Urban Communities clinic, which will give him great experience in non-profit law. Bonus: I'll get to go to a few more football games.
• A friend is looking at an apartment in New Haven today for me. Although the landlord has not been entirely helpful in this whole process (finding an apartment across the country), it seems like a pretty good deal. I just need room for my bikes, books, and bass, and this one has a spare study as well as one bedroom. The whole thing has made me a nervous wreck, though. There are fewer and fewer one bedrooms available on craigslist, other properties are filled up, and I've heard horror stories about having to rent overpriced shacks in bad areas, so I want to rent. an. apartment. now. Apparently, these people don't have the same sense of urgency. I talked to them yesterday about them faxing me an application before my friend visits so I can act quickly. Four phone calls later and they still haven't faxed it. On the last call, she even said that she had no intention of faxing it right away as they didn't see the big deal. Funny, because somehow I thought faxing was pretty easy and you usually do it after a phone conversation so that you can immediately confirm that the technology worked properly with a return phone call. Oh well. I'm just on edge waiting.
• Immunizations: who knew? Apparently Connecticut law says I have to have had two MMR vaccines...just like my elementary school, high school, and college required. Fine and dandy. Except that I can't find any documentation of my first dose. When I started at Michigan, they apparently just overlooked the fact that on the record I gave them I only had the second dose listed. I'm sure I got it, and worst case I get it again for a fee, but just goes to show you - for once in my life I actually found the necessary documents filed in my little filing cabinet in the proper place....and it's still not right. I think this is a sure vote against organization. It's all futile!
• My presentation to the board got cancelled at the last minute last night as they didn't have a quorum present to approve anything. Wah. I'll present at the July meeting, I guess.
• I ran the other day. I haven't run since the summer of junior year. Been too into biking, I guess, and then there was that whole back thing last year where when I ran I had jolts of pain down my spine and legs and then I renched my back right before Katie's wedding and the physical therapist told me I could never run again because of my legs/back. Well, after reading Pain Free and deciding that the real cause of my back and other problems is my imbalanced, tight hip muscles, I figured running would be fine as long as it didn't hurt. So, I ran. It didn't hurt. It's nice to be able to exercise in a half-hour again.
• But then yesterday my quads killed me. And when my legs are sore, what do I do? BIKE! I went for a 25 miler with some medium hills. Averaged above 15 mph with a killer wind and some city riding, so I feel pretty good about that. My quads hurt even more, though, so I might take today off or do a little hiking. Aaron feels all prepared to ride up Mary's Peak since he's been on Bike Virginia, biking 40-80 miles a day for a week...but I am not ready. Yet.

Anyhow, I should work.

Take this love and take it down: Our current obsessions

Obsession 1: Aaron's been practicing his guitar. He really likes Landslide. You should hear our duet. We rock. We rocked out with me on bass, too. Getting our groooooove on.

Obsession 2: We've been reading a lot. Like, that's all we did this weekend. I've read quite a few books lately, including One Perfect Day by Rebecca Meads, The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian, and The Price of Motherhood by Ann Crittenden. I read The Children's Hospital in one weekend - it's 600 pages, and I recommend that you read it all at once. Not that you should read it, though it is pretty good; it's a lot of book that somehow makes more sense if consumed in as few gulps as possible. Aaron felt it dragged, but he read it over a few weeks.

I also ordered five books today off Amazon. Two were for school (!) as I got an email today with my summer reading list for the first day of class. The other three were "fun" books about things I'm interested in. Aaron spent a long time sending me various links to books from university presses. It's a bad habit.

Obsession #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

I've got a crush on Obama. I've been singing it for days. It's so catchy. People seem to think it's raunchy and sex-filled and denigrating to his campaign. I think it's hilarious and apparently, some people haven't ever seen a music video. And, they don't know a great parody when they see it. I live for parody!

