I may be moving back to civilization!

Having done nearly ten months in exile, an opening at my old house may be opening up in the next few weeks and I've got dibs on the room! While I enjoy living by myself, the need to scrimp and save combined with only being in driving distance of anything cool meant that I hardly ever went out and spent much of my time alone. Again, I enjoy that, but only to some extent and it'll be nice to live someplace where there are people to chat with downstairs, and things to walk to down the street. The MAX is only a few blocks away, even! It only takes me 45 minutes to get back from a Timbers game, not nearly three hours!

As you can tell, I'm pretty excited. In the meantime, I've got school to worry about and a week long hunting trip for which my dad is picking me up tomorrow at SIX AM. He lives a ways away, meaning he will have to leave his house at around 4 am. That's lunacy if you ask me.

My classes this term are all online. That's nice because I wouldn't be able to do this hunting trip otherwise, but they seem to require more work than an ordinary class. I'll probably have to take a hit on participation points this week as I don't particularly want to drive into some hick town, steal a wireless connection and do some bs just for a few points after spending ten hours hiking in the mountains. I get paid just as much for Cs as I do As.

Next term, I've decided to go back to PSU, change my major to geography and use up every last bit of benefits. And since the new GI Bill has gone through I now have an extra 12 months of those bennies! As much as I hate school and am bored to death of it, it pays better than a minimum wage job, and I've yet to get so much as a phone call about one of those anyway, so I may as well continue. Hopefully the economy will have stopped sucking by the time I'm done.

Mouseland

This was making the rounds on Facebook today and since it made me chuckle, I thought I'd share. It's a great speech of course and it's probably lost on many people, but the really interesting part is that even after all this time, what has changed? Well, perhaps a lot in Canada. Not a whole damn lot down here, though. I love the way people talked back then, too. Makes me wonder what people will make of our accents 60 years from now when watching old film clips (on whatever the future youtube will be).

The Camping Wrap Up

There's a new post over on my travel blog on my last camping trip. Click on the doggy for the link.

Camping

The camping trip I just took with the family went about the same as all our camping trips. There was a lot of driving, lots of pretty things, at least one disaster, some fighting, but no one nearly died. I don't want to go too deeply into the disaster, but suffice to say, Yosemite is really overrated.

Over on my travel blog, I'll get some pics posted.

I'm back now in Portland, doing not much of anything. Still looking fruitlessly for a job and running out of money. Hopefully I can get some GI Bill money for the next term, but that's not a guarantee. No prospects for employment on the horizon. I hope moving back in with the parents isn't in the cards, because that would be agony for someone in her late 20s.

At least it's that time of the year when just about every soccer league in the world is going, so there's something to absorb myself in that doesn't involve stressing over anything consequential.

It was 91 degrees by 11:30 am today. What the hell? It was chilly and cloudy just about all summer and just when I get back from camping up in the mountains it gets all nasty. Sure, the camping was in the desert, but we were high enough in elevation that it was only hot in the sun, cool in the shade and chilly at night. In other words, it was perfect up there. This is sticky and gross.

Hello

I'm boring.

No, really. I'm not much of a fiction writer, so I blog when I have something worth blogging about happen in my life. Happenings haven't really been happening, so there's been no blogging.

Here's my daily life. Please don't die of boredom while reading it. Take breaks, if necessary.

Get up around 10. Undarken the computer screen and check usajobs for my dream (read: part time underpaid entry level crap) job. Upon it's inevitable absence in the listings, I close the tab in a huff.

Time to make coffee. While heating water and grinding beans, marvel at how gross and smelly the kitchen has gotten even though I swear I just cleaned it yesterday. Or the day before. Or something.

After coffee is in my cup, head back to the computer to open all the new tweets posted since last night. Click on every interesting soccer blog entry and read for awhile.

Sit, contemplate what to do with the day. Check TV listings, weather report.

Suddenly it's 2pm, which means it's hot and rush hour has started so there's nothing worth doing outside the house for at least several hours. Maybe tomorrow I'll go fishing or camping. Maybe.

Evening rolls around and I get on my bike or get in my car and head to the college campus to kick around the soccer ball for a little while. When it gets too dark or there are too many mosquitoes, drive home.

Contemplate bed, since there's absolutely nothing to do. Nothing on the tube, nothing really worth reading on my bookshelf or online. Finally get to sleep way late/in the early morning.

