Bonny Portland

One of my favorite (if not favorite) holiday's is upon us. I love going out on Halloween and seeing all the cool costumes. Especially love you ladies out there going all out to look a special kind of sexy (Olivia is Queen of Halloween Hotness).

We carved our pumpkins last night, Its really hard to take a picture in darkness with our SLR. You basically need a tripod, that we don't have, because the aperature stays open until it acquires enough light. The result is usually blurry at best, freakishly streaky at worse.

We also finally found GOOD SUSHI in Portland!!! Its a place currently called Masu East, but soon to be Bamboo Sushi. In fact, we had a hard time finding it because they changed the signage yesterday. Not only was the sushi awesome, but they are going to be the FIRST certified sustainable sushi restaurant in the USA (possibly the world) when the official re-opening happens in a few weeks.

All the fish was extremely fresh. We sat at the sushi bar and even saw the chef clean and prepare our horse mackeral (similar to spanish mackeral). After we had two orders, one filet made two pieces/one order os sushi, the chef asked if we wanted the bones? Bones? Yep. They deep fry them and turn into the craziest potato chip you may have ever had. DEFINITELY something to try.

Everyone, Enjoy Halloween and if you're in Portland, give sustainable sushi a try.

Its been a good 7 weeks since we moved and I was getting a bit shaggy up top. My two basic choices were an Aveda Salon, about 2 blocks away, starting at $40 OR Phagan's School of Hair Design in my complex for $6. Figuring I could explain away a horrible haircut by a poor Halloween choice, I chose to go cheap.

We went to grab some pumpkins for Halloween on sunday afternoon. What a beautiful 30 minute drive. We took the old Columbia River historic highway, we were surrounded by trees at their autumn peak. Beautiful array of colors, glimpses of the winding river, and great weather. If you are in Portland, take a quick drive SOON. I wish I had my camera.

PS. We went to a REAL pumpkin patch where we had to pick them off the vine. Not some hay covered parking lot. 2 pumpkins for $6 from a family farm, no pesticides. Halloween we can believe in.

So Olivia and I had our first day of Catholic Pre-Marriage class. (few hours today, whole day on saturday). It was pretty unremarkable except for a big faux pas when I shouted out what I thought was a funny comment without thinking....

I blurt out, "Does he read them?" Now, I know in retrospect I look like kind of an ass. But I am now stuck trying to figure out if it was better if she had or had NOT seen Brokeback Mountain. (which I havent). Because the whole ruse (SPOILER ALERT) is up when Heath Ledger's wife leaves him a note in his tackle box that he never reads so she KNOWS he's not actually doing any fishing on these fishing trips with Jake.

So.. better the teacher thinks I'm insensitive or that I think her husband might be gay??

Hectic weekend. I've been putting off blogging because so much happened, but now I realized I am just procrastinating. Therefore, I'm going to break it up into smaller posts... lets see how it works.

Finger is feeling better. Been without the splint for a day or so. It was a big hassle. Hopefully the finger is now healed. I don't know how much time will have to pass before I'm not worried anymore. It wasn't acting up 100% of the time BEFORE the doctor.

Was pretty excited about how well the information session went so I scooped up Olivia and we went down to Ringside (Downtown location) for Steaks. It's an old fashioned steakhouse with leather handles on the door, lots of wood, a fireplace.. classic. Lots of nationwide "Top 10" steak awards. They're known for their onion rings so we got the "half" order that was enough for 2 people.. or 5.

Olivia got a Porterhouse, I went with the Bone-In Ribeye. When given a choice, always get the bone. It helps make a tastier steak. I ordered rare with no butter and it came out great. Olivia got the normal style in a medium rare.. and was suprised when she didn't like it. (She eats rare meat). They quickly prepared another, in rare, and now she doesn't have steak doneness ordering priveledges.

So Simple Shoes is running a contest for free shoes if you post their youtube link. So here it is. I actually have a pair of their shoes. I loved them until I wore them down. I wear down the tips of my shoes much faster than most. I certainly love their commitment to sustainability!

Here it is:

I had to go to the Doctor for a finger injury sustained in the move. Has been a few weeks and it wasn't healing.. guess I have tendonitis in my middle finger, although some may think I injured that finger another way. In any case, it takes alot longer to type using my left hand and index finger, so might be slow for the 4-7 days I have to wear this splint. I did learn that anti-inflammatories make me sleepy. The one piece of good news is that I wont have to talk about the White Sox loss. Still proud they won the AL Central and won more playoff games than the ScRubs.

The Blackout could refer to several different things in the past few days.

We woke up on Saturday morning to find out that we had no power. The fire alarm system kept chirping letting us know (if we couldnt notice the fact that we had no electricity for ANYTHING) that we didn't have power. I took a shower in the darkness before the hot water from our electric hot water heater ran out. We went for breakfast, a good section around us was also without power. By the time we got back, all was well.

The Blackout could also refer to last Tuesday when US Cellular field was Blacked out by all the fans wearing black (over 40,000)! Sox beat the Twins to send them to the ALDS against Tampa.

OR, the Rolling Blackout could also refer to Sunday, where the White Sox came home down 0-2 and continued the Blackout to the tune of their first win of the series!

We had a good weekend. Went to the Greek Festival on Saturday night. Lots of tasty Greek food. We arrived too late to get tickets for Lamb #8, the last lamb of the night. I guess there was some culture somewhere, but they did a good job hiding it. The rest of the food was great and we loved these honey donut holes..


Sunday was AWESOME. First, the Bears destroyed the Lions. Second, the White Sox beat the Rays. Third, Olivia and I went to see Rachael Yamagata in concert! She has the flu but still put together an awesome show. The opening act was horrid, but I pounded through a few Pabst Blue Ribbons and soon Rachael herself was on stage. She played both old and new stuff, her new album drops on Tuesday, the 7th. I hadn't seen her perform for years and I was extremely excited to see her play again!

Come on White Sox, Lets win one more time at home and take the series back to Tampa!!

The Blackout WORKS! The Chicago White Sox are your 2008 AL Central Division CHAMPS!

Enjoy that LOOONG ride home Twinkies. Perhaps you shouldn't have celebrated like you won something LAST week. Beating you on our field was worth it.