august - september update

Whew, I've been working 70 hours a week for the last 3 weeks. I am beat!
I'm taking this whole weekend off, Saturday and Sunday, yay!!!
The new place is good, the garbage trucks are so noisy at 2am, but that's the only problem so far.
Anyway, here is our August/September update in no particular order.

Nik and Amy came to visit. We had a lot of fun, this was right before work got really busy so it was good timing. That weekend, Portland had free ride on the tram to celebrate the completion of the Street Car's new South Waterfront loop. We took a stroll around the zen garden at the hospital. Nik and Amy said this hospital is rich. :)


This was at the performance center. I always wanted to sit here, but was nervous when there are a lot of people around. This was around noon on Wednesday so it was pretty quiet. heh heh....


Saturday Farmer Market. They were having a graduation in the park and the market had to compress a bit so it was very busy and crowded that day. We have a $20 limit when we go to the market since it is so easy to spend money here. This is about 5 blocks from us now so it is very convenient. When we used to live at Ione Plaza, this is right downstairs, but Michelle always missed it because she slept in.




Providence Bridge Pedal
Portland shut down all the bridges on this Sunday to let people bike around. I heard it was very crowded this year and there were many bottle necks at the bridges. Around 20,000 people participated, we just walked around and take pictures. Next year we'll join the official walk and go on Fremont bridge.






Tour de Fat - another bike event, this one is smaller, but has some fun bikes, entertainments, and live music.




Zoo and Washington Park concerts - we took Nik and Amy to a couple of concerts and walked around the Zoo. The Hippos are so round. After the zoo concert, we dropped by to see the tigers, they were playing and running around, it was so cool. It was too dark so we couldn't take good pictures by then. Usually the tigers are always snoozing in the day time so we would just see a tail and an ear or something like that. We also went to see the leopard, it looks so lonely by itself. It's very cute too.



This is a free concert at Washington park. look at all those rug rats rolling down the hill.



Soapbox derby at Mt Tabor park.
A lot of fun, but no parkings.... We parked illegally and left pretty early. Next year we'll go earlier so we can stay for the whole event. This time we just hang out near the finish line where we illegally parked in case we needed to make a quick exit. There were tons of illegal parkers though so I think the cops will let it go on event days. Next time we'll walk up to the top of the hill. There are fast ones and wacky ones. Each heat has 3 soapboxes and there are different categories to win prizes in - time, art, etc...


At the finish line, the hill flattened out so if your soap box didn't build up enough momentum, you'll have to push like Godzilla here. roarrr....
See Michelle? This is a bunny in a carrot, he was pretty fast.
A taco stand.

That's me in my green hawaiian shirt.
There two were racing to the finish line.
Man, this guy squirted water at me.




Elk Rock at Bishop's Close - Dunthorpe. This little public park is in a really tony part of Portland. This area is like the Beverly Hills of Portland. This property was donated to the church with the condition of having it open to the public. It looks like they are somewhat reluctant about the public though since it was pretty tough to find the place and there are no signs or anything on the main road. If I didn't accidentally found out about this on Wiki, we'd never know it exist. I'm trying out the macro mode on Michelle's camera on the various flowers here.
This is the Willamette, the same river that we see from our window.
I bet the home owners around here didn't want riffraffs like us showing up in there nice neighborhood. These people are opposing the street car to Lake Oswego extension because they don't want public transportation stops in their upscale hood.







Our 3 cats. for once not running around chasing each other. This is our living room, Michelle kept her piano afterall.


Eclipse on an almost full moon. I got out of work at 2:15am and it was just starting. By the time I got home and then took a shower - 3am - it was fully eclipse. This was really cool.

It's August in Portland and all is well. The weather has been good this year, we only got one week of really really hot weather so far. There have been more rain than usual, but that's ok in the summer, it's nice that it's not super hot.

We went to the street fair at Clinton/Division on the SE side of town. It's very close actually, just a few minutes drive. They had a little parade, looks like anyone can dress up and join in. We also got a little bench for our balcony from one of the stores there. We had lunch at a BBQ place, good chicken wings and beef ribs. We got the lunch special ($5) and that was perfect portion for us. Other people ordered a regular plate and they were huge.... If we ate that we'd be in food coma for the rest of the day. This is Stella scooter and the side car, I want one. 8)


Free Wizard of Oz play at Washington Park Amphitheater next to the Rose Garden. This was a lot of fun. It is outdoor so they had to be a lot more imaginative since they don't have as much props like in the theater. For example, the yellow brick road is a girl dressed up in a yellow outfit with bricks on top of her head and Dorothy had to follow her around. 8)



First Thursday and The Next Big Thing...
Every First Thursday of the month all the gallery and artists in the Pearl open up their space to show art works. The Next Big Thing is held by the Portland Transportation Commission to celebrate the completion of a section of the new MAX tracks. Portland is building more MAX tracks, in the downtown area, it will be from around Chinatown to PSU. This will be right near us so we'll have more transportation choices.
This Elephant statue is on the North Park block near Chinatown. I've been meaning to climb this thing for a long time. Yahoo!!!!

The original Hung Far Low restaurant. 8)
They actually moved to 82nd street now, but the sign is still here .
A loft building in Chinatown. A few loft was opened to showcase the artist's work. Pretty cool old style stair - 4 stories.

Some one working on a large graffiti art - at least it's on canvas and not on the wall.
BBQ, we didn't have any this time. This guy in the blue shirt next to Michelle is huge.

Afterward, we went to Pioneer courthouse square on the way home. Redbull had a photography display up. There are many cool photos, mostly extreme sports type.

SurfingSnowboard.
That's all for now. I'll call mom now. Happy 60th Birthday!!!! 8)

July 2007

We finally finished moving and selling everything. We also rented out the old place very quickly so no problem there. Downtown living is much more lively than Hillsboro, there are always something going on in the summer. Here are some random pictures from various events we've been to this July.

Free Jazz music at Wallace Park near NW 23rd. Nice little park surrounded by very nice old houses. Portland put on free concerts in various park in the summer, a great way to relax after work.

4th of July - We can hear the Blues Festival from our condo so we didn't go down much this year, just walked by. This year they had 5 days of music, it was hot though - 90 degrees. The fireboat came by and put on a little show.


We watched the fireworks from our balcony, we had an awesome view. Just when it starts to get dark, we could see fireworks going off all over the city, that was a great prelude to the big show.



We have a peek-a-boo view of Mt. Saint Helen from our balcony.


Sand in the City - sand castle contest. This year they asked for a $3 donation so we just watched from outside. "wish you were here"

The Hawthorne Bridge opens up for a barge.



That's all for now. bye. :)