Life in the Pacific Northwest has been going swimmingly. Oregon has been having a late summer, meaning that the weather just got nice. Last week was our first example of lasting good temperatures, so we’re finally at the point we were in the beginning of July last summer. Oh well. At least it’s sunny.
So now that it’s finally summer, I’m trying to soak up as much of it as possible before school starts in three/four weeks.
As I mentioned last year in “Working Girl Blues,” this is rather difficult because of my job, but we definitely make the most of weekends.
So far life consists of a few enjoyable highlights:
1. Our school has an outdoor pool.
A free pool is wonderful.
…the pool is not heated, which is not wonderful.
Fortunately, if the temperature reaches the high 80’s (which it has just started to do), by late afternoon the sun has warmed the pool enough that it’s possible to get in it and not die of hypothermia. Hooray!
Without the threat of freezing to death, the pool is quite fun.
2. Going hiking—or just meandering about in the woods with finger food.
Most hiking trails are a long drive out of the city, but there’s one fairly near (okay, about 45 minutes, but it’s a pretty drive), so I’ve been there a few times. There are waterfalls, which are excellent!
Also, I hold to it that the best parts of hiking are the hiking snacks, and sharing them with your friends in a hidden spot slightly off the trail.
3. Green Bean Harvest!
A while back, in order to relive the summer after my freshman year for a single, glorious morning, I signed up to harvest green beans for a county food share organization.
Two summers ago I worked on a berry farm for an entire summer. While I thought it was fascinating, I probably shouldn’t write about it much, since I doubt anyone really wants to hear about “Asterisk the Farmer.” All that really matters is that I absolutely loved working there.
So, when the opportunity to harvest food for charity came up, I got really excited. The best part? We only had to arrive at 9:00 am, instead of 6:00 am like when I worked at Graymarsh. Uh, SCORE.
I harvested green beans with a friend for three hours, which resulted in somewhere between twelve and twenty gallons of beans between the two of us, half of which went to the county food-share, and half of which we were allowed to keep.
WARNING: Don’t ever take ten gallons of green beans from anyone. I left and additional half of my share with the organization, and still had too many beans.
I ended up bagging them all up (which filled the bottom portion of my fridge completely, much to the terror of my roommate), and took most of them to work to distribute among my co-workers.
The good news: I’m popular at work now.
Adults love free vegetables.
The bad news: I still have a ton of friggin’ green beans.
4. Beach days!
I think I’m only going to make it to the coast twice this summer, but that’s okay—as pretty as the Oregon Coast is, sand is such a pain in the ass to remove from your car.
That said, the first time I went we crawled around in tide-pools and I bought a kite.
Kites are great—it’s such a simplistic kind of thing, but as Peanuts has taught us, flying a kite isn’t exactly easy, so it’s kind of an accomplishment to successfully get one in the air.
One you do, it’s actually kind of boring, and so you have to learn how to do flips.
Oh! Also, there’s this seafood place the pops up in all the bigger coastal towns in Oregon called “Mo’s,” and it’s awesome. A trip to Mo’s is basically the best end to any trip to the beach ever.
5. Frozen Yogurt and the Silver Spur
Frozen Yogurt is obvious. You can’t have a summer without ice-cream, or similar products, so after a long day, it’s nice to grab your friends and make an evening trip to a place that serves cold flavored desserts.
The Silver Spur, meanwhile, is unique to this town—kind of.
It’s a Country-Western Dance Bar, which sounds horrible, but is actually really fun—if you can get past some rather questionable music.
Having do deal with a bit of country music is actually kind of alright, though, because the good outweighs the bad. It’s so nice to have a dance club that isn’t just a bunch of weirdos grinding on you. At the Spur, people line dance, so anything from the Electric Slide to the Canadian Stomp. It’s pretty great, in a silly kind of way.
Willamette students don’t typically go there, since it’s a ways out of the downtown area, and not in walking distance, which means people watching is also a fun experience. My friends have nicknames for all the regulars. These include “Mee-Maw,” “nerdy show-boat” and “Sparkly Belt.”
Mee-Maw is in her 60's or 70's and always shows up with multiple rather younger men. She’s really got game.
My final blog-worthy highlight?
6. The Failed Adventure of Asterisk and Her Friend Emily
It’s actually kind of a tragic story, but it was so funny that I guess it will end up being one of the top six things I remember about the second part of the summer.
Emily and I decided to go to a U-Pick farm, as I was still all inspired by my morning of green bean harvesting. We did a little research, found the main road out of town and into farm country, and then proceeded to drive around for an hour and a half, past countless closed farms, non-U-Pick farms, and farms that were either closed or unidentifiable as actual safe places to be.
After stopping multiple times, turning around equally as many times, screaming quite a bit, and taking several mysterious dirt roads we finally gave up and were forced to return to a non-U-Pick farm we’d visited earlier to buy some stupid pre-picked berries.
At the end of the day, we were unsuccessful, but we’d had a good time, and taken a few pretty stupid pictures. We also made a list of our favorite “Failure Farms.”
The very best were: the one with the surly Mennonite teenagers who were not at all helpful, the one with the sign that looked like it had been painted with blood, and the one that consisted of a trailer, a refrigerator outside of a shed, and a couple chickens.
On the bright side, the day wasn’t total travesty. Another friend and I managed to make a damn fine pie with the stupid pre-picked berries, and I’d never managed to make an edible pie before, so clearly something went well.
***
So, with one month left of my summer break, I’m determined to have the best time ever, despite my boring job and weather that threatens to turn on us any day.
I’m going home soon—perhaps I’ll have to hit up Graymarsh while I’m there and finally get my U-Pick fix.
Enjoy your August everyone!
~Asterisk
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