i searched the tags already, but couldn't find an answer.

here in portland, is it customary to tip a massage therapist of a private/self-owned business?

A recent posting concerning Detroit had me thinking about gentrification.

The term used to leave a foul taste in my mouth but when a great city is beyond crumbling but on the verge of collapse perhaps a healthy dose of gentrification is necessary to save what's left.

The NY Times ran an interesting article concerning gentrification in Portland.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/29portland.html?_r=2&ref=us&oref=slogin

edit -- ( read the copy and paste article behind the cut )

Hey, does anyone have an "air popper" type popcorn popper sitting around gathering dust? I'd gladly take it off your hands... Sandi says she would throw in a dozen cupcakes. :)

Dear Matthew McGuire;

I don't know you but your grandma & grandpa seem to think you live at my house.... Maybe you did live here and didn't let your relatives know you moved? Any ways, They sent you a lovely Christmas card that was already ripped open when I retrieved it from my mail box. Strangely enough there was one bill inside sticking out, so I'll assume the mailman ripped it open shoving it into my mailbox. Normally I would write "Does not live here" and stick it back in the box but I'm trying this new thing this year where I'm nice to people & do good deeds. Any ways, if you are Matthew McGuire (or you know him) please let him know that I have his Christmas card from Grandma & Grandpa. I'll be happy to return it if you can provide for me your grandparents name and where they live with some sort of ID.

One of the things I would like to do early in 2010 is move my account to a local credit union. I am turning to you, The Damned, for recommendations for great credit unions.

I live in Multnomah County and am currently enrolled at PSU, so I know I'm able to join Unitas, First Tech, OnPoint. Any others I should consider?

The most important thing I'm looking for online bill pay that is reliable and easy to use. At present, I write checks by hand about twice a year, and I'd like to keep it that way.

So, any suggestions? Do any of you DPers do your banking at a credit union you just love? Thanks in advance.

i just wanted to wish everyone a happy new years eve! be safe! BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY post pictures of your party makeup! haha. i will probably do a new years makeup look but will most likely be snowed in by the time parties are going on which im really sad about. DAMN YOU NEW ENGLAND AND YOUR 3 FEET OF SNOW FALLING FROM THE SKY!

Hello Portland.

Happy blue moon!

I know I'm pretty late in the game, that this topic may have been exhausted. I've
been put in charge of finding something to do tonight. I'm newish to town and unaware. Ok experts, any affordable SE Portland New Years experiences that you can recommend? The less absurdly large the better. I just want to be in a dress somewhere awesome, drinking drinks with pals and good folks.

Thank you, have a safe night!

With Obama's and the Democrats attack on "the rich", once they get fed up and leave, who's going to pay for all the social benefits?

www.thedailycrux.com/content/3247/Government_Stupidity

Seeing it is already 2010 in my part of the world I will be the first to say Happy New Year!
Me and Mr Monkeypuss had a pretty quiet night in - partaking in various recreational substances, fruity cocktails, bad movies and fireworks until about 4am. The best thing? We can kick our cat out so he won't wake us up in the morning (afternoon?). I fucking love my life. I love having this freedom. YAY!

(just read this on the wweek website and thought i would put it here for you all)

As you gear up for New Year’s Eve, a helpful reminder to our reminder from last week: All rides on TriMet’s MAX and buses will be free beginning at 8 pm on Thursday, Dec. 31. The MAX Blue, Green and Yellow lines will also provide extra late-night service on New Year’s Eve, running every 30 minutes until about 3 am.

When I first plays Left 4 Dead, I fell in love. It was just about everything I had ever hoped for in a FPS. I got pretty good, though usually didn't fare too well on Advanced, and could never beat a campaign on expert, but overall, I wasn't terrible. I always did awesome on Normal.

When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced, I was excited (though disappointed that they didn't just put up DLC for L4D1). When the demo was released, my BF and I played it and thought, "this is gonna be awesome!" Oh how wrong we were...

