So Portland, being the environmentally conscious community that it is has these fancy parking meters installed on each street.

Note the solar panel on the top of the unit [ quite contradicting seeing how they claim it rains here all the time...]. Basically you insert your money - your charge/atm card or coins - and it prints a receipt that has a self-adhesive that you stick to the inside of your car. One of this things serves an entire street.

Now take this old thing which you see all over the streets of Milwaukee and Chicago... hmm... Which government employee gets the job to collect all those coins in these damn things? And how many times did you have to go searching around your car to find coins to feed the damn thing. Or do what I did 50% of the time. You don't give it any money. Then you hope like hell that you don't have a ticket when you get back to your car.

Winner = Portland Parking Meter.

Monday night went to see Beth Orton play at the Wonder Ballroom. She was good. Beer was good. Venue was cool. A friend of Heidi's named Morgan bought the tickets and we picked her up at her house. I found out at dinner that she rides mountain bikes and skis. I feel like a Portland socialite lately. All these bands and venues. We have tickets to see Pink Martini in 3 weeks and there was the lead singer stopping to say hello to Morgan during the show and then her and her boyfriend stood right in front of us to watch the show... small little world here in Portland is what Heidi keeps saying.

My PC has gone south. Processor locks and the damn thing shuts down. Tried to reinstall the OS to no avail. Upgraded the BIOS last night which seemed to help. Now I need Ethernet drivers... it's just one thing after the other. I'm due for a new one since this one is just over 3 years old now...

Those tires arrived and I was able to ride into work today for the first time in ... wow ... 3 weeks. I've definitely lost some fitness and noticed it on the ride. I'm not looking forward to the grueling climb back up out of the Columbia river basin into the hills of SE Portland tonight. It might take me longer than 90 minutes to do those 20 miles...

Thursday we went to see Train. I have to admit that I only knew maybe 1 or 2 songs and to be honest if I heard one of em play on the radio I'd probable change the station. However, you never know what to expect from a live performance and as I've said before - you never know just how good an opening act is going to be. We started the night off by meeting up with one of Heidi's friends, Barb, who had picked up the tickets and surprised Heidi by buying them off craigslist for us. Barb is really cool and has quite a social network from what I understand - we met up with her before the Aerosmit/Kravitz show as well. Just like that night we started of the night at a pre-party gig at some dudes apartment. The place was in this old house that has a few apartments in it. It was on the top floor and I liked the non-symetrical layout.

The show was at the Crystal Ballroom. This was a cool venue and reminded me alot of Rave and other small venues back in Milwaukee/Chicago. Old theater/ballroom which is actually located on the 2nd floor above the restaurant - which is a McMenamins (do they own all the cool venues here or what...) Since it was an all ages show - everyone was in the same room, but unlike other shows I've been too, they not only stamped you as being overage but seperated you using barriers from the younger crowd. And there wasn't that much of a younger crowd. I'd say a good majority were 30+.

The Ballroom has this large chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

Missy Higgins was great. I'd go see her again.

The watering hole closest to where we were standing only had Pale Ale and PBR... I was forced to going showing my Milwaukee side and chose the PBR. Other stands on the floor had better beer but the damn place was packed - and I mean like people shoulder to shoulder - if you moved you lost your spot. I didn't use the bathroom until the end of the night. Funny thing is that were so damn friendly here... they let people cut up in front of them and I'm like "WTF?"

I have to say that although he has a good voice, it's a little high pitched - he did a good cover of Led Zep and Aerosmith song. Other than that I wouldn't go see these guys again unless there was some good reason for doing something else whilst you were there. I also thought it was weird that the final song was an Aerosmith one - why not do one of your own songs? There were alot of women in the crowd - at least 50/50 - that's not the norm at most shows in Milwaukee/Chicago... either that or maybe it was because it was Train. I also had a couple different women order drinks for me because I couldn't reach the darn bar and I didn't want to give up my spot - again proving how nice the people were to pass the beer and $ back and forth.

• Missy Higgins - 4/5 stars
• Train - 2/5 stars
• Crystal Ballroom - 4/5 stars

I'm excited because we are going to see Sigur Ros here in Portland in 6 weeks on May 4th!

Sigur Ros is a band from Iceland (seriously) that I got hooked on last year. The album I got hooked on, () is untitled, has no lyrics, he does sing but his voice is more of a musical instrument and the lryics are called 'Hopelandic'. One of the songs was featured in the movie Vanilla Sky - and since the song hadn't been recorded yet - it was actually a live version used for a movie - you don't see that very often in this day of production value, cookie cutter, sit in a sound studio and have your music 'perfected' type of music - bleh. Anyway - their new album, Takk..., came out in fall of 2005 and is almost as good - lyrics are in Icelandic so if you're only into certain types of music this may not be your thing. If you're interested in checking them out - check out the videos on their website - and for my buddies back home, they're going to be in Chicago on May 9th and Milwaukee on May 10th.

Here's just some random thoughts...

• There's a crack in my windshield... it was loud when I heard something bounce off it. I looked around wondering where the sound came from and that's when I noticed the 2 inch circular crack in my windshield. I was driving next to a truck on I-5 at the time - but that may or may not be the cause because I honestly never really saw the object. Hopefully this Windshield Glass Repair Kit will fix it.
• I won't be riding in the mtn bike race this weekend because there's a couple of pits in my front fork... I need to get the uppers replaced and they have to order some new parts. In hindsight, since I'm now up to $400+ in repairs, and since it was never really leaking oil I am regretting having brought the damn bike in for a tune-up. I really need to figure out how to do more than just change tires, tighten bolts, and oil the chain.
• I've been off the bike now for quite some time because I have no tires for the commute and no mtn bike... I suppose I should quite crying and ride on my road tires bought I can't seem to find the motivation to shred another pair of tires.
• Sunny and in the 50's on Saturday and Sunday. It's been typical Oregon weather yesterday and today (very very light rain or none at all). We went to this Italian restaurant, Piazza Italia, on Sunday. The food was excellent and atmosphere was very cool. The people in there were speaking Italian - showing off if you ask me - but it was cool. Although I've never been to Italy - I'm hoping that this must be what it is like.
• Watched 8 hours of Soprano's this weekend. We came up with the novel idea of catching up to the current season (which is 6 btw) by watching all the prior seasons' via Netflix. I promptly added the DVD's to my queue. All 5 seasons at 4 discs per season and 4 episodes per disc. I did the math later... (5 x 4 x 4 = 80). Yea. That's 80 friggin hours! We're only 1/2 the way through the first season and we are already getting tired... I must say though that we both agreed that even though the first season is old (1999) it is very good. It's not like one of those shows that takes a couple seasons to get good. This is good from the start.