Snow, a 100-mile breakfast and birthdays...

No biking for me today - this is the view out my back door when I went out to feed the animals.

So today is my birthday. I'm getting older. For the most part, it doesn't bother me. I mean, my mom used to say that getting older was better than the alternative, right? But occasionally something will remind me that I'm not the 26 year old I think I am...that I don't have infinite time left to accomplish the things I want to accomplish, and that no matter how much biking I do, I should never, ever wear a mini-skirt again. Ha.

Anyway, this morning I'm sitting here enjoying what turns out to be a 100-mile breakfast with very little effort (good, this is becoming common place!). My eggs are from the back yard, the sausage is from a ranch down the street where they raise grass-fed beef and pork. My toast is from homemade bread using Bob's Red Mill flour which is produced just on the other side of Portland. Even my blackberry jam is from our own blackberries. There are still a few holes in this meal, though. The jam has sugar in it...and that's not locally produced. I do need to find out if you can make jam with honey. We do still plan on getting bees...so eventually we can produce our own sweeteners. I also am drinking coffee and it's Colombian. My coffee from far away places will be the last thing I give up when 'local' becomes the only option. We do the best we can, but some things are just too good to give up! ;-)

So today I am off from work. All employees at my company are being forced to use 10 days of PTO (paid time off) in the first quarter. I figured that my birthday was a good day to take off, since I was looking for reasons to choose one day over another. My plans for today are simple...some 'self-improvement' work (I can be a hippie-farmer, but I don't need to look like one!), some cleaning around the house, transplant some seedlings, bake some bread, and go for a bike ride. The bike ride is going to have to be scrapped. I awoke to snow on the ground and heavy rain predicted for this afternoon. The weather is NEVER nice on my birthday. So instead I'll make the inside of our house all cozy and clean...and wait for a nicer day to ride my bike.

I also plan to upload about a billion photos from my camera (the one above being the first one so far!) and organize my thoughts for future blog posts. I feel like I have so much to say/write about that it gets overwhelming and I just opt out. Once spring rolls around, I'm going to be overwhelmed with work again...so I need to get things in order before then. Spring...I can't wait!