Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Scandinavia was awesome.
I guess I haven't blogged in such a long time, because it would take way too much work to sum up the super-fantastic time we had in Scandinavia, particularly Copenhagen. It almost felt like home over there, I think I'd like to live there someday. Regardless, I did put in the time and effort to post the photos of our trip, with lots of commentary, on our Flickr site. Lots and lots of photos! You can check that out here. The commentary on that probably describes everything better than a blog post would. Now I might write more, since that we're getting deeper into fall, and it's getting darker and less pleasant out.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Preparing for Denmark...
Lots of work to wind up, keep fighting fires instead of tackling my to-do list. And, lots of preparation for the awesome time we're going to have in Scandinavia. Not much time to write, lots more that I should be doing to get ready. News of note:
- My sister had a baby girl this morning, 6 weeks premature. There are a few issues with that, but everything seems to be fine. Yay! Another niece (that makes four). Kinda feel bad for the sole nephew...
- We added a solar water heating subcontractor this morning. It's a plumbing company that's really excited about solar, and they just hired the old plumber I used to work with at Mr. Sun.
- Jill's working on another cake in the other room. She's getting really good at making those.
- My dad is doing really well as a solar designer for my company. He's had to learn a helluva lot within a short time, but he's done a great job of getting up to speed. I think he'll do well while I'm gone.
And, that is that for now. Time to start transferring addresses to my Palm Pilot for all the folks to whom we want to send postcards. And, printing out these sweet maps from my friend Carl on cool things to do in Copenhagen, from when he lived there for a while. It really helps to have that perspective and info.
Probably won't write again until we get back, and then I'll have a ridiculous amount to write about!
- My sister had a baby girl this morning, 6 weeks premature. There are a few issues with that, but everything seems to be fine. Yay! Another niece (that makes four). Kinda feel bad for the sole nephew...
- We added a solar water heating subcontractor this morning. It's a plumbing company that's really excited about solar, and they just hired the old plumber I used to work with at Mr. Sun.
- Jill's working on another cake in the other room. She's getting really good at making those.
- My dad is doing really well as a solar designer for my company. He's had to learn a helluva lot within a short time, but he's done a great job of getting up to speed. I think he'll do well while I'm gone.
And, that is that for now. Time to start transferring addresses to my Palm Pilot for all the folks to whom we want to send postcards. And, printing out these sweet maps from my friend Carl on cool things to do in Copenhagen, from when he lived there for a while. It really helps to have that perspective and info.
Probably won't write again until we get back, and then I'll have a ridiculous amount to write about!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Our Honeymoon Schedule
Another long break between posts - I'm guessing that summer is not really a good time for blogging, especially when it's nice out. Anyway, Jill and I have mostly fleshed out the itinerary for our upcoming honeymoon trip to Scandinavia. We chose that because it sounds like an interesting, highly civilized part of the world that we've always been interested in, Jill's got Danish heritage, and Copenhagen is one of the top bicycling cities in the world. We leave in less than three weeks, and it's going to be awesome! We can hardly contain ourselves!
Here's what we've got planned:
8/26: Leave way too early in the morning, fly to Newark and then Copenhagen.
8/27: Arrive in Copenhagen, and take the train out to the B&B in Christianhavn that we'll be staying at for the first three days. We'll look for a bike rental shop and try to recover from jet lag.
8/27-9/2: Bike around Copenhagen and check out the sites, and try to become immersed in the culture. We'll switch B&Bs halfway through to the Norrebro neighborhood, just to experience another part of town. Some of the sites we plan to check out include:
- Stroget, supposedly the world's longest pedestrian mall
- Tivoli Gardens, a Danish amusement park with their own pyrotechnics staff
- Christiana, a former naval base taken over by hippies in the 1970s and converted into a radical community, and tolerated by the Danes for over 30 years now
- Danish Design Center, which should be interesting, especially for Jill
- day trip to Malmo, across the Oresund in Sweden, which has a lot of sustainability projects being developed
- and a few touristy things like the City Hall, a canal cruise, the Louisiana Museum, maybe the National Museum, and other things that are recommended to us
9/2-9/3: Take a train to Arhus, Denmark's second largest city, which is located on the main peninsula of Jutland. It's where a major university is located, so it's supposed to be vibrant with an interesting youth culture. We'll stay in a B&B for a couple of days, check out the town, and rent bikes. A few of the sites we hope to check out there:
- ARoS, supposedly the coolest museum in Denmark
- Den Gamle By, an old market square
- Forhistorisk Museum in Moesgard, where they have a 2,000-year old "bog man"
- maybe the Latin Quarter and Viking Museum
9/4: Take a train across Jutland to Ringkobing near the west coast (with our rental bikes). Ringkobing is the global headquarters for Vestas Wind Systems, one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers, so there should be a lot of cool wind farms in the area. We're not sure if we'll stay there that night, or take the ferry across Ringkobing Fjord to Hvide Sande, a small town on the coast. It's supposed to be very windy out there, famous for it's windsurfing conditions and such.
