We were walking through the Pearl yesterday after lunch enjoying the sun when we happened upon a private wedding in one of the many parks between the condos. Would you ever think to see a wedding, mid-day, in the north park blocks? on the waterfront? I don’t think so.
I know others bash The Pearl (john hausman voice,) but when i see this and the frolicking in Jaimison Square, I also see community. In the end, isn’t that what we want.
i just love the spring. everyone comes out and enjoys this time before it gets too hot. up in the pearl, devoid of homeless, street kids and trash, parents with kids were out enjoying the noon sun and playing in the fountain. some days, i wish i could go play in the fountain…oh well.
go out and play!
Want to see our very own Portland Timbers play for free? They will be playing a scrimmage match against the Oregon State Men’s soccer team on Saturday, April 29 at Lake Oswego High. The Timbers were 2004 regular season champions of the A league and didn’t do to bad in 2005. 2006 looks promising.
Portland Timbers vs. Oregon State University – scrimmage
April 29, 3pm – Free
Lake Oswego High School – 2501 Country Club Rd
from Timbersblog
Well the tragedy of Santaland’s last Christmas has been slightly buffered. It appears that next Christmas there will be Santaland after all! Sadly, there will no longer be monorail rides, but there will still be a monorail!
The children’s overhead monorail that has long been part of the Christmas celebration will also relocate to the lower level. Tikes will be able to sit in the train and pose for pictures, but it will not operate because management says the ceiling is too low.
So at least it will still be there. For those who rode it every year, or remember it fondly, it’s sad that they won’t still have it to actually ride, or take their kids on. Some, like our own dieselboi, don’t remember it at all so can’t really miss it. Some like me, don’t have any memories of it except going to see it last year and finding out it was the last year and feeling like I really missed out on something cool. (mostly because it’s so rare for me to to be too TALL for anything, and there I was, towering over the maximum height line.)
I’m glad to see that Federated Department Stores are going to preserve some of the “good bits” of the M&F downtown that we are partial to. It’s just good PR. Especially if, as Betsy pointed out, they ARE in fact going to keep the name (at least sort of).
NOTE: I shot video of the monorail last Christmas. Once verified by Google Video, I’ll post a link down here for y’all to reminisce over.
(This photo is my naked toes. I consider them the official harbinger of spring. I also consider them in serious need of a pedicure.)
Seriously? You’re STILL on the internets? When you could be outside? Come on! (Oh yeah, maybe you are outside AND on the internets. Sorry.)
Well since you aren’t leaving, I guess I’ll tell you what the authors are up to when the weather doesn’t suck, and what the best thing is to do with a Friday.
Photo phiend dieselboi peeked over the top of his cameraphone to say:
On Fridays, getting donuts for the team I work with or Begnet’s downtown @ Island joes. Also, having a good lunch out at a nice restaurant seems to be a common activity. Not to mention happy hour cocktails after work.
Benkay stole a moment away from his shiny new intern duties to proclaim:
Walk up and down Hawthorne! Nice weather always brings out pretty, well dressed people. (The BLF sez: To this I must add the caveat that spandex is a privilege, not a right.)
Aaron emailed from the foreign lands of Oregon’s Canada (that means the Couv, kiddies) and told me:
Sunny weather = photography. Landscapes, railroading, architecture, bridges. (Wanna see his work?)
(Betsy, Jonpaul, Alex and your humble correspondent weigh in after the jump…you know you want to see….!)
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Now that we’ve given you ideas for how to spend your beautiful weekend, it’s time to have a contest.
Yours truly, Rusty, hereby creates the following contest, with the following rules…
1) Take a picture (or 10) of how you’ve chosen to spend your weekend. Pictures can be self-explanatory, abstract, purposefully vague, whatever. However, they need to be taken and posted between now and 12 am Monday May 1st. NO PORN OR PATENTLY OFFENSIVE CONTENT, PLEASE. INAPPROPRIATE ENTRIES (and we’re pretty darn lenient here, so I assure you the censorship will be nigh-non-existent) WILL BE REMOVED IMMEDIATELY.
2) Post your picture here. Or you can shoot us a link to a picture you’ve already got up. Either way, any picture forwarded can (and probably will) be added to our Metroblog Flickr-group, meaning you might see it in the banner to this site when you visit.
3) Please provide a caption to your picture post so that we can tell what your picture is and how it relates to how you’ve spent your weekend.
