Are you a WordPress blogger who wants to wants to take your blog to the next level? Then you need to join us at WordCamp Portland on Saturday, September 27th at CubeSpace.

You don’t have to be a hardcore technical type or programmer to attend. (Hell, you don’t have to be technically gifted to present - I’m living proof of that!) Instead, noted WP blogger Lorelle Van Fossen will kick things off at 9 am with her keynote: Changing Lives with WordPress. We’ll have a ‘Ask the Experts’ panel, speakers including local luminaries like Josh Bancroft, Rick Turoczy, and Marshall Kirkpatrick, breakout sessions, unconference sessions for attendees to self-organize themselves on an ad-hoc basis, and more.

This all-day conference will cost you a mere 10 dollars - which includes a t-shirt, meals, and beer. Yes, there will be beer - in fact, Our PDX Network is more than happy to be ponying up for a keg (or two) to help support WordPress Portland…!

So head on over and register now, will you? I need to start figuring out how much this is going to cost me already…

I live in a hell hole out by SE 122nd and Division. When I moved out there, I was under the wild delusion that the neighborhood was improving. It’s getting worse. I live so far out there that you have to set your clock forward an hour when you come visit because you cross a time zone to get out to my house. We moved out there two years ago thinking that we would be out there a short while, and then we would move in closer. Now with the economy, we’re kind of stuck. Or at least we feel that way in our more self-pitying moments.

There is a psychological boundary at 82nd Avenue. Once you get out past it, you are into the hinterland. You may have a Portland address, but you are nestled into the plumber’s crack of Gresham. Good luck getting your friends to come visit. Good luck getting home after work in a reasonable amount of time. If you enjoy the entropy of decay, and being afraid, and hearing the sound of guns at night, and having meth heads rummage through your recycle bins, and occasionally being burglarized, then you will love my neighborhood.

At the nexus of the hell hole, there are various businesses: pawn shops, a swap meet, a trailer park, pizza, burgers, intimate ladies’ apparel, cheap cell phones, meat, tire repair, shoes, drugs, and laundry.

There is also a decent grocery store that prides itself on a particular thing: Cheep Cheep Chicken Monday.

That’s right folks, they sell more Cheep Cheep fried chicken than any other grocery store around. Just ask one of the deli workers and they will tell you that they are Number One. They get on the intercom and say, “Good evening Grocery Store X shoppers, it’s Cheep Cheep Chicken Monday. Come on over to the deli counter and load up on some delicious Cheep Cheep Chicken at a great price. We just brought a fresh batch out of the fryer, so get yours while it’s hot.”

I usually order the 8 piece dark meat combo, which is drumsticks and thighs. The price is certainly cheap at $5.50. I cannot comment on any “cheeping” sound that the chicken might make, but I am not around when they throw it in the fryer, so I might be missing that part. When I purchase my chicken, I rarely bother with the jojos or the distracting mayonnaise slurry salads. I don’t want anything interfering with the absorption of my Cheep Cheep Chicken.

There is another reason that I have chicky allegiance to Grocery Store X. Grocery Store Y once sold me a chicken thigh that did not have any meat or bones - it was simply a large glop of chicken batter. It weighed about a half pound. I ate it simply for the novelty of it, and so I could gross out my friends, but I no longer buy cheap chicken from Grocery Store Y.

When I get home, I put a few pieces on a plate and grab a stack of napkins and crack open an ice cold Pabst tall boy. I like mine smothered in ketchup, salt, and pepper (the chicken that is, not the tall boy). I love this stuff. I eat so much of it that I get the Cheep Cheep Chicken sweats. I go into a Cheep Cheep Chicken vision quest and just lay on the couch in a stupor of grease and sodium, and my perspective on life changes as I think of a happier Cheep Cheep time and a happier Cheep Cheep place. After eating, I stop feeling sorry for myself and notice that I’m feeling pretty darn good about things. And I enjoy the view out the window. Oh, and there is one of my nice neighbors walking by. With a lovely, well-behaved dog in tow.

What’s your favorite comfort food?

