HIPSTER BY MISTAKE

2.08.2015

A Sunday Stroll..

on 23rd Avenue to some of our favorite places.

2.02.2015

On an atypical sunny day on the Oregon coast for late January, we headed down to Astoria to spend the night, getting a quick jaunt in on the beach in at Seaside before winding our way back to Portland.

xoxo

K

1.30.2015

OMSI After Dark

OMSI After Dark is a 21-and-over event held by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry once a month. On their website they boast, "Enjoy child-free, brain-building science fun featuring live demos, new exhibitions and old favorites! Guests can indulge in tasty snacks, sweets and beer and wine from regional food and beverage artisans." After reading that, and being a science nerd, I thought it would be a great idea for a date night. January's theme was Sugar.

A giant devil cupcake…mobile?

So we got our $13 a person tickets and invited our friends Stephanie and Gabe along. When we got there the entire parking lot was completely packed. At 6:30 PM there were barely any spots left. WOW, we thought. This was way more popular that we expected. It must be super cool. Unfortunately, the result was merely satisfactory.

Pulling our own taffy. Literally the best part of the night.

What we got were small samples, an overpriced cash bar, and a lot of this:

Standing in line!!!

The only good part of the night was when we found a hidden free sample room and tasted enough bit-size bundt cake samples to satisfy our entry fee.

A caramel apple of the future! Cool science, but worth 30 minutes in line?

The main hall with free samples was so crowded you almost couldn't move. But no matter how I tried to wrap my mind around how people would pay to come get free samples, I couldn't figure out the logic. Well played advertisers. It seemed like the "hip" Portland crowd attended just so they could talk about the cool "nerdy" thing that they did. I can't blame OMSI for using this as a revenue stream for what they do (which is great by the way!), but next time I think I will stay home. Maybe I'll put a marshmallow in the microwave and do my own sugar science.

xoxo

1.25.2015

gypsy jazz

On Thursday, Karl and I decided to go on a little adventure to a new restaurant in our neighborhood. He had met a new friend on the MAX while going to work with A and the guy said he was in a band that was playing there that night. We had never been to the Chameleon Restaurant & Bar before, so we thought it would be fun to try it out. It was more of a date night restaurant, so the meal was $$$, but the food was good and luckily A was well behaved (although she did try to eat the table a few times).

The restaurant was hard to classify, at first it looked like a Thai place, but then it morphed into Italian. For example, for appetizers I had a Caprese salad and Karl had bacon wrapped dates, but egg rolls and chicken satay were also an option. Chicken curry and cilantro lime salmon for dinner, with handmade cheesecake for dessert. The food was great, but I'm not entirely sure it was worth the price. Portland is funny like that; you can get a $20 gourmet meal at a dive, whereas expensive date night restaurants offer good but 'vanilla' food by comparison.

But the music was fantastic! (Karl and I are kind of going through a big jazz phase). If we had got a babysitter we would have definitely stayed past 7:30.