LAUGHING PLANET

Laughing Planet is expanding, with a new location opening up in Woodstock to join the NW, Belmont and Mississippi stores as the empire of Laughing. Great food, especially if you are a vegetarian, their burritos are creative and delicious. Cheap and healthy kid's menu. They have dinosaurs in their stores, and for some reason this fact didn't seem strange until the recording of it right now. Wait, are carnivores on their way to extinction? Are we all on our laughing way to extinction? The aliens are coming? They just like toys? Ruth likes them, whatever the deeper meaning.

OVERLOOK PARK

Unless you live in N Portland, or happen to have Kaiser as your health insurance carrier, you may have overlooked this park (who could resist a terrible pun!). Two reasons to visit: brand new play structure complete with climbing wall; two gargantuan mature walnut trees. We will be back in October just to see the progress of the nuts.

JOE'S CELLAR CAFE

It's Sunday. You want to go out to breakfast, but you don't want your strollers to tangle with the hip, young singles waiting for a table at Besaw's, fifteenth on the list, and you might not even get the booth that you want, nay need. You want some good breakfast grub, but you don't want everyone to hate you, you just don't want strangers to hate you this morning, is that too much to ask? No, it is not. Come down to Joe's Cellar Cafe on 21st and Overton, just off of the Conway campus, a block from DoveLewis. A clean, nice, throwback of a diner, offering simple greasy spoon-type grub (though, for the record, not that greasy, really), get the critters some silver dollar pancakes, get yourself a delicious plate of biscuits and gravy, some standard diner coffee, and everyone will leave happy. And the waitress was a classic, friendly and helpful. And, you know, you won't drop $50, like at some other places in the Northwest. Go Joe's Cellar!