Thinkcorps

It definitely rains a lot here. Which is a change from California weather, but not as bad as everyone says. First off, it’s water, people. The same stuff that washes over you in the shower. Second, it’s usually pretty intermittent and of the light shower variety. So you can let the rain imprison you in your home if you want, or you can get a jacket. Your call.

While our current rental does lack that old-time historical charm (being built in the 70s, when our neighborhood was apparently lower middle class), it does have a few amenities that I think are key in any house—and especially one here in Portland. I learned a harsh lesson back in the Bay Area, when our SF apartment was sold and we moved to Albany (by Berkeley). The “flow” between indoors and out is very important in a house. Since houses are built to keep the outdoors out, getting good “flow” is not necessarily easy. The more barriers you have, the more you’ll feel trapped in your house.

Personally, I hate this feeling. It incubates the culture of fear running rampant through American society and evidenced in our fences, SUVs, etc. We think that mediating our lives will protect us, but it doesn’t.

So—flow is important to me. We have a little back patio that looks out over the NW industrial area. There’s even a little yard engine that passes by on the train tracks nearby every few days. You can hear it chugging and whining. This probably bothers some people, I love it. The important part, however is that we have a little porch out front. It’s nothing fancy, but we can set a couple chairs out there and sit while it’s raining (or we will when it warms up a bit). We can see the trees of Forest Park above the neighbors’ houses across the street. The back and front of the house are very different, but they bring us two very different dimensions of the city.

Here’s our story (copied from an email I sent a friend. so what? i’m lazy):

Don’t ever use U-Haul for anything but an in-town move. It’s so not worth it—seriously. I packed up a whole truck and our car, and with only the TV set left to pack, my back went crazy with these super painful spasms. So I was useless and we enlisted Patricia’s father to drive up with her (we had the truck and our car). There’s definitely a plus side to having family local. I stayed at her sister’s house and flew up to Portland instead.

Meanwhile, PK had a flat about 2 hours out of the Bay Area and sat waiting the rest of the day for someone to come help (they did). I think the next day went OK, but the next day, Patricia had to stop to rearrange the packing in the back of the car, and ended up spilling a bag on the side of road. The combination of cold weather, age, and falling out of the bag did my poor coffee maker in. The carafe hit the pavement and the plastic shattered, but since it’s an insulated model, the now broken carafe shell acted as a cushion for the glass interior, which was now rolling into highway traffic, Patricia scooting after it, trying to pick everything up and avoid causing an accident.

Plus, her dad snores really loud, pretty much precluding her getting any sleep. I, of course, was fine—though I did convince the Southwest gate agent that I was lame enough to deserve preloading with the babies and elderly. I did pull through by hiring two guys to unload the truck after it arrived. I think I overpaid (still only $140 total) but it was worth it to bring the whole ordeal to a quick and tidy end.

So, that was kind of long. Otherwise, Portland is pretty sweet. It’s a nice town, growing in ways that bother the locals, but I find their “problem” areas to be pretty comfortable. Maybe I’m getting older, maybe I’ve seen too much nastiness in the Bay Area. We rented a little 3BR in the Northwest hills, only a few blocks from Forest Park, which makes it a little remote, but we like walking, and can get all the way downtown or to Powells pretty easily. One night, on our way to a film festival showing, we walked all the way downtown while outpacing the streetcar the entire way.

Parking at its worst is SF at medium-easy. So, I’m pretty psyched. I don’t think you really give up that much, and you can buy a monster home here for pennies. Other than that, we’re just trying to settle a bit, which takes longer in the rainy cold winter, but hey, Spring is coming, right?

I’ve decided I’m sick of writing what I usually write on this blog, and need to expand outward into other areas of life. The easiest way to open that up seemed to be to add a new category, named Portland, to redirect some wayward thinking. We’ll see if it does any good.