Wing Ding

Wing Ding is a way to describe every weekend here in PDX. There are soooo many fun items on my agenda it is hard to get through them all. I want many of you to notice the beautiful blue skies in most, if not all, of the daytime photos. Portland has two major rivers and the coast is only an hour or so away. So weather often makes its way up the gorge (think of those delta breezes in sac or santa ana winds), fortunately, the weather (like fog or clouds) doesn't have a chance with the heat of the sun forcing all of the ugly weather away (I know - talk to me during the winter).
Hawthorne bridge is hiding between the willow tree above. I read recently that it was opened in 1910 and it is the oldest (and still in use) vertical lift bridge in the US. It is named after Dr. J.C. Hawthorne who founded the Oregon hospital for the INSANE. More interestingly, the Hospital was located on a street named Asylum, which has been renamed for Dr. Hawthorne also.
Many evenings have been spent strolling the alphabet streets of the pearl. There are restaurants and bars, clothing and furniture stores, and handmade paper and orchid businesses. It is very nice to walk and find a new location to remember and find again. On many evening strolls pictures are often captured for no reason other than research. If you are looking at the picture with the flag let it be known I am not feeling patriotic, the photo shows two buildings on either side of the frame and two in the middle. The building on the right, is called Avenue Lofts and prior to being converted to lofts it was the warehouse for Meier & Frank. The building on the left is Marshall Wells Lofts (I think?). OK-the lights are a picture taken at a drunken moment in our lobby - I think they are kinda hip!
Last, but not least, a couple of statements about health and physical fitness. The government is all up in arms about childhood obesity but they (government) are still allowing twinkies and cheetos in vending machines at schools. Here are two statements the government could use for their national campaign -I really like them but do not necessarily follow them: 1) move more than you eat, and 2) if you want to look athletic you must be athletic.

Mississip-pix

Mississppi Pizza and Pix Patissere what more could a girl ask for; oh yeah, fantastic conversation and fun with my cow. Beautiful evening in PDX friday night. A band, Klemocracy, was playing at Mississppi Pizza. So, for the price of a pie (exceptionally good) and bottle of wine we were also treated to great beats. We sat in the back of the joint where the pint size bar was bumpin'. The music filtered through the large doors and the windows. Tons of people having a mellow good time. We spent a great amout of time eating, listening and watching. It was late when we left but decided to finally try Pix's Place. A destination for dessert, drinks, espresso, etc. on Division and SE34th. Service was stellar and sitting outside at 12:00am was perfect. Ordered a rouge Lillet which turned out to be a fabulous choice (I only wished it was larger) with the molten chocolate cake paired with homemade espresso ice cream. I hope all of you enjoyed your evening as much as we did!

Forward HoY!

Built in 1906 with a solid foundation and old growth fir timbers the house at 2934 SE Yamhill was built to last - and last it has. The conundrum of buying a home was set at ease by a home inspector that kept saying, "this is a great house." The front porch steps were found to have a bit of dry rot, there was some kind of flange on the roof that needed to be sealed, a J-box in the attic needed to be covered (I don't know what the hell that means), and a few other minor injuries (hey if you were 100 years old you would have flange problems too). Fortunately, being in the house for over an hour allowed me (and I hope the cow) to feel less anxiety about our decision. The House on Yamhill (I am going to write a book and that is going to be the name-from now on it will be known as HoY!) has many great features and a few that will need to be changed: the front porch is large and inviting, HoY is painted well with the under-hang rafters being a deep-dark read, the door bell is on the outside center of the door-you turn the knob on the outside and on the inside the bell rings (I love this), the fireplace is ugly and needs to be changed but it is a gas fireplace so maybe the cow and I will be able to get it lit, there are composting bins and a great storage shed in the backyard. Inside the house the bathroom has good color and new toilet, sink, and a refurbished claw foot tub with shower. All of the light switches have a dimmer switch built in. So when you go to turn the light on or off it will brighten or dim with the degree of up or down (THAT! is a good description). The living room, dining room, and bedrooms have beautiful molding around the light fixtures and the fixtures aren't bad either. Luckily it has a new furnace and all of the floor grids look new. As you can see the backyard is grand! There are apple trees on both sides of the porch, the porch is large enough to put a table and chairs for 6-8 (come and visit we will sit outside), and the view from the kitchen sink is pretty lush. What more could a girl ask for? Closets - I didn't mention the closets. Well-We all have a few flaws that need work so lets just say that HoY needs a few nips and tucks like the rest of us!

No Pictures. Sorry!

Buy or rent? Wait or jump in with both feet? Good 'hood? Condo, loft, or house? Yard or balcony? West or East? North or South? How much are the taxes? Public tranit available? Closets? Room size? Storage? Garage? These are all of the questions that have been running through my head for exactly one week. When the cow and I decided to put an offer on a 1906 Bungalow in the SE. It [the offer] seemed like the right thing to do. Now, I am going through the questions and literally flip-floping on an hourly basis.
There are goods and bads about all options. The most anxiety driven decison is buying a house. Why do we need a house? Why do we automatically walk into a place and say, "we can change the fireplace" and "we can try to make the closets larger." It is some weird need to have a "place of our own." Is it really ours?

Comments?

