I’ve just changed over to Movable Type today…I was getting a little tired of coding all the files by hand, not to mention maintaining the archive. Hopefully I’ll be able to convert all my old entries over to this system eventually. But for now, please excuse the mess of fonts and colors and whatnot as I get myself situated. Thank you hachi and Peter for helping me work out the kinks.

I’m Hearing: Machine Gun Fellatio – Just B’Coz

I’m quite exhausted yet from the weekend. We did so much in so little time, running here and there, driving, flying, the time difference, daylight savings time kicking in…so many things to screw up one’s internal clock. I just went to a vending machine down the hall to get some caffeine and the stupid thing ate my quarter…then when I tried another machine, the only type of soda I wanted from it (Diet Pepsi Twist) was sold out. Meh. Guess I wasn’t meant to get anything.

Man, I don’t even know where to begin to talk about the weekend…Maybe I should just start with the conclusion that both Will and I came to fairly early on: Portland is a fantastic city and one in which we’d really like to live. It just seems like the perfect place for us, all around.

We flew out of O’Hare Airport in Chicago on Saturday evening. It was nice that we all got to sit near each other rather than mushed between strangers. We took a shuttle bus to the hotel (which we used and probably abused over the next few days) then took the shuttle back to the train station by the airport. One of the most awesome things about Portland is its public transportation. Not only is it unbelievably convenient, it’s fast, cheap, and *clean*. In fact, if I had to describe the city (especially downtown) in a single word, it would be CLEAN. Many of the streets and sidewalks are made of brick and stone…there is no litter anywhere. Everything is so green too…so much foliage and so many trees, everywhere. It’s so scenic.

So some of the cool places we went to…the first night we went to Chinatown and passed up a restaurant called Hung Far Low to eat at the not-as-authentic-sounding House of Louie. The food was fantastic, but so hot that I burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth on it. I tried tea for the first time! Will had been up for like 26 hours or something by that point so he was falling asleep. We rode the trains some more and eventually went back to the hotel. I awoke once during the night when Will started talking in his sleep in Japanese. I wish I knew what he’d said because it was probably really funny.

Speaking of funny…in more of a strange and ironic way, we spent a lot of our time downtown locating signs that referred to people we know. With combined efforts we were able to locate the following:

Will, the beverage
Rose Jewelry (why, oh why, wasn’t it Rose Jewels?)
Peet’s Coffee and Tea
Ross
Momo
Qiang

On Sunday we took the train to Washington Park which is supposed to be the deepest underground train station in the United States. In any case, you have to take an elevator up to ground level, which is over 200 feet. Outside the elevator the "floor indicator" is a dial that goes from 16 million years ago – present (since there really are no floors). Cool. And inside instead of counting floors, it told you how many feet above sea level you were. XD From there we took a bus to a Japanese Garden. Way way too many beautiful pictures to link individually, so if you’re interested in poking around, check out the folder. Hiroko also chased around a peacock that was roaming the parking lot of the Oregon Zoo, which you can see in Hachi’s photos. Consequently, all of Will’s pix are up on metalbat, including a pic of me petting a kitty we saw outside the garden and a suprisingly adorable shot of me sitting on the ground waiting for the bus.

Hmm, what else…? We had lunch at a place called The Flying Elephant Deli and it was so freaking good we went back the following day for brunch. XD The people in the shop were really nice and the food was just fabulous (if not a bit overpriced.) But the cool thing about Oregon is there’s no sales tax. :-D My glasses fell apart while we were in the Japanese Garden so when we were out shopping later in the Pioneer Place mall, we came across a Lens Crafters and a guy inside fixed them for free. Man, every person we came across was so friendly and nice, it was nothing like being in the Midwest. Will found an Electronics Boutique and bought a PS2 game. XD In the evening we got off the train and hopped on a bus and rode around till we found a place of interest to eat at…we were all pretty hungry for sushi but when we saw the prices posted in the window of the shop, we opted for the pizzeria next door. We got this absolutely gi-normous pizza that tasted tres fantastique. Num. It was so big the four of us couldn’t finish it. Hachi and I both had some beer and by the time we were done with supper we were buzzing a bit. After that we sought out Powell’s Books, which is apparently the largest new and used bookstore in the world (a full city block!) And it was really really really big! I ended up with 2 HR Giger books, a Koontz book, and 2 out-of-print Red Dwarf novels. If I’d had a way of easily getting more books back home with me, I totally would have gotten more. My bag was heavy enough as it was though. We stayed out a bit too late and were unable to get a train back so we had to call a cab.

