Both Jonah and Nora headed to their prospective schools this week. One late and one early. One less than excited and the other overly so. Late afternoons I often take a short walk and sit near Hayward Field to do a bit of reading. Blue sky, green field and silver skin over the top. It is a lovely start to Fall here in Eugene.
Jonah and I went to the Pine Mountain Observatory last Friday evening for one of their summer season star gazing events and it was just incredible. Jonah has been into astronomy for a long time so this was a treat for us to do together. The next night we went to the Eugene Astronomy Society’s annual Star Party which was also fun and quite different (think: more people, more telescopes, longer lines, but still great). Photos below. These are two of the observatory domes that house telescopes. We were there well before dark, so we had a chance to look around, plus see a fantastic sunset over the Sisters Mountains to our west. From the top of Pine Mountain, which sits at 6300 feet…
Mid-June finds me completing another academic year, running in a trail series on Thursday nights, and planning some summer fun. Plus, Jonah is on the front page of the local news. Running the Output Room, where we print posters, is always an adventure. This year we had one printer break, and the newer ones had to step it up to keep things running, as did the student employees. All in all, it was a good week. A group from Portland, the Northwest Dirt Churners, makes the two-hour drive south to put on trail races at Mt. Pisgah each Thursday in June. I signed up for the series and have enjoyed every race so far. They range in distance from three miles to eight miles…
The weekend: UO Women’s Softball with Nora, new season of sports (Spring soccer), robotics continues, and running with pals! Two complimentary tickets were offered to UO Staff for the game on Friday evening. It was my first time in the relatively new ballpark, and it was quite nice. New season of soccer for Nora. New players, a new coach and new dynamics, but always fun for her. Growing up, indeed! This is a screenshot from the South Eugene Robotics Team’s (SERT) Instagram from their competition that was held in Cheney, Washington, over the weekend. They did really well and now are on their way to the World Championships competition in Houston, Texas in two weeks (!). Jonah seems to have found his niche, as…
This post has more photos than usual, all taken with the trusty orange GM-1. The bridge that crosses the Columbia River is one that I have been traversing since I was a kid and we would come from Seattle to visit my grandmother in Portland. When we were little we nicknamed this “Goofy Grandma’s Bridge,” after her. It still stands and still works, though there is talk of a different one taking its place one day. The town I grew up in, Bellevue, was transformed by the high-tech industry with Microsoft’s campus being just one town over. Now it is a reflective town that I do not recognize anymore, for the most part. Then Robots – Jonah’s South Eugene Robotics Team was in competition…