9/5-9/7: Regardless of where we stay, we'll start out at Hvide Sande, bike up one of the national bike routes on the west coast for a while, and then turn inland to bike back across Jutland. It should be a really nice area, hopefully like that in rural England. I spent a few years in England in my teens, and spent many great hours biking on my ten-speed through the countryside. We'll stay in inns along the way, and we're bringing saddle bags with our clothes and gear. Should only be 100-120 miles back to Arhus, not a big deal (especially with a strong west wind behind us!) We're also planning to stop in the Lake District, and maybe rent a canoe for a day. It's also where they have the highest point in the country, only 147 meters. That's smaller than the little extinct volcano a few miles away from my house inside Portland's city limits.
9/8: Travel day. Ride the last 20-30 miles into Arhus and return the rental bikes. Then hop on a train to Frederikshavn on the northern part of the peninsula. We'll stay in a hotel for the night (the amusingly named "Hotel Herman Bang"). Might be a few interesting things to see, but we'll have to see what it's like when we get there.
9/9: Ferry day. We'll get up early and take the ferry to Oslo, Norway. It's about eight hours or so. We've reserved a small outside cabin, so that we can kick back and relax, or look at the scenery through our window, or head up on deck to see the scenery. Should be spectacular, especially as we enter the huge fjord where Oslo is located.
9/10: Our only full day in Oslo. We're planning to stay at a nice, relatively cheap hotel on the opposite side of the Royal Palace grounds. The main attraction for me is Bygdoy island, with a variety of ship museums and the Norwegian Folk Museum. If there's time, we'll also check out Frogner Park, a vast open air sculptural museum by Gustav Vigeland, and the Norwegian Resistance Museum. And, the City Hall - Scandinavian capital city halls appear to be extremely interesting and have towers with excellent views.
9/11: We'll take the train from Oslo to Stockholm, Sweden. Haven't decided when we're leaving yet, but it's a 6.5 hour train ride. Hopefully nice scenery, but I'm not sure what's out there. We still haven't decided where we're going to stay yet. The hotels in Stockholm all seem to be either way too expensive or way too crappy, no happy middle there.
9/12-9/13: Two days wandering around Stockholm. Not sure whether we'll rent bikes or not, lots of ground to cover. We'll check out the touristy things like a walk through Gamla Stan, the old city, and various museums and parks. And, of course, the City Hall. We're also hoping to make it out to a part of town called Hammarby Sjostad, which was a brownfield redeveloped into a sustainable community. They've got a center called the GlashusEtt that goes into more detail on all of the sustainable elements of the community. Should be really cool. We can ride the subway most of the way out there.
9/14: We'll take the train back to Copenhagen. I forget how long that trip is going to be. Probably get a hotel near the airport since we've got an early flight. We'll probably spend the evening enjoying some of the favorite things we found earlier in the trip.
9/15: Alas, the return trip. Which is going to be looooooooooong (21 hours). We're flying back against the wind, so that adds a few hours to the flight time. And, there's a six to eight hour layover in Newark. We might just use the time to take a quick bus trip into Manhattan and wander around for a couple of hours. It's been about a decade since I've been there. One of Jill's good friends lives there, so it could be fun to meet up with him. We finally get back to Portland in the late evening, and will still have the next day (Sunday) to recover a bit before jumping back into work.
Here's what we've got planned:
8/26: Leave way too early in the morning, fly to Newark and then Copenhagen.
8/27: Arrive in Copenhagen, and take the train out to the B&B in Christianhavn that we'll be staying at for the first three days. We'll look for a bike rental shop and try to recover from jet lag.
8/27-9/2: Bike around Copenhagen and check out the sites, and try to become immersed in the culture. We'll switch B&Bs halfway through to the Norrebro neighborhood, just to experience another part of town. Some of the sites we plan to check out include:
- Stroget, supposedly the world's longest pedestrian mall
- Tivoli Gardens, a Danish amusement park with their own pyrotechnics staff
- Christiana, a former naval base taken over by hippies in the 1970s and converted into a radical community, and tolerated by the Danes for over 30 years now
- Danish Design Center, which should be interesting, especially for Jill
- day trip to Malmo, across the Oresund in Sweden, which has a lot of sustainability projects being developed
- and a few touristy things like the City Hall, a canal cruise, the Louisiana Museum, maybe the National Museum, and other things that are recommended to us
9/2-9/3: Take a train to Arhus, Denmark's second largest city, which is located on the main peninsula of Jutland. It's where a major university is located, so it's supposed to be vibrant with an interesting youth culture. We'll stay in a B&B for a couple of days, check out the town, and rent bikes. A few of the sites we hope to check out there:
- ARoS, supposedly the coolest museum in Denmark
- Den Gamle By, an old market square
- Forhistorisk Museum in Moesgard, where they have a 2,000-year old "bog man"
- maybe the Latin Quarter and Viking Museum
9/4: Take a train across Jutland to Ringkobing near the west coast (with our rental bikes). Ringkobing is the global headquarters for Vestas Wind Systems, one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers, so there should be a lot of cool wind farms in the area. We're not sure if we'll stay there that night, or take the ferry across Ringkobing Fjord to Hvide Sande, a small town on the coast. It's supposed to be very windy out there, famous for it's windsurfing conditions and such.
