Back in town

Hola, y'all.  The rumors are true; I have returned to Portland, and not a moment too late.  After being out in the SoCal mountains for 10 weeks I had gotten accustomed to living in an area where not much grows beyond what's native to the region.  That is not the case in Portland.  If you ever want to meet some of the happiest spinach on earth you should come meet ours.  I mean, it's, like, WHOA!  HAPPY!  SPINACH!  The kale and Swiss chard are equally elated.  Plants grow so well around here that I'm fairly certain that we would be laughed at if we actually bought strawberry plants.  They're so prolific in the Willamette Valley that even I am beginning to look at them as almost a weed.

In other news, I got a part-time job for the summer.  After all those months of dozens of applications and a handful of unfruitful interviews I managed to snag a summer gig after applying for, at most, two summer jobs.  Seriously, there's some incredible irony here.  So yeah, I started yesterday (Monday) working with the Vancouver Housing Authority across the river in Washington.  I'll be their Youth Activities Assistant for the next six and a half weeks.  Yesterday was just paperwork stuff with Human Resources so I don't know exactly what I'm in store for yet.  The preliminary vibe is that I'll be helping to run a summer drop-in facility similar to a Boys & Girls Club.  The commute to work may prove to be the biggest challenge associated with the job.  Yesterday took three hours to get there.  Now, granted, I'm still learning some of the odds and ends of C-TRAN (Vancouver's version of Tri-Met).  Mostly it was due to the MAX not being in service at 122nd Street because some guy that was strung out on meth leaned into the tracks while the train was coming and got decapitated.  Crazy, I know.  But I digress...  I think I'll figure out something that will keep the commute under two hours; it may involve some biking, which is fine by me.  The job is in the afternoons, Monday through Thursday, so I'll still have Fridays to do whatever as well as the weekends.

The summer job will also be ending just in time for me to head back to California.  That's right, I'm going back.  The ranch hired me back on for the coming year - woot!  I really enjoyed my time down there and I'll be interested to see if I still enjoy it after a full year (and a winter season) down there.  It's nice to finally feel like there's some direction with what's going on in my life as well as some financial stability.  If I save my pennies and dimes, I might even be able to finish paying off my college loans by this time next year.  That would be fan-TAS-tic.  I'll miss being here with the super cool community (in the house and beyond) I've found and connected with here in Portland.  At the same time, though, I'm really looking forward to what the coming year brings my way.

Well, I'm sure I could write a small novel about all the stuff that's gone on since I left and even with the almost-three weeks I've been back.  Instead, though, I think I'm going to take some homemade jam over to the couple that is letting me play in their community garden plot.  Ah, Portland, it's good to be back.


P.S.  Sorry for not posting any pictures with this post.  My computer is on the fritz so I'm using Jon's 'cause he's super nice like that.

P.P.S.  Everything Heather said about how sweet the race was is completely true.  It was such a cool endeavor; I'm glad we were crazy enough to go for it!