Portland

John and I had a great weekend in Portland. I took the train to meet him there Friday evening, in time for their board dinner. Our friend Nate (a climate scientist at the UW) was there to give a talk about how climate change is impacting the Northwest's rivers. Nate's wife Christine was there, so she and I had a nice time hanging out. She's a substitute teacher, and she brought her class of first graders to see the Dalai Lama when he was in Seattle last week. She had some fun stories about that.

Saturday morning was John's board meeting, so I took off exploring Portland. Had a great time walking everywhere, checking out the Saturday Market, cool shopping in the Pearl District, and Powell's Books. Since it was windy and cold, I took a luxurious bath back at the hotel (we stayed at the Hotel Deluxe, a great place)

John's meeting finished up in the afternoon and we went out on the town. When we left the hotel it was snowing! First stop was a wine bar, to warm up. Then we checked out some music stores, and John sampled some nice mandolins. My friend/colleague Brett then picked us up to get (another) glass of wine at Equinox, a great little bar/restaurant. After that we met Nate and Christine at Clyde Common, a cool (but not pretentious) bar that is written up in this month's Portland magazine. By this point I was taking a break from drinking, and sampled one of their homemade natural lemon-ginger sodas. Yum.

Eventually it was time for dinner and we walked to Ten 01. Everything was delicious, including the dessert John and I split -- chocoloate chip bread pudding with carmelized bananas, salted caramel ice cream and dark rum sauce!

We collapsed into bed and woke up the next morning for breakfast at J&M Cafe. Then we drove around, checking out neighborhoods. If all goes as planned, we could be moving to Portland this summer!