PDX

Greetings from our latest ZIP code!

Where to start? I neglected to take any photos over the last week so it’ll be a texty entry here. The moving van arrived on Monday, we packed it to the brim, 10′ x 18′ x 10′ in about 100 trips back and forth. Tuesday we cleaned the house and polyfilla’d all the holes ready for the inspection on Wednesday morning. We also fitted in a walk round lake Merritt with T and I got hands-free things for the mobiles so we could chat legally in the cars on the convoy ‘cos of the new California legislation. I also got a polarizing filter for me camera ready for the invariably overcast skies in Oregon. I’ve not tried it out yet.

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Wednesday’s inspection went great, we got our full deposit back and the LL was impressed with the level of cleanliness and the number of applications we’d got for our replacements. Then it was the I-5 all the way to Portland where I burned through a week’s worth of podcasts in 11 hours or so. A highlight amongst them was Mario’s Circulo Vicioso, Mario and his mates are going through their record collections once a month and releasing their favourite tracks with a bit of description. Bodes well for Spanish-speaking, retro music lovers of a certain age… We got into Portland by around 8pm and went straight to a friends house to collapse in a heap and have some wine…

Thursday was exploring our new ‘hood and buying provisions. There’s a wealth of little local owned shops, restaurants, galleries, pubs. We’ve not established a ‘local’ yet but it’s on the cards, found a brilliant breakfast place though about 5 blocks from the house, also found the local pricey organicky supermarket and, more importantly, Albertsons…

Friday… the moving van arrived at 10ish it took about 3 hours to empty it. There were a few casualties but most furniture survived. One IKEA shelf unit reverted to its flatpack form however, but I’ve repurposed it in me office and shall post a pic one of these days. The rest of Friday was unpacking the boxes and moving around furniture/ buying furniture, as was Saturday and a lot of Sunday.

Sunday was our 6 year wedding anniversary. Drsita pulled out our Big Book of Fun Things to do in Portland that T gave us and found a couple of places that were reasonably priced and delicious.

Yesterday it felt like we were moved in. We moved the futon into the basement and replaced it with a second hand sofa, shoved the curtains up around the place, cooked prawn curry, bought a spade to start the gardening and generally chilled. We’ve a heatwave on this week so we’re well glad of the ceiling fans in the various rooms. Today the forecast is the mid 90s. Drsita carried through with her threat to cut my hair too. Maybe in a week or two I’ll be able to tie it back again…

This avo I noticed that some peeps from the Portland Flickr group are having a meet up in a nearby park so that’ll be a chance to unpack me camera and meet some new folks. On Thursday we might well be helping some friends of friends move in too. So it’s all onwards and upwards on the social front. Now I just have to find a job…

In summary, all is very well.

For home improvement and very imminent baby news, Monica’s blogging again.