Tag: fun

Exit the Advent Calendar

While I enjoy the same felt advent calendar from my childhood year after year, Matt isn’t interested in partaking, even if there is chocolate involved. He floated the idea of getting the advent calendar from Exit, the in-home escape room company. And so we did.

We started the calendar after December 1, and then Matt went to Michigan for a bit, so we had a spreadsheet to catch up and keep us on track. That meant that we often did two days in one setting.

Eric was over for Saturday gaming and he did the last three nights with us. You can see how we really pulled everything apart at the end. That was because one of the rooms early on didn’t work, and Matt wanted to find the tiny emoji thing we couldn’t make appear.

One of the thing I enjoy (while also hating) about the games is that the helping clues are sometimes very blunt. There was a doozy in this one, somewhat mocking us for not getting an element that we had earlier commented MUST be something.

In the end, we found the prize: this tiny button labeling us X-MAS HERO.

It was well worth it.

Trip to Cannon Beach Day 1

I haven’t explored Cannon Beach much, and the bus goes there, so I took a short vacation. I stayed at the Hallmark Resort and Spa, which was a hop, skip, and a jump from the bus stop. I arrived on Thursday night after sunset and climbed a bunch of stairs to get to the front desk. I’m pretty sure I reserved a queen partial view room, but my room looked like this.

After I dropped my things and took this picture, I tried out their sauna and did a bit of paddling around in the pool.

A very good start to the vacation.

Portland Winter Light Festival 2024

I’ve lived in North Portland for 16 years and hadn’t yet attended the Portland Winter Light Festival at Portland International Raceway. 2023 was the year to check it out.

While most nights are reserved for cars driving through, they do provide at least one bike and one pedestrian night. They are always on weeknights, and always early in the season, which is one reason for my absence of this Portland Christmas (“Holiday”) tradition. I like to do my Christmasing in December, not November.

I chose a night for bikes, and biked the mile to the raceway, showed my ticket and headed off to the track.

There were a million lights, such as this Santa that was surfing the waves. Families and friends often had their bikes decorated and some were playing music as they rode. Early on, I glommed on to a couple with a fun selection of music and rode behind them for an entire loop, so that was festive.

While navigating bike situations with a lot of bikes and a lot of kids riding bikes can be fraught (I’m looking at you, Bridge Pedal) the racetrack is wide, and the fact that it was a weeknight in November made riding easy. I liked being on a bike more than driving a car. As a solo attendee, I would have had to do the driving and missed the nuances of the lights. I’m pretty sure you can’t just stop in the middle of the track on car nights like you can on bike nights.

The racetrack was big enough that we got visions of all the 12 days of Christmas. Here you can see that three of the six geese a-laying have been busy.

After my first round following the couple with fun music, I took another loop to take pictures and have another look. Then I rode home.

I’m glad to have experienced this fun tradition.

Band Comp (for the First Time in 30 Years!)

My visit to Boise coincided with an event I had not participated in or viewed since October 1993: Band Competition.

I was surprised to see that the 5A schools had been divided into small and large divisions, but was glad they had, or the large divisions would have trampled the small-division schools. I was a little disappointed to see Borah was in the small-schools division. Bigger marching bands are more fun.

It was also nice that Boise High School (my dad and Barb’s alma mater, was also competing near the time of my alma mater (Borah High School.)

We headed down to whatever Bronco Stadium is called now, and were able to sit on the first level, which was reserved for the students, not the families.

The Big Thunder Marching Band (or some contingent of them) started us off with the national anthem.

We watched Boise (still a tiny program, just like when I was in high school) and Owyhee (huge band—for the small division—and really great) and then it was time for Borah to take the field. You can see the people in the pit already in place.

Back in my day, most marching band programs had a theme that tended to be tied to some popular piece of music. My sophomore and junior years we did Fiddler on the Roof and the Beatles, respectively. Based on the three schools I saw, this has changed to a preference for music that is not as readily identifiable. Which, fine, but what has been lost is the crowd reaction as they recognized the what song we were playing. The Borah band looks to be about the same size as it was my senior year, when we got a new band director and he had to rebuild the program. It was surprising to see how few drill team/flag corps there were. I counted four. Even when we were a small band, drill team could field about 30 people.

The full press forward, always an enjoyable part.

We left after Borah’s performance. Based on the three we saw, I would have placed Owyhee over Borah, but when I checked the results the next day, Borah was the division winner! Cheers to the Borah High Band!

Boise Sights Autumn 2023

Here are a few things from my Boise trip.

That feeling when you are sitting at the intersection that you won’t get your camera out fast enough to capture the wonder of the nearby car. Thankfully, I didn’t miss this one.

15 seconds of googling has not uncovered what this sticker is about.

And then I went to see the Eras Tour at the Flicks! It did not disappoint.

Look at this menu!

I had some wine, but no TS-themed drink.

I also enjoyed looking at these fun rice crispy treats.

Here is my commemorative poster I got as part of my (rather high) admission. There was a girl sitting behind me that didn’t get one because they ran out, so I gave mine to her.

I’m pretty much only Taylor Swift fan via what comes on the radio. But this concert was enough to make me into a Swiftie (a slight Swiftie). The pageantry! The dancing! The effects! The walking back and forth on that huge stage! It’s three hours that are well worth your time.

Also, I dearly love excited teen girl energy and there was a ton of that.

The Partial Eclipse at OMSI

Matt had the good idea to head down to OMSI to see the partial eclipse. Though the forecast was overcast, OMSI promised livestreaming in the planetarium.

Here we are waiting for the doors to open. We got there quite early and were about fourth and fifth in line. Someone who worked for OMSI was confused why a line was forming at eight on a Saturday morning. The people at the beginning of the line explained what was up.

The view from inside the planetarium. I enjoyed that timeanddate.com was the livestreamer. They are my online source for calendars and have for years.

We got views from across the country.

At some point, one of the people who had posted themselves outside announced that the clouds had cleared enough to see the eclipse, so the planetarium emptied. Here was the view without glasses.

Here was the view with glasses.

Here was my fun self portrait that was one of my favorite photos taken this year.

Crowd pictures.

I really loved this coat! So event appropriate.

The fun of photographing people watching eclipses is that they can’t see you taking pictures.

Some glasses adjustments are necessary.

I like to think it was one of these fellows who came in and said that the eclipse was visible.