9/5-9/7: Regardless of where we stay, we'll start out at Hvide Sande, bike up one of the national bike routes on the west coast for a while, and then turn inland to bike back across Jutland. It should be a really nice area, hopefully like that in rural England. I spent a few years in England in my teens, and spent many great hours biking on my ten-speed through the countryside. We'll stay in inns along the way, and we're bringing saddle bags with our clothes and gear. Should only be 100-120 miles back to Arhus, not a big deal (especially with a strong west wind behind us!) We're also planning to stop in the Lake District, and maybe rent a canoe for a day. It's also where they have the highest point in the country, only 147 meters. That's smaller than the little extinct volcano a few miles away from my house inside Portland's city limits.
9/8: Travel day. Ride the last 20-30 miles into Arhus and return the rental bikes. Then hop on a train to Frederikshavn on the northern part of the peninsula. We'll stay in a hotel for the night (the amusingly named "Hotel Herman Bang"). Might be a few interesting things to see, but we'll have to see what it's like when we get there.
9/9: Ferry day. We'll get up early and take the ferry to Oslo, Norway. It's about eight hours or so. We've reserved a small outside cabin, so that we can kick back and relax, or look at the scenery through our window, or head up on deck to see the scenery. Should be spectacular, especially as we enter the huge fjord where Oslo is located.
9/10: Our only full day in Oslo. We're planning to stay at a nice, relatively cheap hotel on the opposite side of the Royal Palace grounds. The main attraction for me is Bygdoy island, with a variety of ship museums and the Norwegian Folk Museum. If there's time, we'll also check out Frogner Park, a vast open air sculptural museum by Gustav Vigeland, and the Norwegian Resistance Museum. And, the City Hall - Scandinavian capital city halls appear to be extremely interesting and have towers with excellent views.
9/11: We'll take the train from Oslo to Stockholm, Sweden. Haven't decided when we're leaving yet, but it's a 6.5 hour train ride. Hopefully nice scenery, but I'm not sure what's out there. We still haven't decided where we're going to stay yet. The hotels in Stockholm all seem to be either way too expensive or way too crappy, no happy middle there.
9/12-9/13: Two days wandering around Stockholm. Not sure whether we'll rent bikes or not, lots of ground to cover. We'll check out the touristy things like a walk through Gamla Stan, the old city, and various museums and parks. And, of course, the City Hall. We're also hoping to make it out to a part of town called Hammarby Sjostad, which was a brownfield redeveloped into a sustainable community. They've got a center called the GlashusEtt that goes into more detail on all of the sustainable elements of the community. Should be really cool. We can ride the subway most of the way out there.
9/14: We'll take the train back to Copenhagen. I forget how long that trip is going to be. Probably get a hotel near the airport since we've got an early flight. We'll probably spend the evening enjoying some of the favorite things we found earlier in the trip.
9/15: Alas, the return trip. Which is going to be looooooooooong (21 hours). We're flying back against the wind, so that adds a few hours to the flight time. And, there's a six to eight hour layover in Newark. We might just use the time to take a quick bus trip into Manhattan and wander around for a couple of hours. It's been about a decade since I've been there. One of Jill's good friends lives there, so it could be fun to meet up with him. We finally get back to Portland in the late evening, and will still have the next day (Sunday) to recover a bit before jumping back into work.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Another fun weekend (and good week)
Hmm...somehow a whole week slipped by since the last post. Ah well, it was a relatively busy week and weekend. Some highlights:
- My dad will be coming out to work for my company. He's been managing the office for my aunt's trucking company in rural western Wyoming, and would prefer to be back in the Denver area where the rest of our family lives. He's been taking solar design classes (and I've been providing a bit of training) so that he can get a job in the Denver area doing that. But, it would be easier for him to get a job if he's got direct experience. And, Jill and I are going away for three weeks for our honeymoon, so the company desperately needs a designer while I'm away. So, I get to spend a couple of weeks bringing my dad up to speed (and tackling my ever-increasing backlog of projects) and then he'll work with us until he can find a job in Denver. It'll be great to have him out here!!!
