Bucket List

Yes, I know, I know. I'm a bit obsessed with this idea right now. =) I recently decided to start a "Bucket List" club. I won't go into any detail in here because I've already set up a social networking site for it as well as a personal blog plus talked about it on Facebook so...ya. Enough is enough. =) But if you're interested in seeing what it's all about about, you can check out http://thebucketlistclub.ning.com or even my (Julia's) new blog at http://juliasbucketlist.blogspot.com and you can find out a bit more! I will be posting again soon (Tuesday maybe?) about Dan and my recent adventures in Cali so I'll see you all then!

Much love

Julia

Photo Updates

Some photos of the last week or so...

Me petting the adorable Dulce. 

Will, Melissa, Julia, & Dan

Out on a bike ride in Sun River, Oregon.

Me looking up at Multnomah Falls.

Dan in front of Multnomah.

Me & Dan the Man hiking to the top of the Falls.

A little cave on the trail.

'Little' Multnomah Falls - the small preamble to the main event. 

Kisses!

Wahkeena Falls. 

Us in front of Wahkeena Falls. 

Poor sick Dan and Juneau taking another 4 hour nap. 

Spring Time For Hitler

The Producers play

I Wanna Be A Producer

The Producer's play

A bunch of accountants singing about how they're unhappy. 

Hmmm...I think we might know an accountant or two. Anthony? Sound Familiar?

The Producer's play

Us at The Producers play.

One of our favorite ducks! Part of the Trio.

The Trio! They are our favorite little menage a trois. We seriously have never seen them apart. The two fellas just follow the chick around all the time and 'protect' her. She's even been searching for a good nest site lately with both guys. Alternative lifestyles abound in Eugene! Even the wildlife has that vibe... =)

These Are The Days Of Our Lives...

Ok, so Dan insists that I update this thing before he gets flooded with angry fan mail (yeah, right). I will admit it has been a while since the last post though. Spring break has now come and gone. We headed up to Sun River with Teresa and a few friends for two nights. We hit the hot tub, drank Kirkland Signature beer (not bad considering how cheap it was), went on a bike ride, and Dan did some snowboarding. Unfortunately, the conditions on the mountain were pretty bad...until the day we left and it started snowing pretty hard. 

That was the first time that we'd left Juneau alone overnight and he definitely seemed to struggle with it. When we came home we smelled like dog (our friend Melissa was dog-sitting Dulce for the weekend and I played with her all day -fun!) and Juneau refused to come out from behind the washer for a while. Once we got him out he was ok so we suspect that he was worried there might be a canine around. The next few days we hung out at home and tried paying as much attention to him as we could. 

Our next voyage out during our break was a bit anti-climatic. We'd picked out a hike in our little trail book and drove an hour up the mountain to reach the trailhead. Unfortunately...it was snowed out. We ended up having to turn the car around before we were even two miles from the start of the trail. Crushed, we decided to stop at the reservoir for a quick picnic. It was FREEZING! It was probably better that we didn't go on the hike in the end...

Later in the week we headed up to Portland for the day. We headed up to Multnomah Falls and hiked to the top. The view from down below amazing, the view from the top was ok. The hike up was definitely fun even if the view was mediocre!  After Multnomah we stopped at Ikea on the way home to pick up a few things to help organize the house (you should see the difference in our laundry closet!) and headed out of town. Poor Dan had been struggling with a cold/flu and it was getting worse every day. 

Saturday we had a big day planned but ended up taking it easy since Dan was definitely having his worst day yet. We'd planned on going to a vineyard, catching dinner at a fancy restaurant (we got a $25 gift certificate for $3), then going to a production of The Producers at the Actor's Cabaret of Eugene. Instead, we just did the play. It was a GREAT production and we definitely want to go to some more shows there! 

Pictures will follow...

Bring On The Confetti!

Our Birthdays!

