Northern Belle

 So, I did end up going to Portland. Lolz.

I worked Friday, got out at 10 something. I was ready to go by 12, but we didn’t end up leaving until 3. We were also delayed severely on Saturday. and left several hours later than we wanted to on Sunday. Rob and Torrey are awesome, but they take forever to get ready sometimes.

We got up there a little after 7, probably got to Torrey’s family’s by 730. We unloaded our stuff and went to Pacific Breeze, which is a Vietnamese restaurant, new stuff to me. I had some soup that had noodles and thin slices of steak in it, spring rolls, and Vietnamese iced coffee. I really liked the coffee, I’ll have to learn how to make that. That was with Torrey’s family, after that the three of us went to my favorite place in Portland, Ground Kontrol. There are a myriad of old arcade games and pinball machines, with a DJ and a bar; it’s a barcade. They were repainting or remodeling the normal building, so everything was moved over to some other building, and it was way better. Not as cramped, not nearly as hot, there was blacklighting, and it felt more comfortable, I hope they keep it. We didn’t really play that much, we spent most of our time just talking at the Pac-Man table, since Torrey was kind of bummed from family issues. I set the high score for Pac-Man! It was pretty low, but still, I doubled that bastard on my second game. My first high score ever at an arcade. We left around 2, then went for a walk to some playground of an elementary school Torrey used to work at. It was fun, stuff that I never did as a teenager, just going around doing whatever in the middle of the night for the hell of it.

Saturday we mostly just hung out at the house. Their check engine light came on, so they went with her dad to get an oil change at some point. We were supposed to go last weekend for a birthday party for her dad, so Saturday we had a birthday dinner with a few different things. It was awesome. After that Rob, Torrey’s brother Charlie and myself went to Bullwinkle’s, which is an arcade/game center. There’s a place in Medford called Family Fun Center that’s like it, but without the Bullwinkle’s license, which sucks balls and is expensive. This place was freakin’ awesome, relatively cheap, and had a rock wall and laser tag, which we did not explore. We stayed until it closed, then went home and stayed up again.

Sunday we got up a little late, and everyone went to my favorite store, Uwajimaya. It’s mandatory any time we go there, we always find ridiculous stuff to buy. It’s a giant Asian store with a focus on Japanese stuff, including a Japanese bookstore. I usually just buy a bunch of useless candy and instant noodles…which I did, but I also bought a wok and a turner, so that way I can try to expand my cooking repitoire. I haven’t used it yet, I guess you have to warm it up to wash off the plastic covering it, and then season it with vegetable oil before using it. Should be interesting. I never do anything crazy when I go up there, but it’s always enjoyable. Someday I’ll go on a REAL vacation.

Today was back to the grind. I didn’t get much sleep because I had stayed up over the weekend and was still recovering from that. Work was about twice as long of a shift as it originally would have been, which made it rougher, but I need the money. After that I went over to Corey’s. He wants to get more serious about the site and doing videos, as do I. There are lots of relatively useless people who are popular online. I’m somewhat funny, and he’s definitely funny, there’s no reason we can’t do the same. We’re limited to Monday and Tuesday generally since those are his days off. Today should have been video day, but instead we brainstormed, and then went to see his friend Nikki. That was…odd. She’s definitely a character. In the hour and a half we were there, we toured her house, talked about shooting stuff there(as it is everything is done in his apartment, which kinda sucks), and her helping out, we took turns playing her super old expensive accordion(it’s super complex, but fun as hell), during which she was doing some weird dance while balancing a sword on her head, and she showed us her crazy talking parrot. She’s well-connected too, apparently she knows people that know famous people, and has done some acting and whatnot. Corey is known around town because he used to be in a band, and obviously Nikki knows people…I’m not used to this. It’s good though, if we can get something good going, word of mouth will be the way to get popular. There’s no reason it can’t happen. We just have to stay motivated.