Tam's Think Tank

Portland Marina, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

This last weekend was a busy one. Very busy. Good though. So I guess you’d say it was good and busy. Should I have more caffeine? LOL Probably not…

Anyway… last weekend. Thursday night we went to see Star Trek. LOVED it. Great movie.

Friday… Went to Penny and Dave’s for dinner. Penny and Dave, we love hanging out with you guys. Very relaxing, as always. Plus, you two put up quite the meal. Very tasty. Thai, our favorite. Thanks so much for the fantastic food and the wonderful company. Dinner and a movie, could there be any better time spent than that?

Saturday… We unloaded a truck full of wood and stacked it in our garden shed, which we also cleaned out before the stacking began. When the stacking was done, thanks Stacia and Kev for helping out, we headed back to Penny and Dave’s to pick cherries off of their loaded cherry tree. We haven’t pitted them yet, but we now have a new pitter. Is that a word? Pitter? I don’t think so. Oh, and thanks Penny and Dave for the cherries… they will make terrific cherry jam. Karen’s excited to get started making it. After the cherry picking we headed back home, showered and such, and then headed into the Pearl to meet some friends for dinner at the Deschutes Brewery. How to describe the scene there…. hmmm. We were seated between a bachelorette party on one side and an unrelated bachelor party on the other. Can we say loud? Can we say drinking and even louder? Can we say inappropriate behavior when a girl in the bachelorette party sat down at our table, uninvited, and proceeded to hit on someone in our party? Can we say inappropriate behavior as a guy at the bachelor party seated behind us started singing “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” at the top of his lungs with certain expletives interjected for color and amusement? Not our amusement, but his own. Man… we just ate, drank a couple of beers, and left. I think we got out of there in the nick of time.  Who knows what would’ve happened next.  And hey… I know it’s wedding season and all, but we saw no less than seven different parties of women traipsing around town in packs… posing for photos, wearing interesting I’m getting married really soon garb, and looking all together uncertain yet elated. Wow.

After the dinner we all hopped the streetcar and made our way down to the waterfront and the Pride Festival. We wanted to see a band, Uh Huh Her, playing there. Again I’ll say… interesting crowd. Not terrible, just… well… interesting. I think it always happens when you get large groups of people together in a confined space and there’s alcohol. We were amazed, but great people watching. Strange. Not exactly Karen’s and my scene. Plus, the band wasn’t even that good live. The sound system was terrible. But there she was, the famous Leisha, better known as Alice, from her well known Showtime TV show, The L Word, playing the base and singing. Kinda cool. She was shyer than we thought she’d be. So we listened and then walked to VooDoo Doughnut. As we made our way toward doughnut bliss we passed a group of bagpipers. They weren’t bad. We heard them a long time before we found and saw them. We were walking along and suddenly, rounding a corner, there they were, kilts and all. We stood and listened to them play “Amazing Grace”. Nice.  Then, shaking off the bounty of bagpipes (I had to say it), we rounded yet another corner and got in line a VooDoo. This place is famous. Famous as in it has been incorporated into many a television show… The Amazing Race for one. The reason? Really good doughnuts, all night hours, and strange ingredients. There’s the cocoa puffs doughnut, the fruit loops doughnut, the voodoo doughnut (glazed raised in the shape of a little guy, chocolate icing, and a chocolate covered pretzel stick to poke him with… and when you poke him there’s raspberry filling), the elvis doughnut ( maple bar with bacon on it), and then some I can’t mention here. Or better said, I could, but won’t. Tasty tasty. So we doughnuted. All of us together… standing outside grubbing away on all that sugary goodness, watching the crowd, enjoying some great blues harmonica as played by a homeless guy we all gave a bit of money to afterward because he was pretty darn good, sippin’ on some voodoo coffee… or milk, and taking turns peeking into the window where the doughnut maker magicians were hard at work. They were certainly enjoying the sweet small of success. Get it… sweet smell…. I know. Bad.  The VooDoo Doughnut slogan… the magic is in the hole.  And it is.

After doughnut goodness we walked ourselves back to our cars, except for Terri, who just hailed a cab and was whisked away toward home. The rest of us shmucks had to walk the 8 blocks back to our cars. Not bad though. I love walking around the city at night. There were so many people out.  Great atmosphere.

Sunday… To continue this saga… We got up, earlier than we wanted to given the late hour we got home, because Weston wasn’t happy staying in bed any longer. It was something god awful, like 7:00. Grrrrrr. We decided to head to Lowe’s for deck staining supplies. We also managed to buy some deck furniture for our back deck and two umbrellas, with stands. Again I’ll use the word… nice. We got home, unpacked our goods, changed into our deck staining outfits, and the stain applying was on. Three hours of time spent on hands and knees (thank goodness for knee pads!) swabbing the deck. It was hard work, and a little back breaking, but the deck now looks great, so what are ya gonna do… obviously… you’re gonna stain the deck. We figured, after all that staining, we needed to not cook. Not cooking meant going out, which meant showering (it was the right thing to do, and much kinder to those around us). We did, went out and had dinner, and then found ourselves back at home watching a bad movie (don’t watch The International unless you have nothing else to do… and maybe even watching our stain dry would’ve been more exciting. Slow? Yes, yes it was… painfully in fact.). We ended up turning the bad movie off and looking for appliances and bathroom fixtures. We’re getting ready to get our master bath built (with the help of Kev… ) and also to replace some of our kitchen appliances. We just ordered new Jen Air inserts for the stove top. We will be going from white, which is cracked and stained, to a nice black. We’re excited. If they fit that is. Only their delivery will tell.

And that, as they say, is that. Our weekend… in a big nutshell. Hope ya’all had as great a few days as we did!