by the way for anyone who's reading...

we DID go skiing last weekend.
it was totally totally rad.
i was very, unfathomably bad.
i hurt my knees and played in the snow
i am 25 and will never really know
how to ski but love it.

mike (AKA Sexy husband who is mighty on skis), on the other hand, was very good. he tried to teach me a bit, but i liked the safe 'green' adventure of Rainbow Road. He on the other hand took off a couple times with our accomplished snowboarding nephew JT. I had fun with Alex (our niece) trudging through the snow and getting lost... Thanks Stanley's. We had a great time. Pics to come when my hubby puts them on. i am techo dumb. love to all. kate

Working for the Weekend

A brief rundown of how the rest of the week plays out:

Tuesday: Go to work, look forward to Friday, come home, spend time with Kate.
Wednesday: Go to work, look forward to Friday, come home, spend time with Kate.
Thursday: Go to work, look forward to Friday, go to home group, spend time with friends and Kate, come home, pack for and look forward to Friday
Friday: Have Kate drop me off at work, run from work to the MAX station at 4:30 PM, ride public transit through downtown to the airport, meet Kate at said airport, hop on a plane bound for Tahoe, meet the Stanley's and hit the slopes.

I love my job and I love my life, but this is definately one of the weeks where Friday is the carrot on the string that's keeping me going.

family supper

Last night was the evergreen community's semi-monthly community supper. This time, it happened to be just about a mile down the road at the Leonardo's. Going to dinner straight from a nine-hour workday can be exhausting, but there's nothing like a room full of laughter and good conversation to cap off the day. More pics here.

technology,etc.

So, my posts have been sparse of late. I remember when I used to treat writing as a discipline, with goals of x amount of pages per day. Nowadays it seems I'm lucky to jot an email or two per week. What I could chalk up to laziness, I'll instead blame on the fact that our upstairs neighbors moved out, with the convenience of free wi-fi in tow, and now I'm left with dial-up, which is a demotivator in itself. I guess now I sound picky, impatient and maybe even more lazy. There's probably a bit of truth in there, but we'll move on.

I've been reading 'The Rise of the Creative Class' by Richard Florida. It can be dense at times, but it's basically about the current shift from a labor or resource-based economy to a more creativity-driven economy that Florida claims we're experiencing. He focuses largely on the geographic centers of creativity, arguing that high-tech and other companies that put a high premium on employee creativity are having to relocate to where the most talented folk play, instead of the other way around. In his Creativity Index, which is a complex calculation of the most creative cities based on things like the Bohemian and tolerance index, he ranks the most creative U.S. Cities. As a Texan I'd like to state that Austin was number one with a bullet, and as a recent Portlandian I'd like to note that it finished number six with cities like San Francisco and Seattle falling in between. Portland did rank 1st or 2nd (I can't remember) in the tolerance index, about which I quote:

Figuring out how to make national and regional economies grow and compete is the practical aspect of my work. Fomenting creative activity is obviously crucial, and U.S. regions that have done it best thus far do not accomplish it just by building stadiums, recruiting factories or retail chains, or starting business incubators. The creative process flourishes in places that provide the broad ecosystem which nurtures and supports creativity and channels it into innovation, new firm formation and ultimately economic growth and rising living standards.

If anyone's interested, New Orleans, Buffalo and Louisville were at the bottom of the barrel.