On Sunday, my son surprised me with a perfectly thoughtful Mother's Day gift - a CD of the original cast recording of The Music Man. I lost that CD years ago when  someone broke into my car and stole the CD player. The thief was disdainful of my musical choices and didn't even bother to steal the stack of CD's, but that one happened to be in the player. Every now and then I run into the empty CD case and grieve over my lost musical. Thorin took note of that, ordered me a new one, and waited for the next opportunity to present it as a special gift. I am often made uncomfortable by obligatory presents, but this is the perfect type of gift - something only someone who was actually paying attention to you would realize that you wanted. 

Thorin then treated me and Richard to a rather extravagant Mother's Day dinner at Hector Ruiz's newest restaurant: Don Raul (50th and Xerxes). Hector Ruiz is our favorite local celebrity chef - Mexican born and French trained. We often eat at the 3 in our neighborhood: Rincon 38, Ena, and La Fresca. The food is recognizably similar from place to place, but each restaurant has a slightly different theme and each dish is unique. Don Raul is a small-plate restaurant (similar to Rincon 38) but more international in its influences. We ordered 5 plates for the 3 of us to share, which left us with enough room for 3 desserts. Every single thing was delicious, and we all enjoyed sharing and comparing them. 

Then we came home and I listened to my new CD with Thorin. Still one of my top 10 favorite musicals, and I'm delighted to have it back. 

So Amber and Olin found this cute little house just over the border into Milwaukie, an improbably named suburb south of Portland. It's got new floors, a huge yard, and more storage space than they ever imagined they could have. It's only 6 miles to Amber's school - accessible by a lovely off-road bike path.


 Best of all, closing was schedule for Nov 30 - right in the middle of our Thanksgiving trip! How great is that? Of course it didn't quite work out that way. By Nov 30 the sellers weren't even close to finishing all the stuff they had promised to fix and had barely started moving out. Closing  got pushed to Dec 3, but the realtor arranged the "final inspection" for Tues, Dec 1, so we could see the inside of the house before we had to fly home. We were really excited to see it and glad we did, but the state of affairs 2 days before closing was pretty disheartening.
 
Yet somehow by Dec 4 (Friday) they had it all done. The papers got signed and the keys were handed over. Here they are in their new house on Friday evening.

Of course Lena started feeling better shortly after the grandparents left the scene, and was just as delighted as her parents. Today they rented a truck and moved all the stuff from the storage locker into the house. Amber reports that Lena had a wonderful time tearing around in the empty house. 

Part1 is here.
Larger set of pictures on Google Photo

It was 97 degrees when we got to Portland - not what I expected from Oregon. They've been having a spell of hot weather up and down the west coast, and even Oregon is having what they think of as a  drought. (Remember, I was with people from California who are unimpressed by 2 measly months without rain. But the grass was kinda brown and crunchy.) Thank goodness the new apartment had A/C. The apartment is smaller than their old one, but much more attractive. And they LOVE the neighborhood, right next to Cathedral Park in St. Johns, North Portland.

You can see the magnificent St. Johns bridge from their parking lot (first picture below) and out the window. Amber has already started running across the bridge to Forest Park across the river. There's a sekrit stair leading from the quiet, shady parking lot up the hill to one of those adorable little neighborhood main streets with coffee shops and vegan restaurants and cinema pubs that Portland is famouse for. There is even a supermarket within walking distance.

   

Being a major bridge fan, I just can't resist inserting 3 more pictures of the St. John Bridge. The one on the left is shot from Forest Park, across the Willamette from St Johns. The other two are taken from the lower end of Cathedral Park (2 blocks from the apartment) with and without Greenpeace demonstrators hanging underneath.

Lena has adorably turned 6 weeks old right here at our house, and right on cue she is learning the art of the "social smile."  This big smile took a lot of work. To see how it's done, check out the Google+ gallery here.

As Little L moves into her 3rd week of life she is not only growing, but learning.  Here's some new skills documented yesterday. First, look how well she can balance her giant anime head now (at least when she is wide awake). In this picture she has actually TURNED her head to look at the window, all by herself!


Here we see the newborn standing/walking reflex in action. At this age they can't support their weight on those spindly little legs, but if you help them out they can push back against a firm surface and even make little walking movements. This reflex disappears a few months after birth, but comes back as volitional movement when it's time to start standing and walking.


Probably the most exciting - she is starting to pay attention to toys. This Baby Einstein Radio plays music and displays a pattern of flashing lights. You would think it would be impossible to ignore. But just the day before she showed little interest in it. Yesterday she stared at it every time it was presented and even waved her arms as if she was trying to reach towards it. This means it is now possible to PLAY with her!  Fun.

I created a Picasa album of Lena's first two weeks and "Shared" it, but I really have no idea if I did it right. Picasa now runs through Google+, which I find totally inscrutable. The link is here. Can you see it?

Every day I plan to post some pictures but then the next day comes and there are more pictures and I never get caught up. So here's some random cute pictures of Baby Lena, aged 2 days to 12 days. The first shot is a 2-day old Lena responding to her first stroller ride with a typical "WTF??" expression. In the next picture she has matured into a criminally cute week old cherub, followed by what appears to be a hungover college kid passed out in the corner. But she recovers from her early dissipated phase to become a political activist, and eventually a modern dance instructor. Who knows what the next week will bring?
8 Fi

Amber's baby is here!  

I used to keep my online pictures on LJ, but the "improvements" to their already difficult photo gallery drove me away from that. I tried PhotoBucket, but it was very slow and had the tools for managing albums scattered all over their interface. Then I found Picasa, and it seemed perfect! I downloaded the desktop version of Picasa for managing pics on my computer and love it for that. And hey, look! You can create albums on your computer and upload them to an online photo sharing site with one click. Awesome.

I didn't realize that Google had already bought PicasaWeb at that point and was slowly starting to "migrate" it to Google+.  I do have a Google+ account, but have never warmed up to it. I liked the idea of circles, but simply cannot master the constantly changing user interface. This didn't matter because I don't know very many people who use Google+ anyway, so I just forgot about it.

Then I tried to upload some new Picasa albums to PicasaWeb and they all ended up on Google+ instead. When I go to PicasaWeb I can see the Google+ albums, but the privacy settings are different and seem to collide with each other. Both sites use the term "public" but it seems to mean different things. I prefer to make most of my online albums public so I can post links to them elsewhere. But I think that when I make them "public" on Google+ they immediately inflict themselves on everybody in all my circles, whether they are interested in my family holiday pictures or not. I'm not quite sure there - I really can't figure out what the Google+ privacy settings mean. And I still don't know if a Google+ "public" album is visible to people who are not Google+ members.

And I don't know what happens when I try to link to such an album from someplace external, like... here. Thus this entry. Here's a link to pictures from last year's Thanksgiving trip to San Jose. That ones goes to Google Plus.

For comparison, here is a link to the same album through Picasaweb.

If anyone wants to let me know how these links work for them, that would be nice. If you can view the album through both links, which one do you like better?