Insta-recap

So, I know I said I'd blog more... But, the problem is, I still don't have a camera. BUT, I don't think that will not be the case much longer, so I thought I'd go ahead and jump the gun, and show you what I've been up to for the past several months. If you follow me on Instagram already, this might be kind of boring. If not, I'm @calliebellez. Get to following...

On January 1, we picked up the dogs from their holiday stay at the Muddy Dog Ranch. They were very tired and very happy to be home. So was I!

I was sick over the holidays, but started to feel better, so we took a Bouldering trip to Bend over MLK weekend where I climbed the tallest boulder problem of my life. For a girl who doesn't like heights, this was a big deal. We also drank a lot of amazing craft beer and ate delicious pub food. Oh, Central Oregon, how I love thee.

After the trip, I started to feel crappy again - a relapse from my earlier ear infection/cold. I drank lots of tea and took lots of baths and struggled to do daily activities let alone climb or go to the gym. It was the worst. I almost never get sick, so this knocked me back big time.

I never lost my appetite, though, and this fajita meal was one of my favorites so far this whole year. It was delicious. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

And then we had snow.... lots of lots of cold and snow. Thankfully, that has passed by now. I feel sorry for the Northeast, still getting covered by it.

The snow cleared in time for me to head up to Vancouver for a work conference. It was my first time in Canada, and my first time at a professional conferencey event! I wrote about it here.

One of my New Years' resolutions was to walk the dogs more. And I'm happy to say that we are succeeding with usually at least two walks per week. Sometimes they are around our neighborhood, but other times, we go for fun hikes together. I love this photo. It's the background of my phone right now. :)

I competed in my first climbing competition! At The Crux gym in Eugene. It was a total blast, and I'm glad I did it! I finished fifth in my division. Not too shabby.

We went cross-country skiing for the first time and had SO much fun!

I made bagels for the first time, and they turned out better than I ever could have imagined. EVER. They're better than any bakery bagel I have ever had in my whole life. I may have found a calling: bagel baker. Just kidding. If I did that for a living, I'd weight 300 pounds. But, I will make more.

I was, as usual, surprised at how easy it was. I was always intimidated by the poaching step, but it wasn't bad at all! Here's the recipe I used! I highly, highly suggest the cookbook.

I think next, I'm going for a doubled recipe of whole wheat bagels. Om nom.

That's it for now. See you soon!

First Oregon snow

So.....I'll be a better blogger in the New Year, or after someone buys my camera so I can upgrade.

But, in any case, today marks the first snow since we've been in Corvallis. There are several inches on the ground, and it's still coming down. I enjoy weather events when I can stay home, but there's stuff to do today: a hair appointment, a holiday party. And besides, I'm completely OUT OF BOOKS! Tragedy. It will all get done, and THEN I'll sit on my couch by the fire.

UPDATE: In the middle of writing this entry, I decided to reschedule my hair appointment. Everyone gets to see my roots for two more weeks, but I'll look fresh & cute for our trip home!

Anyway: The snow. It was our new pup Charlie's first snow. He was timid at first ...for a couple of seconds before he started BOUNDING through the yard. It's funny to see the lab in him come out that way. And, as always, Boone hates it. He did his business as quickly as possible so he could rush back in and curl up into a ball on the couch.

UPDATE: The library just decided to close at 1 p.m. So no books either. I might have to download a Kindle book to make it through the storm....

Or I'll just watch my dogs play. They are pretty entertaining....

Happy Halloween!

Today, I'm dressed like this:

I was pretty much always a witch for Halloween growing up. If I wasn't a witch, I would be a bunny or a dog or something cute. Never something super girly. Witches really embody Halloween for me.

I'm not sure when Halloween became one of my favorite holidays, and I don't go ALL out getting dressed up or going out to parties, but there's just something about it that I love. I love decorating my house with witches and ghosts and creepy things. I love watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" I love going to the pumpkin patch, through corn mazes and haunted houses and to harvest festivals. I love PUMPKINS. Eating them and carving them.

