Today is our one-year Portlandiversary (and house-iversary)! It has been such a great year--I'm so glad we decided to actually move here instead of just talking about it forever. Yay, Portland!

In honor of the occasion, I've started working on a house project that I've been putting off for almost a year now--sewing Roman blinds for our windows. I'm starting with the two highest priority windows--our stairwell (which faces south and heats up the house a lot in the afternoon) and our bedroom (which currently has a bed sheet for a curtain). Hopefully I'll be showing you some before and after pictures soon!

I tried to convince Patrick to order dinner from Belmont Pearl to continue our August 10th tradition, but he's not going for it. We're going to have our favorite lasagna (zucchini and eggplant from Cooks Illustrated) and leftover lemon-blueberry buckle instead. Not such a bad way to celebrate!

P.S. I think it's funny that I described Patches as ugly in that entry from a year ago--now I think she's the prettiest kitty in the neighborhood!

I went a little crazy at the farmers' market on Wednesday and bought 10 pounds of blueberries. I froze most of them (mixed with a little sugar, which is supposed to preserve their texture better than tray-freezing), and I'm planning on making a batch of jam this weekend.

Today I baked a lemon blueberry buckle (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) with some of the extra berries. I used two loaf pans because we don't have a 9-inch square baking pan (weird!). We've already eaten two thirds of a loaf, and we're in danger of polishing off the remaining third tonight. It's tasty :)

I also bought a couple pounds of pickling cucumbers at the market, and last night I embarked upon a nine-day-long odyssey of pickle-making. I'm making Icicle Pickles (recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving), which require nine days of soaking in various brines before canning. Fun!

Note to fellow picklers in Portland: At first, I was worried about the lack of pickling spice in the baking section at New Seasons, but it turns out they have it in the bulk spices aisle, which was even better, because I only need a tablespoon or so. Phew!

Man, I meant to write about last weekend sooner, but it got so hot this past week, and I couldn't bear to have my laptop on my lap. But now, with the sun down and the fan aimed at me, I think I can manage.

We've been doing all sorts of fun summer activities lately (I suppose this includes our four nights of porch camping last week, but that was more out of necessity because our bedroom was too hot to sleep in). Last Saturday, after a haircut and a quick visit to the PSU farmers' market for one last box of pie cherries before the season ended, I headed back to SE Portland to catch the Division/Clinton neighborhood parade, which was held as part of the annual street fair.

It was a pretty short parade, but it was fun to watch. The Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers was at the front of the parade and totally made me want to take up drumming. They were followed by an assortment of people in cars, on bikes, and on foot. I especially liked the fish bike!

Next, we had an excellent lunch at Little T, chatted with Susan and Andrew for a bit, and then walked up Division to check out the rest of the street fair.

The highlight of the fair, for me, were the snow cones. I'd been looking forward to them all morning, and they did not disappoint.

Maybe it was just the hot, hot day, but we weren't that impressed by the street fair in general. There just didn't seem to be much going on compared to the Hawthorne Street Fair (Patrick pointed out that Division has a lower concentration of businesses, so that makes sense). We did have some good ice cream at Pix's ice cream social, but it was super crowded and frantic, and at that point, we just wanted to go home. Next year we'll probably stick to the parade and maybe get some snow cones, and that'll do it.

The Tour de Coops was the same day, and we decided that instead of running around town trying to see everything, we'd just visit a couple of the coops along Division after we checked out the street fair. I convinced Patrick that we should walk to the coops, which were around 70th and Division. In retrospect, it wasn't a great decision--walking 50 blocks in the heat was unpleasant. At least we were smart enough to take the bus back!

We did get to see a few good coops. This Old Dutch style coop was my favorite.

When we bought our Tour de Coops booklet, we also purchased a few raffle tickets, and we were lucky enough to win a fully assembled Garden Ark! Here's one just like it in the designer's backyard, which was part of the tour.

