Raving Amicks

With all this rain the Hood River is running high and muddy, so I thought I’d try for smallmouth bass near the mouth. Here’s a picture of a 16″+ bass I caught this afternoon. Thought I was snagged on the bottom and then it started moving!  I let it go.

The Mom unit and I travelled to Seattle to see Mason and Dieter and to see the WWU Junior class exhibit. Very cool exhibit and WWU rocked! Had a great early dinner at an Indian restaurant – Mom had a Mango Lassi and we had some great food out of their Tandoori oven.  Check out Mason’s new haircut!  Mom was freezing as we visited the Tacoma Glass Museum (Mason – remember our visit?).

Anyone having dinner on Saturday nite will have fresh steelhead (caught Thurs. afternon)!

Hey y’all. Mindy posted some pictures of our new wine glasses a while ago and it’s high time I ‘splained ‘em.

These wine glasses are the sequel to our fantastic beer glasses and they use the same serious-business, full-body tempering (apparently using heat and not chemicals). The tempering requires an increase in glass thickness, but results in strong and stable, long-lasting glassware. They’re extra short for stackability, which also adds a bit of stability. I like ‘em, and Mindy’s even warmed up to them.

I conned Mom and Dad into getting a set of 12, cuz I had to order ‘em by boxes of 48 for $200. I found the best deal at ReStockIt.com with free shipping and some sort of discount (they have sales a lot). I’m going to give the 6 of them I have left over to Dieter. Hopefully these will hold up to the harsh realities of Dieter’s roommates. I’ll be bringing them down the next time we come to visit, hopefully in the next week or two.

With Tyler’s help during President’s Day Weekend (he had a three-day weekend back then), I reupholstered our dining chairs that he had picked up for $10 years ago. They originally had dirty and cracked white vinyl on the seats, plus they were really hard and uncomfortable. Now they have high-density foam seats covered with beautiful white leather, and our butts sigh with delight each time we sit on them (or maybe it’s just the leather sinking into the foam that sighs). One of the chair seats isn’t quite as taut as the other (surprisingly, the second one we did), but they’re still infinitely better than before. Now I just need to strip and re-stain them during a summer dry spell and we’ll be dining in style.

Osa also approves of the new seats:

Used my X-mas present twice. Helps make great pizza. Ya’ need lots of cornmeal evenly spread out under the dough to make sure it slides off cleanly. Thanks Mindy & Tyler!