PDX

I guess I should use the free hotel Wi-Fi, since I dragged the laptop along. (I've been on my Q all weekend; new toys are so much more fun than only-slightly-less-new toys.) In fact, we brought FIVE bags for a 48-hour trip. Most of that space was taken up by books to resell at Powell's. Now we have room for all the clothes we bought. (For The Husband; he has been complaining that he's lost so much weight that everything is too big on him now--a problem I doubt I'll ever have.)

I got to read the play-by-play of the last 8 minutes of the KU/K-State game on ESPN Mobile on my Q while we were sitting in the Redding airport. Needless to say, I was not happy.

I was also not happy trying to drive around Portland yesterday. I now know why there were only a couple hotel rooms available in downtown Portland this weekend and they were $280/night. Today is the Portland Marathon. Driving into downtown yesterday was awful; the Burnside bridge is closed and there were barricades set up everywhere. We did, however, make it to Powell's and got $81 in trade credit.

I realized last night that three of the four groups of friends we have up here are people we know from Kansas, and the fourth (from California) are the only ones who live on the Washington side of the river. One of the four is out of town this weekend, but some other friends who don't live here were also visiting last night so we had dinner with them at a pizza place on Hawthorne.

We went back downtown after dinner to go out (since we're in the big city), but we got back to the hotel by midnight. Bars in Oregon are so SMOKY! Today I convinced Stan we shouldn't fight the marathon traffic; we hung around the hotel reading the paper until almost noon, then went to the mall.

Tonight we meet up with the Washingtonians, tomorrow morning with one of my high school classmates, and tomorrow lunch with Stan's friend from Topeka.