Upon taking a late lunch this afternoon, I walked over to the Fleur de Lis Bakery. They know my name at the bakery because I’m in there so often. I like to think my enthusiasm about the restaurant sent customers their way. Today, I opted for the roast turkey sandwich and a basil lemonade. From the first sip of the lemonade, I was hooked. It’s good stuff and tastes like summer in a cup. (I’m always trying to capture “summer” in some kind of food or drink…)

On my walk back to the office — sandwich and lemonade in tow — I thought, “I’m going to miss this place.” You see, in September, a job change will take me to a new neighborhood with new-to-me food options. It’s exciting, if only because I will be able to find a new favorite to rave about to friends and co-workers alike. At the same time, it means starting from the beginning on becoming a regular.

In the meantime, I’m doing my best to revisit places in the Hollywood area. Sure, I can always pop in on the weekends, but it’s not the same.

My family loves Fire on the Mountain. And what’s not to love? Tasty wings in a variety of sauces, onion rings to die for, sweet potato fries, local beers on tap…mmmm.

In fact, my teenage son likes it so much that he requested his Last Supper (pre-tonsillectomy, that is) at the E. Burnside location of FOTM. We ordered our usual - 36 wings (For three people? No, we don’t eat them all there. Yes, the leftovers are gone in less than 24 hours. See, I have the human vacuum cleaner [aka growing teenage boy] living with me, so ALL leftovers disappear in 24 hours, okay?) - and settled in for a rousing game of ‘let’s watch Mom spank the kids at answering Trivial Pursuit questions ’cause they’re all from her old and decrepit era’ while we waited for our food.

I managed to use ‘Richard Nixon!’ as an answer five times over when we realized that we still hadn’t received our wings (although the onion ring appetizer was long gone by now.)

Turns out our order had gotten lost - so after profuse apologies and offers to get us other food while we waited, they insisted on comping us another 36 wings “next time you’re in.”

Now that the kid’s throat is healed and Mom’s officially On Vacation (Oregon Coast, here we come tomorrow morning - just in time for the Storm of the Year, ugh…), I figured it was time to cash in the comp, so ordered wings to go - plus some sweet potato fries while I was at it this time.

When I showed up to grab the order, they refused to take my card - instead, they insisted that I take the fries gratis as well. And they refused to even let me leave a tip.

Of course, I refused to listen to that refusal - I worked in restaurants for too long & know to leave a tip based on the total amount of what I would have paid, so dropped a five spot in the tip bucket anyway. (You know to do this too when you’re using a coupon or getting a discount - right? RIGHT?)

Fire on the Mountain gets the customer service Gold Medal for the week. And, not coincidentally, FOTM just won a customer for life.

Funny how that works, isn’t it…?

My family spent last week vacationing in Newport. We’ve been going back there every summer for the last several years, so we have a pretty good handle on where to go and what to do once we’re there. This year however we did something new, and it was a lot of fun — we made our own glass floats.

The Edge Art Gallery can be found along Highway 101 just south of Newport. While art galleries seem to appear at approximately quarter-mile intervals along the coast, the Edge is a bit more than just a gallery — it’s also a glass blowing studio. We always visit the Edge because we like blown glass, we like what they do with blown glass, and we like watching the artisans while they work.

If you sign up for a glassblowing class, you get to make a glass float under the supervision of one of their glassblowers. You can select up to three different colors to add to your float, whether to have a base or a hook on it, and whether to have a classic float, or a float containing beach sand and shells (a “stuffed” float). If you opt for a stuffed float, you also get to pick out the actual seashells that will be locked inside your float forever.

Children as young as 8 can participate, with the glassblower giving them a little more assistance than he might give an adult. The process is pretty simple, except for the red-hot glowing molten glass part, and involves the application of bits of colored glass to the outside of a blob of glass, heating it until the colored glass melts, and then twisting the blob in a way that will give you the pattern you want. The actual blowing of the float into a sphere is done by the glassblower, but you still have plenty of hands-on moments. My kids and I each made a float, and it was a lot of fun. And the results can be surprisingly lovely.

So, the next time you drive down to the central coast, visit the Edge at 3916 South Coast Hwy, South Beach, Oregon. If you want to visit their website, and potentially buy their stuff online, you can find it here. If you decide you DO want to make a float, make sure you reserve an appointment in advance, and wear closed-toe shoes.