the Life of Zim

Well I’ve been fighting this cold for a good week and a half now. I have no idea what this thing is, but it’s merciless. It started out as a sore throat. Then developed into this respiratory hacking, then a cough, and now I have no idea what it is. I’m coughing a third of the time, stuffed up a quarter of the time and exhausted half the time. It just doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s the most inconsistent cold I’ve ever had. And worst of all, Tony’s been sick with something similar for nearly 6 weeks now. So assuming I’ve got the same thing, it still might be a while until I’m over it. For the most part I’ve felt okay during the daytime, but nights and mornings I start coughing and I’ve been waking up with the worst sore throat ever. It’s like a nasal infection, but then goes away after I’ve been up for an hour. Just plain odd.

We’ll that’s about as exciting as my weeks gotten so far. Really just blogging about being sick because I haven’t got anything else. However, I did get N64 off ebay this week. I still haven’t gotten it yet, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more when I do. Pretty pumped for it. I’m not exactly sure if it’s more the nastalgia factor or the fact the N64 is one the greatest systems, but I’m really excited for Mario Kart, Zelda and Golden Eye plus a few other’s I’ve got coming in the mail.

Anyway, that’s about as exciting as my weeks gotten so far. Weather has cooled off since the weekend which is too bad, but hopefully it’ll be back soon. Although its a lot nicer sleeping in 60 degree weather compared to 80 degree weather.

This past week we’ve had my mom here for a visit, and it’s really been quite a trip. The weather has been phenomenal. Yesterday it was 82 all day, which is really even hot for Portland. And there I pretty much haven’t seen in cloud in about 4 days. Only downfall is that I’ve been pretty damn sick most of the time. Nothing that I haven’t been able to survive, but I’ve had this nasty head cold that just won’t seem to go away. Feel like my head is going to cave in in the morning and evening, but during the day it’s been clearing up (pretty well, at least). Mostly just low energy. Anyway, enough whining.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend. Probably the best pictures we’ve had since we’ve been out here simply due to how clear the weather has been.

The weekend started out with Laura and I driving up to Seattle to pick up my mom from Tony’s place. We really only had time to spend the night in Seattle, which was really too bad, but we want to be sure to have a chance to show Mom around Portland a bit.

West Coast brothers with a West Coast Mom?

On Saturday began making our way down the Washington/Oregon coast – Canon Beach and Manzanita were the main attractions.

Canon Beach

Outlook over Manzanita

On the drive down 101

Another view of Manzanita

Watching the Sunset in Manzanita

In Portland, probably the most exciting thing we did was seeing the Japanese Garden and Rose Garden in Washington Park. No roses in bloom yet, but still beautiful.

View over Portland with Mt Hood

Portland in Bloom

Such a photogenic city.

Simply beautiful.

In the Japanese Garden of Portland

Rock Garden

And on top of all of this yesterday was Laura’s birthday. She was pretty well blissed with a trip to Multnomah Falls and an afternoon massage.

At Multnomah Falls

The Bridge at Multnomah Falls

And of course, Multnomah Falls.

We ended the day with salmon and cake.

Salmon and Taters

28!?!

Well this past weekend was damn near perfect, which has been very well deserved by Laura and I as we’ve been putting in some pretty excessive hours over the past few weeks. This was the first weekend in a while that we didn’t have to work and all, and the weather gods must have had us in their favor. The weekend was filled with blue skies and temps high 60s, low 70s. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

So what did we do with our free weekend? Biked. Here’s the route.
I had a few errands I’d wanted to run around town and so we hoped on our bikes and started the journey. We decided o start out with some fuel and went to the Little Red Bicycle which is this amazing neighborhood cafe about a mile from our house. They’re only only until 2pm and closed on Mondays, which I constantly want to scold them about, but they make some of the best damn sandwiches on the planet. Fried egg with caramelized onions on ciabatta? Hells yeah. So we got some deats and headed out for the long haul. I’d wanted to get to this bike shop in South Portland to get a new rear wheel so I could gear one of my bikes; Portland has a lot more hills than Minneapolis. We decided to go the route of Willamette which is always an awesome view and winded down Greeley Ave, past Adidas (which is a really ugly building) proceeded by a HUGE hill that was quite a bit of fun to ride down.

