Cool things lately have included:
Last Saturday, I and hundreds of others got to play in a new waterpark. This is because the company we work for built it: McMinnville, Oregon's Evergreen Wings & Waves Waterpark, owned by Del Smith, the owner since the 1990s of the Spruce Goose. THAT ENTIRE PREVIOUS SENTENCE IS TRUE. Also true? A 747 is built on top of the park. Four of the building's slides start up in the fuselage. (This is time-lapse video of the plane being lifted by two cranes onto the roof of the partially-completed building in May 2010, just over a year before the park opened.) Anyway, it's open (its ribbon-cutting was Monday the 6th, the anniversary of D-Day), and it's cool and neat, and we got to use it for free. I rode each of the four big slides. The steps to the slides go up near the 747's wings. I was amused to see the "Not A Step" message printed on the wings, because it reminded me of that fight scene on the wing in Die Hard 2. I also was glad there wasn't direct sunlight into the stairwell, because my paleness could possibly in direct light be a weapon. Anyway. Fun! Also fun that day: the music release party for hip-hop artist/newly-acquired Portlander Pwn Toney and his album Star Pilot's Lament. I got back to Portland, ate on Hawthorne, and attended (at the Brite Spot restaurant/ Space Room bar) the party among a bunch of the Portland media people I know, Pwn Toney supporters all. Toney played the album and did more general DJ'ing. I left before he started his second run-through of the album, so I missed the woman who asked him to stop playing his music and play something else, but thank goodness Twitter later let me know what had happened, so I could do an entry about it. I successfully donated blood Monday night, and also successfully rehydrated after it. Last time I donated, honestly, I didn't do that as well as usual, and got dehydrated, and got loopy. I didn't do that this time. Also, my special post-donation meal was a pork sandwich at Vendetta, the bar that used to host Geek Trivia until it outgrew the place, and also where, last year, I won my trip to San Diego Comic Con. Pork's a good food to eat after donating blood, I remembered the bar's pork sandwiches (and its pickled veggies), and had those along with a 7-Up and lots of water. Very important, water, especially then. Tuesday's special trivia night: the Quizzy Trivia event "Testicide," a bigger-prizes contest that was held on North Mississippi. My three-person team from the Wednesday night trivia contests at Jolly Roger SE didn't win but did pretty well, considering our competition. One question we answered correctly was identifying the gland that's connected with the duodenum, which we answered "pancreas." When the (ever increasingly drunk) guy leading the quiz said that that was the answer, I raised my arms and yelled "Thank you, 'Weird Al' Yankovic!" Aaaaaaaaand last night, I joined another team, the five-person team I'm on for this weekend's event Geek Olympathon. We planned some of our strategy for the weekend, while sitting at a table on the sidewalk on a temperate (but still sweatshirt-friendly; it's been cool in Portland) evening. I even practiced a long jump. Because one of the events I'll do is jumping over a bunch of comic book long boxes. Yes, this will be a thing. *smiles*