We headed to Oregon for the weekend, and I'm glad we did - it looks like Seattle got a bunch of snow while we were away. I took Friday off work and it was snowing at the house - we live at about 750 feet elevation - as we hit the road south. Fortunately it wasn't (yet) snowing at lower elevations and we drove to Portland without any snow to make the driving difficult.

 

We based ourselves in Portland, and the weather wasn't great there either, but at least it wasn't snowing. We arrived around lunchtime, so after checking into the hotel (the Vintage Plaza), we had lunch at Pioneer Square Mall's food court and did a little tax-free shopping in the Mall, and the new Macy's. After that we got a little rest in the hotel room (we stayed in the 'Starlight' room on the top floor, pictured). We had originally booked a standard room but after checking in we enquired about the availability of the Starlight and found out there was one left, so we took it. The hotel ended up upgrading us for free, so we didn't complain! :-)

 

 

After that, we headed to Kell's Irish Pub for dinner and a drink. Yes, there is one in Seattle too, which I have only been to twice or three times in the 10 years I've lived here, but we thought we should give the Portland branch a try, especially since we were on a trip, staying within walking distance, and Paew had never before set foot in an Irish pub. The food was incredibly flavored - everything hit you full force with zero subtelty, but I didn't mind too much. The biggest surprise of the night? Paew tried Guinness for the first time and liked it! My dad would be so happy... :-)

 

On Saturday we drove down to Eugene, OR and explored the town and the university. Being a bit further south, the weather was quite nice and warm, and the cherry blossoms were in full glory. We got some nice pics of those and ended up having lunch in P.F. Chang's which was just OK - not one of my favorite restaurants but there wasn't a whole lot to choose from that we could see, and we didn't want to end up in some McDonald's... As we made our way back up I-5 to Portland, we stopped at an outlet mall in Woodburn, OR called Woodburn Company Stores. We dropped some serious coin there since everything was outlet-priced and tax-free to boot! Finally back in Portland, we barely had the energy to make it out of the hotel again for dinner and just got a quick bite at some dodgy-looking Japanese restaurant (the kind where nobody is actually Japanese, as far as I could tell).

 

Sunday, we headed out to see Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Highway. It's difficult to believe it now, but this was the first major paved highway in the entire Pacific Northwest, less than 100 years ago, back in 1916. But it sure is pretty, with great views of the river and cliffs along the way. The weather was dry but cloudy, and cold. We stopped at Wahkeenah Falls first, which was pretty impressive by itself at 242 feet high, and we hiked up to the bridge for a better look. The spray off the falls got us pretty wet and my hands were numb trying to hold the camera to get some pics. After that we headed over a short distance to Multnomah Falls (pictured), which at 620 feet (189 meters) is the second-highest waterfall in the US.

 

While 620 feet is impressive, it pales into insignificance when compared to the highest waterfall in the US - Yosemite Falls, a massive 2425 feet (739 meters) high! But what the heck, Multnomah Falls is the highest waterfall I've personally seen :-)

 

After we were done hiking and getting cold and wet, we headed back to Troutdale outlets for yet more shopping before returning home to Seattle. After passing back into Washington State, we passed through a few really scary hailstorms where the car took a real beating and visibility got down to next to nothing! A few scary moments but we survived...

 

We stopped at Kelso for a bite at McDonald's. Take my advice, don't. It was the worst burger I've ever had, totally cold and gross. It had never even been hot since the cheese wasn't melted. I took two bites and couldn't take another... I probably should have stopped after the first bite but oh well... Anyway, Kelso McDonald's should be avoided at all costs.

 

We made it back to Issaquah finally and the temperature inside the house was 56F. We turned on the heat back on and escaped back out for dinner while the house got warm.

 

And that pretty much wraps up a fun, busy and adventurous weekend trip!

OK, so I'm blatantly this story from LifeHacker, but I couldn't resist - I was in the mood for just the right Easter story after today's Easter rain-out, so here goes: SomeEcards.com has a few Easter gems for those of you with a slightly twisted sense of humor (that includes me) - feel free to email these to all your friends, just click the image to go to the page on SomeEcards.com's site to send them :-)

 

 

 

I just looked at the referring URLs of the last 20 visitors to this Space (all within today). Wow - what an international bunch!

 

Since Comcast just added a few new HD channels today (Discovery Channel, Sci Fi Channel, HGTV, Food Network and TLC), I thought it might be worth pulling together the full list of Comcast’s HD channels for the Seattle area. Since it’s tough to remember all those numbers, I recommend making them favorite channels in your Comcast set-top box/DVR. You might also consider disabling/hiding the standard definition versions of many of these channels in case you inadvertenty end up watching the lower-resolution channel when “less aware” (cough, cough) people in your household are in control of the clicker.

• ABC [KOMO] - #104
• NBC [KING] - #105
• NBC [KONG] - #106
• CBS [KIRO] - #107
• PBS [KCTS] - #108
• MyNetworkTV [KMYQ] - #110
• CW [KSTW] - #111
• FOX [KCPQ]- #113
• ESPN HD - #173
• ESPN 2 HD - #174
• Universal HD - #660
• MHD (MTV)- #661
• TNT HD - #662
• Discovery HD Theater - #663
• MOJO - #664 (Also carries select Fox Sports Network HD events - i.e. Mariners, Sonics)
• Versus/Golf Channel HD - #665
• Discovery Channel HD - #668
• TLC HD - #669
• A&E HD - #670
• History Channel HD - #671
• USA HD - #672
• National Geographic HD - #673
• HGTV HD - #674
• Food Network HD - #675
• Sci Fi Channel HD - #676
• *NFL Network HD - #418
• *Starz HD - #532
• *HBO HD - #549
• *Cinemax HD - #563
• *Showtime HD - #574

* requires purchase of additional packages (movies, sports)

If you're just about to spend some serious cash on fancy speaker cable, Gizmodo has very interesting results of a blind A/B test between Monster 1000 speaker cables and some soldered-together coat hangers. That's right, good old fashioned wire coat hangers!

 

I'd love to see Monster's response to this one ;-)

 

At the very least it's a fun addition to the lengthy debate on whether spending lots of money on cables makes any difference to the sound you get. Caveat emptor!