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Next stop: Portland

ByGwyn Fisher

Sita accepted Lewis and Clarke’s offer last night for a post-doctoral position in their Latin American Studies dept. It’s a one-year gig, but they’ll be paying for our moving expenses (U-Haul for our craigslist furniture and limousine for the schipperke). We’re very happy about all this. If you’ve ever written an email to Sita, you may have received a letter this morning about it, if not… Sur-prise!

This also means Sita will finally be Professor Sita with the hat and everything sometime in June with a PhD signed by none other than California’s own Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oregon is a surprisingly cool place with lots going on, plenty of bars, music and has all manner of parks, dormant volcanoes and borders with Canada to explore. So it’s all good. And keeps our record of never staying in the same zip code for more than 10 months at a time unbroken… It’s still 8 hours behind GMT but maybe the change of scenery will encourage friends and family from t’other side of the pond to visit us again.

The problem with California… and it has many… is that it costs a small fortune to live here. You’re paying a premium just for the privilege of living here and after a while it starts to grate. Especially if you’re not out and enjoying the surroundings to the fullest and just treading water in the (su) ‘burbs. It’s like living in the carpark of Disneyland but paying for a family ticket every day. And it takes an hour to get anywhere in the carpark. And all the cars look the same. And you’ve got a dog. And you were never that keen on Disneyland in the first place. Yeah. Reading back, it’s Just like that.

Talking of dogs. Our neighbours have started feeding the squirrels in the back garden so they’re often running around our little green patch like they own the place. Of course, they don’t own it. Nope, that title belongs to one Atticus Gaytan-Fisher. And he’ll defend the place even if it means flailing blindly against a ground level window until it shatters into small pieces like what happened this morning.

Plus points:

  • He didn’t hurt himself.
  • We live one block away from the DIY shop.
  • It was squirrels he was after, not the neighbours or landlord.
  • I’ve learnt how to replace windows in Victorian style homes and shall put up a page advertising this new service at agaveweb.com soon enough. That’s if Kevin Fennelly isn’t available.

Minus points:

  • He didn’t hurt himself.

Not a scratch. No lessons learnt whatsoever. So I’ve put up cardboard in front of his office windows so he is less apt to throw himself at them. That’s the theory anyway. He’ll probably just start tunnelling.

This evening I’m meeting Fernando from Guadalajara in Amoeba records, San Pancho so I might have a power nap now so I can hit the ground running later over the Bay Bridge. So there you go. Life in the fast lane, Alameda (25mph max).

19 Comments

  1. Life is so strange….we “met” when I was about to move to your hometown in England – and now you are about to move to my hometown in the States. Don’t know if you remember me – you found me on Flickr when I’d posted a bunch of pics from Taunton/Bridgwater/even Kingston St. Mary (which is where the school was that we’d eventually picked for our kids).

    Portland is amazing. It’s my favorite city to live in, actually. Let me know if you need any recommendations for anything.

  2. Hi “American Mum”!

    Cheers for the comment and offer of recommendations. We were well impressed by your hometown. I think we’re going to be looking for a place in the SW, which is nearish the college but it’ll all start to take shape in August or thereabouts. Nice to know we’ve another source of insider knowledge we can rely on.

    Thanks!

  3. Sounds a great & prestigious place. Congratulations! (Just checked it out & it has a lot going for it- I now know who the original Lewis & Clarke were- just don’t mention Monica L. & internships)

  4. Huy, ahora siento mucho no poder haber ido a visitarte a SF, pero prometo ir pronto a Portland, si me invitas claro 😉

    Veo que sigues encontrando usos alternativos a esos prodigios tapatios que son las cajas de huevo Guadalupe. 🙂

  5. Hi Dad,
    I’ve still not looked up Lewis and Clarke, I thought it was something to to with Superman…

    Hola Mario,
    Por supuesto te invitamos a tí y también a tu novia peliroja. Faltan unos meses, estamos aquí hasta agosto. Puedes hacer las dos visitas si quieren.

  6. This is so cool, many cheers and congratulations to Sita!

    Did you know Portland is a “sister city” of Guanatos? Whatever that means, but it is nice it all stays in the family. Can’t wait for the full Guanatos Gwyn treatment of Mt St Helens. Here’s to hoping you catch an UFO.

    Thanks for getting so quick to the “not hurt” point about the dog… it did sent a shiver down my spine… the stupid mutt.

  8. Thanks César! Yep stupid’s just one of the many adjectives that crossed my mind that morning.

    Like all good Catholics, GDL’s got many sisters it seems… We’ll’ve lived in at least 3 of them by September: Downey, Sevilla and Portland. I look forward to judging Oregon’s tortas ahogadas.

    I’m sure we’ll find something local for el 5o de Mayo. Ironic that Guadalajara itself won’t be celebrating it. Cheers, Dad!

  9. Oh, ahogadas. Hey, they couldn’t possibly be worse than Guadalajara’s.

    *ducks*

    😀

    But seriously, here’s a formal Request For Enhancement of this here sexy blog. Is there a way to make it so that it doesn’t delete your comment text when you fail the captcha? It does happen often to me, and everytime I forget to copy my text to the clipboard before hitting submit, I feel like banging my head against the keyboard…

  10. Blimey, didn’t know it did that. Thanks for persevering!

    I’ll flail around in the code sometime this weekend, and cheers for pointing that out.

  15. Grr… wordpress can’t do ASCII art 🙁

    It’s working, Gwyn, thanks! But I have a theoretical concern: see, the captcha has a timeout, I’m sure, it isn’t valid after a while. So, if you take too long to write you comment… won’t this mean that your text will be deleted *and* you’ll not even know why?

    I’ll try later today, right now I gotta run…

    Hey mario… ya va, ya va… verás que pronto vuelve 🙂

  16. Started writing at 11.12am…

    Myrna has been having trouble with the captcha for the last few weeks… hope that de-wooshes you a bit.

    I’ll look into allowing ASCII “Art” 😉 10/10 for effort, though

    Can’t wait for La Mengambrea‘s return!

    Saludos!

    posting at 11.23…

  17. (back from picking up me kid from school now)

    It does, thanks, haha. And the magic script does work great even if you take 15 min writing it seems… so, hum, never mind. Seems I’ve been doing QA testing waaay longer than it’s healthy.

    ¡Salud!

  18. Cómo sabía que ya ibas a tener un Gravatar Don César? No hay ninguna tecnologia que se te escape edá? 😀

    If anyone else fancies having their picture appear with their comments, sign up here

    Hope to be posting again mañana. Thanks for your patience folks!

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