When in Rome

Check out my new tea cup -

The Oregon State... what do they call it? Team? Mascot? Preferred forest creature?... is the beaver, so this town is full of orange "Go Beavs" signs, sweatshirts and demonic beaver mugs.

 

 Who could walk away from that face?

I'm counting down for tomorrow morning's cup of tea already.

Doing Our Bit for the Economy, Part 1

We spent today wandering about, checking out a few different parts of town. First stop, The Cat's Meow op shop, where all money goes to local animal shelters. Shop for the cats! I picked up a nice woolly cardigan and the very informative Tea Rooms Northwest. A trip to Rite Aid for soap led to crazy M&Ms purchase - I looked down and they were just there, in my hand. And then it turned out they were two for one, so they were suddenly both in my hand. I swear! To counteract the M&Ms, I picked up some of my favourite Trader Joe's toothpaste. Call me lame, but I love grocery shopping in this country! A post-dinner stop to The Book Bin yielded a few books on my holiday reading list - The Wordy Shipmates (about the pilgrims in New England) and Assassination Vacation (about US presidential assassinations) by Sarah Vowell, and The Finishing School by Muriel Spark. The Mary Shelley bio by Muriel Spark was an added bonus. What to read first, I wonder?

We've also enjoyed a little TV today. The highlights? Parking Wars, a reality show about parking inspectors in Detroit, and Storage Wars, also a reality show, about people who the contents of abandoned storage lockers at auction (you may remember this from the This American Life episode, Contents Unknown?). Because bidders can't enter the lockers before the auction, people use all sorts of strategies to guage the value of the mystery contents. On tonight's episode, one guy brought two psychics along to the auction, much to the annoyance of the other attendees. The psychics got a weird vibe from a locker that turned out to have an esky full of shrunken heads in it. Ah, reality television!

Other notable moments -

Frozen yoghurt with many toppings

Nuggetssssssss

Getting Our Bearings - The Instagram Edition

Paul had uni orientation today, so I went for a walk and looked for squirrels to make friends with. It has been the source of some distress that so far, Corvallis appears to be squirrel-less. There are tons of parks, trees, and front porch bird feeders, and yet, no squirrels. What is this, the twilight zone? I thought we were in America! Imagine my relief, then, when we finally spotted a big fat grey one on a walk this afternoon. He didn't want to stick around for a photo, but I know what I saw. PHEW, is all I can say. All is right with the world!

 

Tea break. Paul had an Annihilator, which is some sort of multi-shot coffee/white chocolate/macadamia beverage. Unsurprisingly, it made him crazy for a while afterwards. I stuck with the tea - at least it was less aggressively named.

Afternoon walk

Footpath lichen

After dinner, we went to see a film called Tiny Furniture at Darkside, a little cinema near our hotel.

 Darkside Cinema Foyer

 After today, I am banning myself from using Instagram - who needs to make an effort to take good photos when you can just snap some blurry crap on your iphone and turn it into a vintage-looking masterpiece? I vow to be less lazy from now on!

Road Trip Flashback - Black Bear Diner, Yreka CA

And thus commences three months of pictures of me next to food I'm about to eat.

The Cereal Aisle, Safeway

First Afternoon in Corvallis

 A post house-hunting beverage

Cherry blossoms on NW 3rd St

I-5

Shasta River, just before we drove through a snowstorm

A mountain (which one?) in the distance, on the other side of the snowstorm

405, Outside of LA