As previously stated, I’m not much for cooking. My theory is that I have such low standards when it comes to food that I don’t care enough to put the time and effort into cooking. If I can make a meal that requires preparation and time and enjoy it just as much as a bowl of cereal or a sandwich, why would I go through all that trouble?

My pathetic tastebuds also make it difficult for me to taste things and determine that something needs to be added, or what that something might be. (Pepper? Coriander? Glitter? I don’t know!)

The exceptions to my cooking-phobia seem to be baking and special events. Birthday cupcakes? Potatoes au gratin for a family dinner? Homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving? I’m totally in.

And in the summer I LOVE making deviled eggs. Sunday night was a perfect summer evening, so I decided to try out my aunt Carol’s deviled egg recipe. She makes delicious deviled eggs and I had her send me the recipe last summer. I haven’t had the chance to try them yet (once last summer, after I moved into my new apartment I bought all the ingredients to make them on a Sunday only to get home and discover I didn’t own a saucepan for boiling eggs. Apparently Brian kept that in the divorce.), so I thought I’d give the recipe a test-drive this week. They were AMAZING, so I’ve copied her recipe here for all of you to enjoy, as long as you all refer to it in your recipe books as “Aunt Carol’s Deviled Eggs.” I mean, really. She deserves the credit.

This recipe is for 6 eggs, but obviously easy to multiply. The secret ingredient? Pickle relish!

Hard boil 6 eggs and cut them in half lengthwise.
Whip egg yolks with:
1/4 cup mayo
3 tsp or so mustard
1/8 tsp salt
A glop of sweet pickle relish

Mix it all up until it’s a consistency and color you like. (In light of my earlier comments, it may not surprise you that directions like this usually drive me nuts, because I don’t know what consistency or color I like. However, I decided I’d just give it a shot, guessing about how much “a glop” was, and then taste it and see what happened. Turned out it was delicious without any adjustments! And that’s not just me saying that – I brought them to work to share and everyone wanted seconds.)

So try it out this weekend! Unless you’re coming to the same BBQ I’m attending on Saturday. Then just show up and eat some.

Many have you have probably already seen this video:

I saw it last week and couldn’t stop giggling. Naturally, I showed it to Galen this past weekend. We were in Bend to attend the wedding of one of his college friends, and he and I giggled together about the video for a good ten minutes on Sunday morning.

Then, Sunday evening, we went to the wedding. When it got to the part of the ceremony where the officiant read the vows and had the bride and groom repeat after him, Galen started biting his lip. The vows were very nice – pretty traditional, nothing unusual – so I couldn’t figure out what he was reacting to. As soon as they were over, he told me all he could think about the whole time was Talking Carl.

Remember ages ago when I asked you for help coming up with a costume/theme for Galen and my team in the Great Urban Race? Well, then a month passed… and I still didn’t tell you how it went. Please forgive me. Can we still be friends?

My aunt Carol recommended we check out this page of couples costume ideas. We read through the whole list, stopping occasionally when we found potential options. Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles? Charlie Brown and the Red-Haired Girl? Homer and Marge Simpson? Then I got to Sherlock Holmes and Watson and didn’t need to keep reading.

We pulled the costumes together at the VERY LAST minute. Friday at lunch, I went to a toy store and bought two magnifying glasses, then stopped by a smoke shop and bought a pipe.

(I feel it is necessary to tell you about my experience in this smoke shop. I had visited 3 or 4 stores downtown, asking for pipes – any kind, old, new, tobacco, bubble-blowing – and nobody had any. Then one man recommended a nearby smoke shop that I had passed hundreds of times in my life but never really noticed. When I went in, I realized I was in way over my head. Not only did they have way more pipes than I had ever seen, but everyone in the shop was smoking. I didn’t realize this was legal. One of the men working there must have seen the confused look on my face, or noticed that I was the only non-hipster in the shop under the age of 50, because he asked if he could help me. I told him I needed a pipe for a costume, so I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I definitely had a budget. He pulled out a big basket of pipes and told me they were the cheapest ones they had. While I was poring over them, trying to figure out which one had the best color and curve for our costumes, two other store workers decided to come over and help me. One was an old man smoking a cigar who decided to tell me the history of pipes and which kind Sherlock Holmes would have smoked. Except he picked the wrong ones, if you asked me. The other was a blond woman about my age with an asymmetrical haircut and a pipe in her mouth. Blondie sauntered over to me and my basket of pipes, puffing at her own, and said , “You just gettin’ started?”)

When Galen got into town that night, we sped to Goodwill in search of a vest and a trench coat. We got there ten minutes before closing time, but still had plenty of time to find Galen an awesome brown suede vest with fancy buttons, a trench coat for someone twice his width, and a tie.

