Portland City Grill and Portland Underground walking tour

My boss decided it was time to spend the money in the budget for team activities in a really cool way - lunch out at Portland City Grill (alcohol included - I had two bellinis), followed by a walking tour of Portland (her choice was the seedy, underground tour that did actually take us underground for a small portion of our journey through Portland's downtown). We learned how the downtown section south of Burnside along the waterfront was formed by two prominent men - Pettygrove and Quimby (if I remember correctly). These two dudes built roads according to compass North. Captain Couch (pronounced "cooch") was responsible for NW Portland, where he implemented a numerical and alphabetical street naming system for easy navigation. (He's a sea captain, those folks are all about navigating.) Anyway, Captain Couch, perhaps a pirate?, [my aside, not the tour leader's] used the stars to sail the seas, and thereby developed his section of Portland using true North. So if you stand on the dividing line you can see the streets from downtown heading compass North and the streets in NW heading true North. Pretty neat, eh?

We learned what it meant to be shanghaied, that the Willamette used to be home to floating brothels, and how Old Town Chinatown started out as Japantown before World War II. (For more information on Executive Order 9066 that removed the Japanese to internment camps, click here.) When our fearless tour guide made an offhand comment that we "no longer go to war for no reason" only two people complained about the inappropriateness of her statement - midwesterners far as I can tell.

Our day ended at Kell's where we had some crazy waiter guy that kept reciting his bad poetry and going off to the corner to cry. The Guinness was good so she left him a nice tip.

Good deed gone horribly, horribly wrong

Fuck! I stopped off at Krispy Kreme to grab some doughnuts for my office mates and damn if my wallet didn't get lifted. Son of a bitch. At least I got the doughnuts. I'm on the horn now calling to cancel all cards. Hope the dillhole that swiped it enjoys the one dollar bill and $5 Jamba Juice card I had in there.

Update: 7:59am. Called Krispy Kreme on the off chance wallet found and am happy to report the wallet was discovered in the parking lot by an employee. The money and gift card are gone but the credit cards and blank, unsigned check (needed to pay back a coworkers for Bob's Red Mill supplies) are present. Whew! I need a drink.

Bill's Smackdown!

OK, this is all over everywhere, and now I guess it's here too. But it's so great when Bill Clinton Destroys Chris Wallace And FOX news!

And Jon Stewart has good stuff too!

European vacation 2006

Sorry for the delay. I managed to go through the gazillion photos Darr and I took while gallivanting around Europe and finally uploaded them to our web site. If you've got seventeen hours to spare, feel free to check 'em out. For Prague, click here. For Austria, click here. For Italy, click here. In the meantime, you can enjoy photos with excerpts from my journal right here at the blog.

PRAGUE

12 September / 8:00pm - Our luggage is MIA...We are headed to the restaurant for some pivo (beer) and a little someting to eat.

13 September / 5:17pm - Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) is a foot-traffic only bridge we took to get from the Little Quarter to Old Town. It was packed with vendors selling their wares.

15 September / 7:55pm - Our goal was to see the Dancing House by American architect Frank Gehry...and to get to this one ice cream parlor...I'm proud to say we reached both goals.

15 September 2006 / 7:55pm - We leave here for Vienna tomorrow. I will miss the dark beer. It is very good.

16 September / 12:27am - Downing three gigantic beers at dinner seemed like a good idea at the time but now appears to have been a mistake. To avoid any head-meets-toilet-for-puking scenarios, I [Christie] am now drinking copious amounts of water and have swallowed a preemptive Aleve.

AUSTRIA
16 September / 9:45pm - As it was getting dark we noticed a gorgeously lit building...with towers ablaze. We were rather bummed to find a circus tent parked right in front when we got close enough to take a picture.

17 September / 11:45pm - We had an über-touristy day in Vienna doing all those thing you expect from tourists. We walked and oogled the architecture and went through whirlwind tours of a couple of the major must-see attractions.

18 September / 8:03pm - The weather was overcast but the clouds didn't break until shortly after lunch. Salzburgians must know their weather well as they all broke out umbrellas or made their way inside. I've never seen walkways clear of people so fast. We grabbed...an umbrella and strolled down Getreidegasse, an old lane with cobbled streets...and wrought iron signs, including one for a McDonald's that is quite humorous to behold.

ITALY
19 September / 5:00pm - Arrived in Varenna. Must sell everything and move here immediately.

