New Year's Eve in North Portland

After a semi-wild day of playing Assistant Apartment Manager (not assistant to the...where was I?), Ali and I traveled to North Mississippi Avenue for a few places she's been wanting to go.

The Meadow: We stopped first here where Ali had read various Portland food blogs raving on the selection. I being a coffee and wine guy, I should assume that there would be many varieties of salt, but this blew my mind! They have 2 walls devoted to salts from around the world with samples of each. My favorite were the salt blocks (pictured). Supposedly you can cook food right on the block! With equally great a selection was the wall of chocolate. A bit of chocolate is a great way to head of to a taco dinner.

Por Que No Taqueria: This fun place just became my new favorite taco joint. Pay no attention to the poor image quality, but trust me in the quality and taste of the pollo asado (chicken) and pescado (fish) tacos. Ali had a small salad topped with three slices of avocado and we shared some fresh baked chips.

If you ever head down to Mississippi Avenue, and I recommend you do, you may also want to eat at The Mississippi Pizza Pub. We found them while spending time over at Emmanuel hospital with my mom last year. One evening we were all there and asked the nurses if there was any good pizza nearby. Sure enough, they were right.

We're back home now and ready to stay up all night...well, at least to midnight anyway. May God bless you in this new year, 2009.

Christmas Fun

Last year, Brian and I filmed a little Christmas greeting to the students of 180. It was silly and included a couple of nerds—us—dressing up like Santas.

Well, we hope this year is better. Hope you enjoy :)

180 Christmas 2008 from Brian Eberly on Vimeo.

Big snow & ice

The big storm did indeed come. With 12" drifts outside our front door, 8" most other places and a good coating of ice on top of that, it made for some tough walking around town. Ali and I headed up to the grocery store for a few veggies and of course some photos along the way.

Probably my favorite of the bunch, this crab apple tree outside our apartment stands out with it's red fruit showing through the ice. If it were not so cold, I could stay outside and take ice photos all day long!

That would be the 1/4" of ice covering the snow. It makes quite a crunch when you step through it to the snow below.

Think I'll be driving anywhere soon? As I write it's snowing more and they say another 2-4" of snow tomorrow! Are we on Mt. Hood?

Kitty stays in side with all this snow. This is her just about to yawn face. It kind of looks like her just about to bite you face. She has that face much of the time.

More Snow!

Could it be that the weathermen & women of our fine town could be correct twice in one week?! I sure don't mind.

Seeing as we are supposed to get 6" of snow and then freezing rain on top of that later tonight, we went downtown for photos & shopping. Man, I'm sure glad we've got a Subaru. She sure loves the snow!

While we were out, we stopped at Pioneer Courthouse Square for a couple photo ops. Here are a few from our morning.

Snow Day (week?) 2008

What a great day! We woke up not knowing if snow would be here...and it wasn't...alright...get up and go to church. Just a half-hour later the snow began to fall and didn't stop for at least 8 hours! Needless to say, we canceled church.

We couldn't really drive, in fact you'll see that our street was one of three closed by the city of Portland, so we walked to Starbucks with Annie & Matt. After a warm cup of coffee, we walked through Gabriel Park, then over to Ali's parents to borrow some sleds.

It took 6 hours, but we finally decided to come inside to eat and warm the bodies.

Now for the rest of the week....who knows, we aren't supposed to get above freezing until Saturday, with snow coming Wednesday & Thursday. Yikes!

Here are a few pics of the day's adventure.