Can you believe it’s almost March? Holy moly, where did the winter go? The awards season is a wrap (I’m watching E!’s Fashion Police Academy Awards special as I type), the trees are starting to bud, the Portland Timbers’ second season is kicking off, our Easter trip to AZ is knocking on our door…it’s fabulous. True, it’s still 41 degrees today, but spring’s coming, I can feel it.

My eyes were crazy dilated after my final LASIK consultation Friday so we chilled at home – but had to pop out of bed early Saturday to make a 7 a.m. car appointment in Beaverton. Ack! A thousand dollars later, our good ole Jeep is running like a champ. Yes, it was running fine before besides squeaky front brakes, but we’d rather spend a little extra to make sure our one car doesn’t leave us stranded. (Or that’s what we’re telling ourselves to dull the pain.)

Saturday night was a PBJs Grilled/Upright Brewing tasting event, just around the corner from us by the PBJs food cart on 23rd. I spied the event on Twitter – with PBJs, beer and live music, it’s hard to imagine a better combo. Lindsay and Daniel came along; we all squeezed into the house-like event space with a boatload of other people. The Ascetic Junkies warbled their original tunes as the young owner of Upright Brewing greeted us with a crisp Engelberg Pilsener. That’s when the parade of PBJs and beer started. Six mini PBJ sandwiches, overflowing with homemade peanut butter, bread and butter pickles, sriracha, caramel sauce, Rogue Creamery blue cheese and a bevy of other crazy awesome local ingredients. (Jeff and I looove the PBJs Grilled food cart.) Six beers ranging from a pale ale to a dark rye. Delicious. We perched on a couch throughout the night as Daniel jokingly harrassed Keena, one of the PBJs owners, and snagged refills from the roaming servers. We closed out the night with Coors Lights at our favorite local dive, Nob Hill Bar and Grill.

Jeff and I soaked in the Oscar red carpet arrivals Sunday before hitting our 15th or 20th McMenamins property: John Barleycorns in neighboring Tigard. One of my bosses from my Dow AgroSciences days, Mr. VP of R&D Dan, is in town for a whirlwind visit to a local office so we met for dinner, drinks and catch-up. It was great chatting about old times and how the company’s still movin’ and shakin’. And the visitors keep coming: on Friday, Jeff’s high-school friend Joey comes to town for the weekend – yay!

By the way, J and I are smitten with our Nike+ Fuelbands. Reaching that daily “fuel” goal is uber-motivating. I was crushed Sunday when I missed the mark. That won’t be happening again!