Hodge-Podge

This is going to be a variation of installments. 1)OK- For all of those people with dogs here is a business for you; doggy daycare! This concept is HOT in Portland. Big dogs, little dogs, fat and skinny dogs get to go to play with there mates on a daily basis. Drop them off in the morning and they get play time, walk time and food. Ready to go home and be your best-friend for the rest of the evening. 2) Portland has beautiful sunsets. Often a few whispy clouds will fill the sky and the sun creates beautiful mosaics with them. 3) Flowers are abundant and everywhere. This is a feature I want to add to my house soon. This restaurant took a 2" wide piece of metal about 6' in length and placed shot glasses with flowers all along the wall. One of the servers said that they do not have to change the flowers all at once. When one looks wilty or dead they just replace it or remove it until next time. 4) Flower baskets are hanging everywhere (if you have ever been to Victoria, B.C. you know what I mean). Some of the ones around the pearl are so huge I often think they are going to fall on someone. OUCH! 5) The old water towers are on many of the restored industrial buildings. There are several lofts that use the water tower as part of their roof top balconey. As you walk through the neighborhood you must look up, see stuff that most don't notice.

Just keep pedaling!

Sunday morning 7:00 am -what are we doing? We are going on the BridgePedal! Over 20,000 people turned out to ride across the vehicle bridges on the Willamette river. There are ten total but the cow and I decided to do the 8-bridge 25-mile ride. The starting point was on 1st Avenue on the Riverfront. The officials were allowing 100 riders at a time to leave every minute, yeah it was extremely tight at the beginning of the race. The route (click the 8 route and see where we went) was created to zigzag back and forth over the eight bridges. The first bridge, Hawthorne, was smooth sailing. We knew it was going to be crowded and we would need patience. I didn't realize how much patience however; the second bridge was the Ross Island bridge and as you know from traveling across bridges there is always an incline on either side of a bridge. Well, recall that there are old, young, good, and bad riders in front of us. So when the incline got too much for people they would just stop and get off of their bike, which created a huge bottleneck at the beginning of this bridge. At the top of all the bridges you got a beautiful view of the city and you kind of forget the bottleneck and realized the reason you were there. Now on the down side of the bridge was equally as interesting. You could pick up speed but you had to keep your hands on the brakes because kids were everywhere and they get a little jiggly when they go too fast. Not to mention the people who are in it to race and they have no where to go except over the top of you. It was kind of exciting at this time because we were able to descend onto the 405 freeway and just like a car could pick up speed again and merge into bike traffic (Whoa! that was fun). We knew to keep our speed up because the Marquam bridge was next; unfortunatley, the organizers decided to allow Whole foods to hand out bananas and PowerBar to hand out bite size snacks at the beginning of the bridge! You guessed it - amazing bottleneck. Did I say amazing - I meant AMAZING. I have to admit as I was watching all of the riders eating the bananas I thought what the HELL are they going to do with the peels. Low and behold there were boxes set up to throw the peels away and almost every cyclist I saw made there way to the box and threw away there garbage. Banana peels on a downward side of a bridge could be hilarious or dangerous (depends on your warped sense of humor)! After you made your way down the Marquam there was a separation from the men and the boys. It was pretty smooth sailing after this for the remainder of the ride. We also crossed the Burnside, Broadway, Fremont, a long pedal up to the St. John's (this is a beautiful bridge), and back down the east side of the river for great views of the city and the last crossing of the Steel Bridge to the finish line.
I must also say that out of the eight bridges that we rode only two of them (Marquam and Fremont) are not open to bicycle traffic normally. Which makes traversing Portland on a bike very, very easy.

Holy Cow - I am tired!

Wow! Where do I start? The cow came in on friday evening and we had three events to choose from: twilight criterium in the south park blocks, celloist playing at a coffee shop/wine bar, and the Violent Femmes were playing at the Taste of Oregon event for $5.00. Decisions ? Decisions? We started at Eleni's Greek Cuisine. It was awesome - VERY cute bartender, scruffy, tall, great voice - oh yeah, the food and company were excellent also. We had grilled calamari - YUM! Bottle of Greek white wine. After finishing up we took a walk down to the waterfront to see the Femmes. As we were walking up to the event people were lined up on the bridge - this meant that they did not have to pay to get in and they could see and hear everything. Once in we made our way to the beer garden which also sold Oregon wine. We had to show our I.D. to the Alcohol Monitor (hee, hee). This was great. Bought a couple of glasses of wine and headed off to find the stage and listen to the Femmes. I really don't know why we needed a monitor because once we had paid we could have handed our drink to any of the 80,000 people also there to have a good time (O.K. maybe not 80,000 but there was shitload of people). The concert was good and loud and there were people everywhere. I decided that the kids (yes, parents actually take their kids to a concert) had the best seats in the house because they were all sitting on top of the parents shoulders. Next to us there was an old guy rockin out and a woman and her husband singing at the top of there lungs they were standing next to teenagers with dreds and tattoos. It was quite inspiring. As we walked down the street there was a couple in front of us with their new puppy "Governess" in their backpack. Governess got tired at the Femmes and needed a ride home.
Saturday took us to the deep south of the Mississippi Street Fair. Everything you could want in a street fair and more. I especially liked the Posing Pig above one of the many BBQ Rib joints. There were many distractions in ole Mississippi as you can see. The Margarita Bar in the middle of the street, the black rose collective bookstore, the Moxie - Roadside Juice Bar, and Pistils Nursery for all of you herbal needs. There was a sign for an Open house around the corner so we strolled down to check it out. The smaller green house on the left is the one that was open (I know they are both green). It was quite awesome at 370,000.00 but the back yard was a major freeway. The yellow house with the corrugated metal is awesome - I don't know the story on it but when I do I will let all of my devoted readers aware. The Pink place is actually a restaurant that is spectacular - Lovely Hula Hands! All of this and more from Mississippi!