A Perfect Portland Night

Tonight was one of those perfect Portland nights. It is dry and cool…in the upper 50s. After dinner we stopped by Broadway Books where I purchased, among other things, Al Gore’s new work The Assault on Reason. So with the girls in bed and Liz happily entertained by the television I built a small fire in the back yard and camped out there reading for several hours as Hugo and Hazel, our two pups, cheerfully sat by the fire keeping warm and staying on the lookout for a raccoon that has been visiting our house of late. Two chapters into Gore’s full fronted defense of Enlightenment thinking and American-style democracy (with appropriate post modern inspired caveats) my initial review is “two thumbs up” for the book. Tomorrow it will rain again (after all, the Rose Festival Parade is tomorrow and tradition demands that the parade be rained on) but tonight was one of those nights that remind you why we live in Oregon.