Been busy with work. Still in Portland. Sporadic updates via Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal.

I have an Oregon drivers permit.  My license should arrive in the mail in about a week.

Recession-Friendly Sales are here!

Testing stuff for work.   Don't mind me...

Since my parents were in town, we did a little sight seeing.

On Friday, we visited Astoria and saw the column.

We also went to Fort Clatsop, where Lewis and Clark stayed.

Today, I went for a walk with my mother in Laurelhurst Park in Portland.

We also went to Rocky Butte to view the panorama.

Here is a link to all the pictures.

Parents arrive today!

Yesterday evening, I fell down the stairs to the basement.  I was carrying stuff in both hands so I wasn't able to hold on to the bannister. I was in my socks so one or both of my feet slipped in front of me and bounced all the way down.   It was kind of comical but also scary.  

I have bruises on my left thigh and my back on the left side.  My left hand knuckles are a little scraped up. You can imagines it was a little difficult to sleep on my left side last night.

Today, I visited the local Toastmasters group.  I decided I needed a chance to meet new people in this city and also improve my speaking skills.  I felt very welcomed by members of the group, including the president.  I was also impressed at how scheduled to the minute the whole meeting was.  I even got a chance to speak in front of the group and receive advice on how to do better.

After I got back, we did our errands.  The first task was to buy a bed for the guest bedroom, so I took advantage of a year-end sale at the Mattress World near the airport.  It should be delivered tomorrow.

Afterwards we went to the store to buy non-skid strips for the stairs, as well as some other stuff.  I will be keeping my shoes on indoors for the time being even after we set them up.

For lunch we stopped at El Burrito Loco #3.  It is good reasonably priced Mexican food.  I had a carnitas burrito.  Chuk had some tacos and taquitos.  We shared some chili cheese fries.

In the afternoon, I made a butternut squash soup that was surprising easy to prepare.  I cut the squash in half, scooped out the seeds and put it on a foil lined tray.  I also put an apple and an onion, both whole, on the tray and roasted them all for 40 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheight.  Afterwards, I let it cool  down, removed the skins and apple core and put all the good stuff into a food processor.  I ran it until it was completely pureed.  Then I put it into saucepan with mostly stock and some milk, stirred it, added chili pepper, basil and cumin, and slowly heated it up.  It came out pretty well.

Also I have been doing laundry, and cleaning up the house.  My parents arrive in less than a week and we going to have a party while they are here.  If you happen to be in Portland, OR on 11 January, please stop by for "Mama's Country Breakfast."  We will have Tennessee country ham, biscuits, gravy and lots of other tasty stuff.

Tomorrow, more house cleaning...

It snowed so much in Portland, OR, that I was able to work from home almost everyday last week. 

We were able to visit Jerome and Cheryl on Christmas day for their brunch.  We had a wonderful time with them and their friends.

Today, all the snow that had kept us home bound melted and we took the chains off of the car.

After playing D&D, before we went back home, we went to see the Xmas lights at Peacock Lane.  They were very whimsical and pretty.

There has been a lot of humor on TV about the Iraqi reporter who threw a shoe at our president.

Well, I am not laughing now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7791965.stm

We got back to Portland Tuesday of last week.

Haven't posted here since I have been spending more and more time on "Facebook."  Frankly, the killer app on FB for me has been the D&D mini adventures.  It's like a role playing game you can set on auto pilot or you can be very OCD about.  After your character reaches level 11, it is retired and you can build a new one.  I am on my "3rd generation" character, a "dragonborn fighter" named "Miseenplace." 

The other sort of fun app is Vampire Wars but now they closed a loophole that many people had expoited with a hack, it is not as interesting as it once way.  Basically, to get more powerful you have to create a clan of other vampires which are played by other people.  Stricly speaking you are only supposed to be able to forward an invite to people who have agreed to be your friends on FB, but the game never checked that a person was a friend or not before adding a person to your clan. Well, who wants to add a bunch of people they have never met in the flesh as "friends?"  That's like handing your business cards out to everyone you ride the bus with.  No thank you. 

And one of the more recent fun things is that a number of friends from high school reached out to me and now I can "enjoy" pictures of me in different high school productions.  Much more effective than using classmates.com to reach old classmates, if that's what you want to do.

In other news, we harvested the kiwifruit.  No so much because they were ripe but because they will freeze on the vine this weekend if we do.  Chuk got about a hundred or so off of the trees.  If we can successfully ripen a couple in a bag with a banana, then I will be ecstatic because then I definitely give some as gifts to the neighbors and friends.

As for Xmas, I put up lights on the front porch and put it on a timer so they are on in the evening and for a short while in the morning before I go to work.  We also put up a real wreath and a garland.  If I can find the ground stakes, then I might consider putting the inflatable snowman.  No plans to buy a real tree or cut my own this year.  Just set up the fiber optic small tree in the living room and decorate the front of the house.