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.

Sweet Storage

I have a problem. I want to use and access some of my files from home, work, and on the go...specifically our budget. You see, Alison created a wonderful Excel budget file, but I can't see it at work. Sure, I could FTP it every time we edit it, but how fun would that be?

Step in Drop Box. You install a small file on your computer and Drop Box provides you with a folder you can put anywhere you'd like on your computer. Then you drag files you want to sync into that folder. Drop Box keeps the latest copy of that file and anytime it gets updated, Drop Box updates all your computers with the new copy. Bam!

Now I've got my budget at home, work, and on the road! (oh yeah, you can view the files from any web browser too)!

The best part is that you get 2GB of storage for free!

Read more about it here from Lifehacker.

Black Friday

I have stayed as far away from Black Friday as possible—until yesterday that is. You see, yesterday, Office Depot had a great sale on a laptop.

My first experience purchasing a laptop (5 yrs. ago) ended in credit card debt, many interest payments, and when the laptop broke, I returned it using the cash to pay off the credit card. All in all, I leased a laptop for one year. No fun.

This time was different. Actually paying for something outright is a much different feeling. Thanks Dave Ramsey, and oh the wisdom of Proverbs.

Getting the laptop did mean some sacrifice however, like waking up at 4:30am. I was 25th in line...not as up front as I would like to have been, but 100 people showed up between my arrival and the store's 6am open time. Yikes! I did however get a jump start on a John Grisham novel while standing out in the cold.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope all who read enjoy their Thanksgiving and remember how MUCH we have to be thankful for.

I found this video from Sandy Hughes. It will brighten up your day a bit!

Friday Thoughts

I take a break from the list of errands for a random posting of thoughts from today:

• New tires aren't cheap!
• I'd love to be in Nashville for the National Youth Workers Convention right now. They even have a "Live Blog" where you can view 5 youth workers blogging their thoughts as the convention roles on! Check it out!
• If you want to hear some serious preaching, check out the Cornerstone Community Church podcast (find it in iTunes) from Francis Chan in Simi Valley, CA. Brian and I saw him at the convention last year.
• In listening to the podcast, Francis spoke from 2 Timothy 3 about the last days...and that people would be lovers of self of which he said is the sewer pipe that the rest of the junk comes down. (the love of money, boastfulness, pride, etc...) The quote that made me think the most...and probably the most convicting was

  We will get to a point where we are more concerned about our standard of living than we are about other human beings actually living.

  Check out his series on The End Of The World for more...it's not your typical end times message!
• Speaking of standard of living...I'm enjoying the iPhone 2.2 software update. It's pretty cool directly downloading podcasts and then just listen away. No more syncing!

Well, so far that's my Friday...more errands next and some website work for Dennis the Dentist! If you're in Tigard, Sherwood, Newberg area and are looking for a dentist...check him out!

Encouragement from iTunes

I'm sitting here working while listening to Starfield...my favorite NYWC conference worship band this year, and can't get the song Remain out of my head. The chorus rings so true in trials and when it seems like everything in life is changing all at once.

You are God with us
You're victorious
You are strong and mighty to save
For Your word stands true
There is none like you
And when all else fades, You remain

Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.