Thanksgiving

Most years we travel to Phoenix for the weekend to have Thanksgiving with the larger family. This year we did something different and returned home on Thursday after Thanksgiving lunch at the retirement apartments where Linda's mom lives. On Friday Mandy, Paul and the grandkids arrived from Phoenix, followed by Mike and his dog Stewie later that evening.

Saturday was the day for our Thanksgiving dinner - a roast and ham instead of turkey, but surrounded by all the usual family favorites. Afterward we got everyone together on the front porch for a picture.

It was a great weekend of just hanging around together like we hadn't done together in too many years. I can't describe how wonderful it was to have everyone together at the home where Mike, Mandy, and Nick grew up. Here are some more photos from the weekend.

   

Celebrating the Christ of Christmas

Let's boldly proclaim in confident speech and compassionate act that Jesus Christ, born in a humble manger in the obscure village of Bethlehem, lives today as the King of kings and Lord of lords. We bow before His majesty in weekly worship and daily service. We know not only who He is, the incarnate Son of God, but also whose we are. We belong to Christ. We are His people. We are not ashamed or embarrassed by the good news that all who claim His name become His children. And we will spend eternity with Jesus in His forever family. Arrogance? Certainly not. These are the humblest of statements only possible because of His amazing grace.
Rev. Bob Norton, writing in the December newsletter of our church, Church of the Ressurection (www.cor-pca.org)

Sea Vegetables?

I saw this today on the shelf of the lunchroom at work. Does it make it more desirable to call seaweed "sea vegetables"?

I'm imagining wild kelp parties off the coast of Maine.

Rim Country

This weekend the annual Rim Country Quilt Roundup was held in Payson, Arizona. This is always a fun show with a large number of quilts, and inspiration.

There are always quilts at this show from Debbie Stanton. We find Debbie's quilting inspiring and look forward to seeing it each year. This "cathedral window" curved cross-hatching is an example of how she divides and enhances the open space in a quilt.

We also love seeing Debbie's choice of motif's. Some of them are small and almost go unnoticed, but others become the theme of the quilt because they are large and complement the piecing so well.

The end result is a stunning quilt which won the "Best Professional Machine Quilting" award for the show.

Arizona is divided by a geological feature known as the Mogollon Rim, which rises about 3,000 feet in about 10 miles. The "Rim Country", as this area is known, provides fun twisty roads and wonderful vistas. The 125-mile trip from Flagstaff to Payson is always interesting because it takes us through this area.

Today the scenery had some almost magical elements to is due to a winter storm that was passing through the area. Here are a couple of shots from today's trip.

   

Starting to Rain

Portland, Oregon - Part Deux

Portland is full of pleasant surprises. Seeing the word "Utrecht" on a sign-board was certainly a surprise since we weren't in the Netherlands. We'd never heard of Utrecht Art Supplies before, but this was a whole store full of that brand.

There is a parking lot on the other side of this wall, but the wall with these industrial doors are still there just for the architectural detail.

Fall in Flagstaff is probably the best time of year for weather, but you can never depend upon having bright colors on the trees. Even if the colors are bright, it's pretty much just yellow from the Aspens. By contrast, Portland has lots of trees that turn various shades of red and we were there at a perfect time for them.

As wonderful as the tree colors were, some of the most fascinating color was on the ground.

If you want to see more, we've got more photos at Portland Photo Album

Portland, Oregon - Part One

Portland, Oregon is becoming our favorite U.S. city to visit. We were there last year in October for the first Machine Quilters Expo West, and returned again this year. The focus at the conference was learning about the Intelliquilter system, but we had plenty of time to wander around town, visit yarn shops, and eat far more yummy food than is good for us!

This is probably my favorite photo of our visit. We were headed into downtown for dinner and caught the Max train at dusk. The combination of the sky, train, architecture of the station, and the convention center towers really amazed me when I saw it in the camera. Another 30 seconds later and I don't think the sky would have had any detail at all.

Dinner at Bridgeport Brew Pub. Mussels for Linda with a rasberry infused vodka. Cottage Pie for Ernie with a pint of Porter. When the waitress asked if we knew what we wanted to order, we replied that we'd known for a year what we wanted to order!

