It's my birthday!

A few things came together nicely that made for a really fun birthday.  First, I donated blood a few weeks ago.  Normally, you just get water and snacks as a 'reward.'  This time, they handed out buy-1-get-1 coupons to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit at OMSI.  The second was a SQL database conference on Saturday a few weeks ago.  My boss agreed to give me a comp-day by attending this conference.  Put the two together and you get an interesting place to play hooky.

Now all we need is a good excuse to use it.  Enter my birthday (fortunately, Sandi had the day off too or this grand plan would have fallen apart).

We started out with a pre-breakfast snack

 

Followed by a coffee date at Starbucks (which we used a gift card I just got from work for my birthday).

 

We ran a few errands and then headed to lunch.  I was on a bike ride in downtown Portland on Memorial Day and came across Widmer Brothers Brewrey.  I knew that was where I wanted to go on my birthday.  We had a great lunch

on a beautiful but cold day in Portland.

 

We arrived at OMSI in the mid afternoon and dove into all things Sherlock Holmes.  It was a good exhibit with lots of hands-on things to do and learn.  We even got to help solve a crime.

 

We finished the exhibit with just enough time to explore the gift shop and the 'Industry' side of the museum (its old and tired and needs an overhaul badly).

 

After that we decided to take a walk to the Pioneer Square across the river.  By now, our beautiful and cold day turned into a very cold, yet still beautiful night.

 

We walked for about an hour and then headed home for dinner.

 

avocado chicken - mmmm

Last year, we got cheese cake from the Cheesecake Factory.  Since it wasn't broken, there was no reason to fix it.  This year I got Oreo Cookie and Sandi got Vanilla Bean.

 

Sandi and I had such a fun time - what a great birthday!