The trip so far (continued)

Where did I leave off?

Oh, right. Thursday.

Like I said, that day we did not have a gigantic drive ahead of us, so we opted to do a little sight-seeing in Jacksonville (fee non ay! [I really cant stop doing that, Im sorry]) first.

Jacksonville (fee non ay!) is this little town that has maybe 1000 people living in it. (Maybe more, we didnt see the entire town, but i cant imagine that its population is more than 5000.) The entire downtown area is all walking distance, and many of the buildings [and homes] were built in the 1850s - 1880s, so its quite the historic little town. And the fact that it is located in lush green forests only adds to its charm.
While walking around, we saw many many cats just roaming free. The weird thing is, they were all orange. Or had some orange fur on them. It mightve even been the same cat, stalking us. We also saw several ginormous squirrels. I think in another 500 million years or so, those squirrels are going to be running that place. So, you know, be prepared.

We had lunch in The Mustard Seed Cafe, which had some awesome food, and everyone that came in knew each other, and they were all nice and they had Pepsi, of course. After that, we walked up to the town cemetary, because cemetaries are interesting, and because we are morbid. :)
The cemetary probably has more inhabitants than the town.

But thats okay, because that place was really cool. While we were there, we ran into a woman that worked there, and she filled us in on some of the projects that the city has going on with regard to the cemetary - fixing up some of the old plots, completely doing a census of sorts regarding who is buried in what graves, warding off zombies, that sort of stuff.

By around 2pm, we decided to head toward Corvallis. While on the way we drove through Eugene, which.... wasnt all that fab, sadly. Granted, we only drove through one little bit of it, and there could be many other parts of Eugene that are lovely, but we certainly didnt see them that day. Springfield was slightly better, but overall, I think if I had my druthers, Id pick Jacksonville (fee non ay) or Medford as a place in Oregon to live over Eugene or Springfield.

Got to the hotel (the Salbasgeon, which for the first couple of days I refered to as Sebastian, until I learned that it derived its name from 3 types of fish - salmon/bass/sturgeon) around 6ish. Walked across the street to KFC for dinner, came back, and watched the most entertaining episode of Survivor in a LONG time, then took the girls swwimiing for a little while before finally settling back in for the night.

Friday

This was the first official day of the conference, although registration didnt begin until noon.

This is going to sound bad, especially since it was just two days ago, but ...I dont remember what we did on Friday. We did the welcome speech thing...and I know the girls ran around, but I cant remember what the mass majority of the day consisted of, until the pajama party at 8pm. In the morning, Harper, Irina and I had the free breakfast (which was quite deliciious, actually) and Saren adn Steph drove down to Sunnyside Up - a local restaurant where many of the conference attendees were having a pre-conference get together.
The pj party was fun. And wild. It started off with a giant duck duck goose game (although it seemed that adults either werent invited, or simply werent joinng in by choice. I shouldve broken out of my comfort zone and sat in with them, but didnt.) and it morphed into a game of Simon Says, and balloon sword fights, and Dance Dance Revolution and Connect 4 and Blink and knock knock jokes and screaming and running around and fun...

Saturday

This isnt going to be in order, just a list of things that happened, as they come back to me:

- Had dinner at Sunnyside Up. That was really cool. They have this brilliant idea of putting trivial pursuit cards on the tables. hee! Awesome way to kill time while waiting for your food. Plus, lots of local art on the walls, and a very funny sign on the outside door (Steph took a picture of it, so I wont ruin the surprise) Themenu was a little too... new age? hippy? whole foods?...something... for my comfort zone, but i enjoyed the turkey sandwich, and they had Pepsi, so it was all good.

....and again, im gonna cut this short and finish up later...