Today I have been mostly packing a moving van

I have to admit I’d been scared of the NY idea for quite a while. It seemed a bit too much like London- an enormous place full of people sucking money out of your pockets while you dithered about with a map trying to get from one tourist trap to another without getting mugged. After two days here I reckon that while there are definitely parts of the island just like that, we’ve lucked out and are in a great location where everything’s walkable, people seem friendly and there are proper, normal, shops and restaurants. Hellz, there’s even a Trader Joe’s about 10 blocks away. Just a question of training Atticus to understand the command ‘Charles Shaw’ to get him to retrieve the occasional bottle of 2-buck Chuck.

The apartment seems bigger than when we viewed it a month ago and with all our familiar charity shop/ikea furniture and knicknacks in place I’m really looking forward to living/ working here… This was the 1st time we had professional movers do it (because it’s a prohibitively expensive process). Basically on Monday two Ecuadorian blokes turned up with a huge lorry and more cardboard boxes, sellotape and packing materials than I’ve seen during our last 10 moves combined. They methodically swept through the house wrapping, stuffing and carting all our stuff into the van til about 6 hours later nothing was left except for us two, our suitcase and 10 months worth of schipperke fur. We did a final clean of the place, then headed round a friend’s house who made one of the best paella’s I’ve ever had for a farewell meal… next morning, we drove to Portland, left the car in storage, taxi’d it to the airport, flew to La Guardia, then ‘supershuttled’ it to our new quarters where the Ecuador dream team were already unloading our boxes.

It’s the 18th floor (the 17th floor in real money). Out of 30 or so. But the lift is very fast. The view is impressive… There’s a Picasso sculpture out side the entrance… we’re between Greenwich Village and Soho. Everyone seems to have a dog, and they all seem a bit better trained than ‘Cus for urban living. That’ll be a project.

Brunswick had more unsecured wi-fi networks than this area mind. I thought that at least one of the 40 odd available networks in this here skyscraper would connect us to the tubes. Mais non. So I’m typing this in a text editor and shall copy and paste it onto the webs when I get to Think Coffee, the nearest caffeine and wifi emporium. No point in getting internet installed before we bugger off to Guadalajara for a month and half tomorrow is there. That said, with no internet, no dog and no telly, productivity is through the roof.

Highlights this week:
Farewell to Maine and Maine-based peeps
NY Restaurants: Dojo, Tartine, and that Indian one.
The Lomography shop
Rediscovering NPR
Pain-free move

Hola amigos, I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya but things have been moving pretty fast here in Portland, Oregon, Gringolandia…

DrSita’s been applying for positions all over the country for a while since her fellowship here was slated to finish this month. They finally got around to offering her another two years but by then she’d been interviewed and accepted a great job at a premier teaching institution in Maine… This means that our summer plans (which had been up in the air because of this whole where-are-we-living-in August? uncertainty) have been cleared up and in the last couple of weeks we’ve had to plan a trip to the UK for me, a jaunt to Brazil and Chile for DrSita and a 3,189 mile move from Portland to Portland all while resolving the “what to do with young ‘Cus during all this excitement” issue. We’re pretty happy about the move. DrSita’s job sounds really good, I’m excited to find out what Maine is all about and have a new area to photograph. I’ll also get to make a much bigger igloo this winter if I’m right about the climate. We’ll be closer to our East Coast posse of friends, and it’s been a while… And the time difference with england is only 5 hours which makes phone calls and that easier, and we’ll be time-synced with Guadalajara. Portland’s been good to us, and I’d still heartily recommend it to anyone considering a place to live. That’s if it doesn’t fill up with New Yorkers in the coming months.

On Wednesday I let my employers know that I’ll be moving on in mid-June and they’ll have to get by without my services. They’ve been really cool about it. If I’d known how many nice emails I’d get I’d’ve quit months ago… maybe not… anyroad, right now we’re transitioning to a new behemoth of a content management system for the site and I don’t think I’ve worked so hard since teaching Spanish in Scotts Valley. There are going to be all kinds of issues arising before, during and after it goes live so it’s a weird time for all concerned, and I’ll be working hard till the last moments I reckon.

Last weekend we had some friends up from Alameda (remember Alameda?) and so got to go out and enjoy PDX in the sunshine for a few days, eating out, drinking out, walking out, driving out, and all that. And now DrSita’s classes have finished we’ve been able to get out a lot more, spend time with mates who are also jumping the PDX ship and lately it’s been gorgeous and I have  a new camera…

I’m also happy the summer blockbusters have started hitting the cinemas. Star Trek was great fun and maybe tonight’ll be Terminator. We’ll see, cos today I’m at a conference and for some reason listening intently and avoiding networking makes me tired. I’m 34 you know. (btw, it’s Dr.S.’s b-day in a week’s time, folks. She’s on Facebook… ) Yesterday I saw Mark Frauenfelder there off of boingboing do a fun presentation on Making stuff and a couple of other sessions.

I’m stoked I’ve bought my tix to Bristol and back. I was tracking them and they hit the $1000+ mark because I was originally going to fly around the 4th of July weekend which is uber-high season but thanks to the new date possibilities I managed to get something of a bargain for that time of year. My folks are helping with the cost anyway, bless ’em, but still, a bargain’s a bargain. Email me for the dates. I’ll have shaken off the worst of the jetlag for Stu’n’Anne’s wedding and be back in time for packing the moving van before our lease is up.

Sita’s folks are coming up next weekend which is always fun. And there’ll be roses in the rose garden, parades and all kinds of good stuff especially if this weather holds. We’re very glad they said yes, because it’ll be a while till I see them otherwise.

Other landmark events… La Flaca got past the 100,000 views mark on YouTube. Am I famous now? And do I owe anyone royalties?

And that’s all for now. Thanks for bearing with the streamofconsciousness that was this post and for your continued readership. I’m off to “Creating Dynamic Sites with AJAX and Dreamweaver“… subject to change