We got out of there just in time! I was looking to buy a Portlandia DVD @ the airport “Portland items” gift shop, they didn’t have any, I bought Zombie postcards instead. I showed them to people sitting around us in the departing-flight waiting-area, saying “we’re leaving just in time — this is going to happen tonight!” One fellow sighed, said “sorry for my kids, but they’ve had a full life, and at least I’ll still be alive.”

Weeurd.  The sign the Z’s are destroying, above, I had given a long appreciative gaze a couple mornings before (at about 4:45 a.m.) while returning from dropping “sunny-boy” off at the airport.  The sign was still standing, lit, upright, when I drove by.

Oh? You haven’t heard about this, the zombie apocalypse?  Strange, how it can be kept out of the media.  I think the state of Oregon Ministry of (dis)Information puts a clamp down on derogatory news, so as to not scare away the tourists.  You KNOW HOW BAD FOR BUSINESS news of that sort could be for the region!

The day before this impending Zombie Apocalypse, we went to the P, OR zoo, and fed the Lorikeets.   Rachel and Eddy get up close and personal to a magnificently-colored little beast …

Betty is the first one of our tour bunch to attract one.  Zoo-visitors could purchase little cups of some sort of honey/nectar/bird-syrup — along with the admonitions to wash our hands before and after, DON’T touch them, unless …

(unless) one of them decides to whisper secrets in her ear … Betty said that it wasn’t exactly ‘whispering’ — more like screeching and squawking.  Notice the affectionately-deposited bird excrement on her shoulder.  And that it hadn’t tried to eat her earrings … yet.

Tired ol’ gran-pa with Henry sporting the latest in facial cosmetics — a creamy yogurty paste, some of which he actually ate.

Henry could care less about juggling several of the inquisitive jockeying birds.  I’m holding them up on a stick ~

Rachel / Eddie.  I don’t think Eddie is ready to be a bird-perch just yet.

Henry and Nelson play ball, or crawl, or ball and crawl, at a nearby park.

L – R:  Rachel, Eddie (happily yelling), their friend (forgot her name, Kaylie?) with her mom, Ben just behind with Henry, and Betty off to the right.  An action-packed vibrant nice hot summer day at the municipal pool.

Henry (Alexander) is getting more and more mobile each day.  He’ll need it, when the zombeez come!

Ben takes us to the airport, but not before DIM SUM and the requisite visit to the ChinaTown Dragon.

Mount Hood, guardian to the east of P-town.  Also a lodge halfway up it was the starting pointy for the annual Hood-to-Coast Relay — the grandmuthur/father of all long-distance relays.  That’s ostensibly why we were there, to babysit while Rachel and Ben and Tom (R’s brother.  oh, our son) participated on a team.

I heard the garage door opening our last morning there and rushed out to get a shot of Rachel heading off to work.  She says “it’s only” a 17-mile round trip.  No wonder she’s in shape.  And she chided that I reminded her of the parent taking a pixure as the child goes off to the first day at skool …

Tom, and Eddie, relax and, uh, “chill” after the Hood-to-Coast Relay.

Back home, I’ve been watching Venus in the pre-dawn sky for about ten months now.  It makes the “close” association of it’s bigger brother (appearing as the smaller one) Jupiter.