Author: ryan

The weekend has been pretty busy so far. Yesterday after work Kelly and I met up with our friends Ghost Dog (and his wife Becky) at the Mash Tun for some dinner and drinks. I haven't been there for a couple weeks and they have some new batches of beer, one of which is the delicious Ford Prefect Porter (good name too, nice Douglas Adams 'Hitchhiker's Guide' reference), and another is their 'Kitchen Sink #2', which is something like a cross between an English bitter, and an amber. We had a good time and then Kelly and I came home and watched more Lost (which we just started getting via Netflix). It's an excellent show so far.

Today we went to the Mississippi Street Fair in North Portland (with a group of folks, including Ghost Dog and his wife, Snooks and his girlfriend, Miranda, and other friends of Kellys). Quite an interesting event, loads of people with pets (mostly dogs, but Kelly saw somebody walking a pet pig), lots of environmentally-conscious groups, arts and crafts etc. The thing that stands out for me was this scrawny girl wearing face paint dancing down the street on stilts while wearing a very small bikini thing.

Since Portland was hosting an International Beerfest that same day, Ghost Dog and I took off for a bit to check that out. It was a spendy event ($20 entry fee that included 10 drink tickets, each 4oz drink was between 1 and 3 tickets) but it ended up being worth it. Had a few delicious beers, most notably the Freeminer Waterloo, and the Yeti Oak-aged Imperial Stout.

After the beer festival Ghost Dog and I met back up with Kelly, Becky and Miranda at my house to relax and eat some dinner before going to my friend Tyson's birthday party. Kelly and Becky went to see Paul Oakenfold in concert while the rest remained at the party and had a fabulous time.

Tomorrow Kelly's sister and family are going to be in Portland so I don't yet know exactly what's going on, but I'm hoping at some point to get some yardwork in and to relax and watch a movie. Whew! 

Kelly and I spent this past weekend in Astoria, Oregon. Our aunt recently bought a vacation home there and let us stay a few nights. The weather was absolutely fantastic (I have the sunburn to prove it too).

We arrived in the evening on Friday, had enough daylight to pick up groceries, unpack, and start walking into town for dinner. We quickly discovered that things shut down pretty early in town and there’s nowhere to get a meal past about 10pm. So we sat at a local brewpub called Wet Dog Cafe (part of Astoria Brewing) and had chips and salsa and tried a couple of their brews. The only really bad part was that the place had what they called ‘club night’, so it cost us $3 to get in and hear really terrible music from a cd changer. Oh well.

Saturday we drove to Fort Stevens State Park where my parents happened to be camping the same weekend, so we visited with them for a while before heading to the Buoy 10 Brewfest in Hammond, which was a pretty fun time. There weren’t too many different beers there (32 total, most of which I’d had) but there were a few really excellent ones that I’d never had before such as Pike’s Naughty Nelly’s Ale and Racoon Lodge’s Ring Tail Pale Ale. And both the weather and view were great, there was a tent and outdoor area with a great view of the Columbia River (and Astoria in the distance).

That evening Kelly and I had a very nice meal at Baked Alaska, which sits on the pier. Kelly and I sat outside on the deck and watched a magnificant sunset (seen in the photo above) and shared three crab dishes; crab cakes, dungeness crab fettucini, and Alaskan king crab legs with butter. Yum!

On Sunday we walked back down to town for the craft fair before driving up to (and then climbing the 164 steps) of the Astor Column. The photo to the left, taken from the top of the column, is of Astoria, showing the mouth of the Columbia River looking out towards the Pacific Ocean, and Washington (the dark land mass you see to the upper right). Another spectacular day, and a great weekend. 

Had some friends over tonight for a BBQ over this 4th of July weekend. Since I was given a reprieve from work today, and have tomorrow off, today is sort of like Saturday part 3. Hooray!

After spending several hours in the heat yesterday working on the yard I took it pretty easy today, not doing very much but picking up my buddy Ghost Dog and running to the Beer Heaven of Portland (also known as John’s Marketplace) to pick up some unusual and imported beers for the night. I love the place, the store has racks divided by country, German, English, Belgian, Polish, Russian, etc. The beer selection is something to marvel at. I do wish there was a bigger British beer selection, but the store can only get what is imported and distributed to Portland, so what can they do?