This part of the ride I think really sums up what I love about Portland. The roads we were on were really quite large roads, with on ramps to the highway (which we had to cross over) and times really almost felt like we were riding on the shoulder of a four lane highway. The whole time we were in our bike lane and felt no danger from traffic what-so-ever. I think it’s truly commendable how much the city pays attention to bicyclists and makes them feel safe throughout the city. In Minneapolis it’s a lot easier to feel like a nuance to drivers that are obviously more important than god. Long story short, you can bike damn near ANYWHERE in Portland and you’re welcomed. Cars stop and let you pass before they make a right hand turn. People are just more considerate.

Steel Bridge from the floating dock

From our massive hill and highway we came across the riverfront and road along this floating dock on the opposite side of downtown Portland from the Willamette. The eeriest part was that we hadn’t realized we were floating at all until we were about halfway down the dock. It’s basically this boardwalk that runs along the river about 40ft from the coast. It was pretty damn beautiful.

And on we went to City Bikes. There are actually two “City Bikes”, one with the sub-name of Annex. I was looking for a used bike parts story and wasn’t quite sure which one was which, so we stopped at both. I’m pretty sure it’s the same shop with two locations. I think City Bikes Annex is the spoiled little sister, and City Bikes is the ugly older brother. We were looking of for the ugly brother.

New Wheel from City Bikes

The Annex was nice though. They had a cool upstairs with a bunch of used bikes. Saw an old tandem that was about the same as the one I have from home that needs rebuilding. Thinking about buying the one they had for the parts or see if I can make a deal for the parts I need. It’s a really crappy tandem either way, but pretty sure they only wanted $200 for it. Anyway… made it to the right shop and scored a new rear wheel and cassette. The cassette was really nice, but super dirty. Just caked with mud and grime, but about an hour on Sunday later and it was spit shined to perfection. And away we went.

Our next stop was at this great park that Laura knew of in the area, Laurelhurst Park. Apparently it was designed by the same guy that designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park. It was pretty sweet. We walked through the part with it’s lines of furs and lake and plopped down for rest and so I had a change to return a phone call to my mom.

Continuing on we stopped on our way to Mississippi Ave at this super awesome little bar on Failing and Williams called the 5th Quadrant. Played some Connect Four, which Laura totally kicked my ass at, had a couple drinks and some food, and continued on our way. Most of the rest of the trip was just our ride home. All in all, we started biking around 1pm and didn’t get back home until about 7pm. In my mind a damn near perfect day. That evening we biked to a friends house for a bond fire and had pretty relaxed day on Sunday that started out with home made pancakes. It was an awesome weekend.

*** WARNING:***
Some people my find the following content and links thereof offensive. If so, grow up.

So it may or may not be common knowledge that I absolutely HATE Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Having the profession of creating websites, I have the unique opportunity (relatively speaking) to see how jacked up IE really is. For people that don’t know, Microsoft basically insists on using its own standard in terms of reading web content, and refusing to use every other standard adopted by every other web browser out there. They don’t do it because they feel their standards are the best, they do it to bully the market and drive programmers insane. Anyone who endorses IE is simply a jackass and I hate them. So, now that we all know where I stand on Internet Explorer…

Today my buddy Conor sent me this link. And being an avid hater of IE I absolutely loved it. My boss and I were actually joking this past week about how we should redirect people with IE6 & IE7 to a “Go F*** Yourself and Your Internet Explorer” page for the site we’re currently working on. Why? Because to get things to show up correctly in IE is like teaching an infant to juggle. It’s a very delicate and frustratingly annoying process. Why do it when you could just as easily tell someone to piss off? So here’s a small taste of the link, but I high suggest checking them all out if you despise Internet Explorer or just crapped your pants.

Yesterday was a pretty damn productive day. As working from home holds the great possibility of getting stir crazy, by five o’clock I found myself needing to get out of the house. With mildly stocked fridge and some money in my pocket I decided it’d be fun to ride to the grocery store and get myself some fresh ingredients for an awesome dinner. Needing to get out of the house, of course, I decided to go to furthest of the closer grocery stores in the area, New Seasons, my new favorite-est grocery store. The closest New Seasons to our house is about 4 miles away. I think that I underestimated exactly how far 4 miles really is, at least to someone who’s barely biked in the past month due to moving and a broken thumb. It was an awesome ride, but god was it haul. Definitely not a leisure ride.

