Winter Market & Estate Sale

The Portland area has quite a few farmers markets. A few weeks ago I read about the Beaverton-Hillsdale Winter Market which is held twice a month. Since it's not too far (about 7 miles) from here I decided to go and check it out. Even though it's the middle of winter I still found ingredients for some tasty meals. (Ignore the water, it's just sitting there ready for when we move the fish tank). I'm planning to make a soup with the winter squash and leeks and a stew with the elk steak and shiitake mushrooms.

Near the market, I found an estate sale. I was wanting either a small pull-out sofa or a twin bed to go in my office/guest room. Since today was sunday, everything was marked half off. I got a large file cabinet for 7$ and a christmas cactus for 2$. The best thing that there was a small pull-out sofa marked "FREE"! It was in good condition and didn't smell like smoke or cat pee or anything weird, so I gave my name to the estate sale people and rushed home to get my truck. On my way home, I started thinking that maybe we should put this sofa in the home theater room because the our current big green one that we'd hoped to put there wouldn't fit through the door. So, it's in the garage now and I will wait till Sami gets back from his conference to help me decide where it should go.

Mt Hood from 405 overpass

I had the solar installers class today, so I took Sami to the airport early this morning for his flight to San Francisco for his conference. I had taken his camera with us because you never know when you'll see a good photo. The 405 overpass is always a good place to see Mt. Hood and Sami managed to get a pretty good picture today.

Field Trip

This past Tuesday evening my Sustainable Construction Practices class went on a field trip to visit the Gerding Theater in downtown Portland. I'd seen the building from the outside - it's in the old Oregon National Guard Armory - but I had no idea that there was a fancy theater inside. My pictures don't do the place justice. If you'd like to see more, Portland Center Stage has a great slideshow.

Anyway, our class went on a tour of the theater to learn more about LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) standards and how good design could make a building better for the environment and its occupants. The renovated Armory became the first LEED Platinum building in Portland and the first LEED building on the National Register of Historic Places.

Because the theater generally has lots of people and lighting warming the place up it has more cooling than heating needs. A system of chilled beams is used for overhead heating and cooling. Where do they get all that cold water from? Well, it turns out that NE Portland has a chiller plant providing chilled water to several buildings in the Brewery Blocks. The building also uses rainwater and a 10,000 gallon underground cistern for flushing toilets. I could go on with the details, but everything I could say is either on the previous links or here on the case study.

I think in this case, the big picture is even more interesting than the details. The theater decided to save an old building when they could have built a new one. They used the old space carefully to serve their needs; even tucking offices underneath the amazing laminated trusses. There is just something really cool about having a breakroom in a turret.

My First 3D Drawing

While I was re-reading that last post, it occurred to me that y'all might be interested in some of the stuff that's been keeping me so busy this past week. One of the classes I'm taking is Vectorworks. It's a software that can be used to draw everything from landscape plans to electrical diagrams. Anyway, this is the first 3-dimensional drawing I've done. Ignore the landscaping... that was not part of the assignment, I was just playing around with that.

Garden Bench

PS. In case you're wondering what Agnes is talking about in the comments section: she took a class in 3D drawing a couple years ago. Here is her "Gold Duck".

Not Much News

Well, I didn't take any pictures this past weekend. We did manage to move some furniture, but we were both so busy with work and school stuff that I decided to postpone my birthday to Feb. 27th. Hopefully we will be all done moving by that point (since the lease on our apartment ends the 30th). Anyway, we're still busy with work and school so there's not a whole lot of news worth blogging about. Sami is a little sick. I'm hoping I won't catch it. Also, we got the cable internet hooked up on tuesday allowing me to get online and post this.

The Bad News

I left my lunch in the kitchen this morning and ran in to get it.
On my way I tripped on the step and fell through the screen door.


The Good News

While surveying the damage to the door this afternoon,
I saw the first flowers of the year. Primroses I think.