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It’s been a busy few weeks getting settled in Portland, but the settling is going well. I’m actually starting my second week as a programmer at Rentrak, and that’s a big part of why I haven’t written anything earlier: full time jobs take a lot of time. It’s fun to be working again though and this seems like a really good company. I had never heard of them, but they do test first development and pair programming (like a buddy system so you’re not writing code alone). By programming with someone else next to me, I’m learning a lot more quickly than I would on my own, so that’s really cool.

Badass new bicycle

Kim and I each bought bicycles this last weekend, so today was my first day biking to and from work. It’s about 8.5 miles by bicycle, so about the same as my commute in Seattle with much smaller hills. I splurged and spent the most I ever have on my bike since I’ll be using it for commuting as regularly as possible. It’s a pretty flashy looking racing bike, and it really feels way faster than anything I’ve been on, but I do worry a little that someone might try to steal it. Another nice thing is that if I don’t feel like biking, or only biking part way, I can take the MAX train almost directly to work.

On the home front we’ve got a studio apartment in Portland’s Southeast Belmont area. The apartment’s a little smaller than we ideally wanted, but it’s ultra cool and the location is too. We’re walking distance to a ton of stuff, and biking distance to even more! We have a huge covered porch that if anyone visits will essentially be their guest room, at least once we find a futon to put out there. We’ve been going to a bunch of yoga classes since we got to Portland too since there’s yoga everywhere you look. The food coop we joined even has free classes. There’s a climbing gym about 10 blocks away that we may decide to join when the weather gets nasty, and it offers free yoga classes too if you’re a member.

Overall we’re having a great time, and it’s really nice to finally have a place our own again. We may look into buying a house in the near future, but we’ll see how we feel getting used to all the newness.