Hey--so those of you who don't know my dad is going through some state of the art protron treatment at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. He is doing really well (he drove 6 hours to get here) and it is the place to be in the US. 

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 ;-)

So I know a few of you want to see some pics of the new place, and we should have some up in a week or so, it’s just been so hectic here we haven’t had the time yet!

• First, as Sally already mentioned in a previous blog, she was finishing up her school year. Congrats on surviving that first year Sally!
• Secondly, I was single handedly moving all of our furniture to the new condo in the lovely 110º heat. On the plus side though I now have arms like Arnie Schwarzenegger after carrying couches etc down multiple flights of stairs all by my self. A welcome physical break from my normal sedentary geek life.
• Thirdly, just as we were finishing moving, Lisa came on her surprise visit for the weekend. I picked her up from the airport and instantly got a lecture that it was time to propose, get married, raise rug-rats, etc. WTF? The more cynical side of me suspects that it was driven by the fact that she flower-arranges weddings for a living and is thus surrounded by normal people - baaaa, damn sheep! Maybe it’s the 50%+ divorce rate (i.e. marriage actually sucks) or a dislike of organized religion (if the meek shall inherit the earth, why does the pope dress like an über rich drag queen?) or maybe I’m just a cantankerous old git. All possibilities :-)
• Fourthly, we’re about to head to Moab, Utah to meet up with our friend Jim for a few days.
  

We still haven’t even got our cable TV sorted out yet, that has to wait till we get back from Moab! God job I got that AppleTV a few months ago ;-)

Anyway, if you weren’t already aware, Jim has taken 2 weeks off and is riding his BMW motorbike from Portland, Oregon to Moab, Utah and back. You can follow his adventures on this web page: http://beemer.hastyfilms.com/

Jim booked a few nights in a Kamping Kabin (possibly at Kamp Krusty?) in Moab (see picture above), and as we were so busy with other stuff we decided to crash his party rather then sort out anything for ourselves - sorry Jim! We’ll have lots of photos and a blog entry up when we get back next week. At least it’s only 100º-ish there which will be mercifully cool break from Phoenix right now.

Sally here. Today is Monday April 16th and it is a weird one. I actually got a lot done during prep--posters hung up, copies made, some lesson plans written. Then during 2nd hour, one of my students asked what was on my forehead so I got to explain to him that it was a zit. Ya know, a pimple? Yep you still get them as adults--look forward to it hee hee hee

Third period I had student A hit student B in the privates (both boys). It looked like student A was joking as he hit student B, but who knows. I sill had to fill out the referral and walk him to D104 (detention room) when the bell rang. It was near the end of class and lunch was next so I took him down. Usually I would have another student walk him down.

Re-enactment of “privates” incident

As I was walking back during lunch Dodie stopped me to let me know the training in San Diego in July has been approved and she is going to send the hotel info along. I have to book that and get reimbursed. Someone at District does the travel arrangements. I told her I really prefer to fly but if that is not possible then whatever. I am so excited I get to go to this training.

It is for a program called AVID, Advancement Via Individual Determination. It takes C students and puts them in advanced classes. The AVID class then teaches them about time management and tutors them in their classes. Since it is an elective one-day a week is art class. Yeah I get to teach and art class too. So, now I am happy and don’t worry about 2nd and 3rd hour being not so great.

San Diego at sunset, not bad eh? I’d go again...

Fourth comes along and a student (girl) asks me if I am sick. I tell her no. Then about half way thru the class another student (girl) tells me I really do look sick. Thanks a lot-tthhpptt :-p Of course then I start to not feel good, tummy. I hate the ol’ self-fulfilling prophecy thing.

At least during 5th hour not much happens. They are all working good and not needing my help. They helped each other which makes me happy, that means they really get what is going on.

And last but not least is 6th hour when I find out it rained a little bit during the day and the top is down on my car. Normally I wouldn’t care too much but here the wind is blowing too and that means dirt on the wet. When I went out side after school I was not happy. My car was so dirty inside I almost didn’t want to drive home. I got home and wiped the whole thing down right away.

Oh, and during 6th hour, as with the rest of the classes I let them know they would be getting a slip tomorrow with there percentage and letter grade. So what happens? Two kids come up and ask their grade. One was not listening and the other thought I would tell him anyway even though he will find out tomorrow and it wont change in 24 hours.

After school was good. I had yummy soup, went to Sonic for ice cream, watched a movie that was much better than I expected it to be (The Feast) and get a wedding invite from my cousin Kenny. Can’t make the wedding though as it is in Canada, but it was nice of him to think of me (us) and now I have his contact info for e-mails and such.

I am so glad this day in over, and I am so glad it ended on a good note. That note is an interesting book and bed

And tomorrow I get to try again for a good day.

Friday morning after breakfast and long goodbyes to the few remaining couples, we headed back to the tiny airport at Charlotte Amalie. We were tired, hung over, bloated and flea bitten. Just the way you should end a holiday :-)

We got the airport about 1pm ready for our 3pm flight out of there. I was dreading this bit as I’d left it to the last minute to renew my British passport and got all freaked out about it, but as it happened immigration didn’t even look at it, all they needed to do was swipe my green card and I was good to go. Sally unfortunately had left a bottle of water in her backpack which the x-ray scanners freaked out about and they had to strip her bag twice before realizing the machine was freaking out over just a bottle of water.

