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Anchorage Sunrise: 4:45am Sunset: 11:08pm High Temp: 58° Low Temp: 51°
I'm back! Over the Memorial Day weekend, I spent 87 grand, wonderful hours in Portland. I'm not going to go on and on about it, as this journal is for my Alaskan Adventures, but there are a few things I'd like to mention:
- Friday afternoon was gorgeous; blue skies and 85º. I wore shorts, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt just because.
- A college friend of mine plays in a band, so Friday evening, I met several people at the Dublin Pub to hear him play and I got carded! It was GREAT! I mean, I was in town to celebrate my 41st birthday. I told everybody about it for the rest of the weekend.
- If you're ever in Portland on your birthday, the All-You-Can-Eat sushi buffet at Todai is FREE!
- After eating so much sushi we could barely move, we walked up to the Portland State University campus to see the Robot Fair sponsored by the Portland Area Robotics Society (PARTS). It was entertaining, even though the talent show had only eight entrants. Two dropped out before it started. Two others mostly consisted of the robot's owner describing what the robot could do when it was finished. One robot climbed stairs, but only had two of four wheels up on a 4" platform before his five minutes were up. The others struggled to perform their tricks successfully, except the one whose talent was following an infrared beacon. While this has technological merit, watching a robot follow a guy walking across a room isn't exactly riveting. So all you tech-heads out there, if you can build a robot able to perform under the pressure of 100 people watching, the PARTS Talent Show prize is yours for the taking. Fame and fortune will surely follow.
- On Monday, the health-food store by our house (Nature's), had a barbeque outside with, of course, Karaoke! Maybe this looked good on paper, but what part of Sunny-Outdoor-Memorial-Day-Health-Food-Picnic says "Drunken Amateur Singing" to anybody? I admit, karaoke doesn't REQUIRE the participants and observers to be cheerfully intoxicated, but would anyone do it sober? Well, I applaud them if anyone defied the harsh light of day stripping away all that is drolly ironic about public amateur singing, but I was a touch abstemious.
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