Priorities II

I fear that my post is really going to showcase the different levels of maturity of M and me. While she was having all of these great experiences in Las Vegas, it is now my turn to tell what I did. When M decided to go to Las Vegas to visit her friend and see Jr’s birthmom, I though that it would be a great opportunity to get my cousin to come out and keep me company while she was gone. My cousin and I have always been close. We are similar enough in personality that we get along great and different enough in our tastes to keep it interesting. When he got here, I told him that my goal was to make it so that he could hardly stay awake at work when he got back. I think that I accomplished this, but it also had the same affect on me.

The evening my cousin flew in, we decided to go to happy hour at Stanfords. I'd always heard about happy hour, but since I don't drink, I had never had occasion to go. When the appetizers are at most $3 and we could eat a ton of food for not a whole lot of money, I now realize what I've been missing. It was great.

The next day we got up and drove to Multnomah Falls. My cousin wanted to hike to the top of the falls, so that's what we did. As it turns out, I was in a little better shape than him (sorry dude, it's true). We hiked back down and drove to Hood River. We had lunch there and then drove up Mt. Hood to look at some of the local ski resorts. We didn't get a real early start because we were out late the night before, so by the time we got back into Portland, it was getting kinda late. However, because it was later, we decided to hit another happy hour. This time we ate at McCormick & Schmicks. Again another fabulous meal of appetizers for not a whole lot of money.









Saturday we got up late, once again and headed on down to Saturday's Market. It was fun to see all of the crazies out. After hanging out there and eating, we got on the max and went to Pioneer Courthouse Square. Again, we saw more crazies. After a while we got bored and then drove up to the Rose Gardens. We still had some time to kill and since I have been contemplating replacing our Honda in a year or so, we hit the Acura dealership and I test drove a new Acura TL Type-S. It was awesome. I need to make a lot more money than I do in order to afford it. Later that night we met up with some friends and after we realized that our "free" tickets to a comedy club were not really free, we ended up at Vill.age Inn. We went back over to our friends' house for some Nintendo Wii.

The next day was our coast tour. We drove out to the Tillamook Cheese Factory (one of my absolute favorite places) and sampled some cheese and got some food. Then we drove to Pacific City and hung out at the beach for a little while. When we drove to Lincoln City and messed around there for a while. We had dinner at Moe's and then started back to Portland. My cousin and I had an ongoing bet to see who could go the longest without diarrhea while he was here. Unfortunately for me, around Sheridan, I lost and had to drive into town to find a bathroom. We made it back home and hung out for a bit. Then in one more last effort to go to happy hour, we went back to Stanfords for dessert.





Monday finally came and we didn't get up any too early. Finally we got ready, went to lunch and then drove out to Woodburn. After that we had to stop by the house to get his stuff and we were off to the airport. I dropped him off and then went back to the office. That evening, M and Jr. got back from LV and we resumed life together again.