This week I was back to work, after last week’s work-related trip to Portland, Oregon. I attended the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, where I took some classes and attended some sessions to try and gain some useful new information for my work in web development at CBD.
You can see some more pics from the conference and Portland here.
I had some free time after the convention had ended, so I took what I’m sure must have been the world’s shortest trip to Seattle, Washington. Having never been there, I figured I would rent a car and drive up for a quick visit, but what should have been just a three hour drive ended up being a bit over five hours due to a diesel spill that blocked all four lanes of I-5 North. So I ended up arriving around 6 p.m. and leaving just after 9 p.m. to head back to Portland. I got to see the Space Needle, ride the Seattle Center Monorail, visit the Science Fiction Museum / Experience Music Project, and that’s about it! I’ll just consider it a fact-finding mission for when our family has the opportunity to take a real trip to Seattle. It definitely appeared to be worth at least one nice long visit.
You can see some more pics from Seattle here.
In present news, we continue to work on the greenifying of our lifestyles, as Rebecca has written. We’re also continuing the work on renovating our condo; while both of us were away, we had a contractor come and renovate our deck. We now have a nice, safe, sturdy new deck, which should add to the value of our home and provide extensive enjoyment for our family. I’ll get some photos of it up once we have cleared away some of the supplies from various projects we’re working on. The next big things will be to turn our basement into usable living space, and to put in an inside staircase from the first floor to the basement.
My parents and sister and brother-in-law are going to be coming out to visit soon, and before we know it, August will be over and we’ll be moving on to the busy wedding season of September!
As for Catherine updates, I think I’m going to post some of those over on my sadly-neglected daddy blog, so stay tuned there for more details!