Repeat.

Would you want to read about that on a daily basis? I thought not.

Next week I'm going camping for a week with my parents in California. Somehow, I've never been to Yosemite, so we're going there as well as the Lava Beds National Monument. Haven't been camping yet this summer, so that should be good, plus I get to see my dog again.

My Absence

I'll admit it: I'm a nerd. I was so emotionally drained from the just the group stages of the World Cup, not to mention the USA's run at it, that I simply could not write about it or anything else. While I'm feeling much better, I'm still not entirely healed and I'm upset that I have to miss the Germany-Argentina match on Saturday that I had hoped would finish off my cure. Alas.

No, nothing has really been going on other than that. I've applied for a bunch of jobs and gotten exactly zero phone calls. Why advertise for a job if you don't actually have one available? Do they get some sort of financial or tax compensation for listing employment with state agencies? Well, I guess they might. Figures.

4th of July is around the corner and as usual, I will be at my grandparent's lake house up in Washington. Should be good times even if it rains again, which judging by the current conditions and what's been happening since winter supposedly ended, is likely. Hooray for fireworks, beer and for standing on top of my car with my phone in the air, hitting refresh on the Guardian's minute-by-minute report of the Germany match!

Things I Learned During My Cold

I just had a short, but unexpected and nasty cold. For some reason, even though I don't have a job and school is done so I don't have anything to do anyway, this gave me the opportunity to try some new things.

-- I like reading. I know I like reading, so why don't I do it more? I finished Lies my Teacher Told Me, which has a rather misleading title, because the focus is on history textbooks, not the teachers themselves. I also started A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, who is one of the funniest writers around right now. A Short History is a history of science type of book that focuses as much on the scientists themselves as the things they discovered. He has an easy writing style that lends itself to explaining even the most convoluted of ideas - like string theory in physics - to those of us who never made it through a chemistry of physics class. And from the stuff he describes that I already do understand, it seems pretty accurate too. Some things I didn't know that I've taken from the book so far: The same guy who thought it'd be a good idea to add lead to gasoline also invented CFCs, those things we banned after we found out they ate a hole in the ozone layer (Bryson says the guy had "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny"); even in 19-friggin'-88 (I was alive then!) more than half of American paleontologists didn't believe the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid strike; humans today have 685 times more lead in our bodies than people a century ago.

-- The sleep aid in nighttime pain relievers, the cough suppressant in overnight cold syrups and the antihistamine in others is all the same drug. Benadryl. I kind of felt sorry for Benadryl, because once the world invented an antihistamine that didn't make you unconscious, Benadryl faded out of use fast. It seems to have taken its greatest flaw, it's hypnotic effect, and made it its greatest asset. Well done to it, I guess. I remember fighting the need to take antihistamines as a kid, even if I could barely breathe or see due to hayfever, because even a half of the children's dose would knock me out in the middle of a sunny, summer day. I normally hate taking medication and avoid it until absolutely necessary, but by night three I really needed some sleep and sure enough I was out cold until the early morning when I woke up soaked in sweat, but feeling much much better. Amazing what a little rest will do ya.

-- A potato has 45% of your daily vitamin C. I had no idea! So during the cold I ate at least one potato a day, covered in raw garlic (also a lot of vitamin C and sure cleared my sinuses!) and washed down with some echinacea tea. God I'm a hippie sometimes.

-- I need more fishing line. We finally had a sunny day, the one where I woke up feeling cured, so after I watched the Americans beat Australia in a World Cup warm-up match, I drove up to Mt. Hood to fish at Timothy Lake. Surprisingly, considering how crowded it was not far away, there weren't a ton of people. Still, I took my small pole, since the big salmon rod seemed a little excessive for a stocked lake, and went for a bit of a hike to a secluded spot a ways from where I'd parked. It wasn't until after I'd settled down, had a bite to eat, baited my hook and cast that I realized that I only had about 30 feet of line on the reel. It reached the end mid-cast and as it jerked to an abrupt halt I watched the bait fly off into the lake. I wasn't about to hike all the way back just to exchange rods, so I made do for an hour before I reluctantly acquiesced to the reality that I just wasn't going to catch anything in twelve inches of water. On the way back no less than two fish did some spectacular flying triple jumps to bid my adieu and every child with I walked past had a fresh catch on his/her hook. Yeah, rub it in.

lake weekend

After a weekend during which my diet consisted entirely of fried or deep fried meat, fried or deep fried non-meat products, coffee, beer and a high fructose corn syrup containing pop I most definitely needed a recovery afternoon. Since arriving home three hours ago, I have drunk about a gallon of water, heated up some veggies, went for a short run and ate a salad. I almost feel human again.