My office had a pumpkin carving competition. I was bummed that not too many people participated, but that did allow Mr. Snailey here to clench the top spot in the "best decorated" category.

We made him last night! I took care of the butternut squash part, while Aaron actually carved the pumpkin. Tonight I'm planning on getting home early to wait for any trick-or-treaters we might have. This is our first year in a real house with a front door and everything, so I hope we get at least a couple kids coming by! I think we'll also roast our pumpkin seeds and bake some muffins.

The muffins aren't very Halloween-y, but Aaron has a potluck tomorrow at work, so ya know.

How are you celebrating?!

Fire

"Fire operates at a number of different scales. The smallest is that of a campfire, where you're just mixing fuel and oxygen and a heat source and theoretically, it perpetuates itself in time." --- Dr. John Bailey, Oregon State University

I've been working on a story about fire and fire science for work. Thus, thinking a lot about it, and about all the wonderful campfires Aaron has built for us. :)

Anyway... I've also just been plugging along. Working. Cleaning. Last weekend was nice if not a little rainy. We spent Sunday in Portland enjoying IKEA, Foster burger, shopping in the Pearl and seeing Dr. Dog play with The Lumineers.

I've also been drinking more tea and wearing more boots and scarves. More of that to come, I'm sure.

The Garden

It's a secret garden with secret boulders. And, for one day last weekend, a Callie, an Aaron and a Boston terrier.

A v5ish in what I'm calling "the front area". We don't know!

Boone looked on. (See all the ferns?!)

I worked it too!

And then we all got tired and went home. Which was not difficult, because this prime bouldering spot is only an hour from our front door. <3

Home.

I sighed when I got home from work this Friday. It was a strange feeling to know that a week ago I was gazing at this more empty space for the first time, excited about filling it with our things and making it our own. One week later, magically, it is that. And it is wonderful. We just completed our very first "home improvement" project: fixing the front gate so that Boone can stay out in the yard while we're inside the house. The house's owner, our landlord, lives in Australia, so we'll be in charge of these kinds of improvements, which feels nice. Anyway, here it is!

Fergie, my flamingo, lives outside now.

Front yard wilderness.

Living room typical.

Above our fire place!

Living room TV.

Dining room.

Kitchen.

Big kitchen window.

Happy kitchen things!

Hallway. Big mirror.

Bathroom.

Bedroom.

Aaron's closet in our bedroom.

Living room. The fan was our first purchase. A must.

MY closet in MY room!

This is the converted garage, which has the washer/dryer, and a few things that will be moved out to the shed later.

Aaron's man room. I put my Dawson's Creek box set out to make fun of him. This room has our "adventure closet" with our outdoor gear.

Also Aaron's man room. We're lacking furniture for down there...

The back garden.

There are artichokes growing in one of our raised beds. Fate.

Backyard clothesline.

As you might be able to tell, there are some more upcoming projects. I'm excited to make the place even more ours. I love it!

Exhaustion building

Working backwards....

We moved this weekend. Into a new house in the town I work in. Actually our house is 1.5 miles from my office. It was previously rented by a coworker of mine, and a former member of my department before that. We like to keep things in the family, I suppose.

It has a big, fenced back yard with a garden. It has a finished, connected garage where laundry will be done and video games will be played. It has a big(ish) kitchen, a living room with tons of light, the perfect-sized bedroom and an extra room ...for me. A room of my own. So far "my" room has a desk (no chair) and my closet. Maybe I will put more there soon. I envision it being my "office/yoga studio".

I biked to work for the first time today. This was a feat considering I'm not the most confident cyclist in the world. I know I'll get better. I'm exhausted from the stress of it (silly, I know). But I'm also residually exhausted from the weekend. Because said previous renter/coworker is busy moving into a new house & becoming a father & other life-changing events, we hadn't actually seen the place before we got the keys. We took everyone's word for what a great space and what a great deal it is. And it is.

