In Less than two hours, the undefeated Jefferson Lady Demos play their final game of the season, the Oregon 5A state championship, vs. Hermiston.
The Lady Demos out-hustled, out-defended and out-shot Willamette (Eugene) in the semi-final last night, winning 55-44 after a much closer first half against a spirited Willamette team.

Senior Nyesha Sims led the way with fourteen points, along with Janita Badon (pictured) with 13 and Tyrisha Blake with 10.

The University of Portland’s Chiles center was rocked by a sizable and vocal Jefferson cheering section, much of which made their way to Jefferson High to see the second-half of the men’s game, which saw Jefferson defeat Wilsonville 69-51 in their second-round playoff match up. The boys are on to state in Eugene next week.

Wacky Mommy tagged me for a meme, and doubted I would do it. I’ll show her!

1. I can’t believe I’ve never…

   Walked on water. (My nascent fan club thinks I think I’m Jesus Christ, evidently.)

2. I wish I’d …when I had the chance.

   Memorized the numerical codes written on the living walls of the passageways on the the Sirian mother ship mapping the mitochondrial DNA of pre- and post-human evolution.

3. I’ve never felt so out of place as when I…

   Go to church.

4. … is my guiltiest pleasure.

   I don’t believe in guilt.

5. I hope … knows how grateful I am for …

   My extra-dimensional Sirian sistren, for the universal knowledge they’ve bestowed upon me.

6. In my darkest hours, I secretly blame … for my dysfunction.

   Beelzebub.

7. … changed my life forever.

   C₂₀H₂₅N_3O

If you’re like me, and don’t think making Portland, Ore. look like Vancouver, B.C. should be the beginning and end of city development policy, you’ll probably like Portland Gentrification and Other Problems. With a sidebar of links annotated with snarky commentary like “Page after page of unintentionally hilarious stupidity that must be seen to be believed” (pdxcondos.net) and “PSU Architecture students see steel, get wood” (SkyscraperPage Portland Forum), you’re either going to love this blog… or just plain hate it.

I’m loving it, and added it to my feed aggregator the other day. (I read blogs almost exclusively in my aggregator, which means I get to have black text on a white background, regardless of what bad style decisions a blog author may have made, and I get to skip the ads.)

Anyway, today when I updated my feed, it came up with a bunch of new posts. The top of the list was about Natalie Imbruglia’s latest single. There was news of Joan Armatrading’s tour. A review of Neil Young concert. And something about “Pink snuggles up to hairy rocker.” All mixed in with articles about Portland gentrification, including “‘Fast Flip’ b/w ‘Do Ya Wanna Rent My Condo’ (12″ dance remix, nm, no ps).”

Confused? So was I, until I realized that either my aggregator was confused, or the blog’s feed got crossed with the feed from The London Paper. Fun stuff.

As if I didn’t have enough on my plate already, last November I started writing for Portland Metblogs, part of an international network of city-based community blogs.

When I joined the local team, there was much talk of a new, improved Metblogs site in the works. The existing site was based on Typepad, and was slow and non-intuitive. Suddenly, this past weekend, the site was down, and e-mail was sent to authors about the new site launch.

When it finally came back up on Monday, there were (ahem) just a few complaints.

• The fixed width layout is 1215 pixels wide. Good design standards dictate 1000 pixels max.
• The font is small and gray (and increasing the font size on your browser breaks the layout in ugly ways).
• The URL to the RSS feed changed.
• The new RSS feed was broken.
• The RSS URL listed on the page was wrong.
• URLs to archived post were changed, meaning all links to previous entries from other sites are broken.
• Some authors (like me) were unable to get new passwords, and have been unable to login since the changeover.

And, worst of all:

• The site now requires registration to leave comments.

Metroblogs is now what is known to Web aficionados as a “walled garden,” in the same class with MySpace. Before I was an author for Metblogs, I criticized the tone of metblogs as being the MySpace of the Portland blogosphere. I was only joking then, but now the joke’s on me.

I’m taking a sabbatical from Metblogs, at least until they work out their technical issues. Whether or not I want to continue bringing Metblogs readers (and ad revenue) as a contributor is an open question.

I admit it… I’m a bad hockey fan. It’s usually about this time of year that I realize I haven’t seen a hockey game, in person or on TV, for a month or more. Then I look up and realize that all the local teams are finishing up their seasons.

The Jaguars were swept three games to none in the first round of the NORPAC playoffs Thursday, Friday and Saturday last week. PSU finished their season last month.

So, having realized the local season is slipping away, I went to see the Winter Hawks take on the Kelowna Rockets last night at the ol’ Memorial Coliseum. Not having seen the Hawks for over a month, I was cautiously optimistic that I’d see some improvements in both the team and the presentation of the game.

I was sadly disappointed.

On the ice, the team continues to struggle getting the puck out of their own zone (it doesn’t help the the defensive corps has been plagued by injuries), and they continue to have a very hard time establishing offense. The Hawks ended up losing 2-1, but were out-shot 37-17. Their lone goal came late in the third period on a power play with the goalie pulled.

Off ice, the “replay screens,” the jumbo center-hung video screens, were on the fritz for the first period. For the second period, they were on, but only showing graphics — no video. In the second intermission, they tried to bring up some video to show a live interview with Christian author Karen Kingsbury.

It turns out it was “Faith Night,” but no amount of praying could get the big screens to work. When they did work, earlier in the season, they were pretty harsh. Very bright, but pretty low resolution, and the picture was very jerky due to ancient analog video equipment feeding the digital screens through analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion.

Last night this was so bad, it looked like they sent the video feed over Skype to Russia and back. The frame eventually just froze on an unflattering view of Kingsbury and her interviewer from the local Christian radio station. Kingsbury was saying something about how her fans are her friends, and “there are no autograph lines in heaven.” The whole thing completely broke down, and they just blanked the screens for the third period.

This is pretty symbolic of how far this franchise has fallen under the leadership of Jim Goldberg, a self-proclaimed “winner” who’s turned in two of the worst seasons in the history of the Western Hockey League. Things have gotten so bad, the league calls the situation in Portland the top priority of the WHL, and has mandated that Goldberg replace himself as Director of Hockey Operations.

Hopefully there are no New York City barkeeps buying major junior hockey teams in heaven, either.

The good news last night was that I was surprised to learn that the Oregon High School Hockey League was having their championship game immediately following the Winter Hawks game, and I stuck around for three exciting periods of co-ed high school hockey, followed by a five minute overtime and a three-round shootout. The PIL (Portland) took the shoot-out to beat the Pacific (Southwest suburbs) team 3-2.

The Winter Hawks have three more home games this season, including Friday, March 7 against Everett, Saturday, March 8 against Seattle, and Sunday, March 16 against Spokane. The March 8 game will feature a Memorial Cup anniversary celebration with appearances from 1983 and 1998 championship team members and Dean “Scooter” Vrooman, the erstwhile voice of the Hawks, as master of ceremonies.