I wanted to experience the full, exaggerated, Fred Armisen's portrayal of Portland.
So when we were looking through Airbnb and "Unicorn-ucopia" popped up, I couldn't believe my luck.
Title:
Unicorn-ucopia
Main Photo:
Accommodation description:
It exceeded my expectations -- which I built solely on Youtube clips of Portlandia.
Come on. It was written for "visiting unicorns." How could we say no? (Plus, it was the cheapest option for our 4-day trip.) What could go wrong with a place named "Unicorn-ucopia?" I thought, 'Abso-f'ing-lutely nothing.'
But of course, I'm frequently wrong.
If you haven't booked through Airbnb before, be cautious. Even if they say it has a private entrance, it may not really be private. It's just a separate entrance that you share with your host and opens straight into the kitchen (where she and her dogs will be chilling). If you failed to select the "entire place" option, or could not afford it and had to resort to a "private room," you will most likely be placed smack dab in the middle of the house. The host will be so light on her feet that you're never sure if she's in her bedroom, the kitchen, the mystery room filled with birds, or right outside your door.
The place wasn't even unicorn-ed out.
Unicorn-ucopia my butt.
It looks pretty in pictures, but don't be fooled. It's just my awesome iPhone camera.
After seeing our accommodation, my friends and I decided that we will stay out until we have to sleep. It forced us to be more adventurous and see more things, instead of enabling our tendency to lounge around with the TV on. So I guess it was a good thing in the end.
Ground Kontrol was our first destination for the night. Pinball is great. If life were more like pinball. It gives you so many chances to play again and you only pay a quarter to start. 'Awww.. I lost the ball! But wait, I get another one?! Well thank you Addams Family Pinball machine! I WILL have another crack at it!' Also, I've never played DDR, but I had always believed I would be amazing at it. (Never mind that I have terrible hand-eye-coordination; foot-eye-coordination is a totally different thing.) I think it may have been the fact that we were on the Easy setting, which is so slow that it's actually quite difficult! Trust me. But yeah, it wasn't a pretty sight. I can't wait until I go to another state with an arcade-bar, so I can try the Medium setting without fear of running into someone I know. Or just liquor me up and take me to Dave & Busters.
Those people are not my friends.
Pinball got too intense for me.
...resume writing 5/3/2015 (a month after the trip.. I've been busy):
The funny little stories I saved in my brain throughout the trip are now gone. I wish I could at least say they've all been replaced by pharmacy knowledge. But I can't. I saturated my brain with facts about inhalers and whatever else was on my drug delivery midterm, and then proceeded to wring it out for my next test this Wednesday.
It's how my brain works now. Retention is rare. I miss the days when my brain was fresh and my neurons were firing rapidly, forming connections and storing shit into long-term memory without me even trying.
Example: When I was little, I watched the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and a hell of a lot of PBS. I also had subscriptions to children's magazines like "Cricket." (You know those magazines you only came across in your orthodontist's office? Yeah.. I got those delivered to my house.) I guess during those years of staying indoors, away from UV rays and friends, I came across a show or story about the different species of wild cats. And whatever I learned apparently got stored away in my brain to be revealed twenty-some years later. One day, Nina and I were exchanging photos of baby animals and "AWWWWW's" online, as usual, and she sent me the following picture.
AWWWWWWW
Something clicked in my brain and I asked, "Is this a baby OCELOT?" Yes. Indeed this is a baby ocelot. Maybe every one of you reading this blog post knows this and is thinking, "DURRR JASMINE. Everyone and their MOMS know what baby ocelots look like." But in that moment, I was so impressed with my own brain. 'Woah! Good job! OCELOT? How long has it been since you came across that word? I guess you're not as dried up and useless as I thought you were! Now if only I could have such aha moments during my pharm chem test...."
Back to Portland: Okay, so by going through my pictures, it seems that we went to a Japanese garden, took pictures of a bunch of camellias, ate lots of donuts, shopped, looked at tulips, and took pictures in front of a waterfall. Oh! We went to Seattle real quick at the beginning of the trip too. Ahhh.. the memories are flooding back. They're a bit fuzzy sadly, but I'm sure they'll become more clear when I get to hash over the trip with my friends.
I'll leave you with a few pictures without my friends' faces in them. Gotta respect their privacy and stuff.
My love of panos unleashed at the Japanese zen garden
I took like 20 pictures of different kinds of camellias..... why.
I don't know if I would sit through that much traffic to go into a field of tulips again.
Maybe only if my future kids freaking LOVED tulips and I wanted to make them happy.
...
I bet I found this to be hilarious in the moment.
A seedy looking market named, "Street Meat."
It probably made me think back to that one Brooklyn Nine Nine episode in which Captain Holt tries "street meat" with Santiago, and I most likely proceeded to chuckle by myself.
My hatred of Koi fish will never die.
The Multnomah Falls.
It was pretty cool.
Back to studying I go! Bye!
So maybe I did enjoy the tulip fields a little more than I remember.
