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Rockin’ in the New Year

I kinda disappeared from my blog recently. I think after all the blogging in South America, and all the newness of moving to a new city and buying a house, I was just a little overwhelmed. I’m finally beginning to feel settled again. I can tell because I’ve started wondering what the next big traveling adventure might be, although I know it’s probably a year or more off.

Until then we’ll find plenty to keep us busy this new year. There’s always house projects. I’m going to be starting a dodgeball league this month. We’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of local hikes. Kim will probably be doing some more aerial classes soon, once she manages to pry time away from cooking a bazillion new recipes in our new kitchen. And we’re going to be getting a dog in the near future. The dog has been planned for a while now, we’ve just been slow about it.

I’m looking forward to living in one place for more than a year in a row again. Haven’t done that since 2006.

Lots of light in the new house

Finally! If anyone was wondering why I stopped posting the last month or so, it’s been because we’ve been in house hunting mode. We’ve been pretty much nonstop looking at houses, or working to close on a phew. We actually made offers on 3 houses before we finally got one that worked for us. Third time’s the charm, eh? I won’t go into all the boring details, but let’s just say a whole lot of frustration had to happen to let us get the house we really wanted, at the price we wanted, at just the right time. It’s kind of all fallen into place even if it’s been a struggle. I know that seems contradictory, but you can ask me about it if you want the full, long winded story.

And closing hasn’t been a moment too soon. Our little studio apartment is daily closing in on me and driving me bonkers. It was an awesome place during the summer with the giant porch to hang out on, but lately with the weather getting too cold to hang out outside it’s begun to feel kind of like a prison cell. So I’d say we’re timing the house closing pretty well, because if we weren’t buying the house right now, I’d be looking for a bigger apartment to move to.

All this house stress and apartment shrinking really screwed up my goal to meditate 30 days straight. I got about 15 days in and that’s when the house stuff got crazy and the weather got cold at the same time. I know I should consider meditation even more important during such stressful times, but I’ve found it so hard to concentrate on anything but loan/move in/inspection/insurance/paperwork/house stuff that I couldn’t make myself sit down long enough. I feel like now that we’ve signed all the documents I can let go of all those details and get back to having time to focus on pleasant things.

So even with the closing tomorrow we’ve got a few weeks until we move in. The closing was actually done in slightly over two weeks, which if you’ve ever closed a house purchase before you know to be really fast. Because of this, the sellers needed a bit more time to move out after closing, so they’re paying us rent until we move in. Even though it would be nice to move in tomorrow, it’s probably good with all the other stuff going on the next few weeks (Halloween, trip to the East Coast for a wedding) that we’re not moving.

For all you friends and family who have been wanting to check out Portland, we will now have a guest bedroom (or two!) for you to stay in, at least starting mid November. So come on over for a visit!

Getting cozy in the falls

We finally got outside this summer. Portland has just kept us too busy these last couple months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved all the stuff we’ve had to do recently (out of town visitors, street festivals, beer festivals, board gaming, biking, parks, bars, concerts, etc), but it was time to get out. So we went camping and hiking with our new friends Justin and Rachael at Silver Falls State Park.

We headed down Friday night, about an hour and a half drive, and totally lucked out by getting the last open camp site. Phew. Saturday morning we started hiking the trail of the ten falls. Can you guess why it’s named that? That’s right, ten waterfalls, and all crammed into an eight mile loop. There were even a few we stopped to swim in even though the water was not very warm. We took our time, so it took us a little over six hours. At the end we were hungry.

Can you see the face?

We had bought plenty of food for the campsite, but we figured we’d check out the cute little town of Silverton not to far from the park. We picked the Red Thai Room, but it was pretty darned expensive and only pretty good, so we were still hungry. So we walked around and ended up at the little, family Mexican restaurant. Big mistake. We ordered quesadillas and it was the worst cheese ever. Oh well.

