cheerwine

i'm making some cherry infused vodka for the ladies, or for the men who like lady-like cocktails. i started the pickle jar full weeks ago, but wanted a bit more so made this little weck jar full today. the cherries look so pretty at first, but the vodka sort of bleaches them out so it's nice to see this new batch looking bright. as i was working on it, wilco's theologians started playing. i was singing "i'm a cherry ghost" along with jeff before i realized that was sort of funny.

landing

we're here and we can't believe what the young's left behind for us. we knew they were leaving their furniture, but we found they also left their tv (and there is cable somehow), sheets, towels, blankets, dish towels, some kitchen essentials and their coffee pot. we unpacked most of the things we brought, i just need to get into my kitchen boxes today and figure out how i want to set up the cabinets. there is a fire going, al just left for a dive, i've got the shout out louds going and it's time to get prepped for some cookie baking. i'll head out to the yard later to weed a little bit and cut some wild strawberries. i brought the ice cream maker up here because there is actually room in the freezer here. i want some lemon verbena to make up a batch. too bad al took my car and it's a bit far to walk anywhere. we need a bike up here. maybe i can convince al to bring up one of the 5 in our garage at home. no rain, but it's a bit cloudy. we still feel like we're in a weekend rental. oh, and obviously we snaked onto someone's wireless. that means i can study up here!

return

portland was really fun, but it started off rough. we made our way over to oakland via bart, and soon found our 9:55pm flight delayed until 11:40pm. then 12:50am. at that point the oh so very wise al said we should head home. our plane was stuck in denver under snow -- an unpredictable situation. we got ourselves on the 7:50am flight for saturday and headed back to the bart shuttle. good thing too, as the flight ended up leaving oakland at 2:16am, arriving in portland at 3:41am! we were asleep at home.... zzzzzzzzzz.

we ended up with a pretty full day saturday by getting in around 9:30am, so it was fine, we just lost one pre-paid night at the jupiter hotel. it was actually quite loud there so maybe that's ok. the doug fir is in the hotel parking lot and the music and drunkard's voices came right into our room. at any rate, we didn't see a show there but there were lots of bands playing or that have played we would have enjoyed. the parking garage is wallpapered with band posters. sunday nite we stayed at the kennedy school, which was a lovely and quiet relief.

we spent a lot of time checking out various neighborhoods, falling in love with the houses, and visiting friends. sunday we drove up to the gorge and stopped at the vitsa house, visited multnomah falls, and stopped by the dalles lock damn. this was by far my favorite day. portland is cool, but i didn't really care about shopping since we have so many great places here in sf. we did eat some great food, but we're pretty spoiled here.

we're not sure about moving there, but have not decided against it. we need some more trips up there. thanks to mary and scott for brunch, keith for a nice selection of bars, and seth for a thai luncheon.