Last night Kelly and I went to my company's holiday party, held at the Paragon Restaurant in NW Portland. They had rented out the Gallery Room, a large room for private parties, and supplied hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and dinner. Seeing the entire company (with their spouses / significant others) under one roof is impressive. Even the two 'out-of-country' employees flew out this past week and were able to attend. It was fun to get to meet many of my coworkers better halves, chat with coworkers who I don't see in the average day, etc.
About an hour or so into the event however, the power went out, not just in the building, but a large portion of the surrounding area. I went outside to look around and from Paragon (NW 13th and Hoyt) north as far as I could see was out of power, but it seemed that south, east and west were only out for a handful of blocks. Still, it was a pretty large outage. The Paragon staff were polite and professional however, filling the room with candles and continuing to serve drinks (and later, the salad portion of our meals, since nobody was sure whether they could complete the main course without power). Also during the outage the CEO stood up, read a hilarious poem he had written about the company and employees, set to tone of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore, and then handed out gifts (each employee participated in a white elephant gifting scheme, and some of the gifts were hilarious, including what I received). The power finally came back on, and within a half hour dinner and then dessert were served.
Due to the late dinner, many people continued drinking, on empty stomachs. Fortunately for me, I don't drink anything but beer, and my head cold kept me from drinking too much of that, so for the whole event I remained sober. Kelly has a different story, which I'll let her tell. 🙂 It was fun though seeing some of my coworkers getting a bit tipsy, standing outside with their manly drinks and manly cigars. I just stood there with them with my bottle of beer and a cigarette.
After the event, my manager wanted to go to the Moon & Sixpence, which I would have gladly done, but Kelly was ready to go home so we thought we'd share a cab there, then call one from there home. The company provided taxi vouchers for the evening, which was great, except that the cab company's phones were either busy or not answering. The few of us (seven total) who were going to go out decided to find something walkable from Paragon rather than stand out in the cold, somebody (I believe it was my manager's wife) directed us around the corner to a club/restaurant called Apotheke (Portland Murcury review here) for a drink and, well, warmth. The place itself, which, nearly all white, had a very angular, rounded-corner, 'plastic' look (most of it was either plastic or fiberglass), with minimalist artwork decorating the walls, and a couple of guys (one on a laptop, the other with a sampler) creating 'crunchy' electronic music completed the atmosphere.
The restaurant serves what it calls 'Scandinavian and Northern European Cuisine', and has a better-than-usual beer selection (including a couple bottled Scottish beers [1, 2] I hadn't had, or even seen, before). The server behind the bar was very friendly and knowledgeable about the beer offerings and accurately described the flavors of the things I tried after they ran out of one of my favorite English ales, the Adnams SSB. It was a very interesting place to go, and given the friendly staff I'd be curious to go back and try out some of their food menu (the patat, wurst with potato salad and sauerkraut, and Westmalle stew all sound delicious). Kelly and I finally got a cab home sometime around 1:30am, then Kelly, I, and Arthur all dozed off on the couch around 2:30am. I woke up (still on the couch) sometime around 4am, and sleepily shuffled my way upstairs to bed. Fun night. I'm sleepy.
Tonight Kelly and I had dinner with our friends Miranda & Brian at the new McMenamins pub that opened near where we live. It's called the Chapel Pub, and is located in a building that was constructed for and used as a mortuary from 1939 to 2005. Again, McMenamins did what they do best, snapped up the great building and renovated it. A server told Kelly and I that originally the building was to be nothing offices for their corporate headquarters, however they figured out that there was enough room in the large brick building to put a small pub in the front. And boy has it been a hit, Kelly had heard that on opening night a few weeks ago there was an hour-long wait to get seated. Yikes!
The wait wasn't too bad (20 minutes) and we were seated in a nice spot by the windows that face Commercial St. Dinner was good, and had a great time hanging out with Miranda and Brian. At first I thought it might be a little weird to have dinner and drinks in a former mortuary; however it really wasn't strange at all once there. The pub has a warm, comfortable vibe, and very a 'McMenamins' atmosphere, with interesting art and great old photos of the area adorning the walls. It's not a big place, but it's worth going to check out. 
