The Multnomah Villager

In our quest to become an all-auctions-all-the-time blog, here’s a reminder about the “Give the Arts a Hand” benefit auction, in the auditorium of the Multnomah Arts Center this Saturday, March 3rd from 6PM - 9PM. Yes, “they” say that in the spring, a young man’s thoughts turn to love, but apparently an older person’s thoughts turn to having benefit auctions, since this is about the 200th one I’ve heard about recently. Here’s the blurb from the postcard we all got at the MNA meeting last month:

You are invited to Multnomah Art Center’s first benefit auction. Fine art, gift packages, vacation stays, and more! A fun-filled evening of food, wine, and entertainment.

Registration & Silent Auction open at 6PM. Live auction begins at 8PM.

More information is on the Arts Center’s auction page, at this link. There’s a picture gallery of some of the items. Some pretty nice looking stuff, particularly if you’re into ceramics. A rather long list of things to bid on. Perhaps we’ll stop by.

Wanna make even MORE money off of me? Start stocking Pokemon cards. Suddenly, Jr. V and ALL his friends are OBSESSED with Pokemon.

Actually, I’m kidding about the whole money thing, because I’m never paying retail for Pokemon cards for a 6 year old. Well, not for too much longer anyway.

Now I’m a pretty big nerd, and I play Magic, but I SWORE I would never play Pokemon. I’ve broken this rule, as well as pretty much all my other parenting rules.

Best place for cards close to home = Alternate Universe in Hiilsdale, next to the liquor store. Great store. Nice guy. Good prices.
Best place outside the Village but still close? Hoopla sports cards on BH Highway on the way to Zupan’s. Great store. Hardcore nerd staff. EXCELLENT prices and bulk cards.

Back to Village-related stuff now - but if any of you are y’know having a garage sale and have a bunch of Pokemon cards, or if you guys at Thinker Toys wanna make me a bulk deal on all your remaining unopened 8th Edition Magic boosters - drop the old Villager a line….

There’s been quite a bit of comment lately, both online and off, about the LED speed displays you may have seen posted in various locations around the Village. Just so you know, they are not permanent. There are only a few of them, and the PPB PDOT is moving them around to various locations on some sort of schedule known only to them. It’s possible you might be able to influence their placement by speaking to an officer someone from PDOT? (thanks Brian) But even if that’s true - and I have no idea if it is - it will only be for temporary placement. There’s a pair of them being posted around up in Hillsdale as well. I agree, they are useful at slowing down the traffic (myself included). For my part, it takes effort to get my car down to 20 MPH when coming down Capitol into the Village, and the big LED prompt helps that along!

There was a photo radar truck parked right outside the Multnomah Art Center a few weeks back, in the early morning, so apparently operation “slow down the traffic” is well underway.

I have to be careful talking about this, since I might violate the Terms of Service for a certain very large provider of text-based advertisements currently featured on this site, but you might be interested in knowing just how much residual income I’m pulling in from having these links on my site.

Around $2.00 per week.

Which is fine with me, really, since at this rate it will offset my hosting costs for the year which is my main goal. However, you budding bloggers take note! Now I only get around 100 site visits a day, including RSS feed readers, since my focus is fairly small, so you’re not going to be clocking big clicks, so to speak. Only about 2% of my visits (and even less of my page views) results in a click on one of these ads.

So there you have it - some actual facts about the closely-guarded world of text-based blog ad links. If you’re starting a blog, be ready to eat ramen noodles for while until the clicks start coming in…

I got a request from Mara in my email this morning on behalf of the Silent Auction and Concert to benefit the therapy pool at the MJCC. And here’s the post!

You may have heard about the MJCC Therapy Pool users having to raise funds to keep their (our) pool open. While the MJCC underwent its 12 million dollar renovation, the therapy pool was in danger of closing due to lack of funds.

The pool members rallied and raised enough money to keep the pool open through August 2007. They’re having a silent auction and concert by June Howell and the Deadbeat Daddies at the MJCC’s auditorium on

Sunday April 22
1:30 - 4:30 pm
MJCC 6651 SW Capitol Hwy

Tickets are $36 and can be purchased with a credit card by calling 503-244-0111. H’ors doeuvres and desserts will be served; there will be a no-host bar.

Bid on vacations in Hawaii, Sunriver and Long Beach Washington, or gift certificates from Seasons and Regions, Alba Osteria, Otto and Anita’s as well as many other goods and services. Many Multnomah and Hillsdale merchants have donated generously to this silent auction.

I’d really appreciate a mention on your site. The therapy pool has been open for over 80 years. Through the decades, the pool has been a place for any Portland resident with a disabling condition or injury - regardless of
race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, or economic circumstance - to maintain health and physical conditioning. It would be a great loss to the community if this jewel was to close.

They’ve really done a lot of work over at the JCC, and the facilities are really going to be great when everything is done. I’m there quite often, well downstairs anyway, since Jr. V goes to Kids Corner after school, which he enjoys.

Here’s a link to the MJCC Therapy Pool Webpage and this is a link to the MJCC’s main website.

I mean, I am aware that sometimes streets abruptly end and the re-start as if from nowhere, and that things are’nt laid out on a grid an all, but so far, I’ve not had to resort to using a compass and topo map to find my way around… No so with these people….

Columbia River Orienteering Club explores the Village

So I was clicking around on Village related weblinks today and dropped by the Multnomah Village Lofts website, since construction is moving along apace. Their website actually exists now, instead of being just a placeholder, so I checked out the floorplans. Each plan has a name…

There’s a floor plan on the top floor called “The Villager”. Think I should buy it? It could be the ‘blog World Headquarters!

Unit H floorplan, “The Villager”

Parking and getting in and of of the lots over there is going to be an adventure, especially after the six additional townhouse units go in, but it looks like these units are going to be nice. I’m not looking at the prices, but a few more 400K shared-wall units won’t hurt my property value, unless you know, they’re next door.

Some signature gatherers or something just knocked on my door at 8:45PM! No way was I answering the door, cause we’re asleep at that hour, but I was curious, so I waited a minute and then sneaked a look outside the blinds to see if it was a neighbor, or you know, a missionary or some of those magazine people or something. There’s a police car sitting outside my house, so I opened the door. Turns out the cop had been driving by as these signature people were leaving my door, and he stopped and checked out the situation. Thanks police!

Alert: Signature people, or any kind of door to door people. 8:45PM is not an acceptable hour. End of message.

“said” (Sue Augustyn Interior Design) opens after significant remodeling in the old Village Yoga space (7501 SW Capitol Highway) on First Friday, March 2nd. We’ll definitely be stopping by to take a look around. There’s lots of interesting colors and shapes inside. I understand that this will be a combination of a retail showroom and interior design service. There is a website, but it’s not live yet, so I’ll post the link when it goes up. Until then, another pic.

I notice a new domain in my site stats this AM, and a link to this site posted at Portland Connected dot Com which is a site from an outfit called Neighborhoods Connected dot Com, which in turn is a service of something called Portland Power Search which seems to be the online face of Keller Williams Real Estate. The Portland Connected site is well organized and informative, and a pretty good example of these “find a neighborhood sites”. Although the folks in Hillsdale may have something to say about using a picture of Bertha Station in the center of the Multnomah Village neighborhood page….

Thanks for linking to me!