Westmoreland Asays

I just came home from a most refreshing bike ride. I usually spend the Friday noon hour with the family, but they've gone haywire and taken our neighbor and two of her boys to Ikea in Seattle (Meg offered to drive, since the neighbor's husband took their suburban on a skiing trip with the scouts). So I pumped some air in my slightly sagging skinny tires, and rode throughout the streets of South Salem under blazing-blue clear skies. I did have an ulterior motive, however, and I found two Inifiniti G20's sitting side-by-side on a used car lot on 12th street. I've walked their lot before, as they have lots of nicer but older Japanese cars, so I propped my bike against the lot's fence and headed straight for the Inifintis. One was ugly beige and an automatic, so it was immediately off the list. The other was a black '94 G-20t (touring edition), with sexy-black leather that my buttocks and back simply melted into--some of the most comfortable car seats to memory--

Thank goodness this happens but a few times a year. The major downfall about being so far away from the office in Portland is that, when conditions deteriorate, the commute gets really long--three hours this morning. I feel fortunate and blessed to have made it to the North Salem exit without incident (I have class at UCLA tonight--at least I did before they cancelled it), for the roads were one long sheet of ice, with freezing rain falling furiously from the sky. If I had my laptop with me, I never would have left the house--but there wasn't supposed to be a storm today, thus I wasn't prepared. The roads were crazy this morning. About 20 cars were along the side of the road from North Salem to Brooks, having spun-out or crashed. There weren't many problems into Portland, although the snow started to really pack up, and many cars got stuck trying to go up Capital Hill (from the Temple to the Terwilliger curves). The road outside my office has been closed for hours now, wit

We hosted Uncle Donald, Aunt Lois, and cousin Ben--the new Keizer Asay's--at our house for dinner this evening after church. Aaron had declared earlier that he would spend the time upstairs in his room while our guests were here, but he actually stuck around for dinner--at least for a while. We realized that Aaron was missing some time later, and it turns out that he was out in the backyard playing. Never mind that we are experiencing a cold spell, with the mercury level hovering around 25 degrees. Aaron was determined to make charmigins--which for those of you who don't know, that is dirt with snow packed on top of it (we had a little snow fall this week, but it hasn't risen above freezing so it's stuck around), all in a plastic bucket--it sort of looked like a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting smothered on top. He eventually brought it inside to share with everyone. I'm still not sure how he was able to scoop up the frozen dirt with a tiny, plastic shovel,