An Update

Well, lots has happened, but not much in the way of the patio.

Two weekends ago, we went to the beach to hang with Mary's family at the beach house. On the way there we stopped at Camp 18 for a bite to eat. The food is reasonable, but the building itself is amazing - stop by some time. What made this stop memorable was the cinnamon roll I saw. It had to have been 12 inches across. I'd already eaten my lunch, so there really was no space left for such a beast, but the next time I roll by, I'm going to stop in and get one. I doubt there's much hope that it's as good as those found at the Korner Kitchen (which are second only to mom's).

Last weekend (the 4th of July), Ron organized a mountain biking/rafting trip. You can see some of the pictures here and here. Mary flew down the whoop-de-doos. The weekend was too short, but a good time was had by all.

I happened to have the 5th of July off as well, and we went to the Oregon Garden. The last time we were there was right before it opened. The garden has made huge progress, but I imagine it'll still be a couple years before all the displays look established. My favorite was the water garden - with the lilly pads and the frogs.

After the garden, we ate some dinner in Silverton - where there appears to be one fancy restaurant (closed), and one each of a mexican, chinese, thai, and bistro-style restaurants. We plugged our nickel into the parking meter and ate dinner (fair fajitas, decent Cadillac margarita).

Now the parking meter was a trip - I almost grabbed Mary's camera to take a picture of it. Get this, it doesn't accept quarters - only dimes, nickels, and .... pennies! You get 12 minutes per penny (60/nickel, 120/dime). I remember when Berkeley got rid of dimes for their meters (quarters and nickels only). I can't imagine what the parking ticket in Silverton must be - $4???

And, last on my mind is the London bombings that just happened. I'm sorry to hear it happened, blah blah blah. What I want to say is that anyone who thinks we can "secure" our borders/cities/whatever against this kind of attack is just delusional. The only way to make that happen is to turn into a police state, which pretty much means the terrorists "win" - only I doubt our global policies would really change, so the terrorists would still be pissed at us (in which case we win? - they can't attack, and they're still angry == we win). Call me a hippie, but the only way to prevent attacks is to make them our friends - a big group hug. We don't need to make the world all love us, we just have to stop pissing off everyone in the Islamic world. Yes, I know we have non-Islamic terrorists, but most of those guys are internal to the country and a couple of well-placed smart bombs during a "training session gone awry" would solve that.