Things Break, and Get Fixed.

Let's get this out of the way first, I bought new glasses. I was vacillating between Italian skinny suit wearer and 50s scientist. I decided to go with the 50s scientist look. Now I have to beef up my wardrobe to match the glasses. Guess I'll be wearing lab coats from now on.

It's been a time of breaking and fixing. This week we had horribly long hours at work due to system upgrades that broke in unforeseen ways. I won't go in to details because nobody wants to hear about messy IT details. Suffice it to say that my boss's boss's boss's boss (yes we have that much hierarchy and more) wanted updates all the time. It wasn't any systems I was responsible for that broke, but we were the ones suffering the side effects. The only good outcome is that my name gets more notice higher up the pay grades as the person who 'takes care of things', this will help when the Portland move has to get approval by food chain.

This was also a week where other things were fixed. My motorcycle finally got fixed from the accident I had over two months ago. This means I'm finally finished with the annoying "Your lamp is not working!" warning that by moto has been telling me about for months. Also my shifter is now fixed and I'm no longer cutting holes in my boots. This means I get to use my new boots, woo! Sadly I think they messed up my clutch settings along the way :(

Next week is going to be exciting, Mario and Nicki are landing Friday to stay for a week and a half. Nicki has been here before so I'm sure it's all ho-hum for her, but Mario has never been to San Diego. Actually I don't think Mario has been much further than Quebec, Ontario and Vermont so this should be pretty cool. The only thing we need to figure out is how to get a hold of a vehicle that seats four, that or we travel via Smart car and motorcycle all the time. I think we'll work on the rental car idea.

Kat and I dodged a bullet last night. We were give free tickets to a harbour cruise by friends of ours, they won the tickets and couldn't go. We dressed up in white, which was required, and headed downtown for the evening. We quickly realized one of the reasons we don't go downtown very often is the dearth of parking. We ended up parking somewhere that was questionable, but was better than spending another 20 minutes looking for approved parking.

• Then we realized the line to embark was huge.
• Then we spent an hour in line waiting (poor Kat was in heels).
• Then we got on and it was a 'booze cruise'.
• Then we noticed there was nowhere to sit that wasn't already taken.
• Then we realized once the boat left there was no getting off for three hours.

Three hours of being stuck on a boat with a bunch of drunk people, loud music and no chairs=get the hell off the boat. We had a nice supper in a new Italian restaurant in Mission Hills instead. Yes we are getting old, but happily Kat and I are still simpatico in regards to what we think is entertaining.

Our friend Amanda who first introduced us to Portland (we went there to visit her) has continued to send us pro-Portland information in the mail, which we appreciate. The latest tidbit from Portland that we read, and resonates with the way we feel, is the '20 minute neighborhood':

A 20-minute neighborhood is a place with convenient, safe, and pedestrian-oriented access to the places people need to go to and the services people use nearly every day: transit, shopping, quality food, school, parks, and social activities, that is near and adjacent to housing. In other words, a 20-minute neighborhood is another name for a walkable environment.

Links to more detail here (PDF file) and here (blog entry). I believe I've had conversations regarding exactly those ideas with my mother, since we both like the urban environments, also, almost all the places Kat and I have lived meet those criteria. Without giving it a nice sound-bite name we've been living that idea for ages. More reasons to love Portland :)