( I can't suck this much )

So I'm driving home tonight, listening to the BBC World News on the radio. A story comes on that had me screaming at my radio. How in humanities name this could be called journalism is beyond me. The topic itself had me a bit perplexed, considering they were coming off a story about the Nigerian President being M.I.A. and presumed dead, it seemed like the most random story to change topics to. The topic was on Lullabies, and as the world becomes more modern and interconnected they're being forgotten. I'm sitting there in my car thinking to myself, "Well, that's semi-interesting, but why is that important?"

They never answered or bothered with that question.

What followed was what can only be described as hearing the equivelant to what an anyrusim must feel like. It was just some guy starting out saying how he had five kids; which actually I suppose was supposed to answer they "why important?" question. What followed was just audio of screaming babies and a woman shouting/singing a lullaby (And badly. It was worse than the crotch fruits piercing screams and even louder!) over it, but in: Arabic, Ukrainian, Chinese... you know all the really ANNOYING to listen to to begin with Languages; never once in English. And this went on and on... in numerous examples. Like a case study into screaming babies and people who want to burst, off-key, into song over them.

The worse of it was the regular news anchor person referred to the babies screaming and the people's irritating lullabies as, "Beautiful." To which the asshat journalist couldn't possibly have agreed more if his life depended on it.

I just stared in rage at the road before me and thought over and over again, "Why! Why! Why! Why! What in the Hell was the point of that? What did it have to do with anything?! Why did you just waste valuable news time, WORLD news time, to do that?" And I'm still wondering that very same thought as I write this. >:-O

Ideas people? What's going on? Anything fun and weird?

I'm so over hanging out at busy bars with drunks and paying a covercharge to spend hours trying to get my overpriced, watery drinks. Not cool..

Come on Portland.. you gotta have something cool happening.

This community appears to be influencing my dream-world lately. Observe the bizarre dream I had earlier tonight:

I'm getting over a cold, and as such colds require naptime. Now, when I dream, I do the whole surround-sound-stereo-hi-def in full living color and scratch-n'-sniff. Translation: The only difference between my dreams and my reality is that I'm awake for the reality.

I dreamed that I was in a pub/tavern eating some nice beer-battered fries with my folks. Next to us in the other booth was a woman who pretty much fit the basic breeder stereotype. She had about 2 or 3 young kids with her (youngest was about toddler-age, eldest was like 6 or 7) who were acting rowdy and generally not behaving, and she did nothing to control them. But for the most part we were ignoring them...

...until one of the youngers started to get up on the back of the booth seat (it was one of those long booths that runs along a wall) and crawl towards me with a big grin, whapping his hand against the back of my head. I turn around to tell him to stop and go back to his seat, and he falls off the top of the back of the seat, onto and kicking me in the back in the process.

Now I'm mad. And my folks were too. We tell this woman flat-out to control her kids. She huffs and cops an attitude with us and sneers "They don't know any better" and somehow manages to imply that we're at fault for her kids' misbehavior. All three of us take turns snapping off a verbal bite of this woman's ass (in surprisingly non-profane exchanges) to the point where it's possibly about to turn physical - which is right where I woke up.

The weird part about this is that A) said pub/tavern doesn't even exist; it never did. Purely a construct of the imagination. And B) I have not (yet, thankfully) ever had such an experience with bad-behaved parents/kids. (Interestingly, for the most part, unless I'm feeling under the weather, I can tolerate a surprising amount of nuisances from small kids.)

I can't blame the medicine on this one, since I haven't had any NyQuil yet tonight. XD

Anyone else care to share such similar oddities?

Anyone have oil heat?  Who do you use to refill your tank and/or service your furnace?

We just moved into a house with oil heat, and despite the fact that the gauge on the tank appears to be between 1/8 and 1/4, it's not kicking on.  I've never had oil heat before so I'm not sure if the gauge is just off or if it's common knowledge to refill before it gets that low...or if the furnace is just on strike.  Anyway, any recommendations/companies to avoid would be much appreciated!  We'd like to have heat to ring in the new year.

(And yes, I already googled; just looking for personal recs.)

I need to know where in PDX or Vancouver I can find fruit flavored candy canes. You know like blue raspberry and such.

Anybody seeing them still? Please tell me I'm not too late!