Week in Review

Everyone is writing “year in review” posts, but it has been a long enough time since I blogged anything of substance that I need to make a week-in-review post.

Yesterday, I spent a half-day at work to tie up some year-end loose ends. We’re trying to ship a single unit of a newly released device by the end of the year so we can technically say it shipped in 2008, but there was a last-minute security hole discovered in the firmware that needed patching. I kept finding myself thinking, in Dante’s voice from Clerks, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” As a reward to myself, I spent the second half of the day at the Portland Art Museum. I re-upped our membership, which had expired a year or two ago. They had a great exhibit, Wild Beauty, consisting of photos of the local rivers and railroads, mainly from the late 1800s: steam trains, railroad workers, dam workers, native Americans, and so on. Halfway through the day, I stopped for an overpriced tea to recharge my caffeine levels: black raspberry. Wait, no not black-raspberry, but black-tea with raspberry. $2.25. Ouch.

The other night, Kim and I went to Hopworks again. That’s a great brewpub and they’re very proud (for good reason) of how green they are: biodiesel to power the fryers, waste pizza oven heat going to the brewing system, everything built with reclaimed wood, and all that good stuff. It was pretty packed, even moreso than usual. I finally pulled out the hipster PDA and jotted down notes on the beers in the sampler. The first time there I ordered a sampler and didn’t remember what I liked and disliked, and since then ordered things I was a little “meh” about based on the names–which I thought were describing beers I liked, but was mistaken.

We tried to hit up Bar Carlo for Christmas day breakfast, but with the snow, they did not get their food delivery for the day and were forced to stay closed. We did end up there the next morning, though. We’ve never been before and were quite happy. Their whole arrangement seems a little inconsistent, though. It’s almost like they’re in “phase 1” of a multipart launch. They’ve been open for–what, 6 months to a year? They only serve breakfast (and brunch, I guess), but have a liquor license and the word “bar” in their name. They have a room with pool tables. I get the impression that they want to be open late into the evening, but are not quite there yet.

Speaking of snow, we had about a week’s worth of it. My week-and-a-half of Christmas break expanded to over two weeks because we were snowed in. This was our second white Christmas in a row and our second Christmas in the new house. Coincidence??!? This was our first “real” Christmas, though. Last year, we were nestled in amongst cardboard boxes and crumpled packing material.

So that’s pretty much the week in review. I’ve been reading a lot lately. I finished Anathem a few weeks ago, finished The Design of Everyday Things a few days ago, and have started The City of Ember. The latter is a “young adult” book that we saw the film of a few months ago (I don’t think it was in the theaters for very long.) Overall, I enjoyed the movie (except for a couple of nitpicky parts) and wanted to read the source material, even if it was geared toward teenagers.

Maybe I’ll end up writing a “year in review” post sometime soon.

Posted in: Dear Diary

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