20 September / 10:45am - It is clear to me that Italy is fabulous. Darr and I have seen several residences along the shore that would make most excellent homes for us, Ellie & Mabel, and Beauty the wonder dog.

20 September / 9:00 - Darr and I decided it was best to do a little handwashing of our undergarments...thus alleviating us of the need to find a laundromat...So as I write this our underwear is drying on the towel warmer rack in our hotel bathroom...I have a bug bite on my ankle. I'm hoping it's not some foreign bug that has crawled inside my flesh to multiply until it amasses a bug army large enough to attack my vital organs. That would suck.

20 September / 9:00pm - We spent the day walking around the town doing nothing in particular.

22 September / 9:10am - Conversation between me and Darr after showering:
Me: "Hey! My bug bite looks okay."
Darren: "Oh look, there's no gangrene. That's good."
We were super lazy yesterday...We ate inordinate amounts of gelato, had our first Italian pizza...and paid way too much (3 euros) for a Heineken beer.

22 September / 9:10am - We are taking the veloce barca...to Bellagio today to sightsee and shop. I have a feeling gelato is in our future as well.

Returning to life at the condo

We're home. The weather was gorgeous, the beer was plentiful, and the streets were cobbled. I'm working on getting the pics online. I was rather snap-happy and now am left to sift through hundreds of photos. Stay tuned.

We're on holiday

Back in April our friends, the Bickels, went to the Bahamas and Sara had this great blog entry to let folks know they were offline. I've been planning my knockoff vacation blog entry ever since. Enjoy.

If you happen to be in Prague, you might bump into us here:

Four days later, we'll be here:

Then we'll hit Mozart's hometown for an evening of classical music and cheesy Sound of Music tours. It's likely we'll be so tired we end up spending a great deal of time lounging in our room:

Then it's over to Varenna, Italy for a few days lakeside:

We just have to make sure we reach Milan in time to catch our flight home. I tell you, though, if we didn't have kids (i.e., our cats Ellie & Mabel and Beauty the wonder dog) we just might hunker down in some small Italian village and become olive farmers. I am part Italian and we both love pasta and wine...

Labor Day weekend

I can't sleep 'cuz I'm too excited about our trip so I just uploaded our Labor Day weekend pics to the web site. The Labor Day trip to Seattle almost didn't happen as our car battery died and Rick got in an accident while bicycling. (Ouch.) But we made it up there and had a great time strolling on the beach and picnicking at the locks.

A gargantuan thank you

We want to send a huge thanks to Brother Nick and Megan for watching Beauty the wonder dog while we're on holiday. We dropped her off this evening. She was so frickin' happy to see Uncle Nick she hardly noticed we weren't there when she followed him into the house.

Holy schnikes, we leave tomorrow!

This time tomorrow we'll be boarding the plane to Seattle, where we'll board another plane to London, where we'll board a third plane to Prague. It's going to be an exhausting flight but hopefully a little spa-action at London Heathrow during our layover will have us refreshed for our arrival at the hotel. Luckily, the hotel offers a pick-up service so a car will be waiting for us when we land. Cool.

Things left to do include the following:

• drop off Beauty the wonder dog at Brother Nick's
• pack
• change the bedding for our house/cat sitter extraordinaire Flavia
• cuddle with the cats
• buy staple products for the house
• order gift for Brother Nick and Megan
• forget important something
• perform last-minute cleaning
• panic about forgotten important something
• buy second cat box and extra litter
• remember important something
• blog vacation entry
• pick up treats for cats
• get to airport on time

Dogs are strange

The dog eats watermelon. Loves the watermelon. Who knew?

Jackass Number Two

Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the Wildboyz crew are back for what promises to be another movie filled with stupid hilarity. I nearly peed my pants the first time.

A trip to Europe, the Grey's Anatomy premiere in two weeks, a new job, and now Jackass Number Two -- it feels like frickin' Christmas!

Our mortgage company might be evil

Admittedly I am not good with finances. I have improved vastly since my just-graduated-from-high-school-and-carry-15-different-
credit-cards-all-with-balances days but I'm still nowhere near where my husband would like me to be. I care but not enough to take the time to do all the things you're supposed to do, like create and use a budget and make fiscally smart decisions. So it is a true testament to the luck in my life that I came across the latest scheme from our mortgage company.