Our Max pass meant that we could go anywhere that was on the Max train streetcar routes. That meant we were able to visit 5 different yarn shops. I think Portland may have the highest ratio of knitters in the population of anywhere we've visited (at least it felt that way). We met one knitter as we were heading for downtown on the train and she was headed for the same shop. In the photo, Linda is wearing the new sweater that she had finished the day before the trip. We found some wonderful Madelintosh yarn for Linda's next sweater project as well as some Opal "Starry Night" that Linda had been seeking for socks.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this year and we heard lots of comments about how wonderful it had been, but this sign at twisted shows that Portlanders have a certain fondness for rain (last year we learned a new weather forecasting term - "sun breaks"). The staff explained that the fall usually brings rainy weather, which is just the perfect thing for knitting.

Portland has quite a food-cart culture. At least one full block in downtown is surrounded by carts, and there are pockets like this throughout the city.

Portland has a very old-fashioned feel to it that I really like. This auto-parts store is not only in an old building, but this guy was in the back patiently rebuilding an engine. You won't find that kind of thing in your local AutoZone and you just sense that if you needed an engine, this was the kind of guy you wanted to be building it for you.

The converging lines of the train and streetcar lines really captured my imagination.

Of course, you can't visit Portland without spending time at Powell's City of Books.

Imagine and entire city block, 3 floors high, that all looks like this! Oh, and the technical books are in yet another building across the street. So many books, so little time...

I guess I just had a thing for converging lines on this trip. We wandered into this kitchen supply store as we walked between a yarn shop and the streetcar.

More from Portland next time...

God's Plans

This summer I spent several weeks fighting problems with my 1973 Porsche 914. It started when I was bringing Nate home from his first day of Discovery camp. The engine suddenly bucked and misfired terribly and I didn't think we would make it home under our own power.

Now normally, the fuel injection system on a 914 is very reliable, in spite of the fact that it is 50 year-old technology. In addition, I had the distributor rebuilt only 5,000 miles previously so I really didn't suspect the component that ultimately turned out to be the problem - the injector points that reside in the bottom section of the distributor.

One of the best ways to diagnose a problem like this is to change out parts with known good/new parts. One of the parts that I changed out along the way was the cylinder head temperature sender. The one which I bought turned out to be the wrong one for my car, but the resistance measurements were very close to the correct unit and it seemed to run pretty well so I left it in place because I wanted to see how it did over the long term (since the correct part is made of unobtainium). Of course the original unit got safely tucked away in the glove box for "just in case".

That's my friends Brant, Jim and Kevin at the Red Rock Classic event in Beaver, Utah the weekend of September 8th. My car ran flawlessly for the whole 800+ mile weekend, but Jim's orange 914 had a fuel pump go out on the way there. After the Saturday drive to Cedar Breaks National Monument, a new problem developed when Jim's car suddenly died and was obviously flooded. Although we could get it restarted, it would not stay running. Finally Ed Morrow (who came all the way from Massachusetts) diagnosed the problem as an intermittent problem with the cylinder head temperature sender - something he'd never experienced before (and Ed has years of professional 914 experience!).

As is usual for these kinds of things, the question get's asked "who has a spare xxxx", and often I'm the guy who has a spare because of some previous failure. So that's Brant in the photo, changing out the bad unit for the spare that I had in my glove box. Not only did I have a spare, but the new unit which I had purchased was the right one for Jim's car.

The conversation after the successful fix was something like this: "Since CHTs almost never go bad, what are the odds that someone would have a spare along, and the right spare too?" My answer was a line from an old hymn from the Psalter Hymnal - "God works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform", which got an affirmation from Kevin.

There's a verse that also came to mind, and which came up again in this morning's sermon at Church of the Resurrection - Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

As I was fighting with my car problems in August and wondering if I was going to have my car roadworthy in time to make the trip to the event, I often muttered to myself "why me, why now?" Well, God was preparing in advance a good work for me to do and an opportunity to share my faith.

You just can't make this stuff up.