The BBQ was a blast; cooked loads of meats, drank loads of beers (including some porter that our friend Miranda brought from Laurelwood Brewery, which is delicious), and had a fantastic time.

Man, what a crazy month. I know, my posts have become a great deal less frequent. I sort of knew that would happen once I started my new job at SuperSweetCo, though it’s been extra crazy due to the fact that I started the job in the midst of a big software release. That has meant that I have spent pretty much every bit of my computing energy working on it and ignoring my blogging duties. Shame on me.

Tonight the company celebrated the launch of the project I was involved in, and took everybody out to local pubs and such for drinks. My wife joined me and we had a fantastic time. Afterwards we met up with our good friend Ghost Dog for his birthday at Rose & Thistle for a while before we moved on to Moon & Sixpence.

K and I just got home a little while ago, and we had a wonderful  Overal it’s been a craxy month, but really great.

For those of you who don’t live in the Portland Oregon area, it’s hot here right now. Really hot. Really Really hot. The past few weeks have been a bit cool and damp (upper 60’s to low 70’s, with rain here and there) but yesterday and today it shot up to 100+. I don’t care for extreme heat like this, and I never really have. I sort of figure that when it’s cold you can always bundle up. But when it’s this hot you can’t take enough off to make a dent. Urgh. Fortunately the heat wave is supposed to be on it’s way out, dropping to 80 by Thursday. Whew!

Today I spent the day getting the photos from the recent trip posted to the photos site. Check ’em out!

Since returning from the trip last week and having a couple final days of not working, I’ve begun my new job. It’s been really good so far, except that starting Sunday I came down with a horrible cold, so for the first week of my new job I’ve been a coughy, snotty, achy, sweaty mess. It’s finally starting to fade a bit, but I fear this one will hang on for a great deal longer than I’d prefer. Oh well, it’s almost Friday already.

Kelly and I returned from our trip last night. We had a fantastic time, and it both felt like a long and short trip. I both wanted to stay longer and wanted to get home as I was heading to Gatwick airport yesterday morning.

Since my last post, Kelly and I left York (Sunday, May 28) and drove south / south-east to Canterbury. We arrived about mid-afternoon, and after driving in circles through the maze of the town we found our hotel, and had time to check out the massive Canterbury Cathedral. The town itself (at least, the old part) reminded Kelly and I of York, only on a much smaller scale. It has a charming main street (High Street), with quite a few shops, pubs and restaurants. We could have easily spent another day here, but up until two nights before we left home we weren’t even planning on coming to Canterbury at all. We’re both glad we did and would like to go back someday.

After leaving Canterbury (this would have been Monday morning) we drove about 30 minutes south-east to view the magnificent White Cliffs of Dover. If the weather hadn’t have been so poor (it would pour down rain, and then get sunny for brief periods) I’d have loved to walk out further than we did, but as it was the trails were muddy (this pale clay like mud from the chalky ground) so we only walked a short distance. We did get some great photos though. After spending some time at the white cliffs we drove on to Brighton. The weather was nice as we got into town and found our hotel with little trouble. The hotel was just off the waterfront, and just around the corner from the Brighton Palace Pier, and walkable to the Brighton Pavilion and an area known as "The Lanes" which are filled with shopping, restaurants, and of course, pubs. We both relaxed yesterday and got our bags packed ready so we could leave early yesterday morning for Gatwick airport.

The flight to Newark was good and the 6 hours 40 minutes went pretty quick. After a couple hours wait in Newark we boarded the flight for home, and as the plane got out on the runway the pilot announced that due to a thunderstorm brewing off to the west we would have to wait a bit. Well, we ended up waiting nearly 2 hours, in the plane, before finally taking off. The thunderstorm from the sky however was really impressive… large masses of white and grey and black clouds all in different layers, and frequent lighting bolts inside. We arrived in Portland at about 10:30pm, and got home after 11:00pm (thanks to our friend Miranda who picked us up), unpacked a bit and had a great sleep in our own bed again.

That’s it for now. I’m working on getting photos copied off of my iPod so I can sort through them all. Hopefully I’ll get a page built for the trip and posted to my photos site shortly.