Box of Whine

Like every year, Jess and I make the CG-Bend-Woodburn Triangle roadtrip spectacular.  On our last day there, it was suggested that with all of the ample snow, we should go sledding… but not your regular down-the-hill, walk back up, dependence on gravity sledding.  We used the four wheeler to sled.  Behold:

Yes, I am wearing a cowboy hat, but not, I don’t honestly believe I belong in one.

Cottage Grove to Brooks: 1.5 hours.  The last 8 miles from Aurora to Woodburn: 4 hours.  Averaged miles per hour: 20, which is misleadinglyspeedy.

Worst drive… EVER.

This week, Jess and I were happily snowed in.  Two extra days off of school meant that we had a lot of time to hang out together, something we didn’t get to do as often as we would like.  We had nice breakfasts, worked on the house, watched movies… what else could you ask for?

Then my boredom set it.  This is not insult to Jess, but rather, I’m not a person who is very good at hanging around inside a house for more than just a day.   One our second snow day, I decided to break out my camera to entertain myself.  In particular, we found the smile sensor on my camera to be quite interesting.  Apparently, when it is turned to this setting, when a smile is detected, the camera takes a picture.  Most of the time it was accurate, other times it caught pseudo smiles or smiles that weren’t there.

After that novelty wore off, I coaxed Jess into helping me with a project.  I took four pictures and with some editing on photoshop I came up with this:

Boredom at it’s semi-productive best.

When taking pictures inside the house and then working on the computer got old, we braved into the snowy cold of Cottage Grove.  As we usually do on snow days, we went for a walk just beyond where our house is, up into the hills:

I think I’m offically becoming a Hanson.

Today at the high school, I gave blood for my fourteenth time, bringing my total donations up to 1.74 gallons (Ha! Take that milk jug!).  To donate, they have you answer a round of questions: Have to been to Africa?  Have you ever had relations for money? Are you pregnant?  The usual sort of stuff.

After that, they do a quick little review of your answers with a nurse, test the iron conent of your blood (Whoo, no anemic!) and take your blood pressure.  Of course, during all of this there is small talk between me and the nurse, which is probably because I’m one of the few staff members who donates and so one of the few non-high schooler they see during the day.  I’m not sure how it came up, but she said her kids went to Elmira for school, so I threw out the question if she knew one of Jess’s relatives that live in Elmira.  As it turns out, she did, which isn’t entirely surprising as they’re fairly well-known through their boat manufacturing business.

What was unusual was that not only did she know them, she was actually related to them and so in turn, I was related by marriage to her.  Who would have thought that the person who pricked my finger and tested my blood would end up being related to me by the end of our five minute interaction.  I’m sure that would say that this is a regular (if not daily) occurance for her, running into a Hanson or a Hanson off-shoot seems to be a biquarterly activity for her.

This is still a new experience for me, coming from a family where I can count my family and extended family on my fingers and toes while keeping at least one shoe on, many maybe half a mitten.