Okay, fine. I exaggerate, but it is 44ยบ outside and raining. And my toes feel like icicles. It's the first morning that I didn't want to get out of bed without a winter coat, due largely to the fact that we still had the bedroom window wide open. All windows in our apartment are officially closed! And I took my coffee hot this morning instead of iced, something that rarely occurs (even in the winter).
A recent addition to our household is a giant french press. It is my new love. I have a smaller version that makes exactly 8oz., but it was intended for a pick-me-up at the office. Given that I haven't had an office in over a year, coffee is always made for two (or three or four). I had forgotten how much different coffee tastes when made with the french press -- it's creamy and delicious, kind of like hot chocolate. However, I have yet to brew anything other than Stumptown coffee since we got it, so the marginal stuff might taste just as mediocre. I'll have to run a comparison in the future.
Today calls for a healthy serving of coffee, as neither Jesse or I were as productive yesterday as we had hoped. I set out to finish reading for my class and writing a short paper, but ended up taking care of a few phone calls, messing around on the internet looking for rental houses, finding excuses to not cook dinner, and generally being lazy. However, this morning we are off to a good start. Jesse took the car in for an oil change and to have them check out our temperature knob that will not turn to heat. Given the recent cold snap, I think a defroster will be necessary very soon. (As a side note, I had a slight flush to my cheeks when I realized that out heater has been broken for nearly a year. Oops. Where did all of that time go?) I'm already getting started on my paper outline and will be cooking up a tasty pot of potato leek soup for dinner. I'm determined to have a better day than yesterday!
Yesterday's weather was gorgeous. Despite all of the sunshine, I stayed inside for a good part of the day. After reading a little in the morning for my class, I poked around on the internet to see what kind of houses were available for rent on the east side. I found a couple of addresses that seemed promising and around 3pm, convinced Jesse that he needed to drop all of his work and take a bike ride to Southeast Portland. It didn't take very much arm twisting, he'd had a pretty full day already and needed the exercise.
We coasted down the waterfront and landed at our first destination, a small house just south of Ladd's Addition. I had high hopes for this one, given that it was so close to downtown and in an awesome section of town. It, however, was a total let-down. It looked like a place that had been rented to college students and even by just peering in the windows, I could tell that it wouldn't do. The next place was equally as disappointing, as it looked like a storage locker with a front door (no wonder neither of the landlords posted photos).
With one more house left as our only hope, we rode all the way out to 57th Avenue near Mt. Tabor. It's a lovely neighborhood, quite perfect in every way -- cute house (just look at those windows!), nice back yard, beautiful street, right in our price range, and down the street from a nice park. The only down side is that it is located on top of an impossibly steep hill. That means that it would be sweet for commuting to work by bike, but kind of a drag to get home. However, the streets just west, from 51st (at the foot of the impossibly steep hill) to 39th seem to be our "sweet spot."
I still need to do a little more research on the area, like where my local grocery store might be, or what restaurants we might frequent, but as of our bike ride today, I'm sold. I just have to keep my eyes peeled for any other houses that might come up. On our way home, we both realized that we were starving, so we stopped in at our favorite Thai place, the Pad Thai Kitchen on Belmont. I'm always looking for a good excuse to ride out there, because their food is pretty awesome. Jesse got his favorite, the pumpkin curry, and I ordered drunken noodles. It was the perfect end to a pretty good afternoon.
I love this time of year. The weather starts to get cool, the trees start to turn, I get to roast vegetables and make soup, and of course Halloween is just around the corner. I love the process of thinking about and costumes, getting excited about creating crazy gross-out Halloween food, and carving pumpkins (even though I never end up actually carving a pumpkin). In D.C., we were lucky enough to have friends that loved to dress up and go out on the town, but our last Halloween there was a bit of a let-down. Most of our friends had moved away and we just couldn't get up the motivation to go out on our own. Since we moved to Portland just two months before Halloween last year, we didn't have a lot of time to make friends and sat that one out too. I have now had two years of build-up and can't wait to get out for Halloween Portland-style.
I feel pretty lucky to have found a group of friends who love to dress up (at Halloween and otherwise), so this year is going to be pretty awesome. The Halloween party date is set, and everyone is hush hush about their costume ideas. These ladies and gents take their Halloween pretty seriously. I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve, but they'll have to stay under wraps for now. Here are a few of our costumes from the past to hold you over for a couple of weeks:
2003: Ice Queen (which unbeknownst to me was my nickname during the first few months of grad school) and Wolverine.
