Vacation pictures -Portland ,OR : Part 1

Various vacation pictures. I would like to go out to Portland again, this time with my own transportation (rental car).

Hillsboro Station.
This was my starting point for the trip into Portland. The transportation system is very nice - at least in my opinion. For $4.75, I could ride the train, the trolley, and the bus to practically anywhere in the Greater Portland area from the start of business to the end of the day's run.

Tuesday, the 26th, Gordon took me to the Evergreen Aviation & SpaceMuseum in McMinnville, OR. I got to see the famous "Spruce Goose" built by our favorite hermit, Howard Hughes. you read about how big the plane was but you can't appreciate it until you've been next to it.

Looking toward the tail end of the Goose". The picture is really bad. I discovered I had a new disease - Camera Parkinsons - where you think you're holding the camera steady and you're shaking really badly.

Oregon Capital building
It looks a bit like a wedding cake on top. I visited here on Wednesday after my arrival. The picture below is me outside the building. There was a guy there taking a picture of his daughter. I offered to take a picture of both of them together if he would take my picture. So there you are - that's what I loook like.

There was an exhibit of uniforms worn by Oregon soldiers from the Spanish American War to the present. Since school hadn't ended for the summer, there were a lot of kids and their teachers there. I wandered around the downtown area for a bit until it was time to meet my ride. I did meet a guy selling body care products at the Farmers Market. I bought a hand cream from him and we talked about soapmaking. If you're in the area, look for Goldenwood Soap at the market. He has a website: http://www.goldenwoodsoap.com. I love his Cedar and Saffron goats milk hand and body cream.

Thursday, the 28th, we trooped over to the coast. Here I am on my first ever visit to the Pacific. Okay, it's the first I remember. (I was born in Oakland, California so I may have gone to the ocean at some point. And when I was in 6th grade,we stayed in LA with family until my Dad got base housing for us so I may have gone to the ocean then.) We were at Lincoln city, Oregon when this picture was taken.

We went up the coast a bit and had lunch at a place called Mo's. I ordered the clam fritters but they weren't like any fritters I remembered from the East Coast - flat and kind of greasy. Not good. I'm used to little golden puffs of clam-filled dough, not pancakey things.

I was looking at this sandbar across the way with all the driftwood when a piece of driftwood started flopping down to the water. Those are Harbor sealssunning themselves. I knew I should have worn my glasses.

Saturday, we actually made it to Portland. Pictures in part 2.

Sorry, world ...

...things have been pretty depressing here lately and rather than rant and rave at you, I've chosen not to write. That said, I have to tell you about Taco Bell Saturday also know as the 4th of July.

Apparently Babycakes has a well-developed sense of the days of the week. so even though Mommy had the day off, someone felt she should be at Nana's house. So mommy had to listen to hours of "Nana! Nana! Nana!" and "I love you, Nana." I got a call about noon asking if I would watch her for a couple of hours. No problem.

They showed up and I got a big cuddle and hug and Mommy got a low-voiced "yeah" in response to "bye." I made turkey and cheese sandwiches for us and watched as she took the sandwich apart, ate the turkey and some of the cheese and then put the bread together to eat it. Funny.

Her favorite TV show and the only one she gets to watch, is Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin. She always asks to watch it and usually only watches one episode before turning off the television. Saturday, she wanted to watch another episode. It went like this: "Watch more Jack, Nana. More Jack." "What do you say?" I though I would get her to say "Please." Noooo. What came out? "Taco Bell. Taco Bell."

Later, we had some ice pops. When she saw them come out of the refridgerator, she yelled, "Taco Bell, Taco Bell."

Shee wanted to water plants so I put water in a jug, but she said it was too heavy, so I gave her the hose. She did a really good job.

Done with traffic school

I passed with only 7 wrong answers. Yay - my record will still be clean. To celebrate, I'm going to race around town! Just kidding.

Now to stop being depressed about work. I need drugs --- heavy duty drugs. No, what I need is to know exactly what my job will be. So far no job description.

Babycakes has just grown. She can drink out of a glass. She can choose between two alternatives like eggs versus pancakes, swing versus sandbox.

There was a chicken coop tour yesterday. Someone fell in love with the chickens and wanted to play with them. Here she is after letting one out of the coop. Don't worry -we were still in the run. Babycakes got a door prize from the chickens' owner - a bug windchime. The photo was taken with my cell phone so it's not the best quality.

There's still no word on my job duties.

As far as I know 40% of my current duties is on indefinite hold due to a lack of server space. 30% of my current duties will most likely disappear since the person in charge of cataloging at the main campus library doesn't want any of us (me, my co-worker, our boss) at my location, to have cataloging access and part of my job is to reclassify existing items that have dead or changed call numbers. 15% of my job is coming to a halt because the server I need to access to create faculty profiles has been down for almost a year and a half and I'm almost done with the information gathering part.

I'll most likely be made to do something I don't want to do, working with someone I despise. I would rather let someone put spiders in my hair than work with this one person. So I'm sure that's going to be added to my new position description.

I'm hoping to go to school in the fall. The first trick is to choose one of three computer-related certificate programs. Then the other trick is to persuade someone to hire an old person like me. For some reason, I need a piece of paper to prove I can take a computer apart, re-assemble it, install, and troubleshoot, software and hardware.

We'll see.

Once I get my photos re-sized, I'll post a few from my trip along with the blog posts written enroute.

Hello, I'm back.

I was going to write about my vacation and I still might, but right now I'm concentrating on work. While I was on vacation, they took a hatchet to the staff and 6 of my co-workers will be unemployed by July 17th unless they find something elsewhere. I am still employed but most of my duties are either gone or on hold. I haven't seen any revised job descriptions yet, so I'm hunkered down and working on finishing up projects.