Salutations from the City of Roses!

Even though I told myself (and everyone else) that I would start to catalogue my move to the Northwest and the adventures that followed, I seem to have put it off for a good two months now. I blame this on two things: 

1) My allergy to the term "blog," which sounds like either a disease or some sort of arduous task. 

2) My natural affinity for procrastination, which is also the reason that my thank-you cards from graduation in May got mailed last week. 

However, because I do in fact want to keep anyone who is interested (amounting to about 3 people tops) up on what we're doing up here, and because, lets face it, I like to natter on about nothing, here goes. 

Moving from Tuscaloosa and the South to Portland has been quite the experience so far. The actual moving process was actually less painful than any other move I've made, probably because we got rid of half of our possessions and the biggest thing we had to move was a desk. However, the getting settled in part has taken some getting used to. Some things were really easy to adjust to, such as the weather. Not having a car, however, has been totally strange. It is a bizarre feeling to not be able to just jump in my car and drive somewhere. The public transportation system out here is excellent, so it's not that I've really felt the lack of a car, it has just taken a good deal of getting used to. It has been a total lifestyle change. I can walk to the grocery store or just about anywhere really. I don't even know what the cost of gas is, except to know that I'm glad I'm not buying any. 

I think the hardest thing to get adjusted to has been the isolation, I think. Maybe it's because I flew out here and didn't drive, but I never felt the distance grow between me and most of the people that I love.  The first few weeks I was up here it felt slightly surreal. I knew I was in a different place, but it didn't feel different enough for me to feel it. I still felt like I should be able to call people up, and hang out with them. Knowing that I had just taken my life onto a major fork in the road away from everyone else's was so bizarre, and I think it was worse because I was conscious that I had done it deliberately. There was and is an ache for everyone that I left behind. They are like phantom limbs; I feel them even though they are not around.

I still miss everyone, and I get a wave of homesickness every now and then, mainly for people but occasionally for little things like sweet tea. All I have to do is step out the front door though and I am reminded of all the reasons I wanted to live here. For someone who has grown up in the deep south, to live in the middle of a city, even a middle sized city like Portland, is amazing. There's a much younger boy inside me that still can't believe that he actually made it to live here. There is so much natural beauty here, even in the city, that it takes my breath away. Walking down to the waterfront and seeing the mountain off in the distance is amazing. There are so many parks and green spaces everywhere that I feel like I have more nature around me here than I did in Tuscaloosa. The major difference is that here people care about preserving it. 

I had my first instance of "weird" Portland the other night. Portland is a quirky city, by any standards, and most of its inhabitants appreciate that fact. There is in fact a whole "Keep Portland Weird" movement. Anyway, I was coming home from work the other night and was waiting at a bus stop at around 11:00 PM. It was dark and a little cool, and the street was pretty much deserted. I was looking up the street to see if the bus was coming yet, and I could see a pair of headlights cutting through the darkness. A huge old convertible, one of those big 50s models with the tail fins, came cruising slowly down the street, like a ship cutting through water.  The top was down and what sounded like old R&B music was spilling out into the street. A metal pole rose up out of the back seat a good four or five feet and two girls in leather slowly gyrated against it. As the car pulled past, one of them leaned over backwards and winked at me while she licked her fingers. For a moment it felt like there was nothing else in the world but me and this bizarre spectacle in the streetlights, two girls dancing on a stripper pole mounted in a convertible. 

In other words, it was awesome, and things like that are why I love being here.