We were going for as many shades of drab as possible.

We had to lose a few layers around tea time.

We didn’t win the race, but we had a fantastic time. We didn’t win best costume, either, although we did make it into the final round of voting!

After the event, we had a few drinks with some friends…

…and Galen stayed in character the whole time.

It was an awesome adventure.

Aunt Carol – thanks for the website recommendation!  I would be honored to buy you a beer (or high tea?) at Waterton as a thank you.

Do you know what an Ironman triathlon is?

It’s a 2.4 mile swim, then a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a full marathon.  You know the cyclists that do century bike rides?  And the runners that do marathons?  Imagine doing both of those in one day AFTER swimming 2.4 miles.  That’s an Ironman.

See this?

That’s an Ironman, too.

Last weekend, my friend Julie and I drove to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to watch our friend Kara compete in Ironman CDA.  It was the most amazing, humbling, exhausting, mind-blowing, utterly overwhelming event I’ve ever witnessed.

We made a few signs:

(In case it isn’t clear, Kara is a University of Oregon alum)

Then, we found a course map and made sure to be at all the right places in all the right times. This involved getting up at 4 AM to get to Coeur d’Alene Lake to watch the swim:

This is what 2400 swimmers starting at the exact same moment looks like.

She finished both 1.2-mile laps in about 1 hour and 30 minutes total:

Then it was onto the bike:

She’s on Mile 112 at this point.  Looks pretty good, eh?

After 7 and a half hours on the bike and transitioning to the run, she still looked like she was just out for a Sunday afternoon jog:

It was incredible.  She crossed the finish line at 10:35 PM, after 140.6 miles and 15 and a half hours:

Congratulations, Kara.  I am so, so proud and happy for you.

Now, welcome back to the world of the socially-active and well-rested.

(Special thanks go to Kara’s boyfriend Todd – pictured above in orange – for taking the really great photos).

One of my mom’s most adorable habits is the saving and mailing of clippings. Anytime she finds an article, a comic, a quote or a photo that makes her think of someone, she cuts it out and sends it to them. Usually she’ll write a little note on the clipping, like “Isn’t this great? Love you!” or “FYenjoyment.” Sometimes when she sends serious or heavy material, she seems to worry that she’s overstepping her bounds, so her notes will say “Take what you like and leave the rest.” or “A little hokey, but I liked the part about personal responsibility.” Sometimes these clippings make it onto my fridge or into a box of keepsakes under my bed, but even if they go into the recycling bin, they still make my day.

When I was cleaning today, I found a magazine my mom sent me months ago. I flipped through it and a couple clippings fell out. They must be at least 8 months old, because one of them was this obituary, cut out of the Missoula newspaper. My mom’s scribbled message at the top says, “This is the best obit I ever read! Too bad I didn’t know her.”

In case you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here are some of my favorite parts:

“In an obituary, you generally give the timeline of a person’s life through a list of dates and geographic locations where they spent time. Grandma Fran represents the end of an era. She represents the end of a long cultural and family journey which begins in Ireland and ends in America and this type of ending must be marked with a large sound so that the descendants have the great comfort to remember who they are and where they came from and the ties that bind them. This type of death cannot be summed up in linear dates; it must be understood in the abstract chaos of the Irish.”

“She loved humor, blood relatives, canned food, the Democratic Party, and the sense that you’d better enjoy the moment due to the inevitability of bad luck showing its face. She detested the royal family, corporate greed and Republican dogma.”

“Grandma Fran had in her long life moments of great strength. She gathered the strength to leave her husband to protect her children during a period of time when women could not leave or support themselves.”

“Grandma Fran had in her long life moments of great blessing… Of all the blessings that she experienced in her long life, none were as important to her as her family.”

What an incredible woman.  I agree, mom – too bad we didn’t know her.

To the man who taught me
how to shoot a basketball,
to appreciate the French language,
and to remember quotes I loved;

To the man who taught me
never to let the facts get in the way of a good story,
the importance of family,
and to embrace the fun and spontaneity of life;

To the man who instilled in me a love for
New York Times crossword puzzles,
musicals,
and afternoon naps;

To the man who taught me to appreciate
good design and gadgetry,
pilsner beers,
and a good joke;

Happy Fathers’ Day. Je t’aime, Papa.

Pete, Mego and Dad. Summer 2006.

This Saturday, Galen and I are doing the Great Urban Race in Portland. All we really know is that it’s a scavenger hunt around town that can take each team of two anywhere from 1.5 – 5 hours to complete. Apparently you take photos of each clue’s solution with your digital camera and then your shots are judged at the end…

But the really important part is that there are prizes for the best costumes.