2004: My best friend, Lauren, and I dressed up as Krystle and Alexis from Dynasty. J said that my faux silk jumpsuit was so ugly that he might never be able to love me again.
2005: Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York and Mrs. Incredible. I think bourbon and some strong margaritas gave me the courage to put on skin-tight red suit. Jesse also really enjoyed the margaritas and nearly got kicked out of Heaven and Hell (a local bar) for his jubilant dancing. I had to cut off part of his costume when we got home. It was a good Halloween.
Jesse's parents were in town this weekend for a quick visit and we had an awesome time. We went on lots of neighborhood walks, stopped at a couple of our favorite food spots, and went to a Timbers playoff game at PGE Park. Unfortunately, the Timbers tied with the Vancouver Whitecaps, which was not enough to advance them on in the tournament. It was quite heartbreaking to see the team so distraught after the game. So, we had to all drown our sorrows in some good Cajun food at Montage. I personally comforted myself with the Spold mac & cheese with Andouille sausage. We also shared a plate of crawfish hushpuppies that were outstanding.
On one of our walks through Ladd's Addition, we stopped to admire this plant that nobody could identify. I'd never seen anything quite like it before and was struck by the beautiful pink flowers and teal centers/berries growing inside. I haven't bothered to Google it yet, as I'm hoping that you, the internets, will help me come to some determination. The flowers were growing on what appeared to be a small tree, or a very well-trained bush. Seriously, I've never seen that blue color occur like that in nature. It was pretty awesome.
Walking through the neighborhoods made me long for a cute house with a yard again. It was like tearing open a wound that I thought had healed. Given that I still have not been able to figure out what I'm going to do for work here in Portland, renting will likely have to suffice. And honestly, I'm pretty okay with that solution. I went to a couple of websites this afternoon to check out what's available. Jesse and I are going to ride around a few neighborhoods this weekend to see if there is anything on the rental market that might work.
With that said, I didn't have much time to think about those cute bungalows calling my name, as I had a short interview with a staffing agency and later broke into a friend's house and stole their car. Heh. I like to leave out the part about them giving me permission and giving explicit instructions on how to break into their house and car. Even still, I was a bad-ass ninja today (avert your eyes if you can't handle the the masked facade). The photo was taken just before I (the perp) entered the premises and made off with their Matrix. My ninja status was seriously compromised by the baby car seat and smiley sunshine face in the backseat. However, if I didn't look in the rear view mirror too much, it was easily ignored. Besides, even ninjas sometimes have to transport cute babies and their parents home from the the airport from time to time.
Yesterday, a very special package came in the mail. It was from Jesse's office. No, he didn't get promoted, but judging from the excitement in the apartment, you would have thought they made him King of the non-profit. We did a little happy dance as he ripped open the padded envelope. That very special package was the new Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium edition. It's the tricked out Cadillac of all Adobe packages and it's allllll miiiinnnneee. (Ok, technically, it's all Jesse's, since he is going to use it for work, but I can also load it on my Preshus and tinker to my heart's content.)
I popped in the tutorial cd this morning and realized that there are about 15 different programs and applications, many of which I've never heard. I decided to get a little breakfast before diving right in, because I am definitely not worthy. Having this software package to do the types of projects that I have in mind is like hiring Deloitte and Touche to balance my checkbook. However, I feel that I must step to the challenge of owning the CS4 Web Premium edition. In addition to my Public Administration course, I'm thinking of taking a basic web design class to learn how to use Dreamweaver. My main goal will be to rebuild the Quickcrit Blogger template (which is right now sort of a Frankenstein of pieced widgets and html parts) so it's not all buggy and annoying. We'll see how that goes.
Oh and my Public Administration class? Awesome. I think it's going to be a really great quarter for two reasons: my professor is pretty great and Public Administration is such a nebulous field that just about anyone can find a niche -- kind of like my degree in American Studies. Oh, and speaking of American Studies, my professor is also an American Studies graduate. I think I'm going to love this class!
A recent addition to our household is a giant french press. It is my new love. I have a smaller version that makes exactly 8oz., but it was intended for a pick-me-up at the office. Given that I haven't had an office in over a year, coffee is always made for two (or three or four). I had forgotten how much different coffee tastes when made with the french press -- it's creamy and delicious, kind of like hot chocolate. However, I have yet to brew anything other than Stumptown coffee since we got it, so the marginal stuff might taste just as mediocre. I'll have to run a comparison in the future.
