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Introducing: New Guy In Town

July 12, 2010 By David

Finally the question can be answered, what will become of Some Dude From California?

I proudly announce my new project, New Guy In Town.

Moving to and adjusting to Portland is going to entail lots of new discoveries and adventures and I want to invite you all along for the ride. This will be both a blog and a podcast following my first year in Portland. All the new places I discover; places to eat, play and see. I’ll share it all. It’s my take on Portland from a newcomers and ex-California perspective.

Come along as I introduce you in text, sound and pictures to my new home town, Portland OR.

On the web at http://www.newguypdx.com

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Hello Portland!

July 10, 2010 By David

Hello glorious Portland, we are home at last. We did finally make it to Portland and what a long strange trip it has been. The movers broke plenty of stuff and misplaced 16 of our boxes along with several chairs. Also, I have two boxes that were meant for someone else moving to Seattle.

Other than that, it’s been an adventure a minute. Our furniture, which was bought when we had a very large house, doesn’t fit the same in this smaller house. I knew we were going to face this kind of a problem but it’s another thing to see it first hand. The headboard for our bed still isn’t in our room because it’s too large to get up the stairs. Now we are having to literally saw it apart and then put it back together once it’s in the room. We love that bed and we’re not going to spend more money buying a new one, so whatever it takes, that bed is going in.

After the first week we all got killer colds. Maybe part stress and all the effort of unpacking, but Lisa, Virginia and I were all laid out. Only Capella came through without a scratch. Now we are finally healthy again and are making decent progress bringing the house together. It’s feels a lot less like a disaster area and more like an actual comfortable home.

In the middle of all this, through in a heat wave of 93 degree plus temperatures. I expected many things in Portland but never heat like this. The house has no air conditioning and has been brutal, especially at night when trying to get to sleep. Of course, the worst room is the kids room.

In general, I love being here though. Portland is just great. Our neighbors have been very nice and welcoming. Plenty of great, fun places to eat and a nice mellow vibe. Lots and lots of bikes, per the legend. One of the things I like most about this house, every window I look out of I see green.

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Motel Hell

June 2, 2010 By David

Motel HellIt’s  great movie you should see sometime but that’s not really what I’m talking about here.

As you know if you’ve been following along, our family has been basically vagabonds since selling our old house and waiting for our new Portland house to be available to move into. We’ve spend time in various places and Memorial Day weekend we were at an Embassy Suites in Irvine, CA. We love Embassy Suites and we stay there whenever we can. We are Hilton Hhoners members at the Silver level. Don’t get too excited, it doesn’t get us squat but it sounds nice.

On this fair weekend, there was a massive youth baseball tournament going on in Orange County and hundreds of these baseball kids were staying at the E.S. The hotel was pretty much overrun with 10-12yr old boys and girls. It might have been ok if not for the fact that these were some of the most misbehaved kids I have ever seen and their parents, completely out to lunch. Kids were running around the hotel, going up and down elevators constantly and generally making far too much noise. I would have expected their parents to reign them in a little, enforce at least a modicum of reasonable public behavior. But some of the parents were as loud and obnoxious as their kids.

At one point there were around 10 girls sitting directly outside our room door having a loud and boisterous conversation. Just sitting outside our door. That’s when I finally picked up the phone and called downstairs. I’m trying t0 have a nice relaxing weekend and these kids are driving me nuts. Add to that all the elevator hijinks, and getting downstairs at times involved waiting up to 10min for an elevator. There are many other little things I could gripe about but these were the big ones. I was never so happy to leave a hotel in my life. I’ll still go to Embassy Suites as they still have by far the most bang for the buck of any hotel chain I know but boy did they drop the ball this past weekend.

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