Our Family

Us: Bill and I have been together since February 2009 and moved in together in July 2011 after we graduated from UCSD. He is attending Oregon State University in an Ecological and Biological Engineering PhD degree. I am assistant manager at a coffee shop in town. I want to go back to school in another year or so, and I figure that we'll have some pretty wonky schedules so I want to start getting in the right track with organization, cleaning, and money. And I'm going to share with you along the way!

The Fuzzies:
We adopted Meeko from the humane society soon after we moved to Oregon. She had just had some kittens and was looking for "a nice home to relax in." Ha! This girl is crazy- she's always chasing things and trying to get us to play fetch with her.

We adopted Percy from the same humane society a few months later. Her full name is Persephone and she is much more of a lazy cat. She likes to play sometimes, but would much rather hop on my lap and purr like a fiend and bite whatever book I'm reading. Or sit on the keyboard of my laptop.

The Scalies:

Bill got Speedy when he was young. She's probably about 20 now. For the longest time everyone thought she was a boy, until she came to live with us and I decided to figure out. After some googling turns out she's a girl!

Tonks was our first pet together. She is a Western Hognose and refuses to eat. She lost the tip of her tail this past halloween when Meeko got a little too interested in her. It was a rather traumatizing experience for all of us.

Blackberry Wine

Here in Oregon, blackberries grow like crazy. On the hill up to our house the roadside is covered in giant blackberry bushes. Each summer you can see tons of people walking along with pails and picking the most delicious berries with their kids or dogs or while they're on runs. Really, there are a bajillion and everyone loves them.

Well last winter Bill and I decided we would have a yearly tradition where we brew some sort of yummy drink. Last year we made some spiced hard cider which was amazing. This summer Bill thought it would be great to use some of these wonderful blackberries that are all around us. And tada! Blackberry wine!

Bill got pretty into picking berries. I was quite content to just wander around collecting berries, but Billy decided to go all out, decked in his battle gear- hiking socks, jeans, long sleeve shirts and gloves with a pitcher strapped to his belt. And this was August, so you can imagine how hot he was out there. He dove into those bushes and picked 80 pounds.

Look at those beautiful berries

So many berries! Our freezer was packed..and stained purple for weeks. I think Bill ended up collecting all of these between a couple weekends. 

We borrowed this press from the brew shop in town. Despite the horrible mess we made we still managed to fill a 5 gallon carboy.  After we pressed all the juice from the berries we decided to make a "second press" batch. scraped the pulp leftover in the press and added a bunch of water and sugar to it and juice concentrate.                         

Why are you taking a picture of something that's not me?

 Then we stuck it in the office for a couple months with some yeasty beasties.

Time to bottle!