Figured I’d try out the free wireless here at PDX while I’m killing time. Sean raves about it all the time, and it does kick ass. Flight leaves in about an hour and I’ll be home tonight around 10:30. It’s been a great trip. I was able to have dinner with Chris and Matt from BootsnAll last night and lunch today with Court and Matt.

I’m sitting here in the BootsnAll offices trying to get caught back up with the real world after running around Oregon, Washington, and Idaho for the past week. Here’s a rundown on what went on:

Tuesday, April 19th ::

Called mom to tell her that I decided to drive up and meet them in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. She checked to see if there were any tickets available for using frequent flyer miles so that I wouldn’t take Christie’s car for the week. There was a ticket available for flying into Portland, Oregon which was perfect because I wanted to meet up with the guys at BootsnAll in Portland anyway.

Wednesday, April 20th ::

Christie dropped me off at the airport in the morning and I flew from PHX to LAX…then LAX to PDX. I picked up a Chevy Trailblazer at PDX and proceeded to pick mom and dad up from PSC. We spent the night in Pasco, Washington.

Thurdsay, April 21st ::

Mom, dad, and I drove to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. Dad and I spent part of the day helping a friend of his to get ready for people who were coming in for Kjelsty’s wedding. Kjelsty is a friend of mine from when I was a kid. Her parents and my parents are really good friends. Levi, her father, passed away recently and we all wanted to be there for her big day. That night, we went to O’Shay’s Irish Pub in Coeur d’ Alene for a party with a bunch of Kjelsty and Glenn’s (the groom) friends. Many of them played music and everyone had fun. I hung out for part of the night with Kjelsty’s sister Tansy. She was stressed out about leaving her kids at home with her husband, so I tried to keep her entertained.

Friday, April 22nd ::

We spent the morning in Coeur d’ Alene. Breakfast was great at Rustler’s Roost. After breakfast and helping out at Levi and Diane’s house in the morning, we drove up to Athol. Mom stayed in Athol and visited with friends while Dad and I went up to cut some trees at another of his friends’ houses. That night we hung around the American Legion and Pastime in Athol. Went to bed in Coeur d Alene at 2:00 AM.

Saturday, April 23rd ::

Breakfast at Rustler’s Roost again. Spent more time north of Athol helping some friends. Kjelsty’s wedding was scheduled for 3:00 PM. It started late, but was really cool. Kjelsty, her friends, and her family are very creative people. The wedding was at Greenbriar Inn in Coeur d’ Alene. After the wedding I met up with an old friend of mine and went bar hopping until 2:00 AM in Post Falls, Idaho. From there, we went to Denny’s for food. Went to bed around 4:00 AM in Coeur d’ Alene.

Sunday, April 24th ::

After 4 hours of sleep, we left for Hermiston, Oregon. Spent the afternoon at a barbecue with family and stayed with my grandparents in Hermiston.

Monday, April 25th ::

Met up with some of my parents’ friends in Pendleton, Oregon. Drove over to Walla Walla, Washington and sampled some wine that is made there. I’ve decided that I just don’t like wine…can’t figure out what’s so great about it. I’d much rather have a good beer at a fraction of the cost.

Tuesday, April 26th (Today) ::

Dropped mom and dad off at PSC this morning and drove to Portland. Have had the pleasure of meeting Court, Donovan, Matt, and Dave here at BootsnAll. Hopefully a couple of us will go out tonight or something. Chris has to leave early tomorrow morning for New York, so I may spend part of the day touring the area if I don’t hang around the office here.

This can’t be good:

Adobe to Buy Macromedia for $3.4 Bln

I have used Macromedia products for years because I didn’t want to support Adobe. Macromedia makes a superior product when it comes to web based media. Dreamweaver is my favorite Macromedia program and I hope that Adobe doesn’t phase it out like Macromedia did with Homesite when Macromedia bought Allaire. I was a big homesite fan, but when it was phased out I had to move on. Dreamweaver is good, but consumes more resources than Homesite used to. I will admit that Adobe Photoshop is superior to any competition out there. Macromedia’s Fireworks software was decent and priced well, but could never really compete with Photoshop. Maybe I’ll just stick with outdated Macromedia products for now.

This has been an amazing week. I feel like nothing has been accomplished yet we’ve managed to buy a house and prepare, file, and pay our taxes.

The biggest reason it was so amazing was that we shouldn’t have been able to get a lot for a house. There are people waiting for months to get one and we managed to get one only a week into searching. The house will be built by Beazer Homes and will be in the Morning Sun Farms development. It should take around 9 months for the house to be completed and I will be adding updates and photos of the progress as often as I can. We found out this morning that the model we purchased (Richland) has already gone up $8,000 in value, so we’re already ahead only a week into it. Yesterday we finalized the structural and electrical upgrades. May 4th we will be selecting interior design elements (cabinets, doors, etc.). Christie is actually getting excited about the new house, which surprises me because she didn’t want to move out there before. I’m pretty sure that she realizes that we’ll be getting twice the house for just a little more than we can sell our current house for.

Taxes were not too bad. We owed less than $3,000 this year…which is an improvement over the past few years. Next year we’re getting an accountant. Turbo Tax was tripping out on me for a while and I didn’t feel like I could trust it very much. Eventually the problems were sorted out and everything appeared to be okay.

One of the other highlights of my week was the delivery of my new license plate. I decided to get a personalized plate that had something to do with websites. When I was ordering the plate through Service Arizona I was trying to be creative and come up with something cool…most of those ideas were taken. I jokingly plugged “BLOG” into the search box and it was available. Being a person that likes to act quickly on cool opportunities, I ordered it. It showed up in the mail earlier this week and looks damn cool. I’ll get it put on the truck tomorrow after I wash it and I’ll post a pic of it.

So now that the week is officially over (12:37 on Sunday morning right now…assuming a Sunday - Saturday week), it’s time to get back working on the redesign for Travel Gear Blog and Bianchi Design…but first, I need some sleep.

Some people need to get a life. I cannot believe that people would intentionally waste 46 days of their lives sitting in front of a theatre waiting for a movie that will last less than 3 hours. What’s worse is that it sounds like these fools are lined up at the wrong theatre:

Inside Move: Fanatics laying it on the line - ‘Star Wars’ fans stew in queue

I finally got around to watching Riding Giants tonight. It gives a pretty good history of big wave surfing. I have always been intrigued by big wave surfing, especially Mavericks. There was some cool historical footage of surfing and newer footage of Laird Hamilton and his friends surfing huge waves. I think I prefer the video quality of Step Into Liquid, but the overall information covered seemed better in Riding Giants. Both are good films to check out if you have not already seen them.