- We sold Jill's house (well, duplex). This actually happened the week before, but I never posted it. It was only on the market for three weeks, and she managed to get full price for it. Not sure what our next step is, since we're not planning to start looking for a new house to buy until the beginning of the year. We hope to keep renting out our half of the duplex.
- Going to Corvallis yesterday for the annual da Vinci Days celebration. It was crazy fun, with a pedal-powered Kinetic Sculpture Parade, robots, sustainable technology, art, and all kinds of cool stuff. Descriptions don't do it much justice, so you should check out more of the photos here. One of my favorite things there couldn't be photographed - the room-sized camera obscura. It was a large, black tent with a convex lens and mirror arrangement on top, that projected an image onto a round, stone table. It was essentially like a video projected on the table using just a mirror. I can't really say why I liked it so much, but it was fascinating.
- This morning, we ran into a friend of mine (we'll call him spArk since that's the name he used for a long time, and now I can't remember the Scandinavian name he changed it to last year) who basically works as an urban farmer. He plants gardens on thirteen lawns and a stretch of public land along an unpaved road in the neighborhood. He has a Community Supported Agriculture arrangement with the homeowners, who provide him with money in return for the vegetables and herbs that he grows. It's not much, but he's still able to make a living doing something he loves. It's an extremely interesting arrangement, exactly along the lines of what I wanted to develop in the neighborhood of our new house. I'm glad to see that spArk is pioneering the idea already (and very successfully), and we got to take a tour of one of his plots of land.
- We spent a big chunk of the day working on honeymoon plans. We've got a kickass trip to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden planned, and we mapped out the various places we wanted to go, and looked at some of the travel and lodging options. Lots of time online looking at schedules and maps. I'll post a detailed breakdown of that in the near future. It's going to be awesome.
Okay, I've spent way too long on the computer today, time to sign off...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Fun weekend
This has been a great weekend, lots of good stuff going on. Actually, too much good stuff - we had to skip the first-year anniversary party for our local coffee shop, The Funky Door, because we had a few obligations in North Portland. That was sad, because two of the girls who work at The Funky Door were gracious enough to work as servers at our wedding reception, and they took a bunch of funny photos of a little gnome statue at the wedding (it's an inside joke with their boss, Diana). We got to see the album of gnome photos this morning, and they actually had quite a few quirky ones from our wedding (which made us happy to see that Corinna and Jillian were having fun there as well!)
Anyway, on Friday night Jill and I went to see a couple of local b
ands play at a nearby theater. We'd never heard either band, but the headliner, Talkdemonic, has gotten consistently great reviews over the years. So, we hadn't been to a show in a long time and decided to check it out. We went out to a nice dinner first, then got to the show earlier that we planned. We went on a walk around the neighborhood to kill time, and came across a sweet view of the river and west side that I'd never seen before. We were right across from the new South Waterfront development and OHSU tram, as the Ross Island Bridge. Unfortunately, we were also right next to McLoughlin Blvd, which an ugly, noisy, busy highway between central Portland and points south. Still, it was nice enough that we stayed to watch the sun set over the West Hills.
The bands were excellent. The opening band was Point Juncture, WA, an exuberant five-piece that included a vibraphone, one of my favorite instruments. Many of them shifted around to play various other instruments throughout their set. It was a bit quirky, a bit poppy, and lots of fun. I don't think they have an album out yet, but we'll keep an eye out for it. We really enjoyed that band. Then Talkdemonic came on, and they were incredible. Well worth all of the hype. They featured a dynamic combination of a woman on violin and a guy on drums, along with various pre-recorded instruments and beats for accompaniement. No vocals, but lots of intense, energetic music. The show convinced us that we should probably go out to see more local bands, there's been a large influx of musical talent to Portland over the past decade or so.
Saturday morni
ng was our usual routine of coffee and pastries at the Funky Door. After that, I had to go help out at my company's booth at the Mississippi Street Fair. That was a huge event, one of the best street fairs in the city! I believe it's the only one where they actually close off the street, for about half a mile or so. It makes a big difference. There were expected to be about 10,000 people there. You can see from the photo that it was big. Fortunately, one of our sales staff, Ed Han, lives right on N. Mississippi and we just finished installing a 2-kilowatt photovoltaic system for him. And, it was right up the street from our booth! That hel
ped us while we were talking with potential customers. I also get to spend a lot of time telling people about solar attic fans and how great they are. I feel like an evangelist for them now, since I think every house should have one to increase comfort and lower energy consumption. We had a lot of people sign up to get bids and more information from us, and raised more awareness for solar. It was a fun, successful event. I also ran into a few friends there, and Jill picked up some new jewelry and a cool new T-shirt.
