A Trip to Portland & Cold Weather

On Friday we finalized our list of stops for our trip to Portland.  We had to do it on Saturday, because that was when Josh was free.  Meanwhile, the weather had been predicting tons of snow for about ten days.  We kept a close watch on the weather and finally decided that if we got up early on Saturday and left as soon as temps crept above freezing, we’d be able to maximize the amount of time we could spend in Portland while not compromising safety.

 

On Saturday we got up and around at 6AM and found fresh snow on the ground.  We were a little worried about the road conditions so we waited an hour or so for the sun to come up. Jonas was only worried about the stretch between here and Cottage Grove.  We hit the road around 7AM and found the roads slushy and a bit icy between here and Cottage Grove, so we drove slow and made it over the one small pass.  By the time we got to Eugene it was sunny, but still cold.  We made it to Costco where we picked up a few items.  Then we were off to Portland where we would meet up with my brother Josh. Josh was spending a few days in Portland, checking out the area, and then flying on to San Francisco for the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting for work.

We picked up Josh at 11:30AM.  It was so good to see him!  We decided to make IKEA our first stop. I was so excited to finally go there!  IKEA was bigger than I imagined it would be.  We got a bit turned around in the place as a matter of fact!  Then we figured out how the store was set up. First you go upstairs where you can walk around in staged rooms of various furnishings and accessories. Then once you have found the item you want to purchase you write down the aisle and bin numbers of the product.  Then you proceed downstairs to the warehouse where they house all of the boxed items for purchasing.  We found and bought a couple of really nice bookcases at an amazing price for Emma’s ever-growing book collection. IKEA also has two restaurants which are really tasty.  The Swedish meatballs are excellent!  So yeah, IKEA is awesome!  Their products are so versatile and well made and at a good price!  It is safe to say I have found my furnishing store for life!

Our next place of interest was downtown Portland!  Powell’s Book is an awesome place.  You could seriously spend several days there and still not see all the books housed there. We found a lot of cool books, but nothing we really needed. Leaving the bookstore it started to rain heavily; and it was already really cold.  We trekked a few blocks to Pioneer Place Mall where Josh did some shopping.   Then we found a Starbucks and chatted and sipped on some tasty drinks (Emma had a rice-crispy treat). At 5PM we decided to hit the road and begin our three hour drive home so that we could get home before it really froze up. So we dropped Josh off to meet up with some of his friends and said “good-bye.” I was so sad leaving – I loved visiting with Josh and I love Portland!

The trip home was pretty uneventful. Emma slept most of the way.  We did stop off at Borders in Eugene to pick up a box of Christmas cards and an awesome Christmas CD called “Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Christmas Eve & Other Stories.”  We listened to it on the way home.  There was really only one bad spot on the drive home where the road was slushy and icy again, but we just slowed down a lot.

 

On Sunday we cooked up some amazingly tasty food: 1) herbed pizza with tomatoes, feta, shiitake mushrooms and onions and 2) tomato, onion, fresh mozzarella and basil salad.  The pizza was the best either one of us has eaten – EVER!  Then we wrote up and packaged 22 Christmas Cards!  Then we assembled the two bookcases from IKEA. The instructions were really easy and the results are awesome!  I can’t believe how versatile they are!  You can have the bookcases vertical or horizontal.  You can add plastic legs or metal legs or wooden legs (all included).  You can add shelves.  You can add glass or wooden doors.  And you can connect as many book shelves together as you want – high or wide. They are awesome!  Emma and Jonas had a great time making them!

NOTE FROM JONAS

It's still cold here.  Today the temp got UP to 29 degrees.  Tomorrow is supposed to get UP to 31.  You should look at the satellite imagery.  A huge wad of warm, wet air from Hawaii shot due north, through Kodiak and up into the Alaskan Interior.  That warm front (the jet stream) squeezed all the cold air out of Alaska and Canada and sent it south to Washington, Oregon and California.  So let's review...  Warm air into Alaska (Kodiak is rainy and Delta Junction is above zero!)  Cold air down shot down south (clear and cold in Sitka, snow on the Oregon coast, temps in the teens here in Sutherlin and much colder in central Oregon).  I had to shovel the driveway this morning before I went to work at 6am and instead of taking I-5, I drove in on Hwy. 99 which I figured had less crazy people driving on it.  The whole way was icy and snowy!  And the BLM office wouldn't let us go out to the field unless we absolutely had to.  Subsequently, I sat inside and through a really boring budgeting meeting all day.  This afternoon was fun though; a bunch of us discussed restoration plans for streams this coming summer.  When this whole storm was blowing in - literally - we had a really windy day and when we were driving into Roseburg to visit Blockbuster, we saw a tree limb fall on an elevated power transformer and the whole thing exploded in sparks and blue, white and orange light!  Simultaneously, all the lights in the area turned off for a few seconds and then clicked back on as power was re-routed.  It was really cool to watch!

I successfully have registered for both my online physics and calculus courses.  I also just bought the textbooks online which was ridiculously expensive, but whatever; when it's all over with I'll get a nice (expensive) paperweight out of the deal!

Here's some BIG news!!!  We disconnected most of our cable!  It's soooo liberating not to "have" to watch garbage and commercials (also garbage).  We felt that we were wasting way too much time in front of the "babysitter."  I would have gotten rid of all the cable, but then Charter would have jacked up our internet costs.  So we still have about 20 channels, which is more than enough.  We're saving $15 a month now, which isn't much and we no longer get the Food Network, but we have so much more time to do other, more productive things!

DOHNELE NOTE: I miss my 80 channels!!!!  I want it back!!!!  All the good channels are now gone. Oh, and I happen to love commercials!!!

 

EMMA UPDATE

Emma can count to five, all by herself, completely unprompted!  Last night when we were building the bookcases we had all the nuts and bolt laid out on the floor.  Emma all of a sudden started to count them all by herself!  She said “1, 2, 3, 4, 5!”   We were so amazed!!! We had counted with Emma on a few occasions and she would repeat each number after we’d say them.  We didn’t know she could count on her own though. Kids are such sponges at this age!

MOVIE REVIEWS

• "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" was actually really good.  Sure it's a bit juvenille, but it was still fun to watch.  A-
• "Wanted" was a really entertaining movie.  Lots of fun to watch.  The ending was really good, but left us feeling a bit odd.  It seemed to imply that if you're bored, anyone can pick up a gun and become an assassin.  B
• "Fred Claus" was also a good movie.  We're not big fans of Vince Vaughn, but he did a good job in this movie.  The story was really cute and the acting was pretty good too.  A
• "Horton Hears a Who" was really cute too!  Gosh, we're passing out good reviews like candy here!  It's a really funny, animated flick that stays fairly true to the original book and is good entertainment for all ages.  The characters are really brought to life by their voices.  It's the voices that really makes the movie!  A-