Cannon Beach

The McBeths are in town this week, which is super exciting. This is the first time we've seen Sean out here, and it is not often we get Sam as well. We made a quick trip out to the beach yesterday, to Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Astoria. A little chilly, but I always do like getting out to the beach. These shots are from Cannon Beach, which I suppose is pretty popular with the surfers, although there weren't any out there yesterday.

Astoria turned out to be pretty cool as well, but we didn't spend too much time there. I had to get back for a soccer game, so we didn't get around as much as I would have liked. Regardless, it was a hilly little town alongside the Columbia River right next to the ocean.

I'll have more stuff this week as we continue our McBeth adventures. I think I'm finally out of the woods with whatever kind of illness I had, so I can focus once more and get back to writing.

A few pictures ago

Back in business with a few pictures from Nate's visit. We still are far from adequate when it comes to taking pictures, but we're working on it. So I thought I'd show you the Waffle Window we found down an alley.

One of the classiest places we've found so far. We also have a few shots from our night over at the Silver Dollar Horses Horses Saloon, or something like that anyway. The three of us played pool and somehow we all lost.

All the concentration and serious faces in the world couldn't help us sink a shot, but at the very least we were evenly matched.

Nate Nate

We'll have a better post with pictures up next week, hopefully, but I wanted to throw something on here before we leave for Chicago tomorrow. Nate was in town Friday to Monday, which was fantastic. It was one of the walkingest weekends of my life, but really good times. Days were made of good food in large quantities, breakfast out every day, a blazers game, saturday market, arcade, billiards, donuts, videogames, and still more walking around. We made it through pretty much everywhere downtown, most of Hawthorne, and a little bit of Mississippi/Alberta. Weather held out well around 55 with infrequent rain.

This was kind of our first run through of hosting someone besides parents, which lent an interesting perspective. I think both of us are feeling pretty comfortable these days in getting around town under the scrutiny of a third party, finding good eats, and filling time with fun stuff. Nate seemed pretty approving of our new apartment and Portland in general. Food carts are a big winner in getting people on board, at least among our friends. You can get a ton of great and varied foods for super cheap.

Anyway, good times were had. We didn't do amazing, but we will have some pictures up later, which is a positive step. Anyone who wants to come out here, we now have space and are happy to show you around.

McBeth Family Thanksgiving

Hello again. Finals have come and gone (lucky me as all of my professors were of the mind to put finals the last week of class rather than during finals week) and I am back to writing. First up on the list is our trip out east, well, I guess everything is out east from here, but I’ll use East to mean ole PA.

This was our first shared major holiday. We’ve done New Years and Arbor Day, but never one of the big ones that have so many traditions attached. So Thanksgiving. Started off with a rather dismal red eye flight that will probably not be repeated. We left the apartment at 8pm and arrived at the McBeths around 3pm. Lovely. With the changeover in Houston around 4am and the millions of screaming babies, this was not one of my favorites. But we made it. Woo! Cheers abound!

Maybe its because of this flight and lack of sleep, but everything hereafter gets a little bit jumbled, so I’ll forgo a day-by-day.

Most importantly for Thanksgiving, the food. Turkey was had, but after that the field was wide open with new options. There were candied yams that involved a lot of marshmallow, baked corn, green beans with bacon, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry tube, and probably a few things I’m forgetting at the moment. There was also both pie and cake. How great is that? Also important to note is that all of these things were great as leftovers. Very crucial.

We also went out to the ever-favored german restaurant in Hagerstown for Sean’s bday, which was as fantastic as ever. True, it is my only experience with German food, but I am positive I would be let down if I tried something similar at a different place. They do food right.

We also spent a day out and about at a pretty sweet model train setup at the Hagerstown Train Room and Museum, which was pretty sweet. Their Christmas set up is pretty intricate and it took a while tracking down all of the moving pieces, finding King Kong on one of the buildings. After that we headed over to see Harry Potter.

The other big event was Thanksgivingston, which was the Saturday following at the Wilkenings’ house and is a bit of a tradition amongst Sean and his friends. More great food, some ridiculously good pies and a pumpkin cheesecake that was by far my favorite.

All in all these were very good things, fun new traditions that will take some getting used to, but are also pretty exciting.

Great times and thanks to everybody out East!