Tag: Portland

Super Heroes Coming to Portland?

Wouldn’t it be absolutely amazing if super heroes were to come to Portland?  Well for sure Jayden would be extremely excited and that would make me and Daniel happy too.  Well, I just found out that in a way they are.  Taki and Olivia are going to be starring in a show called Takio and will be fighting crime in Portland streets.  Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, these cool super heroes will be fitting in crime-fighting to their school schedules. 

When Takio airs, I definitely want Jayden to see it.  As it is, he is obsessed with Spiderman, so if he can learn about a super hero who is doing good things in our community and “pewing the bad guys” as he would say, then why not?  Looks like it’s going to be fun and somewhat educational at the same time.

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.

Is Daniel Guilty?

So listen to this and tell me what you think.  Daniel like never buys me flowers.  He claims that I told him I hate flowers.  Now, it’s true that one time I said I can’t bear the fact that someone buys me flowers and then I have to deal with the whole thing and it becomes a task:  I need to cut the stems, find a vase and then, once they are dead, take them out of smelly, dirty water and wash the vase.  Plus, there are only a few types of flowers I like – for example I hate carnations.

Anyway, I digress. I probably have – since then, when we first got married nearly 7 years ago – complained that he never gets me flowers.  But that hasn’t affected his non-flower-buying behavior.  Until yesterday that is.  All of a sudden, there’s a knock at the door and this gorgeous bunch of large white calla lilies from Sammy’s Flowers arrives.  Now, Sammy’s Flowers is not just any flower store; it’s probably the best one in the whole of Portland.   

And it gets better.  The flowers arrived a gorgeous, simple, glass vase – just my style – so I didn’t have to do anything with them!  Now the test is whether or not Daniel will clear them away once they have died.

But, back to my original issue; I’m still wondering if Daniel is guilty of something.  I mean, why else do  men buy flowers?  Or, more to the point, why else would my husband, all of a sudden, after nearly 7 years of marriage, buy me some flowers when he knows I have all these issues with them?  All I can think of is that perhaps we are approaching the 7-year itch and now I’m paranoid he is hiding something (although you should know I totally trust him).  Watch this space.

Hello American Pie

The weather in Portland has been a bit gruesome for a while. That definitely makes things a bit tougher with the kids as we have to find more indoor activities to do with them, especially over the weekend when there is no preschool.  Still, at least yesterday it was only drizzling – the rain wasn’t too bad – so we managed to do some stuff. 

Since I’d been reading last week about the cool event taking place at Baker & Spice in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Portland, I decided yesterday that we should brave the weather.  On both Saturday and Sunday, the store was celebrating its annual Pie Day, marking the store’s birthday!  How cool is that!  Each year they have Pie Day during which over the weekend, people can come along and eat as much pie as they want (or can!).  This year apparently the store is turning 7-years-old (so I had Jayden saying the whole time “but I want to be 7 too,” which kinda makes sense as the way he counts now he omits 5 and 6, so given that he’s 4, his next birthday – in his logic – would be 7. Still I digress.

I ordered a slice of Mocha Almond and Super Duper (mega-chocolatey) and by then, truly I was done.  Daniel of course has a way sterner stomach than me so he managed a slice of: Pink Cake, Black and White and Vanilla Dream.  And Jayden shared a slice of the store’s Birthday Cake with Ethan which they both really loved by the look of their faces when the plate was clean.  Since Jayden made my birthday cake with Daniel a few weeks ago, he’s talked about nothing else.

Anyway it was a fun afternoon and what made me feel a bit better about my gorging was learning that the store will be donating a quarter of its pie sales to Neighborhood House’s emergency food box program – an organization that “helps neighbors help themselves.” I thereafter explained the charitable organization to Jayden, and he was so cute, he asked if he could give them half of his cake too!  What an adorable child.  I love him so much.

Not Happy with No Power

It was nuts yesterday.  We suddenly had the craziest power outage. Well I guess it wasn’t really all that sudden as the weather had been indicative of something like this happening.  And, I shouldn’t be all that surprised as I am used to our crazy weathers.  Still, I don’t remember having such a long-lived power outage. Thankfully our house is very well-insulated so the crazy storm that was raging outside didn’t impact us in terms of being cold, or windows shaking.  But it did affect the power.  Daniel told me today that we weren’t alone; apparently around 30,000 homes throughout Oregon also lost power.  He’d read about it on a statement from Portland General Electric.

What happened was, first there was snow (in the early evening Jayden really wanted to go play in it but I figured it would just be a slippery mess rather than something fun for him to actually play with so I said no).  That very quickly turned into rain as the snow melted and there was just a mess of slush (as I’d predicted).  Anyway, things are pretty much back to normal now but it reminded me that we have to go and get those emergency light thingies so that our house can at least have some light if – or I should say when – this happens again.

At least now it’s back I can get back onto Facebook.  Because, as Daniel says, that is my main priority!  Have a great Thursday!