It's a really beautiful coop, but we're not totally sure we'll keep it. We kind of wanted to build our own coop. But it's pretty handy to have a coop ready to go in our garage! It makes it more likely that we'll actually get chickens in the spring, rather than saying we will and then putting it off because we don't have a coop built.

Later on Saturday, we biked over to Meat Cheese Bread, picked up some sandwiches, and headed over to Colonel Summers Park to watch Dirty Dancing (part of the Movies in the Park series). It was great--we had our little sandwich picnic beforehand, plus some free popcorn, and Patrick biked over to Whiffies when they opened and brought us back some fried pies, which were awesome. I had a double chocolate creme pie, and Patrick had the first lemon creme pie ever dispensed from the cart. Cool!

The movie started when the sun went down, and everybody had a good time, cheering on Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. It was so nice to hang out on our picnic blanket in the cool evening air--just a great way to spend a few hours. Afterwards, we rode our bikes home in the dark, which, I've recently decided, is one of my favorite summertime activities in Portland.

On Sunday, we had a great run along the Eastbank Esplanade before it got too hot (we're up to 54 minutes of running without stopping, as part of the One Hour Runner program--and I'm actually enjoying it). And then I made jam!

During rhubarb season, I'd frozen a few cups of chopped rhubarb so that I could make bluebarb jam when it was blueberry time (how could I resist, with such a clever name?). It turned out pretty well, though I'm not sure that I like rhubarb in jam all that much. But the jam is still plenty nice on toast.

In the afternoon, we headed up to North Portland to see Trek in the Park, a live reenactment of an episode of Star Trek. We're not that into Star Trek, but we really enjoyed it. The actors were great, and the production paid good attention to detail (like having the appropriate sound effects when the imaginary doors opened and closed). I'd definitely go back again if they put on another production.

And then there was a heatwave, and we had no air conditioning, and it pretty much sucked. I spent some time working from the basement, since my office is on the second floor of our house, but our basement smelled funny (Patrick thinks this was because of a dry drain trap). Anyway, we made it, and things have cooled down a little now. Phew!

We spent a good chunk of time yesterday getting our new chicken coop home (we had to rent a pickup truck, since it was too big for our car), which was kind of stressful, since we had to deal with U-haul. But we redeemed the day by biking over to Laurelhurst Theatre to see the new Star Trek movie (this much Star Trek in the span of a few weeks is unheard of for us!), which was fun. We followed it up with a late dinner at Laurelhurst Market, a new restaurant and butcher shop started by Simpatica's founder. I wasn't in the mood for a big piece of meat, so I ordered a few appetizers/sides instead--gazpacho with crab; grilled green beans with pancetta; and peaches with prosciutto and pistachios.

Everything was so good, and I really liked the service and overall atmosphere. I'd definitely like to go there again, but I'm not sure how often we'll get back, since Screen Door is also in the neighborhood. I sure do love Screen Door!

We enjoyed another late night bike ride last night, and another early morning run along the waterfront today. I haven't been a fan of the super sunny, hot days lately, but I'm loving the nights and mornings right now--the air is the perfect temperature and such a welcome relief from our too-warm house. Speaking of which, it's time for bed! I think we'll try sleeping in the dining room tonight--a good compromise between our bedroom (too hot) and the porch (too many bug bites). The only other option is the basement, but it most certainly has a higher concentration of spiders than our porch does.

Last weekend, Star and I participated in the Stumptown Challenge, a Portland-centric scavenger hunt run. We were hoping to win the second-place prize: a year's worth of Dave's Killer Bread (which is the best bread ever!).

We were given clues describing 12 Portland locations, and we had to solve the clues and take pictures of ourselves at 11 of the 12 locations, traveling only by foot or public transportation. The three teams that returned to the starting point fastest won. We were allowed to use the Internet and/or phone a friend to help solve the clues. There was also a brief Portland-related quiz before the race, and correct quiz answers improved a team's total time.

