I started out the day at Sunrise Bagels (awesome bagels!) having breakfast with an old friend. I'm driving my mom's car, an older Saturn wagon that has been quite personalized. When I pulled up to the bagel place, my friend took one look and said, "I take it that's not a rental car." This could have been what tipped her off:

Since I had some time to kill before heading out to my dad's near Oregon City, I took a short tour of the neighborhood I grew up in. Every time I go home, I find the old neighborhood less and less recognizable. I drove by the place where my old best friend's house was, and saw this:

The house is completely gone. Just next to the house used to be a pond. We'd go out on my friend's raft in the summertime, or play on the ice when it froze over in the winter. In fact, one time, another friend and I fell through that ice, and I got to walk home soaking wet in near freezing weather. This is what the pond looks like now:

You might notice there is no water. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before this is filled in and houses are built there.

I made it out to my dad's around 1pm to be greeted by the frenzied barking of my dad's dog, Sara, an Australian Red Heeler (aka a cattle dog). Having a herding dog is convenient since my dad owns several head of sheep and Sara seemed to know how to herd instinctually. She has a big bark, but once she warms up to you, she's just like Wally, rolling over on her back so you can rub her belly. She's a cutie:

I then met up with my three nephews and my friend, Melanie, and we headed out to see the season opener for the Portland Winterhawks, the area's major junior hockey team. I bought four adult tickets for roughly $70 - gotta love junior hockey. My nephews don't know much about the game, but they love to watch the fights, and in junior hockey there are a LOT of fights. The Hawks played last season's Memorial Cup winners, the Vancouver Giants, and lost 2-6. Still, it was a fun game to see. I was going to post a highlight video from YouTube that I saw a few days ago, but when I searched for it, I came up with this much better clip from one of their games last season:

The song of the day is "Bad Company" by Bad Company off their 1974 album Bad Company. Wow - creative! My sisters came up with this song last night for me after suggesting about 100 other songs and getting the response, "I've already used it." I was surprised when I looked it up to see how old this song was - I always thought it was from about '79. Good song from a good band.