Shoving off!

I will be going on my first REAL vacation since New Years 2007/08 - that's over 2 years ago and way overdue. I've gone places in between, but mostly for Work. I've been to Portland & Seattle and Atlanta for work conferences in the interim - but those don't count. Granted, pretty much all of 2009 was a hiccup year for my life, working to get back on track and figure out what the hell I'm doing with myself.

So I'm going to Portland, OR to visit & stay with one of my oldest (and dearest) friends & his family. Hang on to a handful of the people who knew you when you were young, seriously. I'll also be visiting one evening with a couple friends from college who live in Oregon (one in Portland, one is taking the bus up from Southern Oregon) who I haven't seen since a mutual friends' wedding in Boston almost 10 years ago (has it been that long???)

Needless to say, I'm jazzed about this trip. I only got to spend a very short time in Portland a few years ago when I made a stop on my way to Seattle. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the city this time. I'll have a couple of days for just random whatever and then two days will be the Oregon Brewer's Festival. Saturday, Brett & Jessie are having a BBQ and hand-craft brew party, then I go home.

On the must see list are Voodoo Doughnut, a couple of parks/gardesn, the riverfront (which I believe the brewfest is a part), and just chilling out and relaxing.

Annie will be staying with my sister & my folks on her own little vacation and my neighbor will be watching the kitties. So I'll be incommunicado for a while. I am going to completely detox myself from all online anything except checking my personal email once or twice, checking my flight status information, and that's it.

Oh, and for those wondering from the last post how nerd dating went: relatively well. It was interesting, I'm glad I did it but I'm glad I had a friend go with me. It was organized so everyone was in groups at tables and then teams rotated after each round of trivia (music, movies, literature, history, comic books, and general science stuff). I didn't do as well as I thought I would in any round - they really dug deep for real nerddom. But that's OK because I met some interesting people - it's good to get out and actually talk to new people - but it was good that it was in a structured context so you're not falling all over yourself trying to think of something to say. I talked to one guy for a good hour & a half after the trivia thing ended. We'll see where that goes when I get back. He seemed nice and was a music nerd - always a plus for me.