a little something a coworker sent my way… MappyHour, the Happy Hour Map. Enjoy!
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Well here I was thinking we'd have yet another year without any snow of consequence. I woke up this morning before sunrise, and began performing my usual ritual… the zombie-like shuffle downstairs to the life-giver (coffee maker) and the sustenance (a bowl of cereal)… carry these precious items upstairs to the think-maker (computer) to read news, emails, etc… when I get a call from my Mom asking if Kelly had left for work yet. I said "uh, no" and she replies with "good, it's a mess out there" … I glance out into the dark towards a street light and see snow falling. Already at 6:50am it's accumulated enough for me to discern the lighter-than-normal ground outside. Another hour later it's still coming down strong and the area is bright white with snow. Kelly and I, after watching some news of cars sliding around and trucks jack-knifing, decided to work from home. We got a little over 3 inches of snow. Pretty stuff, and happy to see it. This is the first time we've had a real snow since we moved into our house. I'd love it if it snowed more, but it's apparently going to warm up a bit and melt off over the rest of the week. Oh well, enjoy it while it lasts. 🙂
Tonight Kelly and I joined Snooks & 'L', and Miranda & Brian at the great southern style 'home cooking' restaurant near Reed College, the Delta Cafe. Holy moly is the food good, and not super expensive. For $9.00 or so, I got a dish of meat loaf with gravy, a side of mashed potatos and another side of red beans and rice with pork (you can pick two side dishes for every main entree). Oh, and I also got to try some of an appetizer Snooks ordered, spicy meatballs. Mmmmmm. I will say however, that I felt uncomfortably full at the end of the meal, and all I had to drink was a little water. But it is really delicious food. Go, now!
After (the very filling) dinner we drove up the street a ways to the fabulous Horse Brass Pub for some beers. Had a great time hanging out and chatting, despite the fact that it was VERY busy. Thanks Snooks for arranging the evening. 🙂
Tonight Kelly and I met up with our good friend Miranda after work at a new-ish McMenamins pub called Back Stage Bar (named for it's location, behind the Bagdad Theater on SE 37th). The pub hasn't been open for quite a year yet, and was once literally the Bagdad's back stage when it opened in 1927. In the 70's it was converted to a more art house theater, but since McMenamins bought the Bagdad the back stage building has been more or less vacant until last year. When you walk in, you can't help but be awed by the height of the room. Essentially, it's the concrete shell of what looks like a 4 story building, though I could only pick out one missing floor, about 15 feet from the ground, I'm guessing that's the height of the Bagdad stage. It's really very impressive. You can also climb some stairs to two smaller rooms along the street-facing side of the building. There are 5 pool tables and one snooker table, a large bar along one wall, and a dozen or so booths. Aside from the building, the food and drink is what you'd expect from a McMenamins.
After dinner we drove over to the Doug Fir to see Talkdemonic play. This was the first time they'd played in a while, what with Lisa Molinaro having joined the Decemberists on tour. Lisa and Miranda are friends so at one point we got to meet her, and had a chat about the Decemberists tour, the future of her with them, etc. It seems that she'll be joining them on another tour sometime soon.
The second opening act was Leti Angel. Fairly good rock trio, though the vocals were pretty rough at times. That said, the male singer (there's a female vocalist and bass player in the band too) would use a sampler effect pedal and add harmonies loop vocal bites (yells, etc), which created some interesting sounds, some of which were really really cool. All in all, worth checking out their MySpace page.
Talkdemonic were, as always, great. I've talked about them before, so I won't go into great detail about them except to say that each time I see them the crowd gets bigger and bigger. They performed a lot of my favorite tracks from their albums, some of which were slightly re-worked, or Lisa would play her parts different, which was nice to hear it sound fresh… and they also performed a lot of new material, which was fantastic. More pics here and here.
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iPhone… very nice!
Ok, I'm not going to go on about this, but I will say that I saw the Apple page for the iPhone today and it is, as Borat would say… "Very nice". It's a slick device (as you would come to expect from Apple), phone, mp3 player, and wifi-enabled web device. I'm not decided if I really want one, but it is pretty sexy. There are some user interface designs that I find interesting, such as "pinching" a photo to shink it's view and "stretching" to enlarge, and it's cover art 'flip' view of your music collection. I also appreciate the built-in Wi-Fi, web browser, and the simple integration with Google maps. Overall it's a very neat device. I'll be curious to see how real-world use shapes up once it's available.