My grandparents have a cabin on a lake up in Washington. Since my mom was a little kid, it's been the site of numerous family reunions, swim fests and 4th of July parties. Some of them have had upwards of 100 people attend, with a core group of us staying the night, cramming our sleeping bags next to one another's on the basement floor and taking up all the couch and tent space available. One year there was even a live band! These days things are more mellow. The adults go to bed at ten, leaving us cousins to drink beer around the fire for a few more hours.

This weekend, Memorial Day, was really laid back, due to the continued atrocious weather. Above all, this family is known for cooking and bringing massive amounts of food. If it's hot out, we all get a little swimming or water-skiing in (not me for the latter), but since it was cold and rainy, we just ate. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious and I enjoyed catching up with everyone and seeing the little kids, but since I've been more careful about eating only real foods recently, this change of diet and lack of exercise was pretty killer.

Seeing my grandpa carry around his oxygen tank and hearing my uncle talk about having to starve himself into order to make the weight limit for a horse-riding trip he'd planned with his kids made me realize that I need to work on staying healthy, because my genes aren't going to do it for me. I'm better off that most in that side of the family, but in all honesty, I could be in better shape.

Hiking

A few weeks back we got a spring teaser. The sun was out, and though it was a bit cool, it lured many of us to buy sunscreen and light beer that goes well with lime, put away our long pajamas and flannel sheets in exchange for lighter linen and shorts. I may as well have washed the car for all the jinxing I put into it. But in any case, my friend and I managed to get in a few Friday hikes and I did some on my own on the weekends. Occasionally, I remembered to bring my camera.

This set is from the Columbia Gorge. The Columbia river flows from Washington south and then west all the way out to the ocean. A good part of the river, including this section, forms the border between Oregon and Washington. A freeway on the Oregon side parallels it for quite a ways and it's one of my favorite routes in the country as the further east you travel, the more dry and deserty the conditions become. You can fall asleep surrounded by fir trees and waterfalls coming off of moss covered cliffs and wake up surrounded by bald, brown hills. I used to imagine that the desert hills looked like someone had taken a giant erasure and took off all the trees and green bumps.


Rest break a little ways off the trail, looking west. It was quite the hike up to this point, so we took a breather and some photos.



Did I mention it's a big river? You can see a very tiny speed boat in this picture as well as a buoy. I was also impressed with the color of the water that day.



Typical Forest Service signage and map markings caused us to end up on a different trail than we had intended. While the road noise was a little annoying, the views were pretty good from this spot. This shot is facing east and little north. That parking lot way down on the right? That's where I parked.



Same shot as above, zoomed out. The climb was hell, thank you.






The next few came from a couple different trips to a park along the Willamette River. While the Columbia flows west through the north portion of Portland, the Willamette (rhymes with "dammit") flows north right through the middle of Portland and then intersects with the Columbia. The park is in the southern suburbs where the hoity toity have their waterfront mansions and docks. It's usually full of fishermen, but for the life of me I can't figure out why anyone would eat something out of a river full of toxic heavy metals that are there due to our years of heavy industry. Maybe it's catch and release.


It was a wet winter. It just seems so typically Oregon that there would be a dead tree over the path that has ferns growing on it.



White legs need some sun.



I was trying to photo an elusive bird here. It's in the picture, but you'll never find it, because it looks just like a rock. In the background you can see some fishing boats and some of those mansions I referred to.



Here's a blurry close up of that rock-like bird.

Rainbows!

It's been this kind of day. I lucked out while working out earlier as it was pouring while I stretched and lifted weights, but by the time I'd driven over to the school with the running path, the sun was out and massive amounts of steam rose from the trail. Birds were singing, the power lines were making scary crackling sounds and a whole fleet of - I mean, at least thirty - ground squirrels had to make a mad dash for cover when I so rudely ran through their sunbathing strip.

