As you may or may not know, my office is above a Vegan bakery. It’s cool because I get all the coffee and vegan pastries my heart could possible desire, but the catch is, when Lisa needs something requiring my skill set, I can’t say no. So when someone from the Food Network called asking her to try out for Cupcake Wars, it was my job to make the video. Not that I would have said no, as this is clearly my latest big break! Jared did most of the filming (though I will definitely claim the shaky shots — there is free coffee here.) I did the editing and this is the result. Now Lisa is a shoo-in for the show and when she wins, I will definitely take partial credit.

It certainly took long enough this year, but it is summer! I know I am supposed to be a snowboarder, but I have no complaints about this season. I’ll take the heat, the sun and happily trade dirty mountain condos for luxurious lakeside houses any day. I did attempt to snowboard, twice, before deciding I’d rather save it for winter. It seems now that I’ve retired from stunts, there’s not much for me to do up at summer camp other than leg burning laps through slushy snow. Plus, there is plenty to do down here.

Summer Fun idea #1: Oaks Park

You know those scary-looking carnivals that pop up on the side of the road in the summer. The ones with rides that may fall down at any minute? Well Portland has a permanent one! Jared and I went down to check it out last weekend, got nauseous on a couple rides, and then he won me a candy necklace by throwing a dart. I had my choice between the candy or a plastic hat, and while I may have gotten more long term use out of the hat, I feel good about my decision.

Summer Fun idea #2: Wakeskating

After more or less retiring because I was too lazy to ever drive to Salem, I discovered a friend with a boat 15 minutes away. Yes, the water is downstream from downtown Portland, and it’s sort of cold, but man is it fun. With enough evening sessions, after the kooks have gone home, I might even get good at it. But probably not.

Summer fun idea #3: Eating!

This morning I rode my bike to the fruit stand and bought raspberries to put on homemade waffles. If that doesn’t scream summer, I don’t know what does. In the last week, I’ve also made a cherry pie, cherry stuffed grilled chicken, fresh pesto with the basil plant you can buy at Trader Joes for cheaper than you can get a package of the stuff at Safeway, etc etc etc. I always make sure to eat well, but in the summer it’s even better.

Summer fun idea #4: Gardening

The cold spring was not really that nice to my garden. My beans didn’t come up, and my cucumbers died before they even started. I did harvest some peas (made shrimp with pea pods and a pea pod salad that were pretty good) but those have died off in the heat now. The zucchini are looking promising though, and even though I have spent way more money on plants, fertilizer, etc then I would spend on produce, it still feels like free food when you pick it and eat it.

Summer fun idea #5: Outside Time

I realized recently that this is the 4th summer I’ve been in my house. In that time we’ve managed to take the yard from useless, to fricken sweet, so one of my favorite things is to just sit on the back deck. Today, Tyra mastered fetch, which was probably the most productive thing that’s happened back there this summer, to give you an idea of what goes on. I’m into it.

Of course, there are other things too. Skateboarding is cool, I do that sometimes. Yesterday we floated the Clackamas, which is a good once-a-year occasion. (I can only handle so many bad tattoos…) And there is no better way to spend an evening than a BBQ. Seeing as the CW is already advertising it’s new September shows, summer will be over before we know it, so I’m gonna quit this blogging crap and go work on my tan!

Dear PR People of the World,

Thanks so much for sending me that highly interesting press release about your amazing product/brand/event/team rider! I cannot express how anxious I am to get it posted on my website! The only thing is, it appears you’ve sent it to me as if you think I am putting it in a magazine. See, on “the internet” photos don’t need to be 300 dpi and 3000 pixels wide. In fact, most websites top out at about 640 pixels wide, which means I must take your giant pdf or eps file and resize it, which will greatly slow the speed with which I can get this exciting information out to the public! It also fills up my inbox and makes it a lot more likely that I will just delete your email.

While I am sharing, it would also be fantastic if you could give your image files a reasonable and unique name. Believe it or not, I probably already have a file called image.jpg on my desktop from someone else! I wouldn’t want to accidentally overwrite that file, now would I? And even better, if you give me actual information in the file name, I’ll be able to use that information to make my post better and more informative. If my post looks better, we all look better, right?

Finally, I am not a big fan of typing when it comes to posting press releases, so if you could please include the text in copy and paste-able form, that would be great. I’m sure your designer spent awhile laying the text out in that jpg, but Google bots can’t read it! And my site looks awfully funny if there is no readable text in the sections that ONLY SHOW TEXT. It’s also a great deal more likely that I will incorrectly type out the information, and your message will get lost in translation. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?

Well, thanks so much for reading! I am really looking forward to hearing about the latest developments you have in store! Have a great day.

A Web Editor

Every once in awhile, a phenomenon occurs that I can really get behind. Usually, it involves drinking, so this whole “icing” thing is right up my alley. Inspired but the guys at Dude Barn, I decided to Ice both Party Time Nate and Timbro yesterday.

Nate exercised proper form and after putting it down lamented he was surprised no one had iced him sooner.

Tim took advantage of “physics” and used a straw for ventilation to aid in his icing.

Now the bad news about this is I now have to carry around an ice for blocking, which seems really inconvenient. But it was worth it, watching your friends suffer through drinking a Smirnoff may be the best thing since Wizard staffs.