However, the view along Willamette is pretty amazing. You can’t really tell from the map, but everything south of Willamette along that route is a pretty straight cliff down, and so you have this amazing view of Forest Park and downtown Portland across the river. At night when the city is lit up it’s pretty awesome too. I’m going to need to get some pictures of the view to post soon.

After the long ride I can home and made a pretty awesome meal. It was a Shrimp with Green Beans pasta dish and I’m going to post the recipe below for anyone to use if they want but mostly as a note of it for myself.

Shrimp with Green Beans Ingredients 1 tbs Ginger – minced 2 tbs Garlic – minced 5 stalks Green Onions 2 Tomatillas – eighthed ±4 cups Green Beans ±2 cups Shitaki Mushrooms 3 cups Fresh Pineapple – Chopped ½ lbs 40/50 Shrimp fully shelled include the tail ¼ lbs Scallops 12 oz dry Linguini 3 tbs Olive Oil Juice of ½ Lime 2 tbs Soy Sauce ½ cup White Wine ¼ cup Butter Salt and Pepper to taste

Shrimp and Green Beans

Cooking Directions 1. Saute Ginger, Garlic and Green Onions on low heat in a saute pan with Olive Oil until browned. 2. Add Green Beans, Tomatillas and Mushrooms and saute 5 additional minutes on low heat. Add Soy Sauce and Lime Juice after a couple minutes. 3. In separate saute pan, saute Shrimp, Scallops and Pineapple with butter and wine until Shrimp are pink. 4. Combine both pans. Toss and saute 1 minute. 5. Add Linguini, coating pasta in wine sauce. Add Salt and Pepper to taste. Serve. With white wine. It was awesome. Could be good with Cashews too.

So today I headed out on my bike in search of a nice coffee shop to get some food, coffee, and simply to get out of the house. The plan was to go to this place called Little Red Bike Cafe. If you’ll notice from their website, they close at 2pm!? I have no idea what the deal is, but it seems that places, like cafes, in Portland and especially St John’s have really lame hours. Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and/or Tuesdays, and then the days they are open, they close mid-afternoon. It’s annoying. So, I was planning on going to the Little Red Bike Cafe, but didn’t leave the house until about 2pm, at which point they were closing. Arriving at my destination and finding it closed, I resolved to go across the street to the lesser, yet open, coffee shop called University Park Coffee.

As this was my first visit to University Park Coffee I was very susceptible to any and all perceptions the place was throwing at me. What did I walk away with? Wham!, Mr. Mister, Bonnie Tyler and a tasty grilled cheese sandwich. They were listening to XM Radio on a station called The Blend. Now perhaps they had chosen this station due to the clever name that correlates to the coffee business, or perhaps they really actually enjoyed setlist being played. Now I’m all for some good old Wham! or Mr. Mister here and there, but during the hour that I was there they played:

Careless Whisper by Wham!
Miss You Finally by Trademark
Kyrie by Mr. Mister
Lucky Star by Madonna
So Emotional by Whitney Houston
Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) by Phil Collins
Just You ‘N Me by Chicago
Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

I felt like I was in a Chinese karaoke bar. And yes, there were a few patrons singing along. Now, I’m really not trying to hate on any of this lineup individually. In fact, I have a good majority of the songs in my iTunes library. It’s just the collective whole that really threw me.

So I was finally able to get the pictures from our trip up on Picasa. There’s an entire album there called “The Oregon Trail” with mostly pictures from Montana. Here are a few favorites:

We drove into a number of beautiful sunsets on our way out west.

Ray was the best Yellowstone guide in all Montana.

Ray and Laura in Yellowstone.

So much contrast in one place.

It's called Yellowstone for a reason.

We saw four elk just as big as this one, all in the same place.

There were litterally heards and heards of bison throughout Yellowstone.

Driving back to Ray's.

Ray and Judy's place was really fantastic.

Driving through the mountains makes ten hours go by really fast. I highly recommend it.

What I'm doing right now, in our new home in Portland.