After a long, but productive week at work, I got off the bus and met my friend Ghost Dog at the Mash Tun for some beers and dinner. Kelly, who was out at a dinner event related to her internship, met us a little after 9pm, and Ghost Dog had a photographer buddy of his in town to shoot a wedding and who meet up a little later. Had a fun time out, even though I was out later than I thought I’d be. Barely awake now. (falls asleep at the keyboard…)
Category: Work
The week has been both busy and lazy. Here’s the story…
On Sunday, Kelly and I supported some local businesses. We started by going to a local pizza place, Bob’s Rocket Pizza, which we’d recently read rave reviews of. The staff were very friendly, and while there’s limited seating indoors (or outdoors) it’s well worth going to. The pizza was fantastic. Probably among the best I’ve ever had. And fortunately it’s right up the street! While waiting for our pizza, we visited a newcomer to the area, Rose’s, that specializes in hand-made ice-cream, hamburgers, fries, and shakes. We picked up a pint of Oreo Cookie ice cream while waiting for our pizza, which was also fantastic. Later that night (after filling ourselves on pizza and ice cream) we watched some of season three Doctor Who.
Monday I met Miranda at Moon & Sixpence after work for a couple pints and some food before heading home. Miranda & Brian leave for Peru in a week. Jealous. Hrmph!
Tuesday I met Snooks at Kennedy School for a few beers, and to chat about geeky television like Torchwood (and Doctor Who) among other geeky things before going home early and going to sleep.
Wednesday I woke up feeling a bit ill and decided to work from home (and got quite a bit of work done). Kelly and I stayed in and watched several episodes of Heroes (season 1, on DVD). What a great show!
Today after work I met Kelly at Lloyd Center so I could do my (pretty much) annual clothing run, where I finally break down and buy clothes, something I dislike doing. After that we met my brother Travis at Rose & Thistle for a couple pints and some dinner. Had a good night. Tired.
Tonight Kelly and I attended my employer’s annual BBQ, held this year at the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center (aka ‘The Ecotrust Building’) in NW Portland. We’d taken the bus into town, not sure what would happen but figuring this way we were safe in case we had too much to drink. That’s right, we’re responsible that way. 🙂 We arrived at 6pm sharp, when the event started, and made our way to the rooftop of the building. Pretty fun spot to have such a gathering, fully catered and hosted, with two kegs of beer (Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale, both from Deschutes Brewery), along with wine and mixed drinks. The food itself was OK, but nothing worth really mentioning. The atmosphere was however really nice. It was a cool day today, and an even cooler evening, but the skies were clear, and the view over the Pearl was great. Had a really fun time chatting with coworkers, and introducing Kelly to a few of my many new coworkers that had been hired over the past few months.
We left the party at around 9pm, walking down to take the MAX train towards home, with a “short” trip to the Moon & Sixpence. We ended up hanging out there for quite a while, chatting about art, travel, and my continued annoyance of how many tourist destinations in Europe don’t allow photography (I’ve determined that it’s all to force you to buy the books that they sell at the gift shops on way out, not about protecting the art / sculptures from the dangers of flash photography like they claim).
After getting home, I got to try a beer I’d bought earlier today from the local grocery store to celebrate Oktoberfest, something from Bayern Brewing (oddly, from Missoula Montana) called Oktoberfest Lager, which wasn’t so much a lager as it was a dark, malty märzen style beer. But it was pretty tasty though.
After one of those “why can’t things go my way?” work days, I went and got a haircut and met Kelly at Mash Tun for some beers.
After that, we went to New Seasons to pick up some dinner. After Kelly’s post regarding her decision to start eating chicken again, we’d picked up a couple parmesan-breaded chicken breasts, figuring we could add some marinara sauce and cheese to make a delicious (and ‘low shock’) meal out of it. Kelly raved the whole way through the meal. It was both funny and odd, seeings how since we’d started dating she has been a vegetarian (well, kinda, as her post explains).
Free-range, hormone-free chickens BEWARE! There’s another mouth to feed! 🙂
Last night my brother Travis and I got together at Moon & Sixpence for the first time in several weeks to chat over some beers and grub. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the bro again, and he’d loaded his iPod with dozens of photos of my nephew Henry which were pretty fun to flip through.
Today SuperSweetCo released another version of the fancy product I’ve been working on, and ended another development cycle for for the next great version due out in three weeks. In the midst of the flurry of activity trying to get a lot of new changes in, I met several friends at a burger joint on Broadway called the Red Coach for a hamburger, fries, and a soda. Fun lunch, and a nice distraction from the hectic work day. At the end of the day, after scrambling to get one big improvement implemented, the team demo’d the new stuff, and then embarked on a helluva happy hour.
For the past few months, during the ‘release week’ different groups or departments within the company have been “sponsoring” happy hours. It started with the engineering team, and has worked it’s way through support, sales, etc, until tonight which was the happy hour driven by the SuperSweetCo management. Each group has tried to top the previous one, and tonight was no exception, though there’s no doubt that the managers clearly outdid everything before it. The theme (each of these happy hours has had a theme of some sort) was James Bond. They dressed in tuxedos, had bartenders serving martinis, and hired a company to come in with blackjack, craps, and roulette tables. Everybody was given vouchers for chips to play with, and at a later point in the evening, people cashed in their chips for raffle tickets to win new iPod Nano’s and Shuffle’s. It was a blast.
Afterward, I walked with Mr & Mrs L. to SC’s place in the Pearl before getting a taxi home. Overall a brilliant night out. Though I’m exhausted now, both from the work week, and the evening itself.