A few weeks ago (the weekend of 10/26-27) Heidi and I celebrated our Wedding Anniversary - 7 glorious years!

Saturday was an incredible fall day that saw temperatures reaching into the lower 70's! We took a day trip to the coast to visit Seaside and Cannon Beach. Both cities lie along the Oregon coast, but that's where the similarities end. Seaside seems to be a bit more "commercial" or crowded. There are arcades along the main streets that remind one of an old boardwalk. There is a new time share hotel along the beach of Seaside that detracts some from it's small town appeal. Cannon Beach on the other hand is small, one street town that has many little "mom and pop" shops to lure the tourist into their shops. This was our second trip to cannon beach and we took advantage of the great weather spending all of our time wandering up and down the large sandy beach. One notable thing is that we had to stop for ice cream before we left and we stopped at a yummy place. They were serving Tillamook ice cream which is rich and creamy and oh so yummy. Oh, and then we had to try the homemade fudge, also yummy-yummy.

The transition from Saturday, 10/25 - 10/26 meant more than just our anniversary, it was the first time that the Leff family experienced the daylight savings time "fall back" first hand. I had to be at work at 1 AM on 10/26 to make sure all of our systems were "contained" or in a state that is not usable prior to the 2 AM change. Once we lived the duplicate hour and arrived at 3 AM, we were able to turn the systems back on and go home. This made for a really rough day/night/day for me, but I got to bed early, and I got a comp day on Monday so I could get some rest.

We were fortunate to have my Mom and her fiance Ron celebrate with us. We had a surprisingly good breakfast at the local Courtyard by Marriott. They had a small breakfast buffet with eggs, bacon, oatmeal, cereal, and fruit. The hidden treasure was that they would cook you made-to-order pancakes and waffles, which came out fresh and hot. Yummy-yummy! After the large breakfast, we went to downtown Portland for the - Saturday Portland Market (and Sunday's too) This is a weekly collection of vendors selling homemade things, crafts, arts, food, and such. There were musicians to provide atmosphere and food to satisfy the hunger. This market is under a roadway that is right next to a park that runs along the Willamette River.

To celebrate our anniversary went to see a very good, but very disturbing movie called Mystic River. This one stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon and is about as gripping a drama as there is. We then went to dinner at McGrath's Fish House. This place is a great value for the quality of food that you get. And of course, for dessert you can split a slice of their "Mile High Mud Pie". After dinner we.

Since I had Monday off, I took the opportunity to watch Chloe and Heidi have fun in their "tumbling" class at a place called The Gym-Nest. Chloe especially likes the balance beam and the trampoline - boing, boing.

After the gymnastics and a quick bite to eat, we were off on an adventure. We decided that the Columbia Gorge and Multnomah falls would make a fun trip. We started out trying to find the Historic Columbia Gorge Highway ... with no "real" directions of course. As luck would have it, we were running short on gas, so we decided to pull of on an otherwise random exit that claimed to have a gas station. After --slowly-- climbing up the side of the Gorge at a very steep 10% grade, we arrived at the gas station. It turned out to be a one pump station attached to a little general store in a very small town. From there we discovered that we were actually traveling on the Highway and continued on until we arrive at Multnomah Falls. This waterfall is a natural beauty ... we'll probably wind up posting some pictures one of these days. All five of us hiked the 1 mile trail straight up to the top of the falls. It was a challenge since we had Chloe in her backpack and the grade is very steep with switchbacks the whole way. The hard work was worth it once we got to the top and looked over. Of course, I didn't lean too far over.

On our way home from the falls, we were hungry, and tired. We thought that pizza sounded great, but not knowing the area, and being pizza snobs, we wanted to make sure that we got good stuff. We wound up settling on Belaggio's Pizza in Beaverton, not far from our house. The best part about the pizza was that it was fast. It wasn't particularly great, but it wasn't gross either.

Our famliy ventures out on their own:
This past weekend the Leff family made a journey to the Tillamook Cheese Factory in Tillamook, OR. It was a great little operation where you could see the steps involved with making cheese. Oh, and you can sample the finished product for free, then you can purchase some extremely yummy ice cream.

We also had a beautiful bike ride through Hillsboro while Chloe took her afternoon nap. The leaves are changing and it was a lovely 70-something degrees while we peddled.

We have a visit!
A few weeks ago we were fortunate to have Heidi's parents Charles and Lilly visit us for a few days. They were gracious enough to give Heidi and I two nights on the town, one of which was Cirque du Soleil: Allegria. We started with dinner at Alexander's Restaurant in downtown Portland and they had wonderful food in a lovely rooftop setting.

We also drove out to the coast to visit Cannon Beach. The day that we were there was cold, windy, and rainy ... but I think that's the norm for the Oregon Coast. It was a beautiful setting and we can see why our friends spend Thanksgiving there every year. We ate lunch at a cozy little log cabin style place called Morris' Fireside Restaurant.

I missed the trip, but Heidi, Chloe, Charles, and Lilly drove out to see the Columbia River Gorge". They were most impressed with the Multnomah Falls - which I am hoping to see sooner rather than later.

I'm going to try to capture our adventures on this blog -- kind of like a journal -- so you can see the things that we are experiencing too.

Until the next blog ...

Here's a breaking news story -- greed might keep sports off of Cox Cable. ** Dispute could result in Cox losing ESPN, Fox Sports ** When is enough money enough? When will the madness end? I hate to say it, since i just got the taste for cable t.v. again - and specifically ESPN - but if these money grubbers keep it up, I'll be happy to view my entertainment on DVD. Of course, that whole ball of wax has it's own issues.

But while you are reading, I'll put in a plug for Netflix a superb way to "rent" DVD's.

Here we are in the beautiful City Of Hillsboro in Oregon. It's quite green and ... hilly ... here. If you've never visited, there is no time like the present. Come on up!

This link is a collection of RSS Feed Readers ... or Aggregators. It's the latest technology to gather a bit of the hordes of information from the internet and present it in one spot. Think of it as a one-stop-shop for news feeds on ANYTHING from Arkansas news to Zoological society news.

RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory :: hebig.org/blog

This Teoma seems to be the latest in a long line of search engines ... some are claiming that it might unseat google.com. We'll see ...

You may think I'm nuts, but if you ask me, this seems like the "next big thing". The technology in this story Wired News: Streaming Video, Cheap and Easy talks about ridding the world of another set of wires. Imagine buying your DVD or CD player, or your TIVO, plugging it into the wall, and you start watching. No more wires to connect. No configurations to mess with. I think the potential is AMAZING for this technology.

And best of all, they are making it "backwards compatible" -- it will work with your existing stuff.

WOW.

This site
EPA Enforcement and Compliance History Online has great info, although I'm not sure that I really understand what is there. The one thing that is easy to understand is the demographic info which I always think is cool.

If you are interested in finding out more "in depth" information about Windows XP -- check this out. It's a bit of a sales presentation, but it does let you know some of the new features.

Windows XP Technical Overview