Group Effort

Tonight we made a dinner from the latest Rachael Ray magazine. It was the cod and shrimp stoup with salt-and-vinegar mashed potatoes. Chris made the stoup and I made the mash potatoes. Ours didn't quite turn out looking like the fancy photo, but it tasted good. Especially considering how many onion are in it. Two sliced onions is a lot.
I did cheat a little and used instant mashed potatoes. Seriously, who wants to cook and mash real potatoes? The instant are supposed to be mixed with 2 cups of boiling water so I just adjusted the liquid so that it was 1 3/4 cup boiling water and the 1/4 cup white wine vinegar the recipe called for. They were actually pretty good with the vinegar.

I wouldn't recommend this recipe for 3 1/2 year olds. Much too many onions and fish.

Tomorrow night we're having dinner with the 'rents and watching the elections. I'll be stopping by the old people's home down the street on my way to work in the morning and voting. The Canadian isn't registered here so he can only stare and cringe as I vote opposite on all the propositions than he would. That'll learn him! I'm voting 'no' on anything concerning maple syrup.

We're Home!

Well we managed to get through our vacation and make it back home in one piece. It looks like I left off right after our day time excursions on Friday (Halloween). So here's the rest of the story...

Friday night we went to Jake's Crawfish which is a seafood house owned by the same Jake's who's restaurant was in the downstairs of our hotel. We each got a bowl of clam chowder and a plate of calamari to share.
As it turns out though, only I ended up enjoying a couple bites since "somebody" got sick and we had to leave early. In fact this photo was taken while somebody was off not feeling well. Good times. Once we got back to the hotel and he was able to eat a little bit of snacks we went to our downstairs restaurant and had some chocolate lava cake dessert. Then we decided to go for a walk around downtown and check out all the freaks. Unfortunately we didn't have our camera with us, but there were some real "winners" out there. Our favorite was an Elvis impersonator set up on the street corner with a karaoke machine belting out the Elvis tunes. Standing, listening to him was a Roman guard and a Greek Goddess. We saw a bunch of English punk rockers but we weren't sure if they were "dressed up" or not. There were some jedi's, a couple Sarah Palins (complete with baby), Evel Knievel, a lot of street walkers (again, not sure if they were all costumes), a great dane with antlers, and spiderman. Not as many people as we would have expected, but enough to get some laughs out of it.

Saturday morning before we left, we tried once again to go to the Chinese Gardens. This time we made it! We were able to get in and get out right before the rain started again.
These guys were right outside of China town. Chris said, 'look - some camels!'. Right, camels....


It was a really cool place and I'm glad we made it before we left. We got out of Portland around 11:00 am and met up with Sean & Tracie (from the wedding) in Corvallis where we had lunch. We stayed last night in Medford with the 'rents and got them all packed up this morning and they followed us back down to Chico. Chris is over there now trying to figure out how to unload their 7,000 lb commercial grade copier from the trailer. Good times! I'm at home doing laundry up the ying yang and getting a shopping list together so that we don't have to subside on all the half priced halloween candy I bought at Harry & David's in Medford. Heaven forbid.

Japanese Gardens & Surprise Guest

The main goal today was to see the Japanese Gardens. We started our day downstairs at Jake's Grill for breakfast (we have comp tickets there) and admired the rain from our window seat. After breakfast we went back up to our room to re-evaluate our walking plan and get an umbrella. We headed off to Chinatown and to see the Chinese Gardens:
We didn't actually go inside because it was still raining and we didn't want to walk around wet gardens. Instead we kept walking a few blocks and caught the rail to the Lloyd Center which is pretty much a giant mall. At the Macy's I found my birthday purse (a gold, croc pleather Guess purse) and finally used my Macy's gift card from the 'rents for some cute brown ked shoes. We had lunch at Kell's Irish Pub (bangers and mash for him and a buffalo chicken sandwich for me) and then hiked the 5 million blocks over to the Japanese Gardens:




More photos later, somebody's apparently going to die without food soon.

Anyway, our surprise guest at the Japanese Gardens???? Mr. Watson, my 6th grade teacher! He came in shortly after us, so towards the end of the tour when I saw him again I ran over and introduced myself and we chatted. How funny is that?? And then he was leaving the same time as us so we walked out together too. He was visiting his sister in Portland. Small world.

Fancy Pants Dinner

So we just got back from our upscale dining experience. It was one of the best meals we've ever had, and it'd better be for $102.00! First of all, the view was beautiful, even though we didn't score one of the window seats. You could still see all the street lights a-glow. I had grilled salmon with a oyster mushroom risotto which was to die for. Chris had a steak with crab covered in some sauce with a baked potato and green beans. It was meat so he couldn't go wrong. I also had two very delicious mint mojitos. Mmmm....

If you look really hard at the bottom right of the photo you can just barely see my salmon. The mojito must have been taking the photo.
After dinner we stopped by the famous Powell's Books. It's a bookstore that takes up the entire street corner. They sell new and used books so their inventory is unbelievable.
I found some hilarious gift cards there that I bought from some poor undeserving souls.

Now we're absolutely stuffed and ready for bed. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

We're in Portland!

Day one of our Oregon vacation is underway. We arrived in Portland today around 2:00 pm. Just in time to throw our stuff in our room and scoot our way down the block for lunch at a brewery. The best brewery food I've had yet. I had a chicken BLT and salad. It was soooo good. The canadian had a plate of meat, pickled veggies and some beer. We've spent all afternoon wandering around downtown exploring all the shops for my birthday purse. There's a mall of sorts called Pioneer Place downtown that's got Nordstroms, Saks 5th Ave, J Crew, Kate Spade (where I found a super cute cranberry purse), Banana Republic and Ann Taylor.

This is in the skywalk that spans the malls over the street:

Our room at the Govenor:
The weather's okay. It's in the 60s and overcast. We had a couple of sprinkles land on us while we were strolling the streets, but nothing too bad. We're going to a semi-fancy place for dinner tonight. It's on the 30th floor of the US Bankcorp building downtown and has views of the whole area. We're hoping it's not too bad on a Thursday night. The 'rents gave us some birthday money for the trip so this is how we've decided to spend it (and lord knows we will!).

The only thing I've bought so far was mulling spices and Williams & Sonoma (a giant magical cooking store). They actually had samples of mulled cider and that won me over. I didn't buy the $20 cider (I think I can find a better deal at CholoMaxx), but we did get two containers of mulling spices. Yummy!

We're just hanging out at the hotel room watching Batman and drinking a pumpkin spice latte from the Starbucks down in the lobby waiting for it to be late enough for dinner. Not only do we have a Starbucks downstairs, but we also have a Jake's grill which as part of our reservation package, we have four $8 comp breakfast tickets to. So I know where we'll be having breakfast!

Birthday Boy Bash

Today was Old Man Hartman's 34th birthday. We celebrated by opening presents and going to Applebee's for hot wings and beer for lunch.
He got two motorcycle movies, a automotive manual, a CD of professional race photos
from his last race, and a 11x16" race print.
Somebody wouldn't let me take the camera inside of Applebees.
Good times in the neighborhood!

Look what's back on...
That's right! Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders Season 3! It's our guilty pleasure. I should be making a packing list for Portland since we leave Wednesday after work, but I'm too busy watching lots of hair and makeup dance it's way across my television screen.

Strolling thru Bidwell Park

This afternoon we went for our first walk in Bidwell Park. We went in the entrance just south of Mangrove and Vallombrosa, where One Mile is.

We went down one of the trails and it took us way over to the east side of 99. It was a nice long walk.

On our way back we noticed all these paintings done on the Hwy 99 pillars.

Pretty cool, huh?