Kelly: my personal recreation manager (part 2)

Girls Night Out

How crazy is it to meet new people and skip the introductions? I went for dinner and a movie last night with Kelly (I knew her before), Lisa, and Emily. We just jumped right in and talked and laughed and had a good time. We tried to get the bus boy in the restaurant to take our picture at the table but none of those pictures worked at all. I'm not sure he'd ever used a camera before, he wasn't even pushing the button down fully, thereby capturing nothing at all.

After we were done dinner the hostess of California Kitchen managed to take a good picture of the four of us.

This was the best self portrait x 4 that I managed to get in front of the poster of the movie we saw. I really liked Becoming Jane, and I definitely never would have seen it if I hadn't been invited out to see it with girlfriends - not the kind of movie Ken and I see together.

Antique Shopping

Today Kelly took me out shopping. We found some really smelly antique shops, some serious junk shops, and a couple of spectacular stores.

This one store Why Not? was probably my favorite. The dress in the window was so cute. The bodice was cut from a vintage piece of needlepoint, and then sewn into a dress with coordinating fabric. I spent the rest of our antiquing trying to find the perfect piece of vintage needlepoint to sew into a dress, but I'm going to have to keep looking.

Why Not? also had these paper crowns that I loved. I loved the music paper, the ribbon, the cameo vintage picture in the middle, and the raised word on the front.

The crown had grommets in the back corners with ribbons strung through them to tie the crown together and adjust the head size, and the inside was printed like a certificate saying:

This Paper Crown is Presented To

______________________

In Commemoration of _____________

On the ___ day of _________ , _____

Presented by __________________

*

Then tonight:

I got Shanghaied

Kelly (my personal recreation manager), with helpful information from Lisa, found out about these tours of underground Portland. The website for these tours gives you the impression that you'll be walking through tunnels under the streets of downtown Portland where kidnapped young men were transported onto boats and forced to work on ships as they sailed to Shanghai.

The tour started in a courtyard behind a bar downtown. We took the kids and they were all repulsed by the cigarette smoke. They were plugging their noses, and pulling their tshirts up over their mouths to breath. They were putting on a bit of a show, but Keith and I made them cut it out (O.K. Emily, so Keith and I are alike). The kids made an instant recovery when our tour guide started in with his stories. He was a very entertaining storyteller and really knew how to share a yarn.

After the initial introduction to the 'history' of the tunnels we all went through a trap door in the sidewalk into the underground.

This is supposedly an opium den, which came with the explanation that the drunk and the stoned were the easiest targets for the Shanghai-ers.

Now here's the thing, we didn't walk through a catacomb of tunnels. I'm pretty sure we didn't get led around more than just the basement of the bar above us. So as much as this tour we took is put forward as historic, I'm thinking maybe it's more like those roadside mystery spots that I've driven by on the highway.

Yes, I'm pretty sure:

I was Shanghaied!