Obsession #4: Blogs about law and feminism. We both hate Ann Althouse. I love reading the brouhaha about autoadmit.com (see here, here, and here). Basically, this law school admission discussion board (which Aaron read occasionally as he applied) is home to nasty, nasty people who discuss various matters in racist, sexist, and disgusting fashion. Normally, this is all fine and good -I believe people should be able to have a forum to talk about whatever they want. That line gets crossed when individual women get harrassed and threatened by name, have their pictures posted against their will, and the owners of the board refuse to shut down the threads. See their legal complaint here (I'll admit, it reads a little awkwardly - but the whole thing makes me. so. mad.) We've talked about this ad nauseum.

Like: feministing (feminist); lawsandletters (woman law student); Feminist Law Profs (just what it sounds like)

Obsession #5: lolcats. Enough said.

Obsession #6: Loratadine. Linn County is the grass seed capital of the world. My eyes itch just thinking about it. Aaron sneezed about 100 times today. It sucks.

Obsession #7: The weather. We want it to get hot. Or, we want to go some place where we can do this:

Glaciers and International Travel

Living out here, minutes from mountains and surrounded by miles of forest, you'd think I'd be sick of nature by now. I kind of thought I would be, too - like what could impress me now? Mountains, been there done that. But National Parks apparently have dibs on all the best nature all over America. It's not just some state park or national forest. Nope, it's the big stuff. Our pictures can't even capture how beautiful Olympic National Park was. But, I'll give them to you anyway, in chronological order.

We started our journey on Saturday morning, a little late (of course), so we didn't arrive up in Port Angeles until 4. It turned out to be a six hour drive, the last two of which were on a windy, tourist-laden scenic drive. Now, I know we are tourists too, but we have a little car and not a truck towing an RV laden with bikes and a grill. I'm turning into a snob. Maybe I already was one. Probably.

Anyhow, we get to the campground that we wanted to stay at around 4:30. It's nestled in a beautiful river valley between the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic Range, and is close to hiking and hot springs and all of that wonderfulness. Of course, it's full. The other nearby campsite is full. We wanted to stay close to Port Angeles as we were taking the ferry to Victoria in the morning (8:20 AM!), so the closest option was Fairholme, a campground on Crescent Lake, about 45 minutes from Pt. Angeles. Only three spots were left, and we snagged one that no one else could ever fit in - but our two-person backpacking tent fit perfectly!

A kind of dark picture of our campsite at Fairholme.

It wasn't exactly what we were expecting in way of nature. They really cram the sites in, and since it was a holiday weekend, we were blessed with this beautiful view:

The SUV in its natural habitat.

So, we set up our tent and made a fire. We were starving. We split an entire pack of hot dogs, had an ear of corn each (genius, I must say, to make corn on the cob over the fire) and then I ate potato chips and yogurt. Oh, and s'mores. Did I mention I hadn't eaten since breakfast? Right. We then got the hell out of the campsite (which was full of screaming kids and competing radios) and went for a hike along Crescent Lake.

Me on the sheer rock face to the left of the trail.

Aaron down by the lake.

View of me down by the lake.

Ooh, so pretty!

The trail used to be a railroad track. This tunnel was abandoned, but still looked pretty sweet. Aaron thought there might be bears in there, but I checked it out. No bears.

I almost stepped on this little guy. Playing around with the macro setting on my camera, I got a banana slug's view of a banana slug.

Self portrait by the lake.
We made it back to our campsite before sunset and remade the fire, having s'mores and marshmallows for dessert. We spend a lot of time on these camping trips playing with the fire, and this time was no different since we brought along these fake log things that were supposed to burn longer. They were cheaper than real firewood and made out of wood chips (so no weird additional chemicals) but they did not burn well. Of course, when they eventually did catch on fire, they wouldn't go out, so we stayed up until the last one burned down. We do that a lot, too - watching the fire burn out, just sitting there. Kind of nice, actually.

The next morning we woke up at 6:30 and broke camp by a little after 7. We hurried to Port Angeles, realizing that our phones were almost dead and we had no idea where the dock was for the ferry. But, we found it eventually, parked the car and hopped on the express ferry to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Leaving the Port Angeles Harbor. The Olympic Range is there, but covered by clouds.

