welcome to portland as i walk you through our current state of affairs

we arrived in portland yesterday evening, 6 hours behind schedule into portland. we took the amtrak train, and spent the majority of our time in the lounge car, talking about Fernando: An Immigrant's Tale, the film we're planning to make on Julian's Portugese father, and having contests drawing redwoods and writing 10-word poetry. it's impossible to compare the day-long journey on the train to the 3-day bus trip with greyhound; there's so much room for fun on trains. when we arrived in portland, uncle rob and aunt theresa were there waiting, as was julian's cousin and friends. julian left with his cousin, and alex and i left with the fam. rob is a 50-year-old tree stump grinder and does various other jobs that i am not clear about. theresa is an assistant manager at a disney store in the clackamas mall. theresa complains to rob that they don't do anything fun anymore because he never takes off weekends in the summertime. he loves his job too much, he says. we drove around portland for about as much time as we walked around it, most of the time being told about what buildings are and looking for the Halprin fountain that Alex studied for hours, OR SO HE CLAIMS. our plan for the evening is to spend some time with julian and his cousin, then to go see dan deacon perform and to watch his collaborative psychedelic, arnold schwarzenegger film clip-infused musical extravaganza called 'ultimate reality'. rob and theresa have 3 cats, 2 dogs, and a bird. the cats are a calico mix named frida, a retarded persian named buster, and another cat whose breed i do not know named tova. the stories of their rescues are horrifying. buster is retarded because he was starved and kept in a box large enough for nothing but him for the first few weeks of his life.