This shot was from just a few minutes ago when there were sheets of rain falling and yet the sun was brightly shining through. The site more than made up for having to tolerate the trashy neighbors' domestic fight in the parking lot that happened about an hour earlier. These two incidents put together perfectly illustrate the benefits and downsides to living on the suburban edge of rural: your neighbors may be alcohol/meth-dependent domestic abusers with a penchant for really loud, shitty music, but hey - the views are great!

The Sun! It's Out!

I can't tell you how happy I am that the sun is shining every now and again these days. School is absolute shit and I wish they'd just give me my degree already instead of tricking me with the fine print. I've been working on these same three credits for over a year now without success. That's not great for one's self esteem, you know.

Anyway, it's been sunny here and there and I've gotten out to run, hike, and hopefully this week, bike. The trees have leaves on them, finally, and I actually had to open the windows when I came home from the soccer game last night, as it was actually hot and stuffy in the apartment.

I'm waiting for a particular job to open up in the Portland area and while I know they're not going to update their job advertisements on the weekend, I can't help but check the listings every few hours. It's a compulsion at this point. I'd just really, really like to remain in the Portland area. While I love lots of other areas of the country and know that I *could* live in those places, that doesn't mean I necessarily *want* to. In the meantime, I'm living off of credit and trying to distract myself from my financial, job and school woes by working out, going to soccer games and catching up on various TV series that I've missed through the years.

Perhaps in a bit I'll post some photos from the last few weeks.

more work AND more play

It became obvious Thursday night, and certainly Friday morning, that I had a lot of shit to do. But this is me we're talking about, so of course I wouldn't just sit down and get it done, would I? Instead, I made new plans and kept the ones I did have. Even though I'm going to two schools this term doesn't mean I have to continue to be a hermit.

By Monday I have to finish writing a song for my electronic music class, get on the bus from downtown and then get into the computer lab enough time before the class starts in order to play it on the keyboard and record it into the school's computer system. Have I mentioned how terrible I am at the piano? Awful.

Earlier Monday I have an archaeology assignment due, the details of which I don't really understand, other than it involves doing some observing on campus which is inconveniently located in a place other than my living room. I may have to get up really early and skip my morning class in order to get that done.

Sunday (tonight) I have two assignments that I have to email in to the instructor. The class as I registered for it was in the music department, but is also cross-listed in the business and digital media communications departments and none of those had a link to the online class itself. I had to find it by googling and didn't get enrolled until a week and a half into the term. Turns out, it's a law class. What the fuck do I know about law? We have to do case studies! I'm not a goddamn lawyer, nor do I intend to be. Case studies in a 100-level community college class? Hay-zooss, I just wanna get paid.

Despite all this stuff, I kept my promise to hike with a friend after class on Friday and while we didn't tromp out to the middle of nowhere, it ate up a good chunk of the afternoon and after a tiring week that involved a lot of walking up and down hills to bus stops in sudden downpours and riding on the bus for an hour at a time, each way, with seedy co-passengers, it was both a physical challenge and a mental release.

Saturday I reluctantly went to my indoor soccer game. I say reluctantly only because I really was feeling my schoolwork obligations weighing on me, but it sounded like without me my team wouldn't have any female subs and I hate it when I have to play without a sub. And it's a good thing I showed up, too. The team manager, of all people, showed up thirty seconds from the finish, as she'd written down the wrong time in her calendar, so we had to play without subs anyway. Somehow, we managed to not only win, but to do it by five goals. I had an assist, a good pass that led to an assist, and saved a goal with my head. I just had to mention that last one, because I'm really proud of it.

Instead of going home after the game, we all stuck around to watch the Barcelona-Real Madrid match on the tv at the arena. Someone ordered a pitcher and then I ended up ordering another one since it seemed like my turn, and there went my Saturday. While watching the match I invited the girl who missed the match to come hiking with me the next day so she could get a workout in anyway. Why I did that I don't know, but it worked out well. The hike was pretty, though tiring, and we got back just in time to catch the last quarter of the Blazers-Lakers (basketball, for you foreigners) match, have a beer and watch Portland win at the last second, away from home and without their best player.

So, instead of working on all those things on Friday, I didn't start on them until 4:30pm Sunday and I'm tired and sore to boot. Do I regret it? Not a bit. In fact, I think I'll look to make my weekends even busier in the future.