Then we waited for hours in the tiny airport with not enough seating for all the out-going passengers. We sat on the floor, leaning against a window. At least we could see the ocean and some other islands in the distance.

The first flight was long but problem free until we got to our old nemesis, Philly. The problem this time was visibility. We couldn’t see anything until we were almost on the ground, so the plane had to circle for 45 minutes waiting for other slowed up planes to land. This meant we had just 15 minutes to get from the very end of the international terminal (gate A23) across to the domestic terminal (gate B11). And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I was wearing flip-flops so my leg muscles were burning after a couple of minutes running through the airport. In retrospect I should have just taken the flip-flops off and gone bare-foot, but I wasn’t that intelligent at the time.

Somehow we made it to gate B11 just as the final passengers were boarding and we made it onto the plane. You can imagine how pissed we were then, when we roll out to the edge of the runway and the sit there for an hour waiting for the departure gate to give the pilot the codes he needs to take-off - grrrrrr! If they’d just delayed the plane an hour at the gate, I wouldn’t still have shin-splints!!! On the plus side, Sally got chatting to this guy sat next to us and it turned out he was the chief architect at a software company. Within 10 minutes he was giving me his business card and telling me to email him about a job :-) Life’s funny like that isn’t it?

The other sucky thing was on both flights, they ran out of food before they got to us at the back of the plane - great planning guys. So by the time we hit Phoenix, it was midnight and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Luckily it was a friday night, and Phoenix is a bit of a 24 hour town, so we hit a brand new McDonalds on the way home (yeah, I know, but we were desperate. It was that or Mo’s cat-food). Even this got lively as there was a guy in front of us who had walked up to the drive through window, but they wont serve walk-ups, so we ended up getting his food for him, and getting his change in quarters so he could do his washing! Jeez! By the time we got home we just wanted to collapse, so we scarfed our Mickey D’s and gave Mo some much needed petting. Our friend Jodi had looked in on her while we were away - thanks Jodi! - but Mo still needed some good scratching under the chin before she’d calm down for the night.

And then we slept, for a very, very long time...

Sally here. STT to PHX: It was crap just like Ross said.

Heres a couple of shots of Sally with Bowe & Noranne from our last night there. Congrats to you both, we had a great time.

Wednesday at 3.30pm we all met up in the hotel lobby for photographs, then headed on a long & winding path through the hotel and out the back to their open air wedding chapel which looked out over the ocean and some of the other islands. Great location!

We’d noticed that most days there was a 5 minute tropical downpour in the early afternoon so we all had our fingers crossed that the weather would be great during the ceremony, and luckily it was perfect.

Sally here. I guess I’m supposed to talk about the wedding since I am the girl - whatever. Actually I think it’s because I know Bowe and Noranne. Well it was awesome. The view from the terrace was amazing; multi blue/green ocean with islands not far away, perfect blue sky (after a morning rain), a barracuda and even a guy swimming by in the ocean.

We, not just Ross and I but other guests too were so preoccupied with the view we had to be called to our seats when Noranne arrived. Noranne looked so beautiful. I loved her dress. No I am not shopping for one, leave me alone. Bowe’s shirt matched his sky blue eyes and made them shine more, or was he starting to tear up? Actually, I think everyone made it through without losing it.

Bowe and Noranne wrote their own vows that were read by the pastor. He did a really nice job, and I liked that they were not the traditional vows. When the ceremony was done champagne was passed around as cake was cut. After cake and some toasts we moved down to the beach side bar and restaurant for dinner and fun. I can honestly say a good time was had by all.

Ross again! After the wedding, we all headed down to the open air restaurant where we had a couple of large tables cordoned off in one corner just for us. Bowe’s mate Mike showed up with a box of cigars...

...and we settled back in the bar to listen to the Steel Drum playing dude. Again at the risk of repeating myself, amazing version of Hotel California!!!

Sally here. St Thomas is beautiful. It is much hillier than I thought it would be. I thought it would be like Hawaii, one mountain in the middle and beach all around. I told Ross I felt like I was in a New York taxi on the way to the resort. That is how crazy they drive :-)

Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday were all largely the same - we’d take the elevator down a couple of floors in the hotel, then follow a rickety wooden walkway down the side of the mountain, over a bridge that crossed a river inlet, and finally down more steps into the swimming pool / bar / restaurant area and onto the beach.

There were some minor variations in this of course. Tuesday everyone but Nick, Sally & I took the island ferry over to St.Johns for the day. We’d heard it was beautiful over there but it was pretty beautiful where we were, and we’d payed a lot of money to be there so we figured we might as well enjoy it.

Wednesday was the wedding, and we’ll talk about that in the next blog entry.

