Highlands Saturday

Because there was a film festival to attend and a new restaurant to try, the bulk of Saturday was spent in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver. 

I attended two separate film sessions at the Festivus Film Festival.  Both were at the Oriental Theater, which is a cool, old theater that I had never been inside. 

Session 1: 2:00 pm “Doc Double” – two documentaries back to back.  These were supposed to be inspiring documentaries about the triumph of the human spirit and so on.  The first one was about surfing and helping kids on Bali surf and get money for school.  It was mostly surfing.  If you’re not a surfer and/or don’t know anything about surfing, all the surfing shots look the same.  It was chilly in the theater so I wrapped myself in the tee shirt I won and nodded off.

The second documentary was the draw for this session – “Conquest of High Passes.”  Disabled cyclist traveling through the Himalayas and persevering.  It turned out to be a little dour.  The whole thing felt like rainy day wrapped in a wet blanket.  I blame this on the cyclist on which the film focused.  He was alternately talking about what an inspiration he was and talking about how horrible everything was. 

The next session wasn’t until 6:00 pm, meaning there was time to check out the area.  Lots of house-shops (i.e. little local shops in converted houses), art galleries, and coffee shops.  In one gallery/framing shop (metro frame works) there were to shop dogs – Greyhounds! 

They also had some art by artist Chris Vance that appealed to me.  This is just one example:

Since the break between sessions was so long, there was time to shoot over to the 32nd/Lowell area for a stroll.  More cute shops.  I love this octopus mural.

Dinner was at Hops & Pie (specializing in craft brew and artisan pizza).   The pizza was pleasantly tasty but the beer on tap was really special.  Here’s a bit of the draft beer menu:

I had the Oaked Arrogant Bastard (you don’t get that on tap too often!):

After dinner it was back to the film festival for Session 2: Laugh Track Short Films.  These were much more satisfying than session one’s documentaries.   Many of them were witty and at least half had me actually laughing out loud!  “Chump and Clump” was my favorite – two animated dudes and their adventures at a bus stop!

Afterwards was the last stop of the evening – Forest Room 5 – for a final beer.  This is somewhere I don’t get to very often because it’s in the Highlands but it’s an eclectic place that has various sized logs for bar stools and old farming and mining films playing silently behind the bar.  It is always pretty crowded. 

That was my Saturday! 

Rare

I'm doing a rare personal post. 

Before I go on about my personal defeat, I have to preface the post.  I realize I am lucky.  I am eating a salad with Sabra hummus, robusto cheese, toasted pita, raw garlic and it's accompanied with clean water and a Stone Cali-Belgie IPA.   I have a roof over my head, my sight is intact, a warm bed to sleep in, etc.  We all have our little issues though.

About two weeks ago gave a presentation to the Transit Alliance Citizens Academy.  The Transit Alliance is an advocacy group for transit and their citizens academy is an attempt to educate "regular" people (i.e. people who don't work in the transportation field) on various aspects of planning and transit. The idea is that they may go back out into the regional community and spread their knowledge of transportation.  Well, it turns out there were at least two people in the class who do work in the transportation field and one of them actually works for my company (!).

I gave a 20-25 minute presentation on a project I have worked on for about 4 years, The Quality of Life Study. It was the first time I'd given the presentation to such a large group and it had been a while in general since I'd presented on the topic at all.  So, bottom line: I absolutely sucked.  Now, you might be thinking, "she's just being hard on herself."  Nope, I got the student evaluations today.  OVERWHELMINGLY , I was described as dry, a bad presenter and even seemed not to know the material (!!). As I mentioned, I've worked on this project as the Program Manager for 4 years.

Long story short, I've been kind of sulking about it all day and have noticed my confidence is down in general.  I never entertained the notion of being a professional presenter, but for goodness sakes, I wouldn't have described myself as downright awful. I know there is an upside to the situation but I don't care, I'm sulking.

Portland y'all! - part III

Saturday, September 27, 2008: Day Three Portland

OK, so Saturday was good too but it was really overshadowed by Friday. In fact, by Saturday morning I was feeling a little...mellow. What better for that than a cappuccino?

Fairly close to the hostel was a bakery we'd been wanting to try, esp. because the associated restaurant was so good: Ken's Artisan Bakery. Arriving at about 8:30 am was the perfect time. There were tables available and a full case of yummy goodness (about 20 minutes later the place would have a line nearly out the door and no empty tables). We both ate some meaty items I'm not going to detail here (but they were wonderful - imagine a _____, gruyere & thyme croissant and a ______ & vegetable quiche). I will say that the peach and blueberry galette (pictured below) was not only beautiful but a delight on the tongue. As you can see our plates (in the background) are stacked - I was supposed to take this little treat to go but couldn't wait.

Next, we set out for the farmers market on the PSU campus. To tout Portland's superb transit, I must say that we had the option to take the free streetcar to the market. Yep, free - they have a "fareless square", which is actually quite large and all transit is free in this area. This is a picture of the cute little street car making its way to us.

Oh, we did stop at Stumptown coffee on the way. Sandy was saving himself that morning for this bit of caffeinated pleasure.
On to the farmers market! Last November when we were in town, the farmers market was just a few stands of this or that - nothing special. This time, however, it was a harvest festival of sorts. Of course there were the tables piled high with mushrooms, fat cucumbers, extra large garlic and leeks but there was also a guitar player with a microphone and a good sized group of watchers/listeners and a chef talking about cooking meat (while actually cooking it), and not one, not two, but three balloon animal makers. One guy was a true artist with those balloons - he made a turtle wrist corsage for a 4 year old girl.

Just a small portion of the weekly farmers market event:
Blackberries, little yellow tomatoes, and strawberries (organic of course):
Look at that burst of color (I'm obviously not referring to the coffee drinking white guy)!
such an amazing variety of tomatoes:The day was fairly uneventful after that, we walked to the Pearl District and through the Nob Hill neighborhood and fell in with the throngs of people out enjoying the sunny afternoon.


Sometime around 5:00pm we made our way to the Deschutes Brewery. I had what was basically a bowl of seasonal mushrooms in broth with chunks of bread and we both shared the beer sampler - the Jubelale was my favorite. Here is Sandy and the samples:


We adjourned to the hostel to drop off some stuff but ended up dozing lightly for about 1/2 an hour, then we headed out to the symphony! We saw Beethoven's Symphony No.9 performed by the Oregon Symphony with a choir at the Arlene Schnitzer concert hall (aka "the Schnitz"). This is Sandy enjoying a pre-concert beverage inside the place - it was stunning.

While I enjoyed the performance, I don't think I've ever sat through the entire 9th symphony before. It was longer than I thought it would be and the cheap seats were hot.

We went to a popular wine bar afterwards and then took one last trip to the Rogue Brewery (we did hit Saint Cupcake earlier in the day). At the hostel we were a giggly mess but tried to be as quiet as possible while preparing for our last night of deep, oxygen-enriched sleep in that playground of a city...