So, Internet, I’m asking for your help. What should we be? In case you want to play off our appearances, you should know that we are two tall and awkward, very pale people, one man with an amazing beard and one girl with short brown hair. So far, the best option we have came from Galen’s sister, who recommended we be the Rural Jurors, but we’re not really sure what those costumes would look like. Other suggestions include a tree and a lumberjack (Galen’s idea – but he, the man who is actually a lumberjack, wants to be the tree) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (my idea, but I couldn’t think of any good costumes to go with it). Basically, we’re not totally sold on any of these yet, so please. Tell me your great idea. The winner will get something awesome. Maybe a trophy. Or a cookie. We’ll work it out.

Reason # 231 we should repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

All I’m saying is that if the armed services were a little more welcoming of “the gays,” it wouldn’t have taken almost nine years for the troops in Afghanistan to come up with the idea of lip-syncing, recording and releasing a music video online.  Plus, the rooms in the background would probably be cleaner.  At least, that’s been my experience.

Over the past year or so, I have heard my generation (Generation Y, the Millennial Generation, whatever you want to call it) characterized in many ways.  We are the generation who:

• Expects an award just for showing up
• Is incapable of hard work
• Is unwilling to put in long hours to gain the respect of coworkers and superiors
• Changes jobs every two years
• Is totally internet and tech-savvy
• Lives with their parents longer
• “Fails to launch” – puts off growing up as long as possible
• Wants to work to live, not live to work
• Doesn’t understand why they can’t wear flip-flops to work

Are these based on real-life examples?  Probably.  Are some of them true of me?  Of course.  (Some other day I’ll support the stereotype by ranting about my incredible hatred for office dress codes).  Are they all negative traits?  I don’t think so.  But they are, overall, negative.

And again, this past week, I was at a conference where generational marketing was the topic of discussion.  And again, I had to listen to a baby boomer tell me about how Generation Y has no brand loyalty and expects total transparency from organizations because they don’t trust them.  At least this time, the presenter acknowledged that some of this was due to age (for instance, how many twentysomethings can afford to be loyal donors or have any brand loyalty?).

But honestly, I’m a little tired of it.  I know for a fact there are kids my age who suffer from all of these traits, but we aren’t all like that. If you really want to know how we think, whether you’re in marketing, fundraising, education or whatever, here’s what you need to know:  (Obviously, these are generalizations and not necessarily true for all of us).

• Save your stamps.  We do everything online or via text.  If you want to reach us, use email, Facebook, Twitter, text message or some other form of communication.
• We expect lots of feedback.  It doesn’t all have to be positive, but it needs to be frequent.
• We want to be judged on the work we produce and not the way we produce it.  If we can do the same work in flip-flops and jeans as we can in a suit, then why spend money on an uncomfortable suit?
• We have always been told to do the things that make us happy.  We will not spontaneously forget this mantra when we turn 22 and graduate college.
• Contrary to what you might think, we are capable of hard work.  But we’d rather work just enough to live comfortably than work crazy hours so we can retire early.  Here I will admit – as a general rule, we have a hard time thinking long-term.

We don’t expect the world to mold to our expectations, but the bottom line is that everyone will need to bend a little now that we have three distinct generations in the workforce for the first time in many years.  Okay, fine.  We won’t wear jeans and hoodies to work, but in return, maybe we can work from home every once in a while.  If you are uncomfortable with social media and all things web 2.0, we can help you get your company online.

I know nobody’s perfect and I’m definitely guilty of expecting companies to understand my way of thinking, but I can’t help but wonder who the slackers are that started all the stereotypes I’ve encountered.  What’s particularly disheartening is that there were enough of them that they weren’t written off as outliers.

The other thing, though, is that I think our reactions are sometimes read incorrectly.  For instance, in my first job out of college at The Company, I had to work long hours and travel about a third of the time for not a whole lot of money, which wasn’t worth it to me.  Was this because I expected lots of money for 40 hours per week?  No.  It was because I wasn’t willing to give up my personal time (and my personal life) for a job.  I didn’t expect to be paid more, I just knew what my priorities were.

Has anyone else experienced this, either from my viewpoint or from the outside looking in?  Am I totally off here?

A friend of mine started a new company called Read Underwear that sells underthings with cool/interesting/funny quotes printed on them.  She’s been having trivia contests on the company’s Facebook page where the winner gets a free “sample.”  I won the other day* and got these awesome undies in the mail.  Dear friends with summer birthdays, sorry for ruining the surprise. (Pete, what size panties do you wear?)

*Q: On the wall in Lisa’s classroom is a poster from Krusty’s literacy campaign, it reads… (fill in the blank)
A (within seconds): “Give a hoot! Read a book!”