Jason's... it's almost like home

   It has been a crazy few weeks. As Thanksgiving in Portland ended, Derek and I thought we'd have all sorts of down time and be able to both finally get settled in our place as well as get to know our surroundings a bit more. Well, so far we just haven't had time. What with childbirth classes, work, car fun, and trips to the doctor's office, it just seems that the days fly by. I can't believe that it's already almost halfway into December!

   What that really means is that I know it's about time for an update. Us being the Californians we are (yes, I know I was a transplant there, but after 10 years it really felt like home), we're still learning things slowly. I'm happy to announce that we made a step up from using credit cards for ice scrapers and are now using plastic rulers. It seems that we forgot after the last freeze to go find an ice scraper at the store and therefore found ourselves in another cold spell before we did anything about it. And of course, the first store we checked didn't carry ice scrapers; and I thought Target had everything!

   At least the ruler seems to do a good (and faster) job on the inside of my windshield. Yes, my car has a bit of a leak (it's a true Californian as well and not accustomed to the rains that we get here in 'Bama). Since it hasn't yet had time to fully dry out, whenever it freezes I get a good bit of frost on the inside of the car. Oh, the adventures!

   But, what I really wanted to share was that we have found a great sandwich place that makes us feel almost like we're back in California. Totally by chance, we found ourselves hungry for a sandwich and decided to check out a place called Jason's Deli. Yes, it is a chain (from their website it looks like everywhere except the Northeast and the West Coast), but they have a great selection of fresh sandwiches and a salad bar that rivals Rusty's (don't laugh - the pizza place in SB has my favorite salad bar by far). They offered several different soups, salads, and sandwiches, and you could even as for "skinny" which means a full sandwich with half the meat. And they offer avocado on a lot of their sandwiches, which I was not expecting to find around here. It isn't quite as tasty as the avocado you can get in SB, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

   So, although the stereotype is that everything in the South is fried (and it's not that far off), it is refreshing to know that a good deli can be found. And that it tastes good too!