I wanted to take pictures as the boat was moving, but it was incredibly choppy and we were forced to sit down in an enclosed area. I ended up sitting on the side where the spray could get through the enclosure. Thank you Gore-Tex for keeping my feet dry. Eventually, we made it to Victoria - this picture shows the huge hotels right in the bay. If only we had actual jobs making actual money...oh, wait.

Oh Canada! We arrive, and the captain puts up the Canadian flag.

Downtown Victoria. So quaint.

A dark picture of me by the sailboat harbor in Victoria.

After spending a few hours in the Royal British Columbia Museum (great exhibits on the natural history of BC and the Native people in the area) we stopped by the Parliament building. Self portrait, 2007. It was quite chilly there - nice and sunny, but only 55 degrees - and windy. The museum was a good choice.

We took the 3:00 ferry back to the USA, where we had to go through customs twice and wait in huge lines. We were asked "how long have you known each other" and "what city and state where you born in?" which weren't as bad as other times I've crossed the border but seemed a little unnecessary as we'd spent about 6 hours in Canada and purchased nothing but lunch. After we got back to our homeland, we drove to our next campsite. This time, we struck out into the backcountry. Although we weren't quite prepared (first aid kit? Nope. Bear proof canister? Nope. Camp stove? Nope. Note: the campsite had bear wires, so we could hang our food. And we could build a campfire. But the first aid kit - nope. ) we needed a place to stay that wasn't centered on RVs and had a bit more nature. We picked out a pretty close campsite on the map, Boulder Creek, and determined it was a 2.5 mile hike in. It was 6:00 by the time we filled out our permits, paid our fees, and got to the trail head - plenty of time to get to our campsite before dark.
As we get to the trailhead, we see a bazillion cars parked there. This trail also leads to natural hot springs - one of two hot springs in Olympic National Park, and the only free one. So, it's naturally pretty popular, and therefore is full of disgusting bacteria and is sketchy in other ways. (So no, we didn't go in.) But what it did mean is that a troop of loud teenagers was getting out of their car at the same time we were. They had sleeping bags. They had towels. They were carrying a ton of crap and had a dog (not allowed on this trail). We were concerned that with the number of cars there that the campsite would be full and that these kids would get there first. So, we booked it. We hiked the 2.5 miles in about 35-45 minutes, which is no small feat when you are hiking. But we lost them! We don't know if they ever made it, but we didn't hear about anyone dying in ONP in the news, so we figured they were ok.

The trail to the campsite was an old road, from the 1920s when the hot springs had a resort there and you could drive the whole way. Nature has taken its course, though, and now you can see the remains of the road.

To cross where the road was washed out, we had to cross a log bridge. Here we are on the bridge. Once we got to the campsite, we found a tent spot and fire ring far away from the other campers. Check out our view now!

We made a fire with some kindling we backpacked in and some (wet) wood we found. Our backwoodz skillz came in handy and we made our hobo dinners (potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots, and butter in a tinfoil packet.) Aaron manuevers the hobo dinners in the fire.

Our tent in the wilderness.

The next morning we woke up and hiked to the hot springs just to check them out. They were hot and springy.

Then, we made our way back to the car, at a more leisurely pace than the night before. However, we didn't really know what time it was and wanted to get on the road before one, so there was some urgency (Turns out we had gotten up at 8:30 and made it back to the car by 10. Something about sleeping in a tent makes you get up early.) Still had to ford the river in one place where the road had washed out. Aaron ponders the best path.

After getting in the car, we drove about an hour up to Hurricane Ridge. This is the do-not-miss-spot of the ONP and I am so glad we went. Look at this!

View of the Olympics. We camped down in one of those valleys.

Self Portrait at Hurricane Ridge.

From this spot you were supposed to be able to see the San Juan Islands. All I could see was cloud, which was pretty sweet, too.

After this, we drove the six hours back to Corvallis, brought all our stuff into the living room, and crashed. All the stuff is still in the living room. Oh well. A constant reminder of a great trip!

