Super Heroes Coming to Portland?

Wouldn’t it be absolutely amazing if super heroes were to come to Portland?  Well for sure Jayden would be extremely excited and that would make me and Daniel happy too.  Well, I just found out that in a way they are.  Taki and Olivia are going to be starring in a show called Takio and will be fighting crime in Portland streets.  Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming, these cool super heroes will be fitting in crime-fighting to their school schedules. 

When Takio airs, I definitely want Jayden to see it.  As it is, he is obsessed with Spiderman, so if he can learn about a super hero who is doing good things in our community and “pewing the bad guys” as he would say, then why not?  Looks like it’s going to be fun and somewhat educational at the same time.

Getting More Than We Bargained For

 

Usually when I go to the shopping mall, I am looking for some cool new clothes, something for the kids, and a nice cup of coffee or salad. “What about something for me?” I hear Daniel thinking to himself… hmm….but you get the picture; I’m going so that I can chill  out, escape and enjoy myself.  So I was quite surprised when I heard that at my favorite hang-out, the Lloyd Center Mall, Father Antonius Wall is holding vigil there six days a week!!! Now, I’m all for confession and all that stuff, but not when you’re looking for a Prada bag!  It just doesn’t sit well or feel right!

But I saw him there with my own eyes.  The elderly gentleman (he looks pretty good for being 86-years-old actually), seemed to be drawing quite a crowd.  So of course, curiosity got the better of me, and I went to have a bit of an eavesdrop.  He was counseling one woman who was talking about her sick husband and she actually left with a smile!  He seemed like a very approachable man – not so stereotypical of what I might expect from the clergy – so I started softening my attitude to him sitting vigil there.  His philosophy apparently, is loving G-d through love of humans.  Well, I certainly like that.  I just wish somehow he could get my Prada bag involved in all this love…

Chinese Celebrating the Year of the Dragon

It’s true, some Chinese citizens have been living in Portland for decades.  But still, tradition is tradition.  And those with Chinese origins went all out in their celebrations of the Year of the Dragon yesterday.  Amanda has a friend of Chinese origin who does it.  She wakes up to a bowl of vegetarian dumplings, symbolically hoping the Year of the Dragon will bring prosperity.

While I have no Chinese blood running through my veins, I nonetheless decided to join in too, so I bought a bunch of tangerines.  Well, I figured that the kids love them; I know they’re healthy and it doesn’t hurt that tangerines just happen to be a symbol of good luck in Chinese culture! Now, I won’t go so far as to hang them on the front door (although for sure one of my neighbors has done that in the past on a Dragon New Year), but it’s nice to take a few fun symbols from another culture and hope – somewhere in the back of my mind – that it’ll bring us good luck!  Hell, we could all do with some extra prosperity no matter in what form it comes!

Apparently, I read somewhere that are close to 40,000 Oregonians of Chinese descent!  (Out of a 3.8m populace that’s quite significant). So there are bound to be a lot of celebrations going on around my neighborhood. I thought it might be a nice idea to educate the kids about it as well, so I’ll be speaking to them about people, cultures and their differences to try and encourage acceptance and diversity in my home.  Oof, now I’m beginning to sound somewhat PC!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year of the Dragon!

Hello American Pie

The weather in Portland has been a bit gruesome for a while. That definitely makes things a bit tougher with the kids as we have to find more indoor activities to do with them, especially over the weekend when there is no preschool.  Still, at least yesterday it was only drizzling – the rain wasn’t too bad – so we managed to do some stuff. 

Since I’d been reading last week about the cool event taking place at Baker & Spice in the Hillsdale neighborhood of Portland, I decided yesterday that we should brave the weather.  On both Saturday and Sunday, the store was celebrating its annual Pie Day, marking the store’s birthday!  How cool is that!  Each year they have Pie Day during which over the weekend, people can come along and eat as much pie as they want (or can!).  This year apparently the store is turning 7-years-old (so I had Jayden saying the whole time “but I want to be 7 too,” which kinda makes sense as the way he counts now he omits 5 and 6, so given that he’s 4, his next birthday – in his logic – would be 7. Still I digress.

I ordered a slice of Mocha Almond and Super Duper (mega-chocolatey) and by then, truly I was done.  Daniel of course has a way sterner stomach than me so he managed a slice of: Pink Cake, Black and White and Vanilla Dream.  And Jayden shared a slice of the store’s Birthday Cake with Ethan which they both really loved by the look of their faces when the plate was clean.  Since Jayden made my birthday cake with Daniel a few weeks ago, he’s talked about nothing else.

Anyway it was a fun afternoon and what made me feel a bit better about my gorging was learning that the store will be donating a quarter of its pie sales to Neighborhood House’s emergency food box program – an organization that “helps neighbors help themselves.” I thereafter explained the charitable organization to Jayden, and he was so cute, he asked if he could give them half of his cake too!  What an adorable child.  I love him so much.

Not Happy with No Power

It was nuts yesterday.  We suddenly had the craziest power outage. Well I guess it wasn’t really all that sudden as the weather had been indicative of something like this happening.  And, I shouldn’t be all that surprised as I am used to our crazy weathers.  Still, I don’t remember having such a long-lived power outage. Thankfully our house is very well-insulated so the crazy storm that was raging outside didn’t impact us in terms of being cold, or windows shaking.  But it did affect the power.  Daniel told me today that we weren’t alone; apparently around 30,000 homes throughout Oregon also lost power.  He’d read about it on a statement from Portland General Electric.

What happened was, first there was snow (in the early evening Jayden really wanted to go play in it but I figured it would just be a slippery mess rather than something fun for him to actually play with so I said no).  That very quickly turned into rain as the snow melted and there was just a mess of slush (as I’d predicted).  Anyway, things are pretty much back to normal now but it reminded me that we have to go and get those emergency light thingies so that our house can at least have some light if – or I should say when – this happens again.

At least now it’s back I can get back onto Facebook.  Because, as Daniel says, that is my main priority!  Have a great Thursday!