Tag: OrangeDoor

Christmas Celebration 2024

It’s been a tough year with many traditions shifting. We gathered for a Christmas meal. The mission: bring your favorite frozen food item.

We had a good (though salty) meal and Linda smartly interpreted the mission to include Salt and Straw ice cream, which we had for dessert.

After that, Matt and I went home and paid $19.89 to watch the Eras Tour (with bonus songs).

It was a nice, if muted, holiday.

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.

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.

Happy Days by NWCTC

Matt and I went to see the NWCTC perform Happy Days in the Lloyd Center Mall. It took place in the former Victoria’s Secret as it did last year, when I saw The Fever.

It’s not quite as easy to see the layout of VS because of the curtains, but you can see the iconic black and white stripes on the walls.

While I deeply loved last year’s production, I found Samuel Beckett’s play to be tedious. I’m not so much into absurdist plays. Neither was the guy next to me who looked at his Apple watch more than four times.

The program says about the play, “It is considered a ‘summit role’ for female actors, presenting a unique opportunity of intense theatricality.”

Diane Kondrat (Winnie) and Chris Porter (Willie) were very good in their roles.

Hopscotch

Our vacation continued in Portland (because it’s important to vacation in your own town) with a visit to Hopscotch, an immersive art experience.

I loved this mural, and would love to have the artist paint a mural on the side of our house. Someday, maybe.

This installation was made of plastic garbage bags, and the lights changed colors making things seem otherworldly.

Here’s a close-up with slightly different colors.

This was my favorite installation. Because a ball pit is a very fun thing, especially when not in a Chuck E Cheese and with fun lighting.

Matt really liked this room, but I did not. You put on a headset that showed you, but from a different perspective. Then you got to walk around and shoot a basket and other fun things while dealing with that perspective.

This installation was a maze of neon.

From there, we went to Clarklewis and had a delicious dinner and many, many people wished us a happy anniversary (and also engaged us in conversation about our wedding.)

Wrapping up Sisters and Headed Home

In Sisters, the air quality was terrible. Smoke from two forest fires was funneled right into the town. Because of that, we didn’t do any walking back and forth to the downtown area as I did on my last visit. But our very large room was a perfect place to hole up.

On Monday night we saw Blue Beetle at the Sisters Movie House and concluded that while Blue Beetle didn’t want to hurt anyone, he didn’t mind if his family did.

We also did another Exit escape room game, getting out of the labyrinth in just under an hour and a half.

On Tuesday, we stayed inside and played another escape room game, this one called the Deserted Lighthouse. It included four puzzles that you had to assemble in order to solve it, plus other things. I didn’t love it. Putting puzzles together while a timer is ticking isn’t my favorite thing. And we didn’t do very well, I think maybe getting 2 stars out of ten.

From there we drove to downtown Sisters to find food and stopped in at the Open Door to see if they happened to have a table. They had us wait a few minutes because someone was a no-show for their reservation and they wanted to see if they would appear. They did not, and we had a delicious dinner. Thanks, Open Door.

On Wednesday, after eating breakfast and lounging around, we took our timer photo and headed home.

On the way there, we stopped at On Any Sundae, and had a frozen treat. I tried the frozen “lasagna,” which was many layers of delicious fun. Matt got an overstuffed waffle cone. Both were quite good.