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After Kim and I got done seeing Robert Kennedy Jr speak, we headed over to Jesse’s girlfriend’s place. It turns out that she’s about 10 blocks from us so we walked. Jacob bought a new car, a subaru Impreza I believe, now that he has a job at Boeing. Travis, Jesse, Jacob, Waleska and Deborah were there. Mike, Travis’s friend, and his girlfriend were there for a little while but left early. The rest of us played a dice game called 3 man until around 3 in the morning. Travis had some trouble with the game since he was already drunk, so he drank water for most of the game. It’s a good thing he did, because he probably finished off about 6 glasses of water.

Kim fell asleep a bit after two, so Jacob drove us home. We had to get up the next morning at 9 to go to a client’s breakfast that our real estate advisor was throwing. It was worth it for the prizes. We got a $25 gift certificate to Home Depot, a frequent shopping location lately, despite their massive partisan donations to the Republican party.

Kim and I drove down the Oregon coast this weekend for my Christmas present. Our destination was cheese, wine and relaxation. It was great to get away from the house, the internet, phones, computers and the city for a little while. Kim met me at work Friday afternoon and she drove the whole way! I napped a bit and it was good that I didn’t have to drive because my back was killing me when I threw it out falling up stairs… Smooth huh?

We arrived at our secret destination, the Old Wheeler Hotel. Kim had booked us a room with a jacuzzi in a historic old hotel. King bed too! Now that Kim is used to sleeping on a queen she figures that it needs to be a king to feel like luxury.

The next day we went to the Tilamook cheese factory! I love cheddar cheese so I’ve always wanted to see the source of most of the cheese that I eat. We watched the 40 pound blocks get sliced up, packaged and sent off. It was cool, but I gotta say, the Cabot cheese factory tour in Vermont is waaaaay cooler. They have a lot more samples and the tour is guided instead of just looking through a window.

After buying $40 in cheese and ice cream we stopped off at a winery and then drove around the scenic coastline. After a full day we went back to the hotel to relax!

Some more wine and more scenery Sunday and then we drove home, refreshed, but still not ready to go back to work. On the way home we stopped by a huge tree, I think Sitka spruce. Kim loves trees like this.

Kim, Brian, Bridgid and I were at it again this past weekend, trying to find some snow to hike in. Initially we wanted to go camping (and by we I mean everyone but me), but decided against it since we really weren’t prepared. Brian gave me a snowshoe guidebook for Christmas so we looked up a route in there and took off for the Cascades. The hike was just a logging road, but there were some nice vistas along the way. As is our habit, we hiked until we had to turn around in order to get back to the car before dark. On the way back some country yokels in big pickups had driven most of the way up the road. My Subaru made it a good ways up, but these fools seemed to be driving in the snow just because they could. It was freezing rain on the way home so traffic was a little tedious, so we stopped for Mexican food.

Kim and I had presents to give our friends for Christmas that we never got around to distributing before Christmas, so we threw a dinner party last night. We made spaghetti with cheese, sauce and garlic bread. Anna, Phil, Travis, Jacob, Waleska, Preson, , Patrick, , Bridgid, Gabe, and Brian were all there. We almost all fit around our dining room table when we put the three leaves in! After eating we pass out Chinook Books that we got for everyone. It’s an environmentally friendly coupon book that supports local businesses, similar the Entertainment book if you’ve heard of those. Then everyone just enjoyed hanging out and talking. It’s harder now that we’re out of college to get big groups of people together. For that matter it seems harder to get people to do things period. Oh well, it was a fun night.

Kim and I went to the Premier for New Years. Phong’s company Zango threw the party. Phong was drunk when we got there and repeatedly appologized for it. G Love and the Special Sauce were the live band and I thought they kicked ass. Most of the people there didn’t pay much attention though, which is a shame since they’re such a cool band. We got there around 9:30 and there weren’t many people, but by the time midnight rolled around the place was so packed that you couldn’t even get to the bar for a drink. Kim and I hardly drank just because it was so hard to get a drink. We found Phong, Justin and his girlfriend and had a fun time in the photo booth. The photos were free! Kim and I left a little after midnight to try to meet up with Danny downtown, but parking was a pain and it was starting to rain so we went home.