We made the most of our last day in Portland by going back to the Flying Elephant again, then checking out the Australian Originals store that was just off the Skidmore Fountain stop on the train (we must have passed it about 10 times over the course of the 3 days we were there). The dude in the shop was really cool and gave me a free tshirt since I was buying an Aussie flag. :3 Even though we were a bit late checking out of the hotel, we got to the Portland airport with time to spare then flew back to Chicago. With a little fanagaling we were able to sit more or less close to each other again. I slept for most of the flight back. Outside of Chicago we had dinner at TGIFriday’s…I had some orange chicken dish that was way too orange. Didn’t finish it. :\ We mostly talked about the Rosa folks during the meal, which made for good conversation. I tried not to sleep on the drive back (hachi drove Will’s car back to Oshkosh since Will was so exhausted) but I kept nodding off. I was horrified to discover Will had never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas (I put the soundtrack on) since he’s such a fan of Danny Elfman. It was about 12:30 AM when we got back to my place, and I had to be up at 6 AM to get ready for work. ~_~ Needless to say I was exhausted the next day.

And in case you want to peruse the rest of my photos, just head over to my Portland directory.

Yeah. So yesterday after work I went home and napped until about 8 PM. Then I got up and did Tae Bo, then took a nice long walk down by the river. So peaceful, so relaxing….so absolutely wonderful. :-) Ahhhh. When I came back I noticed that TR had called so I called him up and he came over for a bit. Then I went to bed and slept soooooooo welllllll. :-D

Just got back from Portland last night. There’s just no question, the city is absolutely amazing. After spending 2 days there, I could not see any negative aspects to living there… The city is amazingly clean and well-kept, especially downtown. There is brick and stone everywhere…the roads are in really good condition (not full of potholes like around here.) The trains are new and the interiors are clean and well-lit and comfortable. The people are really friendly and helpful…no one is rude like they are in the Midwest. (When we got back into Chicago we had a nice reminder of how people treat strangers here–there’s nothing like being ignored or shoved around.) The public transportation is rather inexpensive ($4 for an all-day, unlimited ticket for the buses and trains) and it runs till quite late at night and it just feels safe there.

I took several hundred photos of the trip, but they’re all on hachi’s laptop right now, so I can’t really show anything off. And since I’d like to give a guided tour of what we did, perhaps I’ll just hold off on descriptions until I get ahold of them. It’ll just make reading this more interesting. XD So those of you who are itching to hear about it, you may just have to wait a bit.

I’m Hearing: Coldplay – In My Place

Hmm, it’s been an odd week. Wednesday night was just…a bit messed up. I hung out with Alisha, Big Bri, TR, and Gorter…we had a few drinks. After TR and Gorter left I was there with Al and Bri, and I must have been drunker than I thought because suddenly I started crying and I don’t know why. But it went on for quite awhile and suddenly I was miserable and I was feeling really really alone. When they went off to bed, I went online and started talking to Peter but was so drunk and tired I passed out upright in my chair, chin on my chest, in the middle of the conversation.

I woke half an hour later, extremely confused, head aching, and flopped into bed. The next thing I knew it was morning, and I was over 2 hours late. Somehow I’d slept through my alarm blaring for an entire hour (after which it turns itself off.) So I got my ass out of bed, showered, and went to work feeling absolutely horrible mentally (and a bit physically.) The lonely feeling persisted even though I didn’t understand what had really happened the night before. I had lunch with Tiffany, which was nice…got rid of the dizziness I was dealing with. Then later in the evening we went to see Love Actually at the university cinema. Absolutely wonderful, beautiful, uplifting film. Rosey, I can see why you liked it so much. And Colin Firth was just delicious in it. ‘Twas so nice to see him smiling so much. Yum.

I’m quite tired today. Tomorrow morning bright and early we head to pr0tland. It’s going to be so exciting…man. It still doesn’t seem like it’s real. I’ll have to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, especially if Will is leaving Green Bay at 8 AM to get us. :o

I got to talk to both Ross and Jules today, which has become an unusual occurrence. I used to talk to both of them so much back awhile ago but they (esp. Jules) haven’t been online as much as they used to. I really miss the super-long, deep discussions I’ve shared with Juuba. I’m also quite glad Ross and I have come to an understanding about stuff from the past…makes life so much better, and conversations so much more comfortable. Mm. :-)

I spent some time today helping a co-worker learn some basic HTML. Sometimes I take it for granted that anyone who’s into computers knows at least as much as I do, if not closer to what hachi knows. But I guess I just hang around uber-geeks too much. Nah, not too much. Never enough. :-D