Tuesday

We had a great Memorial Day weekend, and I hope you did too. I'll post pictures later, since they're on my computer at home, but get ready for a big picture post.

On the six hour drive home from Olympic National Park, we listened to this show about the costs of war and it brought me to tears. Then, we switched to the country station (our favorite sing-a-long road trip music) and the DJ's patter of honoring our fallen troops - with the idea that all wars being equally patriotic and necessary and all deaths being equally valued and, well, necessary - was jarring after the other show's sensitive portrayal.

My friend Zach - fellow Gilder Lehrman history nerd and now a PhD student at Brandeis - posted a note about Memorial day on his Facebook profile. I don't know if non-friends can read it. I thought it was interesting, especially as he studies political history and well, I hate political history so I would never read the stuff he does and have such an informed opinion.

Anyhow, time to work. Pictures perhaps tonight.

Our life, in pictures

It's been a good couple weeks here in Corvallis. Work has been ok , weekends have been good. We spent one weekend at the sand dunes, which I'll make a post about later (as the pictures have been posted on Facebook already), one riding our bikes to Alpine (a 45 mile ride) and hiking around Corvallis, and one with my dad and stepmom visiting (hikes, a trip to the coast, and yummy dinners and a beer festival!). So it's been busy! I also went to an Americorps Symposium, which is where people share their stories of service through art. Needless to say, a lot of the art was pretty bad, but some of it was very good. I did not submit anything. No one wants to hear about my office life when they can hear about kids learning to read. I did get to hang out with Kris for two days, though, so that was tons of fun. I love sitting at her and Rebecca's apartment talking and drinking.

The office life is good, though - had a good planning meeting and next month I'll get to present to the board and get some of this stuff set before I leave.

This weekend Aaron and I are probably headed up to Olympic National Park, with a side trip to Victoria, BC. Should be fun!

Now, to the pictures. These are in no particular order, simply intended to give you a peek into our every day lives. In this edition, you will get a bonus of "Animals in the Lives of Aaron and Allison". Aaron at Mt. Bachelor when we went cross country skiing. The mountain behind him is not Bachelor. It is a piddly bump.

Aaron studying for the LSAT. He's spent a lot of time doing this lately. During this time, I'm usually reading or working on my painting.

When we went to the sand dunes, Aaron decided to test the waters. Still cold.

Us after the worst day of the year ride in Portland, in February. We set up that start line you see behind us.

Me at Mt. Bachelor. I love skiing!

The view from Dimple Hill. This was a 3 mile uphill hike from where we started, but we could make it to our house in four miles. I love living here for this reason.

Aaron prepares to go mountain biking. Our outfits are so sweet.

I wore my new shoes, made for wearing around town and looking semi-normal while still having my pedal cleats on the bottom. They don't look so clean any more. Note the leg warmers with the baggy shorts. Classy.
Ready for mountain biking, giving the face.
At the sand dunes, I stop to smell the flowers. They didn't really smell like anything.

This is what happens when I work on my bike. Never fails, I get grease everywhere.


ANIMAL TIME!!
Ok, well, that's mostly me, but there's an elephant in the background. At the Oregon Zoo.

Black bear in the new exhibit at the Oregon Zoo. I can only think of horrible Anchorman jokes, and...well...I succumb. BEAR FIGHT!!!
This is my co-worker Linda's new little friend. Buckshot was born a month ago now - he was one week old in this picture. He must have an itch. He was SO cute. I pet him a bit, but he was quite skittish.
Buckshot eating lunch. While this is quite cute, the cutest thing ever was when Buckshot chased Dixie, the obese beagle, around the yard. I was squealing too much to take a picture, but man, it was so cute.

Last, but not least, is Zoey, the Princess Cat. When we were house/catsitting, Zoey was our charge. She is so cute, except when she wakes you up by walking on your face at 5 AM. She likes to sit on this futon with you. Look at the paws!

That's it for pictures for now. Time for bed!