spring for me! spring for you! spring for us!

Hello everyone! Happy First Day of Spring!

I had a really nice weekend. Friday evening I talked on the phone with my mom for a long time as it was her birthday. I was outside chatting on the phone with her & weeding my garden when it started raining on me just as the sun was setting. Oh Portland how I love you! The sky to the west was a peachy blaze while to the east a huge rainbow formed. I snapped a few pictures and promised to send them to my mom.

Later that night Mark and William picked me up and we went to the Horse Brass Pub on Belmont to meet up with Eva, the birthday girl, and a bunch of friends. It was freaky smoky there and packed with people. St Patrick's Day on a Friday! It doesn't even matter that the Horse Brass is an English pub not Irish. Every bar was packed. From there we went to a house party in Ladd's Addition hosted by Toni & John. It was Toni's birthday also and she's from Dublin! The party was lots of fun with a big international turnout. In our group William is from Ireland, Cubic is from Scotland and Eva is from the Czech Republic. There were several girls from the Netherlands, another woman from Ireland besides the host, a couple from Germany and a British woman. It was pretty amusing to talk with the German girl who didn't like beer. hahaha! I would dance in the living room whenever some good funk music was played (Parliament, James Brown) but the host was a little short on the attention span so he was constantly changing the music even stopping in the middle of songs. booooo! We stayed until very late then decided to walk the 20 or so blocks back to Mike & Eva's house where we stayed in their guest room.

Saturday morning Mark & I walked back to Ladd's Addition to retrieve his car and go home. He dropped me off and I showered and read my book for a bit before driving to North Portland to meet up with Elaine. Elaine plays on a dodgeball team and the league playoffs were Saturday afternoon. I was sitting the bleachers talking with Elaine & Kami or maybe it was Karli? I'm not sure. They're identical twins. Which one was it? Anywhooo, Elaine had warned me to watch out for flying balls since the bleachers are right behind the court where people play. I was being mindful when for a brief moment I wasn't. I turned to say something to Elaine when a ball came flying, ricocheted off a bleacher and nailed me in the side of the face. OUCH! Tears welled up in my eyes & I moved up several sets of bleachers to a safer zone. The man that had thrown the ball was definitely the hugest dude in the entire league. He looked like an NFL linebacker and boy could he throw a ball hard. ouch! His team lost. haha! I sort of lost my enthusiasm for the whole event after that. I watched Elaine's team, the Flamethrowers play but unfortunately they lost.

After that I decided to head home. I read for a long time then watched Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. I own the movie but haven't watched it in over a year as it made me cry every time I watched it. No tears this time! Still one of my favorite movies! Later that night I drove over to Mark's house and gave him his birthday gift. His birthday is actually tomorrow but he's left for a work trip to San Francisco so we celebrated on Saturday. We drove to the Alibi in North Portland, a tiki karaoke bar. We crowded into a table and had some drinks (giant mai tais for Mark) and laughed & cheered the karaoke singers. It was lots of fun but I left early as I was supposed to volunteer at the museum on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning I woke up early amazed to see blue, blue sky. I showered then went to my local coffee shop for some breakfast. I drank my mocha and finished my book A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. It was a very good book. I left the coffee shop and drove downtown and parked near the waterfront. I walked to the Hawthorne Bridge and went part way over the bridge taking some photos. I then walked north along Waterfront Park, underneath the Morrison Bridge, the Burnside Bridge and finally crossing the Steel Bridge on the lower pedestrian bridge to the east side of the river and the East Bank Esplanade. I was really wishing I had my bike as it was a gorgeous sunny day. I took lots of pictures and came to the conclusion that it was way too nice for me to spend three hours in the museum so I bailed on my volunteer shift. This is why I don't volunteer in summer because I'm not willing to give up sunny days.

I called Elaine and we decided to meet up and go play in the sun together. We left her house and drove to NW Portland where we stopped at the Lovejoy Market for veggie sandwiches and a 22 of Rogue Dead Guy Ale to share. We then drove up to Council Crest Park, the highest point in Portland. We found an empty bench just waiting for us. We sat in the sun and shared our beer and ate our yummy sandwiches while looking out over the blue hills to the west of Portland. When we were done eating we walked up to the very top and looked out to the east of the city. The view of the mountains here is incredible but there just a few too many clouds on the horizon for them to be seen clearly. There was lots of snow still hanging on to the foothills though.

We left Council Crest and Elaine drove me to the KGON tower just because I'd never been there before. It is a HUGE radio tower in the West Hills of the city so of course I'd seen it many times before. I had never stood beneath it though. It's 1018 feet tall and surrounded by other strange radio towers transmitting mysterious signals. We left the West Hills and took the Fremont Bridge to Northeast Portland. We didn't realize how lucky we were to take that route as we later found out there had been a huge protest in downtown Portland (10,000 people can slow down traffic!). Another reason why I love Portland though. People still protest! I despise George and his administration with my heart and soul. But I digress...

Elaine & I drove to her friend Tami's house. Tami is a new mother and this was the first time I'd met her 3 month old son Thomas. We went for a walk around the huge park by her house. We were happy for the continued sunshine and amazed by the number of activities happening in the park. We counted one baseball game, one soccer game and two dodgeball games. Elaine knew a bunch of the kickballers as they're people that are also in her dodgeball league. After our walk we left to drive back to Elaine's house where I got all my pictures off my camera.

For dinner I met up with Jess at Ichidai for some yummy, yummy sushi. It was so good and we had a great time talking. We're trying to plan a trip to Seattle together in the next few weeks. yeah!

So that was my weekend. Please let me know how you are and what you've been up to. I hope all is well!

xoxo,
carolyn