November 2005 Jammie Visit
Nov. 4th, 2005|07:11 pm: Quit work around 1 or 2pm and drove to Fry’s Electronics in Wilsonville. I was hoping to get a new battery for my Pocket PC since my old one seems to have completely stopped working. But they didn’t have any. What sucks is that I just bought this Pocket PC and I could take it back to Office Depot and get the battery replaced but I packed up the box and manuals into my storage place in Illinois. So I’m kind of screwed there.
After Fry’s I drove to a hotel that Jammie reserved for us. She’s flying into Portland tonight. Dumped my stuff in the hotel room and drove to the airport. And now I’m on the Trimet towards downtown Portland for the 2600 meeting. Jammie doesn’t get here for another 3 hours so I guess I’ll get about 2 hours of 2600 in before going back to the airport.
Nov. 4th, 2005|09:30 pm: Done with Portland 2600. It was boring. Kind of like St. Louis – a bunch of guys hunched over laptops in a coffee shop with an occasional burst of short conversation. The difference being that I don’t know anyone there so I was extra bored. I finally gave into peer pressure and busted out my laptop and caught up on the Fark news that I’ve been missing out on since I left Illnois. Now I’m back on the train to the airport. Jammie in t-minus 1 hour, 25 minutes…
Nov. 5th, 2005|11:04 am: Left our hotel at 11am, parked the car near a Max stop and took the train to downtown Portland. Walked around the Saturday Market for awhile, looking for Jack. Asked somebody about him and she informed us that he was still in Africa. Dammit. So we walked around Saturday market, Jammie bought lots of stuff, we ate Nachos and then got on the train back to the car and drove to Albany. It’s rained pretty much all day. We had to buy new umbrellas at the market since my last umbrella has been destroyed ever since Orlando.
At 7pm we met Kcochran and Chad at Red Robin for dinner. I’ve known Kcochran online since about 1997 and this is the first time we met in person. Here’s a picture of all of us in front of the…uh…Burger of Liberty, then a picture of me and Jammie being nausiating in our matching Back to the Future t-shirts. As we entered the restaurant, some teen girl asked to see my shirt, apparently thinking it was the coolest shirt ever. She was even more impressed when Jammie showed hers off.
The other day I created some postcards on the computer from a picture me and the kids took together on Thursday. Jammie and I took them to Walgreens tonight and printed out 30 of them. I’m going to send them to everyone I know in Illinois to let them know that I made it to Oregon alive. Here’s the postcard…
Nov. 6th, 2005|10:33 am: Jammie and I had breakfast at a really good waffle place. It was packed and we had to wait an entire 10 minutes to be seated. Went through a bunch of Oregon tourist literature, looking for something to do, but found nothing. Ended up going to the mall in search of milkshakes. I got a milkshake and Jammie got an Orange Julius. Our plan was to pick up Emily and Payton at some point during the day so they could all take me to Pizza King for my birthday. But Colleen didn’t seem to be home when we called.
After awhile of walking around the mall, I notice them walking into a store. So I run up and grab Payton from behind, pick him up and say hi. I think it took him a few seconds to realize who I was. Jammie stood there, I think horrified, thinking I was harassing random kids in the mall before she realized who they were.
So we ended up taking the kids then, and went to see Chicken Little at the movie theater. By the time we left there, we decided against Pizza King since we were all pretty full. Went back to the hotel, I got a birthday surprise of Hostess cupcakes with candles in them, then we played Legos for an hour before driving the kids back to Colleen’s.
We went for a walk around the neighborhood, then to eat at Abby’s pizza. Later in the evening, we went to see Shopgirl at the theater. I thought the 9th Street Cinema was in Albany but it ended up being in Corvallis which is 10 miles away. So we drove there quickly, hoping to not miss too much of it. We got there 30 minutes late (we were already cutting it really close when we thought the theater was in Albany) and the girl at the theater let’s us in for free since she’s already counted all her money. So that was nice! We only missed maybe 10 minutes since there were a lot of previews.
Nov. 7th, 2005|08:14 pm: Today is my birthday. I’m officially 33 years old. Jammie and I went to breakfast at that same place this morning. I forget what it’s called. Then we had pizza for dinner at Abby’s again. I asked for “the usual” at Abby’s but I had to remind the cashier what the usual was. We spent the morning going through newspapers and looking for apartments. Then we spent the afternoon driving around and looking at apartments. I think we looked at a total of 8 of them. Jammie rules – I never would have accomplished that many on my own. And a couple of them looked very promising so I have slight hope that I’ll have an official place to live by the end of the week.