After the Street Fair, we biked up a couple more miles north to an ice cream social in honor of Bastille Day at a co-housing commnity called Peninsula Park Commons. I know a few people there through Shift, a bike fun group. Actually, they had a Memorial Day party a couple of years ago that was Jill and my second date. It was an okay event, but we both felt less inclined to socialize by the time we got there. There were tons of people there, and lots of them with kids. The kids were having a great time, splashing around and playing with a hose and such. We ran into a few people we knew, including one of my old friends from the Green Party. And, there was an enormous amount of excellent homemade ice cream! Jill had made a triple-layer chocolate cake for the event, but it got jostled around in it's container on the back of her bike. The top layer was salvaged and savored by folks, but the other two layers were basically mush. She was disappointed, but for the most part she really enjoys the process of learning to make the cakes. We grilled some food, hung out with a few people we knew, and then decided we didn't really feel liking hanging out much longer. Unfortunately, my good friend Ken showed up right as we were leaving, we don't hang out anywhere near as much as we used to. But, it was time to go.
We rode back home, a fairly straight, fast route down N. Vancouver Ave. (with a double-wide bike lane, so we could ride side by side and talk!) and onto the Eastbank Esplanade, which took us most of the seven miles home. We had time to drop off a lot of our stuff, and then took off again for the Hollywood Theatre in NE Portland, another four mile ride. One of Jill's friends from high school had appeared in a movie shot in Portland back in 1999 called "The Sum of the Parts," and it was just now being released. This showing was the "world premiere." Jill was hoping to see her friend Melody, but we got there just before the movie started. The movie was, um, interesting. The acting was perhaps more suited to the stage than the big screen and they had a bit of trouble with the pacing. And, it was very low budget. There were a lot of interesting elements to it, and I liked some of the style, but the plot simply tried to cover too much ground, and it all got muddled. Basically, a sci-fi, techno-thriller with a lot of hard-core geek information embedded in it. It was a valiant effort for a first time director (and writer, and lead actor) but I think he would have been better off narrowing his focus and making a better film that way. Afterwards, there was a Q&A session with the director. Jill again hoped to find her friend, but couldn't make her out in the audience, and we were tired enough by that point we didn't want to hang around until it was all over.
We got to sleep in late this morning, and have a relaxed day. More coffee and pastries at the Funky Door, and then we both tried to catch up on some work. Jill had to go into her office for a few hours, and I worked on a few things from home. In the afternoon, we went to see another movie, "Day Watch," that we'd been planning to see for quite a long time at the second-run theaters, but were worried wouldn't be there much longer. It's a sub-titled Russian sci-fi/fantasy movie and the sequel to "Night Watch," and they're both based on a bestselling series of Russian novels by the same names. The two movies have broken all box office records in Russia. The first movie was great, with an interesting story and special effects that reminded me of "The Matrix" even though the budget was only $5 million. They did a helluva lot with that money. I've also been reading the novels as the English translations have been released. [an amusing interjection - my friend Ken just called to say that he was biking past the Laurelhurst Theater, and decided to see "Day Watch" tonight, and invited us to join him. That's such a weird coincidence!] Anyway, the second movie wasn't that great. Jill enjoyed because she went in without expectations, but I was disappointed at how much it differed from the books, and the plot was kinda silly. The novels are much more intricate and well-developed. Ah well, that's movies for you. And, it's nearing the end of our weekend...
Anyway, on Friday night Jill and I went to see a couple of local b
ands play at a nearby theater. We'd never heard either band, but the headliner, Talkdemonic, has gotten consistently great reviews over the years. So, we hadn't been to a show in a long time and decided to check it out. We went out to a nice dinner first, then got to the show earlier that we planned. We went on a walk around the neighborhood to kill time, and came across a sweet view of the river and west side that I'd never seen before. We were right across from the new South Waterfront development and OHSU tram, as the Ross Island Bridge. Unfortunately, we were also right next to McLoughlin Blvd, which an ugly, noisy, busy highway between central Portland and points south. Still, it was nice enough that we stayed to watch the sun set over the West Hills.The bands were excellent. The opening band was Point Juncture, WA, an exuberant five-piece that included a vibraphone, one of my favorite instruments. Many of them shifted around to play various other instruments throughout their set. It was a bit quirky, a bit poppy, and lots of fun. I don't think they have an album out yet, but we'll keep an eye out for it. We really enjoyed that band. Then Talkdemonic came on, and they were incredible. Well worth all of the hype. They featured a dynamic combination of a woman on violin and a guy on drums, along with various pre-recorded instruments and beats for accompaniement. No vocals, but lots of intense, energetic music. The show convinced us that we should probably go out to see more local bands, there's been a large influx of musical talent to Portland over the past decade or so.
