Passport to Portland

We arrived in Portland at around noon, but were not allowed to check into the hotel until 4. (Why? Just one of the many strange rules we encountered during our stay here.) We also arrived with a digital camera with dead batteries. Although stuffed with restarants and funky/trendy stores, Portland seems to lack the more basic drug/convenience store. Finally, after much wondering, we found this dive that sold over-priced batteries. So here is the first photo of our trip.

This is in one of the many green spaces in downtown Portland. What does it mean? I have no idea.

And here is the (in)famous Powell's books, which covers an entire city block, and has 6 or 7 different colored zones inside so that you can find your way about. It is great, but limited to two small carry-ons, there is only so much time you can spend looking at books you can't allow yourself to buy.

We were staying in the Pearl district, which is significant, apparently. I don't know why.

Finally, we are allowed to enter our room and Thomas does what he wants to do more than anything else--play on his DS. Actually this was fine with me because I hadn't finished writing my paper before leaving Flint. I thought procrastinating would give me a finely tuned mental energy that would power me through it the night before. But it didn't. After wrestling with my laptop for several hours (which, in retrospect was silly because I didn't have easy access to a printer), I gave up and sketched some thoughts out on paper. Good enough. Who is going to attend a talk titled "Body and Self: A Hegelian Analysis of Sex Identity" anyway? (It turns out that quite a few would. Oops.)