After dinner we went back to camp to enjoy a fire and some cocoa and 99 bananas. Some rowdy neighbors moved in next door and were a tad annoying, but that mostly just meant that we didn’t stand out as the noisy ones for just talking late into the night.

We had to return home Sunday morning for Kim’s work, but it was a great outing that was long overdue.

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.

We’ve made it to Portland and so far so good. We’re staying with Travis, a friend from college, while we do job interviews and look for a place. Our first day here and we each had interviews and spent some time getting to know the prospective neighborhoods we might live in. The interviews seemed to go well for each of us today, and there’s more to come. Tomorrow we’ll be looking at some rental options and meeting with some other old friends who live here. Overall it looks like this is going to be a good place for to settle down for a bit, and we’re looking forward to being stationary after all that traveling.

The fast is over! Now it’s time to get back to eating solid foods. To start the morning I just ate an apple. However, unlike other fast breaks, it didn’t fill me. For lunch we ate potato soup and I had more than I would have thought. Basically, my appetite returned very quickly, and by dinner the second day we were eating Mac and Cheese.

It’s more than a week since my low weight and I’ve gained back all the weight lost during the fast. Overall I don’t really feel all that different than from before I started the fast, except that I’ve been needing less sleep than before the fast. I’m not feeling tired when I wake up either. And I think my appetite has increased.

The third day was hard for me! It was hard mostly mentally, but a little physically as well. Perhaps it was knowing that the next day I’d be eating (even if only a tiny, tiny bit), but I felt physically hungry late at night. It’s interesting getting to know the difference between feeling physically hungry and just psychologically hungry. The last three day fast we did the third day was the easiest for me, since by that point I had gotten mostly past the cravings. Interestingly, I lost no weight today. I weighed the same as the previous night all the way through the day. I can’t wait to eat tomorrow!

Day two was also easier than in the past. Perhaps I’m getting used to this. It also helps that we have absolutely no responsibilities right now and plenty of quiet. In the past I got a little grumpy fasting, but since I don’t have to interact with anyone but Kim and we have plenty of time doing our own thing there’s nothing to agitate me.

We did a lighter yoga session today, which was good. For juice we did some stuff with carrots today. We also have a cup of vegetable broth that Kim prepared with organic veggies. As far as cravings, there weren’t any that I remember. At one point I felt hungry, but I had a spoonful of honey and was immediately reenergized.

I again lost two pounds from the other day. I do wonder where that weight comes from since by now there’s nothing really coming out of my body except for water, and I’m replacing that with a lot more.

One more day! Of course, after that breaking the fast is gradual process. For example, the first day of solid foods all we eat is an apple and some potato soup. Even though I’m not having massive food cravings, I definitely miss just chewing something.

This first day of the fast was surprisingly easy compared to past fasts. I was barely ever hungry, although I think a large part of that is due to my decreased appetite eating raw for the previous five days. There were a few food cravings for bread mostly, but once again, I think that carries over from the previous days of eating raw.

To help the fast along, as usual, we took about a tablespoon of Epsom salt in a warm glass of water. It’s really disgusting to drink, but man does it empty you out. For juice we had beets, apples, spinach, and a few other assorted veggies. Later in the day we did a juice with watermelon (juice the rind too, there’s vitamins and stuff in there) and mint that was tasty. We did an hour of yoga which may have been a little too intense. We also drank some herbal teas and a ton of filtered water.

I’m always surprised how much energy and concentration I have while fasting. However, this is accompanied by occasional feelings of weakness and dizziness, especially if I stand up too fast. The first day I don’t usually feel crappy, like often happens the second day when the toxins are supposedly leaving en masse. Other physical symptoms include a lot more sweat than normal and a huge layer of guck on my tongue that I scrape off. Again, this is supposedly the body’s way of releasing those toxins. So far I’ve lost two pounds from my morning weight to my evening weight, although, again, the goal of the fast is not to lose weight. The weight lost during the fast usually comes back pretty fast anyway since when you start eating again your body stores calories like crazy.

On to day two!