The folks that carry our mortgage called me toward the beginning of the year with news that we weren't depositing enough money into our escrow account each month to cover the property taxes. (The escrow account is a part of our mortgage loan.) The woman presented me with two options: pay the estimated amount in one lump sum or spread the payments out over the rest of the year. I chose the latter. Fast forward several months to the point where I receive and review our latest statement. I notice our escrow balance has grown to an astounding $4400+. We know that our taxes fall somewhere in the $3300 range so we've already overpaid by a thousand bucks. Wtf?! I decide to give our mortgage company a call to stop the monthly amount from being taken out of our mortgage payment as we clearly have enough to pay our property taxes.

I tend to think of myself as a relatively intelligent individual but this lady apparently thought I was the largest dumbass on the planet. That has to be the explanation or how else could she tell me what the mortgage company was doing and expect me to go along? Here's the breakdown.

The mortgage company performs some sort of assessment at the beginning of the year. The outcome of this is that they are given a figure, an estimate if you will, of the expected property taxes. They then call the homeowners and explain they need more than the figure that is a result of their assessment. Do I need to type that slower? They want you to overpay. "But we send you the money back at the end of the year." She was incredulous that I wouldn't take part in this glorious game plan I like to call "Rip off your customers".

That's not the end of the trickery. They also want to continue to take the $500 out of each mortgage payment we send in to build up our escrow balance because "you didn't want to make the lump sum payment". Were we to continue in this fashion, we would end up overpaying our property taxes by approximately $3000, which we'd get back -- she assured me of this many times. The problem, Barbara, (I have no idea if that is her real name but let's use it anyway) is that I don't want to overpay my taxes to such an extent. I don't want to pay a fee to stop the payments to the escrow account. I want that money to come back to me so I can pay my own damn taxes and use that money for something useful like, oh I don't know, paying down the damn mortgage loan balance so you get less money in interest. You fat cow.

After being told this could not be done without great expense to us, I contacted our broker and let it fly -- but in a nice way because we like him. Everything was swiftly resolved in our favor. No fees were assessed. They returned the money in the escrow account to us. Darr and I agree to take care of the property taxes on our own. All is right in the world.

Score:
Evil Mortgage Company 0
Us 1

I missed the makeup class

There are two groups of women - those who know how to apply makeup and those who don't. I reside somewhere in the latter group. I missed the makeup class. Makeup application isn't luck, it's a skill that is taught. I must have been absent that day.

There are advantages to not being makeup-crazed. For instance, if Darr decides to invite me to a last minute dinner out, I can be ready in under 15 minutes, that's including the time it takes to shower. Also, I don't have to avoid hugging someone wearing white because there's no worry I'm going to leave half of my makeup face behind when finished with the embrace. And when I workout, my face doesn't melt off when I sweat.

On the flip side, I notice when people look good because they have correctly used the various artistic tools available for applying makeup. I recognize a well-lined lip or a well-blended foundation that creates the smooth, flawless look that is truly beautiful. I see it and I want it for myself. One of my friends told me how she went to a makeup counter, promised to spend a small fortune on makeup, and finagled a makeup lesson out of the experience. I may have to do this because I sometimes want to have that "natural" look you can only achieve with makeup.

Any Place I Hang My Hat

Any Place I Hang My Hat earns a 3.25. The most refreshing part of this book is the strength displayed by the main female character. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she is raised by her father, when he isn't in prison, and a grandmother who succumbs to Alzheimer's. She manages to attend Harvard and become a journalist at a respected albeit not widely read publication. The one thing I noticed, is that a lot of the books I've read recently have an über-wealthy friend in the supporting character role, as if one of those is so easy to attract when you are making $40K a year and can hardly afford a 300 sq. ft apartment in New York. Amy spends her time chasing story leads while searching for information on her own past. With a parallel storyline, the reader is presented with two possible conclusions to uncovering your past, discovering who you are, and gaining the acceptance needed to move forward.

Goodbye sweet unemployment

Tomorrow I start my contract job working on an online help conversion project. While I don't expect this to be a wildly exciting employment phase of my life, I'm actually eager to do something productive that will bring in an income and be a good notch to add to the old resume. The people are so cool at this place they hired me even though I'm leaving less than a week after my start date for a thirteen day romp around Europe. You have to appreciate that kind of flexibility. Plus, once the project is underway my boss said I could work from home, thereby ending the miserable commute to Beaverton. I've got a few other solo projects I'm working on -- web site construction is great fun thanks to the folks at Freeway Express (our site is in their gallery!)-- so between those projects, the contract job, my possible internship and general life stuff I should be busy until the holidays. Thank God my Christmas shopping is almost done.

