Stay in Portland

Stay in Portland

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My first stop was the Bally Total Fitness Club in Beaverton, OR (right on the southern edge, just outside of Tigard, OR). It was nice to shower after the trip.
I had pretty much decided I would be staying in the Beaverton, OR area and so had my mail forwarded to the post office there. I was able to pick up a big packet of mail (as I had been redirecting my mail there for two weeks). That worked ever so smoothly.
I then went to the Beaverton, OR library and was able to get a library card. They weren't very familiar with the General Delivery address, but seemed impressed with my inch thick packet of mail, all addresses to Beaverton, OR. So, I am back to reading library books without any gap to speak of. Yippee! Sadly, they and all the other libraries in Washington County have a one hour limit on internet access.
The Tigard, OR library accpets the Beaverton library card, but their internet access doesn't use the same password as they do in Beaverton; there I had to choose a password while in Tigard everyone enters SAM as the password. It makes me suspect that I can only use one hour of internet access in each library.
On Tuesday, September 24, 2002, I spent the day visiting the local temporary employment agencies. There were several of them, but all of them were regular employment agencies who sometimes did 'temp to hire'. My six week stay in Oregon was not long enough to be of interest to them. So it looks like I will be back to Labor Ready. This is the office in Tigard, OR. It is very close to the Tigard, OR library shown above.
Tuesday evening I was able to go the Syda Yoga Center in the Galleria mall (shown here). I have seen lots of Galleria malls, but this is the first one I have seen in a renovated building in a renovated 'historic' district. It is in downtown Portland and so parking is not so good (though much of the street parking becomes free parking at 6PM and on Sundays which is when they meet).
The fourth and fifth floors of the Galleria are designated as office space. However, there are lots empty offices and lots of not-for-profit groups seem to have facilities there. I imagine the rent is pretty cheap for the offices. Here is an interior view from the third floor (specialty shops) looking down and the center section of the 'mall'. Somewhat similar to traditional Galleria malls, but definitely distinct.
I would guess there were about 25 people at the Satsang that evening. The commute in was real easy as everyone was headed out. Getting back was also easy at it was 9PM and I5 goes directly to Tigard, OR. If the parking is not bad it should be very nice. Portland has put in a light rail line from the suburbs into the historic district. Here is one of their trains.
As the local libraries have one hour limits on their internet access, I am investigating alternatives. This is the library at the Portland Community College. It has fine internet access, but parking is real tight on weekdays. We will have to see how parking is on evenings and weekends. I will hope that it is much better and not for fee ($2 per day for anything on campus when parking is restricted).
Here is the Bally Total Fitness Club in Tigard, OR (pronounced Tie-gard, not Tig-ard I learned today). However, the aerobic schedule shows that this is the Lake Oswego, OR Bally, even though my state map says it is in Tigard, though right next to Lake Oswego. I assume Lake Oswego is more prestigious than Tigard. There are three different Bally's around the Labor Ready, so it looks like I will end up stopping at which ever one is on the way back from a job.
On Thursday my brakes started grinding and braking in pulses, which was not a good sign. Saturday morning I took them by Sears Automotive. They are in a separate building from a really big mall, Washington Square. It was less than $250 to have my front brakes repaired and I only needed one new rotor (the first to go after over 227,000 miles). They were done by 10:30AM which left me the rest of the day to play.
My regular food store is still Fred Meyer as they have two that are close to each of the Bally's that I usually use. However, another store I found is WinCo which is a sort of Home Depot of food stores (down the orange warehouse design motif). They have some really great prices, better than Wal-Mart Supercenters in some cases. All their prices are pretty good with Fred Meyer sometimes being better. Albertson has Patio dinners (which now have a Tamales and Enchilada dinner that you can't get with Banquet and has more food than the Banquet entries) and a really good long term sale on bagged cereals, so I stop by there when they are convenient.
Here is the library at Lewis and Clarke college. It has very good hours and fine parking on weekends and evenings. It also has the only library in the area which allows editting of images. Yippee! All the pictures from the last couple of weeks which required you to turn your head to make sense of them, now make easier sense when viewed directly. They have plenty of terminals and great access, but you have to ask the Reference librarian to log you in (though she didn't seem bothered at all to do it).