Portland, day one
The Smelmooo mocks me for blogging regularly only while I'm away, or about trips, and he's mostly right, but I feel like that's okay, because sometimes life at home is just sort of get up, let the dog out, go to work, eat dinner, maybe watch TV or play poker or darts or whatever, bed, repeat. But on the road, things happen, baby.
Today I flew out to Portland, Oregon for a work meeting that starts tonight with dinner and ends with an all-day meeting tomorrow. I got here before 10am west coast time, and I'm not leaving until Thursday, so I actually have some time to wander around the city, which is excellent, and not something I always get to do when I travel for work.
Anyway, I first want to give Smelmooo a big thank you, simply for not being That Guy on the plane this morning. That Guy was sitting across the aisle from me, and in the row of seats behind him were his pregnant (early 3rd trimester, I'm guessing) wife, her three-ish-year old daughter (I think not his) and her/their 10-month old daughter. Despite there being no one in the middle seat, That Guy declined to sit with his family, which in itself is not a big deal, but even when the baby was screaming her head off, spit up all over mom, 3-year-old crying and needing to go to the bathroom? That Guy CONTINUED to sit there, watching the in-flight programming and not doing a damn thing to help.
"Hey, Nathan? Could you give me a hand here?"
"Whaddya want me to do about it?!"
"Could you at least take her? She spit up all over me, and Madison needs to go to the bathroom."
"Nope. I don't think so."
So off mom goes to get the girls cleaned up, and That Guy pretends to be asleep when they come back from the bathroom, so he won't have to deal with them. The hell? So anyway, thank you, Smelmooo, for not being That Guy.
So all is well; great hotel, great location. I wandered around the downtown area a bit with a couple of my co-workers; I was crabby-desperate for a snack, and they were crabby-desperate for caffeine, so despite the Smelmooo's friend Renee's insistence that, when visiting Portland, I was under no circumstances to go to Starbucks, I got outvoted (although there did not appear to be a Coffee People, Renee's recommendation, anywhere in our vicinity).
Anyway, I was delighted with the Starbucks decision when I saw that they had these cute little snack packs of strawberries with chocolate dipping sauce. Hooray! Chocolate-covered strawberries! Awesome. So I got those, plus a cinnamon roll because chocolate-covered strawberries are not walking-around-the-city food (plus, frankly, I didn't want to have to share.
So we wandered around a bit, and ran into all of these random people (a) giving away free candy in honor of American Idol coming to Portland and (b) offering to sell us random crap for a dollar. Not like in NYC when people are selling t-shirts for a dollar or something: a guy with a -- one, singular -- cell phone case, for a dollar and, separately, a woman with a -- again, one, singular -- beat-up purse, also for a dollar. What? Is this usual? A Portland thing? A west coast thing? A hidden camera show?
Back in my room, I settled down with my chocolate dip and my strawberries; I even took a self-portrait with them to show Smelmooo when I get home. I'm very smiley in the picture, which is followed by a pouty picture of me when I realized, very quickly, that "strawberries with chocolate dip" is not the same as "chocolate-covered strawberries, where the strawberries are edible and the chocolate forms a hard shell around them." Instead, it means "bruised, yucky strawberries with a cup of Hershey's syrup to be used as a light glaze for the berries." Very disappointing, and I'd had such high hopes.
There are lots of local wines in the gift shop, but I feel like you're not allowed to bring wine on a plane to NJ. Am I making this up? Probably. I may be wild and risk it (but, more likely, I'll go research whether it's legal, and then buy or not buy accordingly). You can take me out of Jersey, but three days in a far-cooler-than-I-am town like Portland could never take the dork out of me.
Today I flew out to Portland, Oregon for a work meeting that starts tonight with dinner and ends with an all-day meeting tomorrow. I got here before 10am west coast time, and I'm not leaving until Thursday, so I actually have some time to wander around the city, which is excellent, and not something I always get to do when I travel for work.
Anyway, I first want to give Smelmooo a big thank you, simply for not being That Guy on the plane this morning. That Guy was sitting across the aisle from me, and in the row of seats behind him were his pregnant (early 3rd trimester, I'm guessing) wife, her three-ish-year old daughter (I think not his) and her/their 10-month old daughter. Despite there being no one in the middle seat, That Guy declined to sit with his family, which in itself is not a big deal, but even when the baby was screaming her head off, spit up all over mom, 3-year-old crying and needing to go to the bathroom? That Guy CONTINUED to sit there, watching the in-flight programming and not doing a damn thing to help.
"Hey, Nathan? Could you give me a hand here?"
"Whaddya want me to do about it?!"
"Could you at least take her? She spit up all over me, and Madison needs to go to the bathroom."
"Nope. I don't think so."
So off mom goes to get the girls cleaned up, and That Guy pretends to be asleep when they come back from the bathroom, so he won't have to deal with them. The hell? So anyway, thank you, Smelmooo, for not being That Guy.
So all is well; great hotel, great location. I wandered around the downtown area a bit with a couple of my co-workers; I was crabby-desperate for a snack, and they were crabby-desperate for caffeine, so despite the Smelmooo's friend Renee's insistence that, when visiting Portland, I was under no circumstances to go to Starbucks, I got outvoted (although there did not appear to be a Coffee People, Renee's recommendation, anywhere in our vicinity).
Anyway, I was delighted with the Starbucks decision when I saw that they had these cute little snack packs of strawberries with chocolate dipping sauce. Hooray! Chocolate-covered strawberries! Awesome. So I got those, plus a cinnamon roll because chocolate-covered strawberries are not walking-around-the-city food (plus, frankly, I didn't want to have to share.
So we wandered around a bit, and ran into all of these random people (a) giving away free candy in honor of American Idol coming to Portland and (b) offering to sell us random crap for a dollar. Not like in NYC when people are selling t-shirts for a dollar or something: a guy with a -- one, singular -- cell phone case, for a dollar and, separately, a woman with a -- again, one, singular -- beat-up purse, also for a dollar. What? Is this usual? A Portland thing? A west coast thing? A hidden camera show?
Back in my room, I settled down with my chocolate dip and my strawberries; I even took a self-portrait with them to show Smelmooo when I get home. I'm very smiley in the picture, which is followed by a pouty picture of me when I realized, very quickly, that "strawberries with chocolate dip" is not the same as "chocolate-covered strawberries, where the strawberries are edible and the chocolate forms a hard shell around them." Instead, it means "bruised, yucky strawberries with a cup of Hershey's syrup to be used as a light glaze for the berries." Very disappointing, and I'd had such high hopes.
There are lots of local wines in the gift shop, but I feel like you're not allowed to bring wine on a plane to NJ. Am I making this up? Probably. I may be wild and risk it (but, more likely, I'll go research whether it's legal, and then buy or not buy accordingly). You can take me out of Jersey, but three days in a far-cooler-than-I-am town like Portland could never take the dork out of me.
1 Comments:
You can bring wine back on the plane. I did it coming home from Napa but I think you can only bring 2 bottles or something, and it does NOT count as your carry-on.
-Shari
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Anonymous, at 12:21 PM
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