Thursday many people started heading home. The hotel was over $500 a night, so most people arrived late Monday and headed home Thursday morning. We stayed Sunday through Friday, and a couple of other couples were staying an extra day or two again. I was pretty jealous of them I have to say, I could have easily stayed for a month or two if I’d only had “Lord” in front of my name and “$$$$$” after it. Note - getting working on that Mater & Pater, I’ll expect a letter from the Queen immanently ;-)

Anyway, there were 3 pools in the swimming area, all joined together through mini waterfalls, then one of the pools had some big waterfalls and a little cave system that you could swim through. One of the pools had a volleyball net setup too. Surrounding all that there was some pool & foosball tables, a hamburger joint, a much nicer open-air buffet restaurant that we actually ate at a lot (while I in turn got eaten alive by sand fleas every night), a bar and an italian restaurant that we never tried - it was the only place you had to pay at so we collectively said screw that!

Walking out onto the beach there were a couple of hammocks (where Sally and I spent an enjoyable hour late one evening), hundreds of sun-beds to lay on, kayaks, jet-skis, snorkeling gear, and a dock out in the ocean to swim to. We did swim out there one day, only to learn that a large Barracuda tended to live under it! We thought they were joking until we saw him off the coast on the day of the wedding! He’s light grey at the top of this picture though you can hardly see him...

It was amazing how many fish we saw while we were snorkeling around the beach. Even close in where lots of people are splashing around and jet-skis and boats are routinely going in and out, there were still lots of really large fish (like as big as your head!) swimming around in large schools. It was an amazing sight to see, and made me wish I had an underwater camera. Jack Cousteau had the right idea I tell ya!

Out on the ocean there were boat tours you could do, and para-gliding boats and all kinds of stuff that we didn’t really take advantage of as they probably wouldn’t let you bring your rum drinks with you. Back on land there was an endless supply of wildlife, lots of birds & iguanas especially, and an endless supply of bikini clad nymphets. Not such a good showing for the girls though unfortunately, I guess most of us guys would rather eat another slice of pie then go to the gym - yay, I’m not alone! :-)

Evenings were spent either at the open air restaurant & bar down by the swimming pools, or at the posh restaurant up the mountain in the hotel. There was another bar up here which also had the islands biggest casino! Before you get too excited at this prospect, it turned out to be nothing but 30-ish slot machines. No tables, no cards, just slot machines. Oh well, Vegas it’s not. The restaurant and casino area did have a huge balcony running all along it where we could hang out, smoke cigars, and stare out at the stars...

Down by the pool evenings were a lot more casual, as thats where the live entertainment was. We had an amazing steel drum player one night who played the best version of Hotel California any of us had ever heard! (Note - If anyone else got a recording of it, send it my way and I’ll put it up here). There was a band another night playing all kinds of reggae stuff, and a fire eating / glass walking woman who just looked in pain the whole time - time for a career change lady! Would I do that every night in order to live in paradise? Possibly...

Bowe & Noranne needed to head into St.Thomas main town, Charlotte Amalie, to pick up their wedding license, so we headed down there with them and Leslie & Devon to explore the town.

We wandered around the lower part of town for most of the day. Unfortunately I forgot to take my travel guide with me so we didn’t make it to the upper part of town, and thus missed out on a few treats like Blackbeard’s Castle. Oh well, there was still plenty to see and do in the lower part of town, which is where the main shopping area is. Just about every store we walked past was an über up-market jewelers, diamond store, rolex shop, etc. Needless to say I didn't buy much, not currently having a spare $30k to spend on a watch :-)

On the plus side though, the harbor full of sailing boats and a huge cruise ship was incredibly beautiful, especially from the top of the hills behind Charlotte Amalie as we drove into town, and many of the shops lived in a tiny rabbit warren of narrow alleyways that were incredibly beautiful and easy to get lost in. Everyone I asked just said it was the old warehouse district, but it was easy for an overactive imagination to picture Blackbeard and his fellow pirates running through these narrow passages to escape the British Navy.

We all stopped at a restaurant in town for lunch. Unfortunately Sally and I had had a late breakfast so we skipped the incredibly tasty looking food hat everyone else had, but made up for it in rum drinks. There’s a lot of rum made on the islands, I’d had Myers & Mount Gay before but everywhere you go on St.Thomas they’re pushing Cruzan so I had to try it and it was good!

About 4pm everyone decided to head back to the hotel or off to find beaches they’d heard about. Sally & I decided to stay on a little longer in case there was anything we’d missed. What we almost learned the hard way though is that EVERYTHING shuts down at 5pm sharp. We discovered this as we tried to exit the rabbit warren of tiny shops only to find all the gates locked and all the shops suddenly empty. We ran around from gate to gate until we found the only one that was still open - phew! Not sure I could have resisted being locked in all night with a bunch of art galleries & rolex stores - I could easily have ended up as St.Thomas’ No.1 cat burglar :-)

By Monday night a few more of Bowe & Norannes friends had arrived so we all met up in the poshest of the 3 hotel restaurants and decided to eat way too much, drink way too much and annoy at least half the staff and other guests. Luckily the other half loved us so we didn’t get in any trouble.