I dropped by on Friday after work, gawked at the emptiness and decided which rooms and closets would hold which things. That night, we drove back down for dinner and for Aaron to see the place and to drop off the three boxes worth of books, DVDs and CDs we'd actually packed ahead of time.

Nothing else was packed. Nothing. But, we don't have too many things at this point. We had just enough to fit into our last 600-square-foot studio apartment, so we weren't too worried about the packing side of things.

We were fully packed by about 1 p.m. on Saturday, and just about had everything under one roof by 9 p.m. that evening. I tried to unpack a bit, but my feet weren't having it. Aaron had to work on Sunday morning and early afternoon, so I unpacked most of the house by myself and at noon made my way back to the old place for cleaning duty. It wasn't a tough job since the apartment was teeny and essentially brand new. Aaron joined me at 1:30 or so. We took a break and grabbed lunch and made a Target trip before we finished up cleaning the kitchen, taking out the last bit of trash & cramming the cleaning supplies into the back of my PT Cruiser.

I headed into our moving experience physically tired and sore from a day - Friday - of canyoneering. I'm writing an outdoorsy story for work, and the director of the school's "Adventure Leadership Institute" invited me on a trip with a group of kids training to teach a canyon leadership class. It was their second time to run this particular canyon, and it was my first time running any canyon...

After a two hour drive in a van, we stopped on the side of the road and suited up: wet suits, dry jackets, booties, helmets, PFDs and canyoneering harnesses, which are different from climbing harnesses in that they have rubber bottoms. Yup. You're essentially wearing a rubber diaper.

Wearing all of this gear, we bushwhacked through a forest to get to the canyon. We started out wading through the creek, which was actually the most difficult part of the entire trip for me. I'm always careful when I'm walking over rocks. I go slow. And, it turns out, I go even slower in water. But, the water got deeper and the rocks got bigger, and the walking part got easier after awhile. There were several slides down rushing water and jumps into deep water off high rocks and tree trunks - fun.

And there were two repels. Before this, I had only repelled off of vertical or slightly overhung (or slightly slabby) surfaces after sport climbing. Repelling down a waterfall into shallow water is different. Your life is in your own hands, sure. That part doesn't bother me. The part that did bother me was the sliding-down the rocks part. My leg got stuck and my hip popped on the first one... And also the whole water part. Before I started, they told me that climbers have a tendency to stop repelling and wait for a moment if they feel uncomfortable, but when you're repelling down a waterfall you shouldn't stop because the water will just keep hitting you and building up. I understood this and was sure I wouldn't have a problem during the first, short repel. I was wrong. The first thing I did when I felt a little freaked was STOP, and the next thing I knew, the whole team was yelling at me to "keep going". Hilarious. I did better the second time.

And I made it out of the canyon alive. Tired, but alive. It was an awesome experience, and I think it will make my story stand out. I just have to finish writing it...

I was also tired starting out on the canyon trip because we'd been out late two nights before seeing The Postal Service at the Rose Garden in Portland. The show was amazing. I'd never been to a concert at a venue that big before. And Jenny Lewis was amazing. She was, of course, my favorite part. Before the show we went over to Dave & Rebekah's and had salad and pizza and beer and wine and cider and the rest of my marion berry pie. It was a great night and totally worth the exhaustion that followed.

So see, it's all building on itself. Last night we were back in the climbing gym. And after that we finished laundry and cleaning the new house. We're having our first guests in the next day or so: Aaron's mom and two Aunts are coming. Yup, I'm gonna need a nap after my ride home from work.

Quack Quack Quack

So...last week, I got myself involved in an interesting discussion, which turned into this.

And this is all because my friends from college are crazy and fun and imaginative (and I miss them)...

But, in the middle of all this hoopla, we're not talking about why the Mighty Ducks is important (as a film series), and why we feel drawn to them. Here are my thoughts on the matter....

