Chronicles of a Polish Gypsy: July 2007

A Wedding in July

Some friends of mine got married in July. To protect the innocent we will call them "Sails" (him) and "Deck Girl".

Deck Girl is drop dead gorgeous!

I'm not sure I've introduced this character yet on the blog. If I haven't we'll call him "Hardcore". He is definitely working the camera on this one. Pretty rare.

Here's a crowd! From the left we have Mill, me, Hardcore, girlfriend of Hardcore (I'm running out of creative names here,..), and girlfriend of Mills.

Mills and Hardcore, much as I hate to admit, were looking pretty sharp.

The cutting of the cake went off without a hitch. Sails is on the right.

There were some difficulties withe garter toss, but Sails finally got a good throw in, and us single dudes can be seen anticipating it's return to earth.

Three of the members of a well known Corvallis band played music for the reception.

The wedding and reception was held at an organic farm in the foothills leading up to Mt. Hood. I got a picture of Maggie and the mountain.

July 4th, 2007

Maggie and I spent this Fourth of July with our friends who live in Newport, at the beach about an hour from Corvallis. The great part is that they actually live about 200 feet from the actual sand. It was a perfect venue for some grillin' and firecracker antics.

Woman helps man make fire.

Man prepares grilling surfaces.

Man experiments with evaporative cooling.

Man uses sparkler to re-ignite charcoal based fire.

Man and Woman cuddle.

Man puts shrimp in his mouth.

Man and Woman rehydrate with watermelon.

Man ponders Bernoulli's Principle and other advanced physics.

Man leaves Woman. Woman seems sad. Woman still has beer. Woman is happy again.

Army Men and Women serve country well, but lack manners and conversational skills.

Man embraces Woman after sunset.

Man kisses Woman and is forced to admit that it is a good picture. Man subsequently agrees to post picture on blog, against his better judgement and his standing rule of "no pictures of me kissing are to be posted on the Internet".

Garden Update

Well, it was 101 degrees today. I worried about my garden vegetables all day at work, but they seemed to be doing all right (the peppers in fact look extremely happy) when I got home. Let's take a look:

This picture is in fact a week old as I write this. This particular fruit was about 6 inches long in this picture. It is now a foot long and twice as rotund. Squash are easy to grow I've found.

These are either cherry or grape tomatoes.

Again, this is a week old. The corn is now twice this height. I planted it kind of late, but hopefully it makes for a good mid to late September snack.

Maggie gets the credit for these pictures, and I think this one is rather artistic.

Biederman Family Graduation Party

Maggie wasn't the only member of her family to earn a degree recently. Her father and sister both earned degrees this spring. Her father got a BS in Business, and her sister received an Associates degree in something related to dentistry.

The three of them threw a group party at a McMenamins in Portland (Hillsboro to be exact).

There were many friends and family in the makeshift tent where we had the party.

My family (minus the step mom who couldn't make it) showed up for the festivities.

Synchronized Badminton.

My brother gets pretty intense with the Badminton.

Maggie's father has a weakness in his heart for Karaoke. I think he sang 'School's Out for Summer'.

Maggie makes me post pictures like this.

Maggie is Awarded Degree #2

Maggie graduated with her Master of Science degree in Mathematics in March. She attended the mass graduation ceremony this June. We are very proud of her. Now she presses on to attempt a PhD!

This was the entire OSU graduating class. I can't remember how many there were. Maybe 4000 including PhD, Masters, and Bachelor's degrees. Where could Maggie be in all that mess?