Ole Bolle Troll

Someone at work clued me into this delightful public art project brought to us by the Scan Design Foundation: six trolls built by Thomas Dambo scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest. Here is the Portland one: Ole Bolle

As you can see, Ole Bolle is quite popular

The trolls are built from recycled materials, and you can see how nicely those recycled materials came together.

Look at that foot!

And that hand with fingernails.

Once you look in the door, you can see what the troll is after. I don’t blame him, especially that delicious looking cake.

They did a great job of making his face very kind.

Here is an attempt at a mom-and-me self portrait. No dice though. It was just me.

So here is mom with the troll.

We Escaped! From the Mysterious Museum

Some time ago, Matt brought home two escape room games. Exit has created at-home escape rooms, which are brilliant. For less than the cost of one person attending an escape room, one to four players can “escape” from the scenario. There’s also no having to work in teams with people you’ve never met before, a thing I don’t love about real escape rooms.

We worked through the various rooms and escaped from the museum.

At the end, you can fill out your certificate.

If you use the app, it keeps time for you, and then you can enter your information and get a star rating. We got 8 out of 10.

While card game “rooms” don’t provide some of the surprises we’ve found in physical escape rooms, this was a fun experience I would like to repeat.

Celebrating Matt’s Birthday at Emperor Georgiou’s Tea Room

Somewhat recently, Emperor Georgiou’s Tea Room, set up (tea) shop in Kenton. Matt decided to celebrate his birthday there so we could experience the tea.

Some pretty cups.

One of our platters of food. While no service job is easy, being a wait staff at a tea shop does have its advantages: a very limited menu; a set timeframe; the inability for people to become inebriated by consuming the product.

I grabbed a picture of Matt and his mom, Linda. I neglected to catch the rest of the table.

Shopping for the 30-Year Reunion

My 30 year–high school reunion is in July, so it’s time to find something to wear. There are two events, so I need two dresses. (Two new dresses are not actually required, but I included them in the budget for this weekend. Because who doesn’t want new dresses? And new new dresses, not new-to-me dresses.)

After flaming out at Nordstrom’s—I didn’t seem to catch their legendary customer service—I visited Amelia Boutique* to see if they had potential candidates.

*Reporting from the future, I see that Amelia Boutique has closed. I’m quite sad to hear that.

Boy, did they! Amelia brought me a ton of options, even ones I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen myself. I found a really great dress (it’s the blue one on the left).

Amelia also helped me problem solve as there was a fun dress, but not in my size. She pointed that all purchases come with free alterations, and with the dress I was looking at, I could buy a larger size and then take it in so it fit.

I did just that. It worked perfectly. What a great day of shopping this was!