My company is having a fitness challenge and I get a virtual badge if I take a hike. So off Matt and I went.
We found a new park called Moulton Falls Park in Washington. It was less of what I think of as a hike and more of a flat walk through the woods. That works, though. It was a nice outing.
My grays are very sparkly in this picture. I’m not sure why.
For our date tonight, we searched out Mike Bennett’s A, B, Sea display, which I read about in the Oregonian. Each day, Bennett puts out another letter in his themed alphabet in his front yard. We were there on the nineteenth day, so could see A through S.
Matt writes postcards to his niece and nephew.
We both posed for this top-notch head-in-the-hole display.
Matt poses next to his initials: jellyfish and manta ray.
I especially liked this elephant seal.
I posed next to my initials: pelican and clownfish. Also, when we visited, there were no other people present. I think maybe families come earlier in the day.
Though no seashells were available when we stopped by, you can see that others have decorated and returned these seashells and they were added to the display.
There were postcards and stickers to take home.
It was a fun find! Thanks, Mike Bennett. After the entire alphabet appears, this will go to live at the Rogue Brewing in Newport.
Well. It’s our second pandemic anniversary celebration (who woulda thunk?) and so we ordered food to go yet again. From this menu we chose pork schnitzel, sugar snap peas with almond dip, asparagus panzanella, and hand rolled couscous.
I have no pictures of the food, but it was delicious and I hope to eat at this restaurant when we can eat at the restaurant.
And here we are at 19 years.
We also ordered desserts from St. Honré Bakery. They were much smaller than I imagined. They were also delicious.
I’ve driven by this park several times when I take an alternate route to the airport and today we decided to explore it.
You can see the beavers have been busy, and the humans have been busy thwarting the beavers.
Birds on the wing.
The pond!
This was another pond that was separate from the main pond.
The foundation of a house has been turned into a mural.
More pond.
Us and pond.
Matt and I celebrated my new job by picking up food from Urdaneta, which is a Spanish small plates restaurant on Alberta.
The food was delicious, and I would like to go back when they are seating people.
Matt also was a fan.
P.S. Behind him, you can see my old desk, waiting for a NextDoor buyer to come and pick it up. More on that in another post.
It was Matt’s week to choose the date and he came home with a Lego set for us to put together.
I do love the tidy order and step-by-step of a good Lego set.
Here is the finished product.
I also think it’s fun how the astronaut fits in the cockpit, and the satellite folds and fits into the space ship.
Once we were done, we dissembled the whole shebang, repackaged it, and I dropped it off in a Little Free Library so someone else could enjoy it.
I went to Fred Meyer and grabbed ingredients for beer cheese fondue, fondue dipping things, and our favorite kind of ice cream. As a bonus, I stopped by a Redbox kiosk to see if the movie we were planning on watching, Tenet, was available. It was! This means we paid $1.80 for it, rather than the $19.99 we were planning on paying.
The result: beer cheese fondue was delicious and simple to make, Tenet was entertaining, and the ice cream was, as always a cornucopia of chocolate flavors and textures.
Since we are quarantining this year, Matt and I will not be doing the usual, which is going to Aunt Carol’s house for dinner and stockings. Instead, we went to find the Bakelite Santas that Chris Willis (@ChrisWillis) has been installing in various Portland locales for 10 years. We pondered the clue he gave us and set out for Westmoreland where we wandered about until we saw a faint pink glow coming from an empty building.
The Santas were marvelous!
This was our first time seeing them. They don’t usually wear masks, but this year is a special year. We got to find six mask variations.
This was a very fun break from our routine. Here’s more about the project.
Matt bought a ghost tour of Oregon City at a charity auction and our friends Burt and Laurie met us for the tour.
Oregon City was dressed up for Halloween. Even the municipal elevator got into the action.
We skipped the elevator and walked up the stairs. I enjoy stairs, as I rarely encounter them. North Portland is very flat.
Aside from taking us by some houses that were haunted, our tour guide took us off the beaten path of the tour to see a very festive house. I could not capture the scale due to lack of light, but it was quite impressive as the next three pictures attempt to get at.
The moon was also stunning and eluded capture by my camera.
It was a fun outing in a year with few fun outings.
I’ve been training for a 5K with Nerdfitness. My problem with 5k training programs is that none exist (or, if they exist, I have not found them) that stretch the 5k training over three or more months. So I did what I could. But the six weeks was not enough training time for me to run the entire way, so we did a run walk.
I plotted out the route and was just the tiniest bit short. (A 5K is 3.1 miles.)
It was good to start my day with this neighborhood 5K!