Saturday morni
ng was our usual routine of coffee and pastries at the Funky Door. After that, I had to go help out at my company's booth at the Mississippi Street Fair. That was a huge event, one of the best street fairs in the city! I believe it's the only one where they actually close off the street, for about half a mile or so. It makes a big difference. There were expected to be about 10,000 people there. You can see from the photo that it was big. Fortunately, one of our sales staff, Ed Han, lives right on N. Mississippi and we just finished installing a 2-kilowatt photovoltaic system for him. And, it was right up the street from our booth! That hel
ped us while we were talking with potential customers. I also get to spend a lot of time telling people about solar attic fans and how great they are. I feel like an evangelist for them now, since I think every house should have one to increase comfort and lower energy consumption. We had a lot of people sign up to get bids and more information from us, and raised more awareness for solar. It was a fun, successful event. I also ran into a few friends there, and Jill picked up some new jewelry and a cool new T-shirt.After the Street Fair, we biked up a couple more miles north to an ice cream social in honor of Bastille Day at a co-housing commnity called Peninsula Park Commons. I know a few people there through Shift, a bike fun group. Actually, they had a Memorial Day party a couple of years ago that was Jill and my second date. It was an okay event, but we both felt less inclined to socialize by the time we got there. There were tons of people there, and lots of them with kids. The kids were having a great time, splashing around and playing with a hose and such. We ran into a few people we knew, including one of my old friends from the Green Party. And, there was an enormous amount of excellent homemade ice cream! Jill had made a triple-layer chocolate cake for the event, but it got jostled around in it's container on the back of her bike. The top layer was salvaged and savored by folks, but the other two layers were basically mush. She was disappointed, but for the most part she really enjoys the process of learning to make the cakes. We grilled some food, hung out with a few people we knew, and then decided we didn't really feel liking hanging out much longer. Unfortunately, my good friend Ken showed up right as we were leaving, we don't hang out anywhere near as much as we used to. But, it was time to go.
We rode back home, a fairly straight, fast route down N. Vancouver Ave. (with a double-wide bike lane, so we could ride side by side and talk!) and onto the Eastbank Esplanade, which took us most of the seven miles home. We had time to drop off a lot of our stuff, and then took off again for the Hollywood Theatre in NE Portland, another four mile ride. One of Jill's friends from high school had appeared in a movie shot in Portland back in 1999 called "The Sum of the Parts," and it was just now being released. This showing was the "world premiere." Jill was hoping to see her friend Melody, but we got there just before the movie started. The movie was, um, interesting. The acting was perhaps more suited to the stage than the big screen and they had a bit of trouble with the pacing. And, it was very low budget. There were a lot of interesting elements to it, and I liked some of the style, but the plot simply tried to cover too much ground, and it all got muddled. Basically, a sci-fi, techno-thriller with a lot of hard-core geek information embedded in it. It was a valiant effort for a first time director (and writer, and lead actor) but I think he would have been better off narrowing his focus and making a better film that way. Afterwards, there was a Q&A session with the director. Jill again hoped to find her friend, but couldn't make her out in the audience, and we were tired enough by that point we didn't want to hang around until it was all over.
We got to sleep in late this morning, and have a relaxed day. More coffee and pastries at the Funky Door, and then we both tried to catch up on some work. Jill had to go into her office for a few hours, and I worked on a few things from home. In the afternoon, we went to see another movie, "Day Watch," that we'd been planning to see for quite a long time at the second-run theaters, but were worried wouldn't be there much longer. It's a sub-titled Russian sci-fi/fantasy movie and the sequel to "Night Watch," and they're both based on a bestselling series of Russian novels by the same names. The two movies have broken all box office records in Russia. The first movie was great, with an interesting story and special effects that reminded me of "The Matrix" even though the budget was only $5 million. They did a helluva lot with that money. I've also been reading the novels as the English translations have been released. [an amusing interjection - my friend Ken just called to say that he was biking past the Laurelhurst Theater, and decided to see "Day Watch" tonight, and invited us to join him. That's such a weird coincidence!] Anyway, the second movie wasn't that great. Jill enjoyed because she went in without expectations, but I was disappointed at how much it differed from the books, and the plot was kinda silly. The novels are much more intricate and well-developed. Ah well, that's movies for you. And, it's nearing the end of our weekend...
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thunderstorm!
After a few days of hot weather, we had a surprise thunderstorm pop up last night. That's a rare occurrence here, we get maybe two or three thunderstorms each year, usually in the spring. And, it's fairly unusual to get any rain at all in the month of July. The climate here is incredibly mild, and we rarely get any kind of extreme weather. It stays cool for much of the year, but it never gets cold. We often only get snow a few times each winter (or sometimes none at all), and that usually melts within a few hours. For much of the winter we'll have light, scattered showers to occasional steady rain, and the summer is usually clear blue skies from July through September.
So, the thunderstorm last night was a lot of fun, something that I really miss from back in the Midwest (and fireflies, we don't have those either). The first time I heard thunder last night, I went outside in disbelief, and stayed out for half hour or so until the rain got too heavy. Most of the lightning stayed within the clouds, only a few bolts coming down to the ground. Regardless, it was still a fun spectacle. And, the plants really needed the rain!