Update

I'm skipping class today and I actually feel rather bad about it, so I'm trying to do some productive things with my time to have made it worth it. So far, I've experimented in a radical concept where I store the clean dishes in the cabinets and dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Whoa! Next perhaps I'll try the equally radical idea where I put my clean clothes in the dresser and dirty ones in the laundry bag. At the moment the clean clothes are in the laundry bag and dirty ones on the floor.

Life out here in the 'burbs is all right, I suppose. It's far enough away from the city that it has a lot of rural characteristics, which isn't really a good thing. Yes, I like birds and the woods and things, but the people in rural areas are just dicks. I lived or walked through some nasty areas of Portland on a regular basis and the amount of times anyone honked at me, hollered at me from their car or revved their engine and swerved at me totaled about four. Here, it happens once a week. There are bike lanes, but drivers don't actually expect bicyclists to be in them and when it happens, the bicyclists are subject to a torrent of horns, shouts and abuse. Anything different must be punished! Another thing people don't understand about rural areas is that they're full of criminals. When we think crime, we think cities, but there are enough other people in cities to dilute their effects. Here, everyone in the back half of the bus I ride in the morning know each other because they served in prison together. Awesome! It's difficult to get an apartment as an ex-con so they're often forced to buy a place and that's difficult without much money, so they end up in the cheap areas, which tend to be rural.

Because of all of that and the distance I live from my friends, I've been keeping to myself mostly. This term I'm enrolled in the community college in my new town doing stuff with music recording and production and I'm finishing up a few classes at PSU. That schedule makes for a lot of commuting and a bit of homework as well, making it easy to not go out too much.

If this stupid weather ever improves I'm going to take my newly fixed up bike out for regular rides, do some fishing on the weekends, and weekly hikes with my Portland friends.

an example of someone who is not lazy

Talk about a motivational story! Or one to make your excuses for not working out seem really trivial. This guy, Charlie Davies, is now jogging. It was only October when the soccer player on the USA national team was a passenger in a horrific crash that severed the car in two and killed the other passenger. Davies broke his leg - both the tibia AND the femur - his elbow, multiple bones in his face and lacerated his bladder. And he's already running and doing agility drills. I ran about a mile on Monday and thought I was going to puke or pass out and spent most of the time since then sitting on my new couch. According to the article, a few weeks ago he could barely get out of his wheelchair. I understand that he's a professional athlete, but it's still pretty incredible that in only four months he's getting back up to speed.

In completely unrelated news, I've got birds! Inspired partly by MC's recent diaries on her amazingly beautiful property and the birds that occupy it, and partly from a discussion with my ex-roommate about her mom's African gray parrot, I decided to get a birdfeeder. It takes awhile for anything to show up in new feeders, so I've tried really hard to not get impatient. Yesterday, I finally got a few birds. Still not entirely sure what they are, but my best answer are bushtits. They're tiny little brown to olive birds that make small tsee tsee noises and flutter around. Hopefully, they'll spread the word around to their avian friends that there are some good eats on the second floor balcony.

Indoor soccer game tomorrow! After that embarrassing attempt at a run on Monday, I'm a bit worried about my first game back in months. It's disheartening how slowly 26 minutes tick off the clock each half when you're struggling for breath. It may be a long game.

Still Moving

I finally found an apartment near my new school and I'm finally moving into it this week. So far I have a random collection of things that I've moved over - a few crates of books; receiver, records, but no record player; plates, but no silverware - and my dad is coming up this weekend to help me move the big things with his pickup. In the meantime, I'm hanging out at my old house in order to sleep on my bed and to use the internet. I don't get a connection at my new place until Tuesday. Poo. You know how difficult it is to do online classes without an internet connection? To make it even more difficult, the classes require Word, which is not compatible with the current programs on my Mac, so I have to buy some expensive system. Double poo.

I'm still deciding what to do about furniture. So far I have a fold out camp chair to sit on and crates with boards stretched across to serve as shelves/desktop.

Sorry about the sporadic posting on here recently. I'll try and do better. Now that I'm living all alone again I'll probably have nothing better to do than blog away the time.

Overheard

Two boys, reading in bed.

9-year-old: Wow, I want to go to Europe. Don't you?

6-year-old: No!

9-year-old: What? Why not!?

6-year-old: Because they have vampires there.