I'm awesome

I know it's early in the tourney, but I have to brag now while I can. Friend Gregg invited me to join his traditional for-bragging-rights March Madness pool. I don't like college hoops and have never paid any attention to the annual craziness. But since I like Gregg, I decided to add to his fun. Well, his fun has turned to my fun!

With 12 games out of the way, I'm in first place (along with two others in his group)! I never thought I would enjoy that so much! Knowing that my moment won't last long, I've already sent off an e-mail to Gregg, made a call to my sis and snapped a screengrab of the bracket before it all changes (it may have already).

-Liz :)

PS - Eryn is right behind me with just two losses - yay!

PPS - Where's Gregg?!?!

Sweater Day

Today is Sweater Day in honor of the late, great Mr. Rogers. So put on your favorite sweater and help celebrate what would have been his 80th birthday.

YAY!
-Liz :)

My turn

I chuckle in the fall as everyone groans about raking their leaves. In my yard, most leaves stay where they fall or get shoved onto the beds to make a nice winter blanket for my plants. But come springtime, my beauties are awakening from their slumber and need my help getting out from under that now-wet, heavy and decaying blanket.

I avoid carbon-producing leaf blowers and instead choose the old-fashioned way -- manual labor! That means lots of raking and, around my tender perennials, crawling around on my hands and knees and hand scooping. I never think of my yard as very big until this time of year.
After a couple hours of sweaty work, my yard-debris bin is full and my deck and rock walkways are sporting a leaf-blanket of their own. AND - I've only done one corner of my property (the easy corner)! But now my plants can bask in the spring sunshine and flourish.

-Liz :)

Why did I get married??

We went to Whistler about a year ago with friends Sean and Karen for some Canadian skiing. The trip was excellent - full of lots of fun stories and great snow. One day as we were heading from the slopes to our mountainside condo, we literally walked through a movie set right outside our building. We recognized Janet Jackson with her hair in a bun and wearing a long fur coat. We watched for a while while they reset the scene over and over for different shots. Later in the day, they moved the filming inside a shop, lighting it from the outside. Here's the view from our condo balcony of the night-turned-to-day inside shot: I looked it up when we got home and found out that it was a movie called "Why did I get Married" due out in the fall. We're too cheap to see it in the theater, but we rented the DVD and watched it this weekend. The story was entertaining but not earth shattering. I'm not sure we would have watched it if we weren't looking for "our scene" to show up. But it wasn't a waste of an evening.

So the movie was set at a cabin in Colorado. The women in the group head out to go shopping, and there's a very brief scene with them walking outside the shop and then a bit more when they are inside. That's our scene! But the funny thing is, it was all closeups with no way of identifying anything in the background. It could have been shot anywhere - even in a soundstage. I'm not sure why they took production all the way to Whistler when you couldn't see any snow or mountain or anything in the shots. Perhaps any establishing shots ended up on the cutting room floor. But it was still neat to see our little vacation on the big screen!

-Liz :)

Palm Sunday

...A large crowd of Passover visitors took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. They shouted, "Praise God!Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the LORD! Hail to the King of Israel!"

John 12:12-13 NLT

Devil's Rest

Despite today's sketchy forecast, Brad, Steve and I hit the Devil's Rest trail in the Columbia River Gorge for some training fun.
Brad and I had done the lower Wahkeena Falls section before but hadn't gone the next 1.6 miles to the Devil's Rest summit. The weather was a bit drizzly along the way, but the shelter of the trees kept us mostly dry. There was plenty to look at while we tromped up the trail next to Wahkeena Creek: drippy moss-covered slopes, fallen trees, beautiful waterfalls.

The upper section lacked waterfalls, but it made up for it with spectacular views of the river and Washington side of the gorge. As we neared the 2,450 summit, we began to see snow patches. Pretty soon we were post holing in the snow-covered trail and getting pelted with clumps falling from the trees above. The rain turned to hail and then to giant, wet snowflakes. We nearly lost the trail a couple times because of all the snow.
We finally reached the top and took a quick stop for some cold, foggy photos.

It was a great day in the woods and a great trail for a moderate workout.

-Liz :)

Wow. Talk about divine intervention

I never created a writing/Web design portfolio for myself for a couple reasons: I never really thought I'd leave KOIN, it was a solo operation for so long that I thought it was silly to save my work when it was all my work, the lack of resources forced me to be a bit less than proud of my work at times, and, through a series of issues, our archive was lost several times and my writing was destroyed.

But I was at a throw-away interview last week when they asked for some samples. I ran home, went through KOIN.com and pulled some links to e-mail back. I created a list of headlines and links and was going to call it good when Brad suggested that I don't know when the KOIN site will change, so I should copy the text, too. So I painstakingly went through the links and pulled the actual stories and accompanying photos. I also made a couple screengrabs of some sections that I designed and made notes on what I'd done.

Well, I just now learned that the new KOIN owners have relaunched the Web site. The new site is hosted by a different company, and the archive apparently DID NOT transfer. Meaning: If I had not saved my work at the end of last week, it would be gone forever.

I'm sad that my legacy is gone. There's nothing left on the site from my nine years at the station. BUT, I'm extremely thankful that I was prompted to sit down and pull some of my work before it was too late. Thank you, God!

-Liz :)