Riding the Aerial Tram

Sami and I went to take the birthing class at the OHSU Center for Women's Health yesterday. The class was good, but my favorite part - we got to ride the aerial tram from OHSU Kohler Pavillion to OHSU Center for Health & Healing so we could go to the cafe for lunch.

I have a few more pictures of the tram and Kohler pavilion back on my August 26th post.

Me waiting to get on the tram.

(I wasn't ready for the photo)

Another pic of me and my ginormous belly.

South Waterfront, the Willamette River, and Mt. Hood.

Sami riding on the tram.

Downtown Portland, the Willamette River, and Mt. St. Helens.

"Landing" at the OHSU Center for Health & Healing.

Another view of downtown Portland.

Going back to our class in Kohler Pavillion.

Souvenir from Hong Kong

Seen on the newsstand in Hong Kong.

My friend Agnes went to HK for a long weekend and saw this magazine.

She laughed and said if this was really my magazine I would give McDonalds coupons for free pancakes instead of apple pies (because I ate so many McD's pancakes when I had morning sickness).

Sami Loves Google Street View

It's our house, and our street! (and Melissa's truck in our driveway)

Kinda scary and kinda cool.

Sami played with this tool for nearly three hours, walking around all the old neighborhoods we've lived in. Then he started checking out other places like Alaska, and the ghettos in LA.

I think someone should build some kind of car race/chase game where you get to drive around in google street view. It would be great fun.

Oddwater

I'd seen billboards for Oddwater, but didn't really know anything about it until I saw this in today's paper. Cool. I wanna go there.

Oddwater has beautiful fish swimming through beautiful glass

Black History Month

February is Black History Month.

In school, it was always a big deal and we studied all the great people who did historic things. In recent years, I've pretty much forgotten about black history month.

This past week, I was asked to make some displays for the library. I immediately thought of George Washington Carver, the botanist and inventor. He was always my favorite.

Anyway, I did a quick search of the internet looking for a few photos and found an amazing amount of information on black history at Biography.com. I highly recommend checking it out. Now... I think I need a peanut butter sandwich.

Christmas Comes Again

Two weeks ago I got a cool birthday present from Agnes - she sent a book about birds of the middle east.

On thursday I got this card and I was very confused. I was sitting there looking at the envelope thinking... "but she already sent me a birthday card and it's too early for valentine's day"...

Well, I opened it and it was actually a christmas card. I don't know what took it so long, but it was worth the wait. The flashing lights are very cool

Cool Sconce

My SBAP class met at Earth Advantage the past two days. We had a bunch of classes on insulation and lighting and stuff like that. They have a light lab there where you can see how different lights make colors look. Also we got to see a cool LED can light.

In the classroom, they had a bunch of these cool art sconces. I wasn't terribly impressed with their art, but I thought the fixtures from Visa Lighting were very cool. (We took down an ugly traditional sconce in the home theater room, and I think it would be great if we could replace it with something like this.)

We Play Wii

Sami and I went over to see Chris's new condo. (There was still some stuff in boxes, so I didn't take pictures.)

Chris loves games of all kinds and so he has the Nintendo Wii. We'd never tried one before and it was a lot of fun.

First we played the tennis and bowling and boxing... Chris and Sami laughed at my boxing style, (they said I looked like I was drumming) but I got a KO on my first try!

After the sports games we tried one of the other games that comes with the Wii. The game instructs you on various positions for how to hold the remote (or Wiimote as Chris called it).

Then you have to complete the action show on screen in the alloted time. It's silly but a lot of fun.

Here Sami had to slash this log with the samurai sword.

It's amazing how the controllers work with the game... how they know what you're doing and reproduce it onscreen.

I took a video of Sami playing to give you a better idea of how it all works.

Actually Sami took a video of me too, but he held the camera vertically and movies can't be rotated the way pictures can.

Moon Halo.... Maybe Mars?

On our flight from Portland to Atlanta, the pilot pointed our the moon and mars but we were on the wrong side of the plane to see it.

Later, at my parents house in Charlotte I took this picture of a moon halo. Mars might be there too, but I'm not sure which bright spot it might be.

I was setting up my tripod and taking a couple pictures of it when my brothers, Matt & Andrew, came outside and said "Cool! How did you do that?" Although I'd like to take credit, it's a weather thing. When there are ice crystals up in the high-level clouds, they act like tiny prisms, bending the moonlight and making a 22 degree halo.

Mikontalolights

Mikontalo (map) is the biggest apartment building in Finland (or at least everyone claims this to be true... I don't really know). It's located near Tampere Technical University in Hervanta, a suburb of Tampere, Finland. Sami and I have both lived there at different times. Anyway, the building is going through some renovations and some students decided to "create the world's physically largest colored graphics platform". Very Cool.

UPDATE: Eric told us he'd read of students at Brown doing a smaller non-color version in 2000.

Deck the Halls

We decided to go ahead and put the small artificial tree up this year even though we'll be going to NC for Christmas. Not all of the lights from last year were working so I went ahead and got some of the new LED ones. They look pretty good and they're super efficient.

Another year, when we're actually home for Christmas, we'd like to go out in the forest and cut our own tree. You can buy a permit for only 5$ to go and pick out a tree from one of the national forests.

Thank You Athena!

Athena was in Africa when we moved and she sent us this cool Kuba cloth
for our new house. It's made of raffia I think. I hung it in the stairway
and it fit perfectly. Hopefully I haven't hung it sideways or upside down.

Why Worry?

I was driving from work to the new house on Monday afternoon and took a wrong turn. I looked around at the signs to see if I knew any of the roads, and I was so surprised by the name of the first street I passed. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me then, so I stopped by again today to take this one. And yes, it's a real road on an actual map.

... And a few days later Sami and I went to the local Safeway (supermarket) and found Weekly Ad Avenue.