We did pretty well on the quiz (thanks to a close reading of the Portland Wikipedia page the night before), and with Patrick's help we were able to solve all of our location clues correctly. We brought Patrick's iPhone along, and it came it very handy--we used it to see when the next bus/MAX/streetcar was coming, so we could decide whether to wait for it or run to the next destination. Our main weakness was that we tired quickly and weren't able to run the whole time, but I don't feel bad about that. It was a hot day, and a good portion of the running was uphill. I can run for long(ish) periods of time when it's a nice cool morning in Ladd's Addition, but in a race setting I run too fast and use up all my energy right away. I should work on that.

We were given half of the clues to start, and then we had to go to a check-in point to get the remaining clues. The first six clues were all in the Pearl district, so we ran between most of the locations, but then the second six clues took us to North Portland, so we had to take the MAX/bus to get there. Waiting for the MAX was tough, because we kept wondering if it would have been faster to take the bus (turns out it would have taken about the same amount of time).

When the race started, I was hopeful that we could win, but at the halfway point we found out that 20 teams had gotten there before us, and I think that discouraged us a little. But we persevered, and we ended up coming in 18th out of 71 teams, which I'm really happy about! And even though we didn't win the bread, we did get our very own Dave's Killer Bread magnets, which is almost as good!

Click here for the clues and unflattering pictures of us at each location. I definitely need to work on my self-portrait skills. The photo below (taken in Overlook Park) is my favorite bad picture of us.

I'm really glad we decided to do the Stumptown Challenge. It was lots of fun, and I hope to do it again next year!

P.S. In case you were wondering about the logistics of getting a year's supply of bread (we sure were!), here's the scoop: Each member of the 2nd place team received a punch card good for 52 loaves of bread. They have to go to the Dave's Killer Bread store (in Milwaukie, which is just south of Portland) to pick up the bread, and they can pick up four loaves at a time. It's a good thing their bread freezes well!

P.P.S. Later that day, Patrick and I went to see The Decemberists play (along with Blind Pilot and Andrew Bird) at McMenamins Edgefield, and it was possibly the best concert I've been to. It wasn't just the music (the Decemberists are always great), but the setting was perfect--a warm summer evening, sitting in a clearing watching the sunset while listening to music we love. Not only that--Patrick brought me an ice cream cone, and there was a cute baby wearing too-big hot pink protective ear muffs. After the concert, it took forever to get out of the parking lot, so the people in the car next to us cranked up their Decemberists CD, got out of the car, and danced, and a bunch more people came over and formed a big happy drunken dancing circle (we are not dancing circle enthusiasts, so we stayed in our car and watched from a safe distance). It was just an all-around good night.

Note to self: Bread and Ink has totally awesome ketchup!

We went there for pre-trivia dinner about a month ago, and I was totally impressed by their ketchup (I think I said, "Is this what ketchup used to taste like? I feel bad for all other ketchups!"), and then I promptly forgot about it. The memory of that ketchup came back to me a few days ago, but I couldn't remember where I'd had it. Luckily, Patrick helped me remember just now. I'm making an entry about it so I won't forget again.

The other praise-worthy feature of Bread and Ink (that I know of) is their Waffle Window, but I've already written about that. Hooray for excellent neighborhood restaurants!

While I'm writing, I wanted to make note of two upcoming Portland events that I'm super excited about:

• Tour de Coops: We narrowly missed this last year, and I've been waiting patiently for it to come around again. And now it's only a week away! I'm excited to see all sorts of cool local chicken coops (hopefully they'll give us some inspiration for our potential coop), plus they're raffling off one of those awesome Airstream-trailer-style coops by John Wright. I would so love to win that!

• Portland Pie-Off: Thanks to Sarah for the tip-off on this one! We were vaguely aware of this last year, but it was the week after we moved here, so it didn't seem like the best time to bake a pie. But this year I'm definitely considering entering. I'm particularly intrigued by the C.P.R. pie category. I love a good baking challenge!

Wow, I guess this means we've lived here for almost a year now. It has been so great so far--everything I'd hoped it would be. Thank you, Portland :)