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Baseball and The White House

Okay, so I realize three posts in one day is a bit excessive...and it won't happen often, but today is one of those days where I feel like sharing.

In my job it's not unusual to get wacky phone calls. People ask me what kind of wood they should use to build their wine cellars. People ask me if we make cakes (???) like they saw on the Food Network? Um the name of the company has VINEYARD in it!!

This week I had a call from The White House. Yes 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue called. All I can say is they want to use some wine, at some dinner, on some day, with some guests. Vague? Yes. Fun? Of course! I once watched a show on the White House's inner workings and a lot was about the house butler and service staff. I had visions of all that while talking to him on the phone, and of course I'm just certain my name is now written down on some very nice, super fancy stationary with the official seal embossed on it. He did tell me I was "too kind". Such a lovely call...The former Poly Sci major in me was giddy.

Then I get a call today, from someone who knows someone who works for a team in the Major League Baseball organization. I was asked to name my favorite player on the team because they are going to send us some signed memorabilia...well I'll be dammed if I couldn't think of one "favorite" on this particular team. As an Oakland A's fan, and a friend of many Boston fans I am not allowed to even entertain the idea of a favorite on this team. I actually sat there, silent for a moment and thought about what to say...so all I said was "wow, that's going to be hard because we're west coast fans!" and then I offered to transfer him to someone who could answer him. I'm sure you can figure out who the team was. Seriously it's like asking a SF Giant's fan to name their favorite Dodger, it ain't gonna happen!

Doing my part...

Often times I feel helpless or useless in the sense that I’m not able to make an impact on this world, my community, one person who really needs someone. I think that’s a fairly common feeling for most of us because it’s easy to feel insignificant next to the grandeur of large organizations or people who are able to give wads of money away. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the many needs individuals in this world have.


However, I feel better when I have done something that I know is helping others. Be it buying the Street Roots (great local program here in PDX) newspaper from the homeless man standing in front of Powell’s or taking a name off the giving tree at X-mas time. A month or so ago I decided that I was going to make more of an effort to do good things. My first step in that was to sign up for some volunteer work. My first shift was last night and I had a great time!


My friend Chrissy and I went to the Oregon Food Bank and helped label and repack cans of salmon. It was actually pretty easy work as work goes, but it was hands on, and will directly affect people in my community. We were there for two and a half hours but the time went very quickly so we were surprised when it was time to leave.


Our volunteer coordinator offered to give us a tour before we left and everyone knows I love a tour, so I was first in line! Lucky for us, only three people wanted the tour, so we had some one on one attention and got to ask questions and see things close up.


The Oregon Food Bank has a huge garden where they teach people how to grow their own food, even in containers like five gallon buckets for those people who may not have a yard to dig up and plant. We met their little lady chickens, saw some huge plants, and then went back to the warehouse for the rest of our tour.


The warehouse is quite a site. It’s the only food bank building in the country that was designed specifically for food bank usage so it’s special. It’s also huge, and completely owned by the food bank. They service 57 million pounds of food a year and serve many, many agencies in our area as well as all over Oregon and Clark County, Washington.


Our tour guide even took us in the freezer which is kept at 10 below! Brrr! Poor Chissy was in Capri pants and a little white shirt…


Overall it was a great experience. We’d already signed up to go back on the 20th, but today I signed up for a few more days in September too.


On the 25th of Septmeber, if you’re in Portland, take advantage of the great food drive they are putting on. See below! Clink on the picture for more details I’ll be in Mexico otherwise I would so be there.

Welcome one and all to the the new blog...

I know some of you are readers over on MySpace, and some of you may be new... so welcome to all of you. I decided to have a blog over here because it's a bit more accessible, more customizable, and well I just like the look and feel of this better. So here I am, with a pretty new green blog with swirley whirley gigs in the corners.

I'm going to try and update this more often, also combine it with the harvest blog I do every year. So if you had bookmarked that blog, you can move it to this one. Though I will still have those posts archived over there on livejournal. I figure this year I can get away with more pictures and cute anecdotes rather then all the technical stuff I'd written about before. You should all be experts now if you were paying attention the last two years!