I will personally choose the best 3 (perhaps with the help of my Metblogs cronies) and will supply the following rewards to the winner (from my own budget, most likely, so it may take a couple of days to weasle the money past my personal financial dictator…er…wife).
First Prize: $25 gift certificate to Portland area eatery of winner’s choice
Second Prize: $10 in Regal Cinemas movie money (since not all weekends will be as nice as this one)
Third Prize: $5 Gift Card to Starbucks
All contest rules subject to change as reasonably necessary to make this fun for as many people as possible; any such changes to be announced by way of updates to this post. Caveat Emptor. Semper Fi.
So, contest is on. Disclaimer: Metbloggers can not win. Sorry Dieselboi…
Well, here comes the weekend!
Perhaps predictably, we’ll have showers on Saturday, but at least not all day long. In fact, the weekend looks to be pretty darn nice.
So, how will you spend your weekend?
One idea is to walk with a purpose. Tomorrow morning is the March of Dimes WalkAmerica, an annual fundraising event for the March of Dimes, an organization that was originally created by FDR to help eradicate polio and which now focuses its efforts on research to prevent premature birth and birth defects, and also give money to support families afflicted by these issues. If you’re interested in participating, you can sign up at www.walkamerica.org (you also have access to convenient easy-to-use online fundraising tools), or if you can’t walk but would like to donate, you can e-mail me and I’ll send you the link to my fundraising page (my friends have under-performed and I’m waaaaaay short on my personal goal of $2000 for this year…).
Of course, there are many other things you can, and should, do this weekend. Last weekend at the Rusty residence was devoted to yard work, but my perplexingly lush back-yard grass needs another mowing already. The beach should be very nice Sunday. Same with Multnomah Falls.
That’s what I love about Oregon (and Portland in particular) — whether it’s hiking, biking, spelunking, sand-dollar gathering, fishing — you name it, it’s within 90 minutes of where you live.
It’s going to be pretty nice out this weekend . . . even for an avowed X-Box enthusiast like myself, it would be a shame to waste it.
Have pretty-weather ideas to share? Add them below in a comment…
Could it be? A rumor indicates someone hung themselves last night at the Clark County Jail. Could it be one of the two “celebrity” inmates there now… the Battle Ground dentist convicted of murder? Or the mentally-disturbed man who stabbed the McDonald’s girl? The traditional news outlets are quiet so far…
The Oregon Supreme Court declined yesterday to revisit last October’s ruling that Portland Public Schools unfairly terminated their custodians, and may owe up to $64 million in fines and back wages.
In recent years under Superintendents Jim Scherzinger and now Vicki Phillips, the district has been trying to build up a reserve fund to help soften the blow from sinkholes like this one. The district was on the verge of spending their reserves down dangerously low in order to fill the funding gap this fall; thankfully, the emergence of other sources of funding helped prevent that.
I don’t want to revisit the rightness of the decision(s), nor am I suggesting that this year’s school closures are being done in part to pay this overdue bill. But when parents protest that saving ‘only 2-4 million dollars a year’ by closing schools doesn’t amount to much, I’d point to this catastrophe as a prime example of why we need to be paring money in any way we possibly can.
This year, the chips were falling our way – from excess monies back from the state to PERS expenses that came in lower than forecasted. Plus lottery dollars. Plus the ability to renew the gap bond. And while it’s easy to get complacent now that a Salem solution looks more likely than it has in recent years, the reality is that the district still sits on a constantly shifting pot of resources, and is still living in a house with too many rooms.
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seriously – do you? is it truly affecting you? you may be angry to see the price over $3. you may rail against the gas companies for posting record profits based on oil speculation, but do you truly care? has it changed any habits? i haven’t been a driver/regular commuter for over 2 yrs now, so i’m not the one paying at the pump, my better half is. yes, it’s expensive, but we have a diesel, so our trips are few and far between. we just did a 2200 mile roadtrip on 3 1/2 tanks of diesel.
my point is – what is it going to take to get us to really care about this issue? the talking heads made this a huge story last year and the year before when prices spiked. did we as americans actually stop buying gas? no. did we stop buying fuel inefficient vehicles? no.
what will it take to make you think about your gas consumption in your car? if not high prices – $5/gal; $7.50?; long lines?; rationing? i’m not judging here, just wondering what other people think.
