darling DPers:

my CEO/boss will be in town this week from san franny, and i'm looking for a few suggestions for places to meet him for appetizers/cocktails. preferably:

-downtown
-nice atmosphere (read: no big-screen TVs playing The Game, pool tables, KENO)
-not a hotel bar (because, chances are, he's been there/stayed there)
-not a restaurant with a bar
-interesting/representative of portland in some way
-music/noise at a conversational volume
-really good drinks/appetizers (higher-end is OK, i won't be paying)

i'm trying to avoid places i frequent regularly for various reasons, and most of those are too loud or too dive-y in the first place. besides, i'm always interested in trying new places, so suggest away.

My boyfriend's best friend, our roomie, is possibly the most ungracious 3rd wheel i have ever known. She is terrible. She still very important to my boyfriend, though she and i have had a falling out...at best i feel care towards her as i would any human being, at worst i cannot stand being around her at all.

My conundrum is this: I really want my boyfriend to come with me to Corvallis for Christmas to spend a day or two with my family, and this is *very* important to me. However, the roomie has at best tenuous plans for Xmas which seem *VERY* likely to fall through...plans to go hang out at a party with a guy she has a crush on who is interested in someone else...yeah. Past differences aside, i think leaving someone who is depressed alone for Xmas is particularly mean. So what do i do? Invite her with me to my family Xmas? She is...a girl who i don't particularly like right now and would like a break from. Or leave her here probably alone over Xmas, which is something i would wish on almost nobody?

I guess my question to you Double Penetrators is this: Does anyone know of any good, fun, public singles type mixer events happening over Christmas? I mean, i was single for a few Christmases and it SUCKED. Such things have and will always suck, so there must be SOMETHING out there to help assuage the sad single masses on the holidays. Something? ANYTHING?

Shit. What do i do?

Heya DP:
Relavent backstory:
My apartment building has just 4 units. On one side of the building there is a chimney. Via this chimney my apartment has a fireplace and my downstairs neighbors have a fireplace. Neither one of us has used our fireplace. When I moved in, in April, the fireplace was a big draw and the landlord said "I don't know the last time it was used. It's been taped up since the previous guy moved in. It probably works fine." Well, it's freezing inside my apartment (literally- bad windows) and I want to use the fireplace.

Question:
How much does a fireplace inspection cost? Anyone have a rec? If I offer up a place that has a reasonable price, I can probably get the landloard to make it happen. But I have no idea where to begin. Google gave me a bunch of places that don't have websites or prices for services.

Help a freezing fellow DPer out?

Thanks!

Hey DP, my parole officer says I'm due for some community service, so I thought I'd do some Social Media Network Owner to English translation.

The following bit of Social Media Network Owner from the Livejournal folks

Unfortunately with our last release, and its instability, we were forced to roll back releases. Unfortunately in doing so, it would seem that our notification system has been broken somehow. Our engineers are working on this issue as quickly as possible. We hope to have a patch within the next day, so we can deploy our code and fix the notification system at the same time. Please *bear* with us ;)

can be translated as

We fired anyone who knew how anything worked around here and are pushing out releases that'll help us make our bonuses without caring what existing functionality it breaks. At this point you're pretty much big bags of money that we're kicking until a few bucks slips out of a broken seam or you leave.

My Social Media Network Owner is a little rusty, "kicking" might actually be "anally violating with a silver spoon", but other than that the translation's accurate.

We appreciate the opportunity to serve you!