So, the thunderstorm last night was a lot of fun, something that I really miss from back in the Midwest (and fireflies, we don't have those either). The first time I heard thunder last night, I went outside in disbelief, and stayed out for half hour or so until the rain got too heavy. Most of the lightning stayed within the clouds, only a few bolts coming down to the ground. Regardless, it was still a fun spectacle. And, the plants really needed the rain!
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Air conditioning blows (and how to get by without it)
Today we're supposed to have record-breaking heat, above 100 degrees. The current record for today is 98 degrees. I checked Accuweather this morning, and clicked on the Weather Advisory issued for Portland. I was ticked off to read that one of their recommendations was "stay in an air conditioned room." That's really lame and unnecessary here.
I've lived without air conditioning for 12 years now, except for six months or so in 1999 in Cincinnati when my girlfriend at the time had a small window unit. Air conditioning is a colossal energy drain (which means we're burning lots and lots of coal to provide it), and for the most part it can be avoided with a good building design and a few cheap space conditioning measures.
[had to take a long break to deal with a lot of work issues]
Now it's nearly the end of the work day, although that's always flexible since I'm working from home these days. Accuweather reports it's 101 degrees outside, officially breaking the record. However, I'm sitting relatively comfortable in the house with the thermostat reporting 83 degrees, only up 7 degrees from this morning's low of 76. That's without an air conditioner or even turning on a fan. I'm feeling a little warm but not uncomfortable. I considered digging a fan out of the basement, but don't want to kick up a bunch of dust if I turned it on (well, maybe we should sweep and mop more often...) We also might sleep in the basement bedroom tonight, because the overnight temp is supposed to stay high until just before dawn.
Here are a few things that I do to beat the heat, while saving lots of money (and the environment):
1.) Live in the right place. Fortunately, the Pacific Northwest has a fairly mild climate , which makes this more feasible. Days over 90 degrees are fairly rare and the relatively low humidity makes for a comfortable "dry heat." For many reasons, you couldn't pay me to live in the sweltering, humid Southeast or furnace-like Desert Southwest. Even the Midwest could get very uncomfortable with 90 degree, 90% humidity days. Still, there are options even there.
2.) Install a solar attic fan. This is one of the most effective ways to cool a house (and here's a photo of our solar attic fan). An installer cuts a circular hole in the roof and mounts the solar attic fan over it. Hot air rises and gets trapped in the attic, becoming even hotter. The solar attic fan draws the hottest air out of the attic and draws in cooler ambient air. It also works only when there's direct sun, which is when it's hottest out (and that means they run off free electricity). A solar attic fan should cool a house by 5 or 10 degrees, which can help quite a bit. In our case, it means we don't need AC at all. In other cases, it could reduce the amount of air conditioning needed. And, they're cheap! I got mine at cost through the last solar company I worked for, but one of my co-workers told me that he saw one at Home Depot last week for $179! People can either install themselves, or get either a solar or roofing contractor to do the work. Should only cost $50 to $100 for the labor, and they should be installed within an hour or two.
3.) Cover windows to minimize solar heat gain. During the summer, I make sure to close all of the blinds to the south and west of the house, which the sun is going to bake throughout the day. Most of our blinds are white, which is highly reflective, and that helps even more. When the ambient air is so much hotter outside than inside, it's good to draw all of the blinds as a form of insulation. However, I can put my hand between the windows and blinds, and feel a big jump in temperature. That's bad news, meaning that the heat is still being trapped inside the house. The best scenario would be exterior roll-up blinds above the south and west windows, to block the solar heat gain from getting into the house at all. Unfortunately, we're trying to sell Jill's house (well, duplex) so I had to let a realtor show it this afternoon. To make it more attractive, I had to open all of the blinds and allow more heat and solar gain in for an hour or so. That probably cost me a couple of degrees.
4.) Make the best use of cooler ambient air. Once the sun goes down, the air outside will start to cool down. And, any wind will also help circulate the air and cool things down in general. So, when the sun sets, I'll usually open many of our windows and let the house cool down. Usually within an hour or two it's cool enough to sleep comfortably during the summer. Like I wrote, we might just sleep in the basement bedroom tonight. In the morning, I'll leave the windows open to keep the cool, fresh air circulating, until the outside air temperature starts warming up in the late morning. If the air inside the house is cooler than outside, then why keep windows open to let in the hot air?
So, that's basically what I do to keep cool during the summer. It's fairly effective and relatively painless. I had to stop a few more times while writing to deal with various work issues, so it's turned into a rather late work night. It's now a little after 7 pm. Accuweather indicates that it's cooled down a little outside to 97 degrees. The house has absorbed more heat (we've got a lot of western exposure) so the temperature has climbed to 88 degrees. But, I have to admit that I'm still feeling relatively comfortable, probably because it's climbed so gradually throughout the day. I haven't turned on a fan all day, and haven't really felt the need. Yay!
