Portland International Airport is like a huge warehouse that someone built an airport set in, having only heard about airports from an airport promotional brochure. It's bright, shiny, airy, spacious, and all their security appears based on poles and ropes. It immediately tells you that Portlanders are open, friendly, bright, and accessible people. Either that or they're naive and soon about to die in purifying Jihaddic fire.
Anyhoo, we caught a taxi to the house of my friend and coworker Rael. His wife's due Monday, and we had a bbq and talked about work. And by talked I mean bitched. We both work from our homes for O'Reilly, and without officemates we can't gossip or gripe the way that regular workers do. Normally we vent with the help of iChat, but it's great to get together and sync up in real life.
We finally got to the hotel around 9, after William and Raley (my kids) started hurting themselves at the rate of one pint of blood for every three steps attempted. The hotel room is nice (and big enough for the perl5-porters party, thank goodness) and we had a great view of the last few hours of the Jazz and Blues festival going on in the park just outside our window.
Great view and great acoustics. See the movies for a sample.
--Nat
