We spent Memorial Day Weekend 2011 in the Hood River area thanks to an invite from friends. Each day we enjoyed a fantastic view of the Columbia River and even caught a glimpse of Mt. Adams on Saturday (bottom-left photo). If you want a view and be just a few blocks from downtown Hood River I highly recommend checking out the Riverdell Vacation Rental! Every day we walked from Riverdell to downtown whether to shop1 or feed ourselves (or both).

I am a coffee snob. There I said it. Yes, I am fortunate to live in the Northwest where some of the greatest roasters were born. And as much as I like Stumptown I also get bored with the same thing over and over. That’s why I love exploring the many, many, many options I have nearby. This past weekend it was Coava. In their own words… Coava is a family of hard working people who love coffee.

Bikes have always played a large part in my life. I vividly remember each bike all the way back to my first Big Wheel1…one of the originals in the early 70s. The first monumental bike purchase for me occurred in 1982. For a year I had been working on my parents and grandparents to buy me a Honda three wheeler. I was totally consumed with the idea of having my own three wheeler…my cousin had three Honda ATVs which I loved to ride anytime we went to his house.

Instead of working on My Everyday Things project last night I spent over two hours captivated by slide decks from Note & Point. That small diversion led me to rethink the font I was using on this site…and once I started thinking about fonts it was all over. After hours and hours (and hours) of dinking around I decided to try Google’s web fonts versus me hosting them. We’ll see how that goes…it slightly goes against the simplicity that I am after with this site, but I still feel compelled to try.

Today Ben Brooks posted his list of apps he would buy first if he had to start all over again. So why not join in on that fun? My list of apps I would buy first: Dropbox - duh Backblaze - backup computer and 2 Drobos 1Password - manage all passwords Aperture - photo management and editing OmniFocus - manage my tasks OmniGraffle - draw pretty pictures (I’m a software architect) Sparrow - Gmail client Reeder - RSS reader TextMate - robust text editor FontCase - manage my font fetish LittleSnapper - take/manage screenshots Acorn - cheap, lightweight image editor (I no longer use Adobe Photoshop even though I have CS5) Alfred - launcher/productivity app TextExpander - excellent timesaver, just get it SuperDuper!