Hey everybody, how was your Thanksgiving (if you are from the US)? Mine was quite eventful. The wife and I did our annual road trip up to Port Towsend, WA to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Along the way we decided to stop through Portland and, you know, buy a house. Yes that's right, we bought a house! We've been talking about it for months now, and the Monday before Thanksgiving, we met with a realtor, spent all day driving around the city, and ended up putting in an offer on a brand new "Portland four-square" craftsman style brand new green home! We checked out a bunch of homes throughout the day and ended up picking a house already being built in the St. John's neighborhood in the North part of the city. Here's a bit of a preview:

And when it's done it'll look a little something like this:

Pretty nice, eh? We love the San Francisco area but getting into our first home here would have been very difficult and we would have had to make a lot of compromise. We considered a ton of cities and ultimately decided on Portland. When we went we were just about sold, and spending time there really nailed it for us (obviously). We met up with our good friend Colby and his lady, Abby, who helped show us the town.

He used tricky tactics such as feeding us delicious, amazing donuts, coffee, and beer to convince us that it was the place to go. And we're glad he did! They are a couple of awesome people and we're very excited to be their neighbors.

And I must mention that if you are a nerd like me, and love nerdy computer/code books, you MUST visit the Powell's Books Tech store—it's basically the Mecca of nerd book stores, I was totally blown away and considered just moving in there. It has everything! Code books old and new, books on engineering, physics, math. It's basically like Amazon in person. And we tried a number of delicious donuts from Voodoo, including the maple bacon donuts, the Cap'n Crunch and Fruit Loops donuts, the "Miami Vice", and a few others, all of which were, without question, the best donuts I've ever eaten.

And one of the best parts is that I will continue to work with Cuban Council! My talented photographer wife is going to have to do some hard work to establish herself there when we move, so if you know anyone who needs some top notch photography, spread the good word and get in touch!

We won't be moving until probably mid-late March of 2009, so if you are a Bay Area buddy of ours and want to do some hanging out, let's get it done!