14 December, 2025
Greetings from Portland, where I’m dreaming of a dry Christmas. Portland has now set a record for most recorded rainfall in December thanks to an atmospheric river that passed through last week. Several places in Oregon and Washington both saw flooding, and while it was nice and sunny the previous two days (and conveniently my weekend), we’re back to rain today and for the next nine days.
This is now year ten in Portland, and I’m hoping to get out and see more of Oregon this summer, but we’ll see how things go with Kroger in 2026. That said, I am still at Kroger. We did not merge with Albertsons, and we’re now dealing with the fallout from that. We had a pretty brutal round of layoffs back in August. A lot of people I knew were let go, and a lot of positions have shuffled around. My team is now “Service Insights” instead of “Operational Research and Analytics”, and my larger department has been moved from HR to Finance. January will mark ten years at Kroger for me; we’ll see if I even get a milestone award this time with how much we’re reshuffling money. If you know anyone looking for a position as CEO, we’re [soon] hiring for one (our previous one was ousted at the beginning of the year.)
Outside of work, I’m still involved with the local Japanese pop culture convention here in Portland, Kumoricon. This coming Wednesday I’ll find out if I’m reappointed Secretary for another year, which would make 2026 my second year as a Director. While it is still essentially a second, unpaid full-time job, one of the nice perks I do get as a director is three complementary badges, which let me actually hang out with some friends at con this year. We did take a small hit in attendance this year, in large part due to the economy, and we’re still wrapping up the books to see how much money we’ll have for 2026. 2026 will be the first year we have the entire convention center, save for one set of ballrooms.
When I’m not doing things for Kumo, my weekends are still usually spent at Washington Park, mostly at the Oregon Zoo but also still the Portland Japanese Garden. The zoo saw a lot of animals come and go this year, from the birth of a new baby elephant, Tula-Tu, and the departure of our polar bears, Amelia Gray and Nora (well, Nora is still here because FedEx canceled her flight. Even polar bears can’t get FedEx to be on time.)
As for the traditional transit update I’m sure you’ll all skip over, Portland has been retiring our original 1986 light rail trains from Bombardier as new ones arrive from Siemens. One of those original cars is now being preserved in a museum in Brooks. Our three new streetcars from Brookville finally went in to service after two years of testing, and after less than half a year in service, we’re already getting rid of them. Long story short, they’re junk, and the city never wants to deal with Brookville again. We’ll be trading them with Tacoma, WA for their three Škodas from 2003ish; they were our options with Škoda back in 2001 when Portland opened our system, similar to how we bought our Brookvilles as options Tacoma had. Portland will be ordering 14 streetcars in the coming year to replace our original fleet. No clue who we’ll order from this time as the request for proposals closes at the end of January.
Not much else to report on this year. Tourism is very much back in Portland, which is good because downtown still has a lot of vacancies. However, a lot of that is office space that will probably continue to be vacant for quite a while. Jiji is still a tripping hazard and enjoys watching the birds that come to visit the balcony. Haven’t won the Powerball yet, so I guess I’ll have to try again on Monday. $503 million sure would be nice, but I’d settle for a million.
Jiji and I wish you a joyous festive season and a happy new year.
