Sebastian’s Quiver

I haven’t given any reading updates lately, plus it’s been about a week since I posted photos of the Great Outdoors, so I figured that I would do both.

Sebastian and I have been reading the classic Goodnight Moon most nights at bedtime.  He loves looking at the drawings and the more read it, the more he pays attention to it.  We’ve also been reading Lord Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon, which we just finished this evening.  It’s quite good; I recommend it to everyone.  Several weeks ago we also started reading War and Peace.  Yes, that War and Peace.  We got through Chapter 1, but we haven’t yet started Chapter 2.

Juliann, Sebastian and I loaded the car up on Sunday and headed out to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.  This week’s trip was quite a bit closer than the previous few - it was a 15 minute drive to the park in Southeast Portland (we live in Northeast).  I expected it to be nice, but it was even nicer than I had expected.  It was different levels (all stroller/wheelchair accessible) with very nice bridges and waterfalls and great landscaping.  I heartily recommend it to anyone willing to pay $3 to spend an hour or so walking around some really beautiful rhododendrons and azaleas and other nice flowers and trees.  Sebastian stayed awake for the entire excursion and he enjoyed the brightly colored flowers and the wildlife and the ponds and waterfalls.

This past Thursday, one of my oldest and dearest friends just happened to be in Portland on business so we got together and hung out a bit.  I’m glad he got a chance to meet Sebastian (and vice versa).  We got a chance to eat some Thai food, drink some fancy beers (some too wheaty, some too stout) and talk about fatherhood and recommendation engines and Shanie and her sheets.  A grand time was had by all.

So here are some photos of various things.  As usual, please visit the photoblog to catch up on all the photos, the below which are just a sampling.

No one will really care about this story.

Back in the day, when I was a skater, I used to skate with a guy named J.  That period after the J was for the end of the sentance, not for the abbreviation of the name J.  J was his name.  No period.  Just J.  I can go on and on about this story or that story about J (ask him about Shanie, or how we were in the Closing Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics together) and I can go on and on about all the businesses that we were going to start (e.g., online menu system back in 1996).

Well, J and I were both inline skaters.  We skated mostly in Piedmont Park, but we often ventured around the city on our skates, especially the Monday and Wednesday night skates where we skated around Midtown, Downtown, Georgia Tech and other places around the city.  I’m not sure where I’m going with, but I guess that point is that J is one of my closest friends even though I don’t see him very often (since Atlanta, he’s lived in Baltimore, San Francisco, Boston, and now Northern Virginia).

Sooooo….during our skate days we were going to start a t-shirt company geared towards skate punks and other ‘cool’ GenXers and GenWhy’ers.  The name of the company was going to be Adrenaline.  We sketched out ideas for t-shirts and logo ideas and everything we would need to start our company.  Unfortunately, we were classic GenX slackers and never took the idea off the drawing board.  Where am I going with this?  One of our ideas was going to be to use the chemical designation of adrenaline for one of our t-shirts.  Well, guess what came in the mail last week?

Yes, almost 15 years after we hatched the t-shirt idea, J designed and created the shirt for my son.  One day, after J and/or I hit it big we can start up our t-shirt company.  Maybe one day.