Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Seattle, San Francisco, Portland best cities for Trick or Treating

According to online real estate data provider, Zillow.  Their methodology?

"We theorized that homes in more expensive neighborhoods would give out bigger, better candy. However, wealthy neighborhoods are not always the best for harvesting the most Halloween candy. For parents and kids alike, the walkability and density of a neighborhood is key to covering the most ground, in the fastest time, to collect the most candy. Safety, of course, is also a primary concern for parents on Halloween, thus adding crime data to the Index was a no-brainer."


Doesn't hurt that the Pacific NW (we include San Fran when it's convenient...) has a very high Happy Heathen index (i.e. lowest "religious" population in the country). We do like our Pagan holidays.

Over the next two weeks the folks at Zillow will be rolling out neighborhood-specific stats within those top 20 ghoul-friendly communities.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Fall Harvest

We made our semi-annual October migration to the Hood River Valley this weekend to collect our winter's stash of Honeycrisp apples.  As the Monkey had temporarily re-located my camera I don't have pics to share.  But we actually made it all the way to Parkdale this time to Kiyokawa Family Orchards (a missed goal from last year as you may recall...)  

A few thousand other folks had the same idea - it was also the weekend the Mt. Hood Scenic Railroad celebrates their Autumn Fest in Parkdale.  And Hood River has their Harvest Fest.  The scenic railroad is lots of fun if you've never been.  The biggest kick is to see grown men rediscover their inner 10 year old, model-train loving selves and go climbing all over the caboose.
Once long before the Monkey - and I think when we were just dating Mr. Stang and I took this same railroad trip on a weekend as part of a 'romantical' weekend at the historic Hood River Hotel.  Beautiful old, historical inn - though I kept expecting "Larry, my brother Darryl and my other borother Darryl" to walk in at any moment. 

For this trip, however the weather was incredible even though the fall foliage was pretty much nonexistent. The nights have only just begun turning a little crisp and it looks like most leaves will fall off before changing color .  I'm blaming La Nina.  Supposedly we're in the strongest event in 60 years or so which means we're in for a "wild and wet" winter according to all the local news agencies.  I don't think I can wait to see what seizure-inducing TV graphics and adverbs for "wild, wicked weather"  they're going to come up with this year.  On the other hand, yes, yes I can! 

Actually what's most entertaining when snow/iced in is to turn on the local news, mute, and watch the city streets turn into a Demolition Derby.   I hear Seattle is giving in this year and planning to salt their streets.  Killjoys.