Today, just for fun, I took Sharon on a tour of a local strip mall. Not interesting? This particular strip mall has an Armenian bakery, a British butcher shop, an Italian grocer/bakery/sandwich shop, and an international (mostly Persian) grocer. We bought a little of this, and a little of that, and made a real nice picnic of it all.

That's the sort of thing I'll miss, if I were to move full-time to Astoria. Astoria has a very diverse population, in that it has Swedes AND Norwegians AND Finns, AND Irish AND English. I'd have to go to Portland to buy so much as couscous.