I went to PDX last weekend to see peoples. I went shopping all day on Friday with my friend Lisa. We found the coolest store on N Dekum and N Interstate called Alex Sandra's. It is women's vintage clothes. I got two really cool dresses. You need to check it out. The owner is a blast. We had so much fun trying on stuff.

Our friend Lee came to visit us this weekend, which was perfect timing as Sally has just started her summer vacation. We did some of the normal stuff like mooching around in Scottsdale, an early morning hike around Papago Park (which turned out to be really good as all the animals were out and about, and all the flowers are blooming right now - seeing flowers on a cactus is still trippy to me!), and heading up to the top of South Mountain to catch a sunset. We also ate some great food...

Monday was our last day in Portland and we had to be back at the airport around 4pm. This gave us a few hours to run around and see some more friends, so we started out with a quick breakfast back at the Doug Fir again - yes I do miss that place! Then back into downtown in search of one of Sally's best friends Nick. We knew he was working at a store called UnderU4Men which sells fun & cool underwear for men - you'll never buy your underwear in packs of 3 again after seeing this place :-) We weren't sure if he would be working a shift when we got there, but luckily he was, and even better he was busy changing one of the window displays so we crept up on him and leaped out in-front of the window. After a momentary look of "WTF?" he came running out to hug Sally so fast that they both nearly went flying out into the street :-) It was hilarious. We hung out for a while chatting to him, I checked out lots of underwear, and we all checked out the golf-ball sized hail that suddenly started falling outside. OK I exaggerate, but only a bit.

Sunday we majorly learned our lesson from yesterday and crammed as many different friends in as possible :-) We started out by going to the Doug Fir for breakfast with my friends Amanda & Jim. Amanda was in Phoenix visiting us last weekend, but Jim had ripped the tendons in his legs and couldn't come. Sure enough Jim came hopping in on crutches and painkillers, but it was great to see that he's still his usual funny self. They also had a gift for us, a beautiful Vargas print in a delightfully tacky plastic frame that Jim had found at an auction or something. It's one of the nicest gifts I've ever been given ;-)

Saturday ended up being our most depressing day of the whole trip, but we realized in retrospect that it was because it included the least friends spread out through the day. It started out great as Heather cooked us a great breakfast, just ham & eggs, but soooo yummy. It ended good too, but we'll get to that later...

After breakfast we headed downtown. It was still freezing cold and oscillating between rain and hail. I used to love Portland's downtown, but now it seems like half the shops have closed and with the miserable weather everything just looked grey and yucky. We cheered ourselves up with lunch at Rock Bottom before heading up to the 21st/23rd shopping areas. We were going to walk around but we were so cold by now that we just drove down the streets until I saw a cool new store called eccodoma. We checked it out and they had some amazing furniture in there. We ended up buying a chinese painting that we liked, then driving to the nearest UPS store to ship it home to Phoenix. Painting: $80, shipping: $80.56, loathing UPS: priceless ;-)

We flew back to Portland today for our friends Kat & David's wedding. The trip didn't start well. First we had to be up at 5am to get to the airport in time for our early morning flight, then as we pull into the terminal we realize that our tickets say the flight is run by Alaska and United, but Alaska is at terminal 2 and united is at Terminal 4. So we go to terminal 2, park up, try & check in, but there's no record of us! After lots of looking at the computers, this eventually means we should be at terminal 4! Oops.

We arrive in Portland about 10.30am, go pick up the rental car and head towards town. Phoenix was 88 and sunny when we left, Portland is alternatively snowing, hailing, raining or nice but freezing cold. It seems to rotate between any one of these weather settings about every 10 minutes. It kinda makes Phoenix's endless "sunny, hot" seem quite boring by comparison - yay for boring! ;-)

We were staying at Sally's brother Ronnie's house, and after a quick detour to check out Sally's old house (completely unchanged after 3 years!) we picked up Ronnie and the kids and head downtown to Kell's Irish Pub for our first taste of Portland. For me it was the meal I've been missing - Curry & Chips - yum!

After dropping Ronnie & the kids off, we headed back into downtown to meet up with some old friends. First we stopped by the new offices of the company I used to work for. Their new offices are beautiful (congrats guys!) and it was great to see so many of the old faces there and catch up on what's been going on. Thanks to all who gave us a tour or stopped and chatted for a few minutes.

Next we headed over to visit my friend Jim who works for KGW - channel 8 in Portland. He gave us a quick tour round the building, showing us the studios where they film the local news, and many other cool rooms full of all kinds of audio/video technology that I can only dream about owning. I loved it, but I think Sally got a little bored of us geeking out over all the gear :-)

Next we swung by my old place where I used to live, which really hasn't changed much, although the area around it had, lots more high-rise buildings - condos, offices etc then there used to be. Then it was down into Johns Landing to see another place where Sally & I first lived together, and on to the cemetery where Sally's mom is buried.

Then it was back to Ronnie & Heather's place to relax for an hour before heading out to the Arcadia Ballroom for Kat & David's wedding. The wedding was cool, with some great vows and really funny speeches. The best bit for me though was catching up with lots of our old friends who we hadn't seen in a couple of years... and the cake ;-)

My old friend Amanda came to visit this weekend - yay! She was supposed to have her husband Jim with her, but unfortunately earlier in the week Jim had decided that running a 5k marathon, followed by playing a game of soccer, would be a good idea. His legs didn't agree however, and he managed to completely rip the tendons off the bone on one of them - ouch! First Sally's brother Ronnie on crutches, now Jim? What do you Portlanders get up to all winter?

After the hike, Tawni took us all to a great burger joint that we'd never seen before - Greasewood Flat. It's up in North Scottsdale, and while it sounds like the name of an old blues singer, it's actually housed in a 120 year old bunkhouse & stagecoach stop that was on the route between Fort McDowell and Phoenix - now that's some history!

My Big Brother and Sis-n-Law are in town. It is brother number one, that means the oldest of the three older brothers. Ron and Heather flew in Friday afternoon and are here until Tuesday morning. They are staying at a really nice place called Sanctuary. It has all kinds of stuff to do, like golf, tennis and hiking. Too bad Ron pulled a muscle in his calf and now has to take it easy. I feel so bad for him beacuse the place they are staying is really hilly.

We met up with them Saturday night and went to dinner. We picked them up to bring them over to see our place. They gave us a really nice picture of Portland to remember home by. Then we went to Stax for food. Ross and I love that place, it's our new place to take everyone.

It was great to see them. I enjoyed just hanging out talking about the old neighborhood and the family. They looked great and it sounds like all is good at their house. I can't believe how big their kids are getting. I look forward to hanging out with them some more at the end of the month when we are in Portland.