So we just celebrated our joint birthday last week. It was a great day! We were blessed with presents from family and friends and were able to spend the day together. I made a corned beef and vegetable dinner in the crock pot so we could play all day. We lounged around, watched Chuck and Dexter (our two current favorite shows), went on a bike ride along the river, had a great dinner. All in all, it was a fantastic day - even if I did end up crying first thing in the morning and during dinner. lol  Onions in the am and dinner...well, I made the mistake of trying to give Juneau a little corned beef as a treat. Since he believes EVERYTHING is a toy, he got excited and lunged for it. I ended up with a precise claw gouge deep in my thumb and another up and UNDER my fingernail. Owwwwwwwwww. ='( But he was so cute I couldn't be mad at him! Oh, and we decided to get a present for him too. He now has a little Oregon tag for his collar. He's so dashing with it on! Note the picture below. =)

We're heading out of town tomorrow to spend a few nights in Sun River with friends. Spring break, baby! We'll only be gone for a few nights. We haven't left Juneau alone yet so we wanted to ease him into it. He's such a needy kitty we're worried about how he's going to take it. I did get the rest of the spring break period off from work but am trying to pick up shifts now that we'll be around. For the days that I'm not working, we'll be off exploring Oregon. We've talked about going hiking, camping, checking out some of the waterfalls out here. Lol Maybe that book of NW Hiking Trails that I got Dan for Christmas will get some use!

There's not too much else in current news. We've hung out with more friends, I've chopped my hair off to shoulder length (pictures will be posted once we have some), we've gone on several bike rides, I'm officially re-applied to UO for the fall, Dan may have sold his car, AND he's gotten yet another bike which he loves a million times more. Oh, plus he's crashed again and re-injured his wrist as soon as it started to get better. He went to the health clinic on campus but their x-ray machine was broken so we still don't know if it's something too serious. He doesn't really want to go back and get it x-rayed but I still think he should. We'll see once the machine is fixed! Ummmm...that's it! 

It's Official!!

First thing is first! Dan was offered a job at the BRT (the educational research shop on UO's campus) next year making about 40G a year depending on how the funding is set up.  He'll get to work with people he admires in the realm of Educational Research (including Jerry Tindal) and the position is set up to turn into a GTF if/when he goes back for his Ph.D. Needless to say, it's a great opportunity and we're officially staying! We love Eugene, I'll be able to go to school, Dan will be making more money than he would in Utah, he'll get to work with amazing people, it all works out. =) Oh, and he may be able to start the position this summer while he takes his last class. Now we're just trying to figure out if we're going to stay in our current place or if we'll be able to track down a new home where we could get a dog. 

In other events/news, despite the fact that it is currently snaining, it's been feeling like summer out here! We've gone on a few bike rides recently - one just to the park and a long one down the river banks - and have even been reading on the porch and sipping the occasional smoothie. It's a bit strange...during the summer we were soaked to the bone and didn't really GET a summer, and now we're in the middle of winter and it's gorgeous out. Funny how it all works out. 

Our social lives are starting to get more active these days too. We went to Simmyung and Ester's house for dinner awhile back. It was delicious! We met up with some friends to celebrate Melissa's birthday and even went the next night to get a birthday Pizookie with Melissa and Will. Dan went and played Ping Pong with Andrew the other night while I caught a cheap movie. Oh, and Dan's finally found guys to play basketball with! 

Life is definitely great! And things are only looking up from here...

Juneau

Here's the amazing Juneau once again. This is starting to turn into more of a Juneau blog than a girly and boy blog, but that's ok, because he's girly and boy's boy.

Drama Drama Drama

    This last week has been a bit dramatic to say the least. Right after our last post, Dan's bike was stolen. Yes, that's right. The love-of-his-material-life LeMond. He left for class about ten minutes before I left for work that night - and he took my keys on accident. I had my spare and he was able to lock one of his bike locks so we figured it'd be ok. When Dan walked out of class the bike was right there, perfectly ok. Teresa was nice enough to give him a ride home to pick up his spare lock keys but when they got back to campus fifteen minutes later...it was gone. Poor man was devastated. Dan's even admitted that he'd rather somebody steal his car than his bike!

