fall is on its way. i can feel it. i can feel the chill in the morning when i leave for work and my almost-daily coffee order has turned back from iced to hot. it's sad, but true. however, labor day weekend gave us one of the last beautifully warm days we'll probably see. so, in honor of that i joined the thousands of other northwesterners...and enjoyed the outdoors. check out the pictures of this grand adventure....
stop one:
i had never been to the rose garden when it was in bloom. i can honestly say it has to be the best smelling place on earth. not only does it have beautiful flowers, and a great view of downtown portland, but it also reminds me of why i love living in this area so much...cultural diversity. we saw and heard so many different ethnic groups....russian, east indian, asian, hispanic, etc, dressed in their national dress and speaking their national language. i love it!
stop two:
we had never been to the waterfront before, sad but true. we always said we should go, just never had, until today. although the willamette is not the most breathtaking river, the view of the city scape is.
stop three:
Superman Returns: The IMAX Experience®
note to self..."superman returns" in imax...not the best experience. there's nothing like seeing lex luthors larger than life bald head on a 72 foot dome screen to make you nauseus. i guess in Kevin Spacey's defense, it wasn't necessarily lex luthor that made me nauseus, but the special effects around him. i'll stick to educational movies at the OMSI theatre the ones with lots of wide shots of scenery and geographical locations, so "greece: secrets of the past" here i come!! aside from making me sick to my stomach, the movie also reminded me of one of my greatest pet peeves...parents who overestimate their small children's ability to sit through a two and a half hour movie. i love it when the climax of a movie is interrupted by a child in front of you standing to stretch and the one behind you asking his parent if they can leave while simultaneously kicking your chair. i'm not bitter, i'm just saying.
for the last couple of years washington state university has been playing an "exhibition" game the first part of the season. that's what i call it, because they pick some random southern team, that they think they can beat, and play them in seahawk stadium. this years chosen team was baylor. let me say that the baylor bears gave us a run for our money. but, in the end, after a really sloppy game, the cougs won. 
it was fun to be immersed in the college atmosphere again, i had missed it. there is a sense of comraderie among cougar fans that you can't explain. you get this feeling that if you needed it, any one of those people would have your back just because you have WSU in common. it's great! there was also something really fun about 14,000 cougar fans invading downtown seattle, which is essentially husky territory. yeah, there was some name calling, but that's all part of the fun!
