Last Day in Portland

I finally got around to fixing the JetBlue trip later this year that got changed from a nonstop to a JFK connection. Ugh. J. from the builder sent over the paint selection document for me to review at the beginning of the trip. I finally got around to doing it, and she returned the corrections I asked for and I confirmed so we are good to go with that.

We’re on Yet Another Possible Front Door vendor. We’re now looking at sapele with a bronze threshold and S.’s artwork on top of it. We’ll see.

The three of us went to Mcmenamin’s on Market Street. The Dutch street signs are all from Rotterdam — fun looking them all up. The museum is being renovated, so not many people there, which meant we really got to stare at the massive Monet. I think I’ve figured it out — this isn’t about getting far enough back. It’s about figuring out where Monet wanted you to focus, in this case some of the little circles in the water.

Later R. and I met J. at the Rose Garden, which I’ve never been to. A. declined; she’d had enough excitement apparently. After that, we went down to Life of Pie. I had a vegan pie, and took a quarter of it back to the hotel. The seasonal mushrooms are awesome, and they didn’t go too heavy on the cheese. Yay! A. had some leftovers (chicken tender from Screen Door), a steak that R. got her from QFC, and some fruit and veg. R. and I drank the beer.

I’ll be happy to go home. It’s been a very busy trip.

We are home!

We got up, packed up, ate breakfast, retrieved car, put gas in it, returned the car and got burgers at Burgerville. And let me just say a few things about Burgerville. The vegan cheezeburger is excellent as is — a little salty, but the vegan pepperjack is really nice. I had the hazelnut chocolate bliss (plant based, using coconut) shake. I got the 16 oz because I was offered 16 or 20; there may be a 12 and I would get that if I ever do this again. It was really good, but there was a lot of it. Both waffley fries and regular fries are good. R. and A. appeared to enjoy their Northwest burgers with modifications for their dietary constraints / preferences.

At breakfast, I took a bagel and marmalade with me for the plane ride; I already had peanut butter and I’m just not a big fan of Jif. I brought the contents of the fridge (other than the lone chicken tender from Screen Door) with us, so A. had veg and fruit on the plane. I had scoped out a late night dinner option (Tavern on the Square runs full menu on Fridays until 11 am according to their website), but we weren’t hungry so we didn’t bother. I made A. a grilled cheese when we got home.

I went through the mail. My insurance company proactively sent me cologuard, which was extremely confusing. We knew it was coming because of UPS notifications, but weren’t sure who it was for until we got a look at it. I may or may not blog about my thoughts and feelings on this topic; definitely not right now. I’d rather go to bed at a reasonable hour. A. starts school on Wednesday, and we are 3 hours off due to travel and her orientation on Tuesday nominally starts at 8. LOL. I do not expect to make it there for that.

It’s good to see T. again. I put the compost out on the porch because I didn’t feel like emptying it tonight and there were sooooo many little bugs. I then vacuumed bugs until there were too few to annoy me any more. Then I vacuumed the floor. I’ve mostly unpacked, but still need to go retrieve the sourdough so it can thaw overnight. I may bring up some kind of protein while I’m at it. ETA: sourdough thawing, protein in fridge. I’ll catch up on posting blog entries from the vacation over the weekend. No cocktail zoom today because I was traveling, but hopefully this weekend.