Rumsfeld gets his ass chewed up and spit out

Recipe Corner: Blueberry Buckle

Today's recipe is a new favorite at la maison de Gilroy Glynn, which we're posting because we actually received a request for it. The recipe is easily halved, preventing you from eating too much of the blueberry goodness.

Ingredients:
Streusel
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz) packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch table salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces, softened but still cool

Cake
1 1/2 cups (7 1/2 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool
2/3 cup (4 3/4 oz) granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest from 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs, room temperature
4 cups (about 20 oz) fresh blueberries, picked over

Directions:
Streusel
Combine the flour, sugars, cinnamon, and salt in a standing mixer fitted with a flat beater and mix on low speed until well combined and no large brown sugar lumps remain. Add butter and mix on low speed until the mixture resembles wet sand and no large butter lumps remain. Transfer streusel to small bowl and set aside.

Cake
Adjust the oven rake to the lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 350-degrees. Spray a 9-inch cake pan with 2-inch sides with nonstick cooking spray, line the bottom with parchment or waxed paper, spray the parchment or waxed paper, and dust the pan with flour.

Whisk the flour and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside. Cream the butter, sugar, salt and lemon zest at medium-high speed in a standing mixer fitted with a flat beater until light and fluffy (approx. 3 minutes). Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla until combined. Add eggs one at a time with the mixer running on the medium speed. Beat until partially incorporated, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and continue to beat until fully incorporated (mixture will appear broken). Turn the speed to low and gradually beat in the flour mixture until it is almost fully incorporated (approx. 20 seconds). Stir the batter with a rubber spatula to remove any flour pockets. The batter will be very thick and heavy (like cookie dough). Gently fold in the blueberries until evenly distributed.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading evenly to the edges of the pan. Squeeze streusel in hand to form large clumps then break streusel over batter. Bake until the buckle is a deep golden brown and toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then remove buckle from the pan, peeling off and discarding the parchment or waxed paper. Cool to room temperature.

Serves 8-10

Storage Tip

Unless you have a big house in the suburbs, you might be able to use this handy tip. Christie thought of it.

Vacation preparations underway

Yanking the familial obligations chain, we managed to secure lodging for Beauty the wonder dog while we're gallivanting around Europe. Brother Nick, sister-in-law Megan, and Tessa (a.k.a. the cat who oft pukes) have agreed to manage our dog and we couldn't be happier or more grateful. We owe you big time.

We've roped another person into watching our two lovely cats and the condo. To assist this person, I've created a house and pet sitting guide. I had spare time. It covers everything from how to watch a movie to a listing of local recommended restaurants to what is required for pet care. If you want to take a gander, click here to download the file. The one part about going on vacation that sucks is that you have to leave your fantabulous pets at home. We miss them.

I located our passports and the little security wallet that I'll force Darr to wear around his neck. Earlier this week I bought an additional pair of Balance Spa Pants at Lucy (on sale - thanks for the heads-up Sara) that I plan on wearing as I toodle the European streets. On an earlier shopping trip with Sara and the Noodle, I found the shampoo soap bar I was looking for since the airlines have placed restrictions on carry-on items. Darr and I are hoping to pack in such a way as to avoid having to check our luggage, which we've agreed to try and keep to one backpack per person. I found the backpack I want to buy for our journey at Climb Max, where we recently purchased our climbing shoes, but I haven't been back yet to pick it up. It's an ultra light pack that maybe, eventually, I'll be able to use while climbing. If we ever get to the point where we're climbing outside on routes that are higher than 15-20 feet. As it is now, we've purchased the year membership at The Circuit Gym and are trying more and more of the beginner routes. Darr's reach has him in the lead for successful climbs - I curse his long limbs!

On the list for tomorrow -- contacting our credit card companies to advise them we will be traveling abroad. I used to work for a credit card company and this preemptive call is highly appreciated by the security departments, who are almost always alerted when charges from foreign countries start popping up, particularly if this is out of the norm for your account. This decreases the likelihood they will freeze the account, leaving us without a means to pay for goods and services. Woohoo! We leave in ten days.

Monthly banners

Another month, another banner. One of these days I'll have Darr show me how to use these cool background designs so I can do something a little more creative than cropping a photo and typing our blog name in the corner.