•They're underdogs: When the Ducks start out as District 5, before Coach Bombay swoops in to save them, they have nothing. They're using newspapers for hockey pads. All they really have is each other, which brings us to my next point

•We love ensembles: DUCKS FLY TOGETHER, and there is someone for everyone to relate to! I love ensemble films in general, but the Mighty Ducks has to be one of my favorites. There are SO many characters. Some of them kind of get lost in the shuffle, and we only had a few details about them to form our opinions. This makes them the perfect "'verse" for fanfiction, which I may or may not have enjoyed in junior high and early high school...

•Girl power: And this might be the most important point for me. But, every time I wear my hair in a low braid (which is often because I'm just not a pony tail person), I think about Connie Moreau and how badass that long, brunette braid looked coming out of her helmet. The Might Ducks isn't just for boys. It's for strong girls just as much, and we loved seeing Connie and Julie "The Cat" dominate.

These are just a few of my thoughts, but these three movies were honestly a pretty important part of my childhood. They ended up challenging me creatively, and I even made friends through the fandom. Just goes to show that you never really know where your inspiration is going to end up coming from.

"...And there you were: Charlie and the Ducks. And as hard as I fought it, there you were. You gave me a life, Charlie, and I want to say thank you. I told Orien about all this when I talked to him about taking over. I told him that you were the heart of the team and that you would learn something from each other. I told him that you were the real Minnesota Miracle Man."

Exploring!

Another weekend is in the books. Friday's usual pizza night turned into pasta night. We were going grocery shopping after work, which opened up a myriad of dinner opportunities, but Aaron said he felt like pasta, so pasta it was. My current favorite recipe is based on this Pinterest favorite, as I do love the goat cheese. I usually leave out the artichokes, but this time we did opt to add some mushrooms & sun-dried tomatoes to the sauce!

So, after work we made our way to the store and picked up everything we needed ...except the actual pasta, which I realized after we'd pulled out of the parking lot. Luckily, just around the corner was our local Target store, and we ran in and fetched some trottole. How the hell have I never cooked with that stuff before? It holds sauce perfectly, and like most things Archer Farms, this variety was delicious!

After a jaunt down to Eugene on Saturday morning during which we may or may not have ended up with a half dozen Voodoo doughnuts, we headed out to Wolf Rock.

Wolf Rock is apparently Oregon's largest monolith, and it does look intimidating from several miles away. Saturday was the first really hot, undebatably-summer day in Oregon so far, and since there aren't that many sport routes at Wolf Rock, and since I'm still not entirely psyched on Sport climbing at the moment, we decided not to camp near the crag that night.

Instead, we headed to Sisters, only stopping in town for beer...

I've only seen the Kansas-City-based Boulevard beer in two places in Oregon so far: Market of Choice in Corvallis and now, Ray's Food Place in Sisters. Neither of these stores have stocked my favorite: Boulevard Wheat, so if anybody knows where to find that, please let me know! I will buy it in cases.

This Bock was delicious, though! Maybe even rivaling the Wheat. I really enjoyed drinking it when we made it to the Sisters Boulders.

This area is a really cute, neat and compact boulder field. The rock is volcanic and the 30-ish-food boulders just rise out of the flat landscape.

We fooled around on a few of the problems on Sunday, and while we didn't climb anything THAT quality, I'm convinced there are amazing problems out there, and I want to find them! We'll be back, Sisters.

Paddling

I'v been wanting to try this for FOREVER, and lucky for me, my place of employment has very cheap options for gear rentals. This was our first time taking advantage of that program. We got inflatable kayaks and everything we needed for a day of paddling on a big creek near the coast.

The boats were cumbersome, and we took no phones or GPS devices, so all I know is that we paddled pretty hard on still water for 3.5 hours. And then we were wiped out!

Kayaking is on my outdoor-hobby wish list now for sure. I can't wait to go again!