Portland’s Emergency System Worries Me

So I heard something a tad worrying today.  It seems that my city tested its emergency alert system but things didn’t go well at all.  What was meant to happen – didn’t.  As they say, man plans and God laughs and it seems that in the case of Portland’s emergency system that’s exactly what happened.

So, a message was meant to be received by the city’s 300,000 residents at 11:00am.  Well, neither me nor Daniel nor Amanda or her husband received it. And apparently we weren’t exactly in the minority either.  Indeed, I heard later on that a mere 1 percent of Portlanders received the message!  Not very good…and a bit worrying truthfully.

The mess up is being blamed on the First Call company (from Louisiana) as it was unable to deliver.  But now the city has said that if the company fails to sort this out, their contract will be reevaluated.  If you ask me I hope they’re nixed.

Auto Show Comes to Portland

 

O-oh. So now perhaps I am getting a sense of why these flowers showed up yesterday.  Today marks the beginning of the Portland International Auto Show, at the Oregon Convention Center and Daniel is nowhere in the house to be found. Hmm…so now I’m getting suspicious. What is he thinking?  That he’ll buy something there?  With what kind of money?  Oh I hope he doesn’t do anything stupid.

The truth is, we have a great car now (a 2004 Honda Civic) but at some point we will need to change it. I love the Honda for its reliability.  And apparently at the show there will be some hybrids there too. Being real Portlandiers (is there such a term?) it is something we are serious about investigating…but in the future. Still, it’s not like we have the money for it now but I bet that was why I got the flowers yesterday…he’s so sneaky!  You can tell he used to be a lawyer!

Hopefully he just went there for fun…

Portlandia Again

 

So you remember I started watching this show ‘Portlandia?’ It’s all about an idyll world, everything easy in which people are free to do whatever they want.  So I’m not sure I explained it well: this guy comes to LA and says he was just in Portland, and while he was living there, it was “the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland” and you could just do whatever you wanted.  “Portland is almost like an alternative universe,” he said. The environment is friendly; people ride bikes, no cars, everything is peaceful and good.

But then, within a few minutes, one of the characters spirals with all his gadgets and gizmos and feels the need to text, watch all his movies, go crazy on the Internet, iPad, YouTube, etc.  He’s miserable and overwhelmed.  He needs to free his mind from all this stuff and go back to basics.  Ironically it shows how over-the-top going back to basics can be, which misses the point. 

It’s very interesting.  It’s about a bunch of totally weird people doing totally weird things and men wearing skirts locking innocent people in their stores; all which seem to be accepted in Portland!  Well now you know how much I love my city but I sure hope it won’t become an acceptable behavior to lock people in stores against their will!  As Daniel says, I must remember it’s just a TV show.

Portlandia

I just started watching Portlandia.  It’s in the second season right now, but I went back to the beginning to watch it from the start as my friend Amanda has been talking about it non-stop for the last couple of months.  Mind you, being 40+ and pregnant for the first time, there’s not all that much sense coming out of her these days.

It’s a fun show.  Fred and Carrie live an idyllic life in Portland.  The first episode of the second season was screened last Friday and I did take a sneak look at it (even though I promised Amanda I would go back to the first season to really catch me up to speed) and it looked fun. She tells me it was such a clever show that they actually coined phrases that are now popular in our area such as “Put a Bird On It.”  It certainly sounds like a good response to the next time my boss starts talking to me about something with which I am unfamiliar!  If nothing else, it will get a giggle!

There is one couple in the show apparently who are totally eco-conscious (typical of Portlanders) and love everything organic.  Then there’s the artsy couple and a feminist. And that’s just a few of them. It seems like the show is full of different and eccentric people. So it sounds like something I’ll really enjoy watching. Not sure if it’s for Daniel but we can at least start a few episodes together.

Thank-You Notes

I told my kids – well Jayden really, Ethan is too young – that we needed to start writing thank-you notes for all the presents we received over the holiday season.  I started off by showing him what I was doing for Daniel and then he started his creations.  I showed him how I’d made our family logo when Ethan was born last year through Logo Maker and he said “cool.”

Next, I gave him a large piece of paper and he drew on it.  But then, after studying what I was doing, he decided he wanted some of the family stationery to do it on so I gave him some of that.  He was very happy with his final creation. He made one each for both sets of grandparents, one to Ethan (his idea) and then one each for me and Daniel.  Oh, and then just as he was about to stop and eat a snack, he realized he’d forgotten his aunt and uncle and did one for them too.  I was very proud of him for his efforts – and I told him so – and I think he was happy too by the end. It was a fun, productive and educational afternoon.