This event was a catalyst for even more problems over the next few days. Dan was (and still is) checking everything from craigslist to ebay religiously in the hopes to find it up for sale. While perusing for it, he found a great deal on a bike up in Portland. He talked to the guy and finalized the sale with us to head to Portland in the morning to pick it up. I had to call several coworkers to get my shift covered and we purchased a bike rack to take my bike (which was discovered in our hunt for the LeMond and was too good of a deal to pass up) so we could go on a ride through the city after. We'd arranged to call him when he got out of church at one. After getting a bit...lost...in Portland and taking a small stroll around an arboretum we headed into town. We'd just walked into Powell's when we got ahold of the fella and had to turn around. ( Boo! ='( ) Unfortunately...we'd locked the keys in the car. UGH! So we had to call somebody to get us back into the car. Dan called the bike's owner to let him know we'd be a little late and was told he'd received another offer that he was thinking of taking. After a bit of convincing, the guy said he'd still give it to us since it would be rather sketchy of him not too after we'd already driven all the way up there, finalized a deal, etc. The lock smith was a bit late so by the time we hit the road we'd tried calling Al (the bike guy) several times. He'd told us to drive up to WASHINGTON and meet him at a LA Fitness right off the freeway. We got there and waited...and waited...and waited...and tried calling a million times. After sitting there for over forty five minutes we finally headed back south without a bike. The guy had sold it to somebody else and didn't even have the decency to let us know! After we'd taken the day off and driven across state lines! UGH! People!

The next night I come home from work to be told by Dan that he'd sold his car. What?? I hadn't even known he was putting it up! We'd talked about it before, of course, since he doesn't ever drive it and we really don't need it, but he'd decided to put it up that night and sold it just a few hours later. So I hopped back into my car without dinner and we drove 30 minutes south to meet the guy. Turns out...he backed out too. After saying adamantly that he was taking it and Dan had told about a dozen people it wasn't available still. UGH! People! Since Dan had gotten such a great response to the ad, he's put it back up for more money. Hopefully we'll be able to get more out of it after that guy backed out - at least then he would have done us a favor instead of a disservice. 

Between work and school the rest of the week was pretty calm. Friday Dan was invited to go snowboarding with one of the girls in his program and her roommates. He had a blast, of course! I'm sure all of you reading know how much he LOVES his snowboarding. Meanwhile, I headed up to Portland with Teresa and Melissa. Mel's just moving into a new place and wanted to get some things at IKEA. I ended up picking up a small shelving unit for the kitchen (what a difference it's made!) and a couple of small cheap end tables that we use pushed together to make a coffee table. Great purchases! It was a great trip and we spent a little time in Teresa's cute old neighborhood which made her extremely Portland-sick. Oh, and I introduced the girls to mochi ice cream! If you've never tried it, you're missing out! Trader Joe's carries one of my favorite commercially available brands (try the strawberry) or some Whole Foods carry them too. They're my favorite dessert. 

For Vday we did nothing special. We just hung out like we normally do and then I worked in the pm. Sunday night we'd talked about going to the Eugene Ballet's performance of Swan Lake but decided against it when we realized that we could only get the student discounts on Saturday. But we were invited to go play laser tag and get pizza and beer with some coworkers of mine that afternoon. I was so excited! Until I got a migraine. I've been getting a surprising amount of headaches lately even had to call in sick to work once last week because of it. Anyway, we spent the day around the house and made a trip to the store for provisions. It'd been a while since we'd stocked up and our fridge was starting to look kinda sad...Oh, and we made an attempt to eat at PF Chang's since we have that gift card but it was still too much of a wait so we just went to this little mexican place in the Oakway center. It was our first time eating out since probably October. We still need to figure out when we're going to get PF though. We've already almost lost the gift card several times!

As far as the serious stuff goes, Dan's paper is now officially in the review process for possible publication. I'm so proud of him! Plus he's set up a meeting with Jerry Tindal (one of the men he most admires here) about research job possibilities with him next year. Plus he's talked to his old principal at Willow Springs and she told him that they were switching to a traditional school year and that there would likely be job openings next year. Yay! It would be great fun for him to go back to his old school (which his sister Katie also works) and a traditional school year would be better for us than a year round one too. It would leave the summers open to possibly head back to Alaska or somewhere else for the tourism seasons. Especially with my school schedule too. Who knows where we'll end up but things are looking up! Dan's leaving it up to me to decide where we go and I'm waiting to see how my credits transfer and what job opportunities he'll have. Hopefully we'll know for sure in a couple of months. 

In the meantime, here are some cute videos of Juneau from the last week. Oh, and one of Dan drunk and playing on our exercise ball. =) Enjoy!