Category: General

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Beer General Music

Christmas at home

Due to the unusual amount of snow that’s hit the greater Portland area this past week, Kelly and I were unable to make the usual trek out to my folks house today.

My hometown, which is nestled in the foothills of the Oregon coast range, had more than two feet of snow. This is the most snow my folks have ever seen, and that’s saying something. When I was young we’d fairly regularly get about a foot of snow, though over the past 15 years getting more than six inches of snow, especially before Christmas, has been a rare thing.

This meant that this was the first Christmas that my family hasn’t spent together opening gifts, eating breakfast, eating pies, and gorging ourselves on far too many cookies. It had my family pretty bummed out, especially my younger brothers.

If it warms up and the snow continues to melt (which is the forecast) we’ll be out there in a few days (maybe Saturday) to celebrate Christmas. It’s only a few days delay, no big deal. Fortunately I have family who all live in the same area, and nobody has had to travel long distances. I can’t imagine the hell it must have been for people trying to get into (or out of) Portland the past few days. The inconvenience of postponing Christmas a few days isn’t that big a deal.

Tonight Kelly and I met Snooks at Kennedy School for a couple beers, which was a nice break away from home. On the way back Kelly and I helped a cab get un-stuck. Poor fella tried to turn from a relatively cleared street onto a snow & slushy mess and got stuck. It’s still a mess out here.

Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone. Hope you all had a great day. And only a week away from 2009. Maybe this year will be better than the last.

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Beer General

I’ve added a photo gallery of all the snow

I’ve added a gallery of photos, documenting the snow storm that Portland has had over the past week. Most are of my house and the local area, including some photos I took while Kelly and I walked down to Kennedy School a few hours ago. It’s funny to see the progression from last week, when I was taking photos of a light dusting (as if it were a big deal), and then to see where it is now (12 inches or more of snow).

I’m now sitting home, sipping on some beers, just having eaten a delicious chicken korma dish Kelly cooked up (yummy!) and listening to Christmas music. Nice.

Anyway, enjoy the photos!

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General

Crazy, it’s still snowing!

Here’s some updated versions of the photos I took the other day.

We’ve now got a LOT of snow. More than I’ve seen in this neighborhood since moving to northeast in 2004. More than I’ve seen in Portland in a long time. Apparently the amount of snowfall for Portland is reaching the previous record high for this time of year, which was in 1969. Golly.

Yesterday was a bit crappier, in that there was a sheet of freezing rain from the early morning hours, which put an icy glaze over everything, including power lines and trees. Fortunately it was less than a half inch coating at our house, but other areas got hit pretty hard, major freeways were closed, and lots of people lost power (and/or tree limbs). However, by the afternoon it started snowing again, and it seemed to snow all night and continues now.

So the strata of this winter blanket around my neighborhood goes something like this:

  • 5-8 inches of snow
  • .25 – .5 inch of ice
  • 3-4 inches of snow
  • + still snowing

In some spots it’s deeper (due to the winds creating 1 to 2 foot deep piles). Either way, it’s just nutty, and very unusual, to get snow like this in Portland.

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General

Still snowing

Here’s some more snow pics from my house, taken at around 1 PM today.

Had a nice, relaxing day. Slept in nice and late, got up and realized I didn’t have creamer for coffee (yeah, I use creamer, wanna fight?) so I got cleaned up and braved the snowy weather and walked to the local grocery store. The snow is that really fine, powdery stuff that you get when it’s very cold, and the wind was blowing, which meant that my clothes were covered white by the time I got home.

The powdery snow makes it difficult to get a clear sense of how much snow we’ve gotten (it blows into piles as deep as a foot, and then blows some spots nearly clear), though I’d guess we’ve gotten about 4 inches so far. Maybe more. Not sure. Doesn’t matter because it’s still nice to look outside and see everything covered in a blanket of white.

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General Work

Wintry weather, and some well earned vacation

Snow in NE Portland, 2008The past week has been very wintry here in Portland, unusually so. We had snow over last weekend (as Kelly mentioned), some 24 degree days, and again over the past day or two, more snow! I always love the snow, makes the world feel a bit softer somehow. We had more yesterday, a bit of a warming today, and then more snow tonight. I got home to a white neighborhood again. Love it.

Work has kept me insanely busy over the past few weeks, which explains why I’ve been ignoring the blog. I’ve been working late hours (more than a few 1 AM night, and one 16 hour up-til-4 AM code-fest, urgh), trying to get a bunch of feature work done for SuperSweetCo’s upcoming release. The late hours were partially because I really wanted to get something added that wasn’t officially planned for, so the only way to do it was to work late nights. We did a demo today, and the release is really coming together and looking fantastic. Mad props to everybody involved. I’m super excited to see this next version launch in a couple months.

Fortunately (for my sanity) I’ve got the next two weeks off of work. I look forward to lots of sleeping in, gaming (Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty, here I come!), and generally doing nothing (except the usual holiday season activities). Hopefully I can get some shopping done, finally.