I woke up early today for the free breakfast (the conference is paying, woo!). They had exactly the buffet that I had yesterday…only $17 cheaper! The watermelon and muskmelon (cantaloupe) were really good. Afterwords I talked with some of my peoples for a while, and then went out in search of a camera. At first I was thinking I might just get an el cheapo disposable one, but its so hard to do anything with that, so I started thinking about just buying an inexpensive digital one.
I walked the 3 blocked over to a nearby Ritz Camera, and after the salesman showed me several cameras, I decided on the Nikon L18. I went with the blue one. The camera can take AA batteries or a rechargeable, which was very important since I didn’t want to have to wait for it to charge up. The camera was on sale, and also, since there is no sales tax here I was like, well…why the fuck not buy this? And it came with an accessory package: some fuji photo paper, a coupon for free cleanings (which I will probably give away), a coupon for free classes (which I will also give away), some rechargeable batteries (precharged), and a 1gb memory card (which isn’t a lot, but it was free). So I got a pretty good deal I think.
After my purchase I hopped on the yellow line and took that up to Old Town (6 blocks). There is a haunted pizzeria up there that sounded interesting, and it was. I managed to get out of there for pretty cheap even though I had a small pizza and a soda (their small is very small). My own pictures here.
Next I went to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden. The garden was amazing, but what really surprised me were the smells. As you walked through the garden there were these light fruity smells that varied from location to location. I took some pictures of this as well.
Afterwords, I caught the blue line back down to the hotel where I promptly fell asleep for about 3 hours. When I woke up I was pretty much starving, so I went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. I am not going to say it was the best steak I have ever had, but it was good (and for $28) it should be.
After dinner I watched Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy in my room (yeah I know I know) before falling asleep.
It was a pretty good day.
Straight up, next level bullshit. 
