Greetings from Portland

Greetings:

I hope that you are well. Beth, Jago and I recently carved pumpkins that we grew in our backyard and had a great time trick-or-treating (Jago was "Super Jago ala superman). Life in Portland is good and the pace is comfortable, people are friendly and when you go to cross the street even the busses will stop for you. (No joke, it happened to us, we were in shock).

So the reason I'm writing is two fold, first please come and visit! We have a great guestroom and as fall sets in here in Portland attention is turning to cooking good food and testing out new cocktails. I've been tasked to create a hot chocolate-based drink this winter, so if you have any ideas let me know.

The second reason is that I would like your help in promoting my new website. I'm using it as a prototype for launching a bigger project in the future that will provide a go-to destination for how-to videos. So my beta site is www.how-to-tie-a-tie-video.com, it's a simple site that teaches you how to tie a tie with a streaming video. Most people doing a "how-to" search are looking to tie a tie. As you may know Goggle ranks pages largely by the number and quality of incoming links. To rise above everyone else I need links to my site, I'm shooting for 150 links.

Here is my proposal to you to entice you to take a moment and create a link to my site.  For every ten friends who create a link to my site I'll donate an hour volunteering at the Portland Chinese Classical Garden, which I'll take you to when you visit.  By extension of your efforts you will be helping to maintain a beautiful spot of nature in the heart of the Portland.

Just copy the code below and paste it into your webpage, Blog, MySpace page or what have you:

<strong><a href="http://www.how-to-tie-a-tie-video.com" title="Learn How to Tie a Tie Video." target="blank">Learn how to tie a tie with easy to follow video instruction from How-to-Tie-a-Tie-Video.com.</a><br /></strong>

Thanks so much. If you have any feedback on the site I'd love to hear it and hope to see you soon.

Cheers,

Geoff