We'll see how things go tomorrow when it might be warmer than usual overnight, and we're expecting our second 100 degree day in a row. Of course, it'll help if I don't have to open the blinds again to show off the house!
I've lived without air conditioning for 12 years now, except for six months or so in 1999 in Cincinnati when my girlfriend at the time had a small window unit. Air conditioning is a colossal energy drain (which means we're burning lots and lots of coal to provide it), and for the most part it can be avoided with a good building design and a few cheap space conditioning measures.
[had to take a long break to deal with a lot of work issues]
Now it's nearly the end of the work day, although that's always flexible since I'm working from home these days. Accuweather reports it's 101 degrees outside, officially breaking the record. However, I'm sitting relatively comfortable in the house with the thermostat reporting 83 degrees, only up 7 degrees from this morning's low of 76. That's without an air conditioner or even turning on a fan. I'm feeling a little warm but not uncomfortable. I considered digging a fan out of the basement, but don't want to kick up a bunch of dust if I turned it on (well, maybe we should sweep and mop more often...) We also might sleep in the basement bedroom tonight, because the overnight temp is supposed to stay high until just before dawn.
Here are a few things that I do to beat the heat, while saving lots of money (and the environment):
1.) Live in the right place. Fortunately, the Pacific Northwest has a fairly mild climate , which makes this more feasible. Days over 90 degrees are fairly rare and the relatively low humidity makes for a comfortable "dry heat." For many reasons, you couldn't pay me to live in the sweltering, humid Southeast or furnace-like Desert Southwest. Even the Midwest could get very uncomfortable with 90 degree, 90% humidity days. Still, there are options even there.
2.) Install a solar attic fan. This is one of the most effective ways to cool a house (and here's a photo of our solar attic fan). An installer cuts a circular hole in the roof and mounts the solar attic fan over it. Hot air rises and gets trapped in the attic, becoming even hotter. The solar attic fan draws the hottest air out of the attic and draws in cooler ambient air. It also works only when there's direct sun, which is when it's hottest out (and that means they run off free electricity). A solar attic fan should cool a house by 5 or 10 degrees, which can help quite a bit. In our case, it means we don't need AC at all. In other cases, it could reduce the amount of air conditioning needed. And, they're cheap! I got mine at cost through the last solar company I worked for, but one of my co-workers told me that he saw one at Home Depot last week for $179! People can either install themselves, or get either a solar or roofing contractor to do the work. Should only cost $50 to $100 for the labor, and they should be installed within an hour or two.
3.) Cover windows to minimize solar heat gain. During the summer, I make sure to close all of the blinds to the south and west of the house, which the sun is going to bake throughout the day. Most of our blinds are white, which is highly reflective, and that helps even more. When the ambient air is so much hotter outside than inside, it's good to draw all of the blinds as a form of insulation. However, I can put my hand between the windows and blinds, and feel a big jump in temperature. That's bad news, meaning that the heat is still being trapped inside the house. The best scenario would be exterior roll-up blinds above the south and west windows, to block the solar heat gain from getting into the house at all. Unfortunately, we're trying to sell Jill's house (well, duplex) so I had to let a realtor show it this afternoon. To make it more attractive, I had to open all of the blinds and allow more heat and solar gain in for an hour or so. That probably cost me a couple of degrees.
4.) Make the best use of cooler ambient air. Once the sun goes down, the air outside will start to cool down. And, any wind will also help circulate the air and cool things down in general. So, when the sun sets, I'll usually open many of our windows and let the house cool down. Usually within an hour or two it's cool enough to sleep comfortably during the summer. Like I wrote, we might just sleep in the basement bedroom tonight. In the morning, I'll leave the windows open to keep the cool, fresh air circulating, until the outside air temperature starts warming up in the late morning. If the air inside the house is cooler than outside, then why keep windows open to let in the hot air?
So, that's basically what I do to keep cool during the summer. It's fairly effective and relatively painless. I had to stop a few more times while writing to deal with various work issues, so it's turned into a rather late work night. It's now a little after 7 pm. Accuweather indicates that it's cooled down a little outside to 97 degrees. The house has absorbed more heat (we've got a lot of western exposure) so the temperature has climbed to 88 degrees. But, I have to admit that I'm still feeling relatively comfortable, probably because it's climbed so gradually throughout the day. I haven't turned on a fan all day, and haven't really felt the need. Yay!
We'll see how things go tomorrow when it might be warmer than usual overnight, and we're expecting our second 100 degree day in a row. Of course, it'll help if I don't have to open the blinds again to show off the house!
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