happy new year

i really had a lovely holiday. it was a non stop go go go, eat eat eat kind of thing, and i polished it all off by getting head cold. but all in all it was a very nice time.

more link-o-rific details than you probably care to know (for posterity & my own reference):

incoming
3 hour delayed flight (which meant 5 hours of wandering the airport)
by the time we arrived & were between the sheets it was 5 am to our body clocks. what a way to start a family marathon. over to my mom's house in the morning where we started hooking up her new computer. my favorite coffee joint for mandatory caffeinated beverages and croissants. that afternoon we ran some errands on the ave: mj feet (where i bought some fabulous cozy tights), the u bookstore, and tru value. then we met all our aunts, uncles and cousins for a big chinese food feast. then we went shopping at whole foods for sunday/monday dinners & had a lovely dinner out with p and a at volterra.

xmas eve

more food shopping in the morning. drop josh of for computering. ferry kids and groceries home. back to mom's and then all of us over to the house to help prep for dinner. e,s,m,l & h join us for a delicious dinner of (tuna, cheese, and pate appetizer) salmon with creme fraiche & caviar yumminess, fingerling potatoes, salad, and chilly lime pie for dessert.


xmas day
presents in a big blur & then an eggy breakfast. charlotte's web with the young'uns. we were all of the same opinion (booooooo-ring). dinner of (appetizers: more cheese & pate with cornichons, and assorted olives) prime rib, braised fingerlings, brussel sprouts braised in heavy cream, and salad, with an apple pear crisp for dessert.

the day after
hung out with the kid's until they left for the cabin. thai food for lunch. went thrift store shopping (goodwill, value village & thriftco). i am so glad we went to the thriftco, because that is where i found a hardly used complete GOCCO set for $5.99!! if you don't know how amazing this is wander over to ebay and see how much these things are going for these days. i am always looking at them, but i can never justify the expense. after all that excitement we went over to lora's to visit and ordered some pagliacci's for dinner.

off to portland


packed up our goodies and picked up my mom for breakfast. after driving by several places that were closed we ended here. then on our way to the freeway we decided to hit the greenwood space travel supply co. where we bought a few items for the good cause and resumed our journey south. we arrived in PDX around 3 in the afternoon, checked into our hotel and went directly to powells where we bought a decent map and a guidebook. we had some deep fried fishy snacks and microbrews at jake's & poked around the pearl before heading back to the hotel where i started surfing for interesting real estate, restaurants, and other assorted information. we ended our day with a cocktail & a late night snack at the hotel bar: doug fir

1st day


we discovered stumptown and caffinated ourselves & then we wandered a bit in the hawthorne/belmont area. we drove around to look at some real estate in the sw, checked out the new seasons market (VERY nice grocery store, why don't we have anything like that here?) and from there we wound our way to the NE in search of autentica


which was closed for lunch. we ended up around the corner at la bonita, which was plenty yummy. we were now in the alberta/killingsworth neighborhood and did some shopping:


office - a GREAT little shop with lots of fun paper products. bolt - a beautiful little fabric shop, where jak bought me a yard of deep red wool felt out of the remnants basket. after that we headed back to out hotel 'hood & looked in at hippo hardware. for dinner we went to lovely hula hands & then went back to hawthorne for dessert at pix, back at the hotel we stayed up way too late watching "one hit wonders" on VH1

2nd day
stumptown again. more shopping around the pearl. obilation paper and press is heaven. cacao has an amazing selection of chocolates, we sampled some fluer de sel caramels and 2 different blends of drinking chocolate (which spoiled our appetites for lunch entirely).


canoe has a great selection of beautiful designer-ly things and lots of neat stuff for under $10. we had sushi for lunch (because we were all hopped up on coffee and too much chocolate, which rendered us unable to make any decisions or think straight, we ended up at a run of the mill unremarkable sushi place) after lunch we went to the japanese garden


by that time it was very grey and starting to drizzle...and it was cold. i have been to the garden in the early summer when it is SPECTACULAR, i have to say that in the winter there's just not much to see. that evening we drove to salem to meet lindsey & harley for burgers and beers at boon's treasury. back at the hotel and snug in bed my throat started feeling scratchy & my nose was feeling stuffy. this was a bad, bad, no good sign

last day
i woke up sick and feeling like crap. packed up and ate a nice big breakfast at doug fir.

checked out of the hotel. enjoyed one last latte @ stumptown. back to powell's for some airport reading. drove over to council crest for the view, we had wanted to make it over there for sunset, but it just didn't work out weather & timingwise. slurped big steamy bowls of thai soup for lunch. poked around a great little zine-centric bookstore called reading frenzy. not knowing quite what to do with ourselves for the remainder of the day we decided to go see a movie at the very cute cinema 21. i highly recommend anything and everything pedro almodovar does. we grabbed some burritos on our way to the airport and thus our northwest adventure was concluded

outgoing
we were on a red eye home (departing at 10:45pm). a red eye flight is usually pretty miserable under the best of circumstances, but being sick made it extra miserable. we didn't sleep at all & felt utterly zombified by the time we got home.

a complete set of pics over on flickr on my fancy new pro account (that i finally succumed to paying for)