Hail Yeah!

It's hailed the past three days. Pretty weird, in my opinion, but I'm getting used to it. There were some flaky snow-like things coming down at one point. Only for a moment. Today it rained, then got sunny, then hailed, then got sunny with patches of blue sky and puffy clouds that looked like cotton candy (this is when we went out grocery shopping), then it hailed again, then rained, and then I don't even know because I lost track.

The temperature seems to be hovering above freezing, but it's obviously cold up in the heavens. So interesting!

I wanted to mention a new benefit of this glorious weather out here in the NW. Standard-Humidity-Winters. My skin isn't overly dry. I rarely need chapstick. And the best of all: I can brush my hair without static electricity!!! No frizzy hair! Seriously. I can't even get over it. I've been brushing my hair occasionally, now that it's so long (really, this is pretty long for me). In normal New England winter, my hair would be standing up like I'd just stuck my fingers in a socket, but here it actually DE-FRIZZES my hair when it's brushed. Un-effing-believable.

In completely non-hair-related news, I'm taking lots of new photos for my Etsy shop, since I got some great ideas from critiques at the PDX Etsy tea time. It's a bunch of work, but I may as well have the best photos possible for the items I have listed, instead of spending all my time making new items. Sell sell sell. I'm trying out some new lighting and new backgrounds. I also need to add more shots for each item, since people want to see products from all angles. There are also purple sand and fake fur involved in some shots.

I do have new items I need to make though, since I got accepted at Trillium Artisans! Yay! This'll be my first consignment shop in PDX, and they're focused on helping artists grow their business. I could try using their photo setup, or maybe take a class on digital photography there. They have all kinds of stuff like that, and I'm excited! They also only sell artwork from folks who use at least 50% recycled/reclaimed materials for their work. Very cool.
www.trilliumartisans.org

Flaming Trains and Tornadoes

Tonight, just as the sun was dropping past the horizon, we had a bit of a hailstorm. I noticed it because I was in my studio and I heard a funny noise coming from outside the window. I looked out to see white pebbles rolling down the roof of the garage behind our house, with blue sky off in the distance.

The hailstones were only about the size of large salt crystals used for icemelt. It pretty much stopped as soon as I got my camera outside to take some photos, but it was cool nonetheless.

This is the second unexpected hailstorm we've encountered here in the past few weeks, and it made me think about all the interesting things we've seen since we embarked on this journey back in February. It's weird how you can plan for a big move across the country, by packing and changing your utility companies and everything, but your life pretty much goes on as normal until you're officially on the road. Even though you're packing your things and saying goodbye, you're still following the same daily routines and having generally predictable days. It doesn't even really hit you that you've left until about the third day of driving, since before that you could have just been out to visit friends or taking a little vacation.

While the scenery around you changes from forgettably familiar to unfamiliar and moves into foreign and unusual, your moods and emotions are changing along with it. The rolling hills and green pastures of Virginia are pleasant enough, but when you suddenly realize that the mounds of trash you're driving past and the charred and leveled trees were caused by a tornado that had just ripped through a day before, it gets to be a little uncomfortable. At least you finally see a live animal on the side of the road: a big buck deer with tall antlers, just standing inside the tree line. (We saw a bald eagle somewhere in there, too.)

Two days after that and you're stopped at the biggest, most ostentatious rest-stop you've ever seen, just inside the Texas panhandle. You're still able to close your eyes and imagine yourself navigating your old apartment, remembering where every single one of your belongings was located, but now you're staring at a sign warning you to stay on the path to avoid rattlesnakes. You walk up the steep, dusty hill that climbs the backside of the rest stop building and you can see further than you can even calculate. It sort of hurts your eyes to look at the mesas in the distance. You become painfully aware of your New England accent (or, lack of an accent, as I like to think of it) when you excuse yourself for almost bumping into the cowboy truckdriver at the drinking fountain.

In Arizona, your giant Uhaul truck with swinging car trailing off the back sticks out like a sore thumb next to all the short-sleeved motorcyclists. Everyone is driving under the speed limit and it feels like you're crawling. It's a bit nerve-wracking, worrying about getting pulled over for the miles and miles of tiny highway you're traveling.

It just gets stranger and stranger, the further from home you get, with days of driving behind you and more days of driving ahead. It starts feeling like maybe you'll never stop driving, which wouldn't be too bad if you could just get to some of your stuff. Having it all in the truck behind you is like hell. You're entire life is bumping and bouncing along the highway, somewhere behind you, but you can't see it. You can't even see your car behind the truck unless you take a really sharp turn and catch a glimpse in the side mirrors. It's like having your soul ripped out of your body and letting it wander around on its own, hoping it's keeping up with you. You constantly worry that the car has come unhitched and is lost somewhere on the side of the road, or that all your precious belongings might be trickling out the back door of the unlocked, unlatched truck.

There's a train on fire in the middle of the desert outside Las Vegas. You wish your camera wasn't packed in a box somewhere.

Then you drive through the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is a surreal experience in itself. There's been flat, beige desert for what seems like months of driving, and you slowly climb up the big mountains that you've been seeing in the distance for days. As soon as you get to the other side of the range, everything around you is green and there are cows. It looks like Happy Valley from the Disney cartoon of Jack and the Beanstock. Bubbly mountains with colorful trees and farms. Then you descend into another kind of hell. I can only assume it was the smog from LA that had collected in the valley and couldn't cross the mountain range. It had a flat top, and we drove straight down into it as we descended the mountains. It was like driving into thick fog, only it was brownish black. I got a headache after about 5 minutes of driving though it, and we didn't get out of it until we crossed the Cascade Mtns. two days later.

We had to get gas in Bakersfield, CA, which we've deemed as the Worst City in the World. It felt like death had rolled in, and we had to get out of our car and pump gas in the middle of death's hot, black stickiness. We were at a station that only took credit cards no one had ever heard of (or cash, which we were almost out of). We tried a second gas station which was next to a fruit farm and was infested with bees. It was hot, and I still had a headache. I remember getting lost too, probably trying to find the gas stations in the first place since there were no signs getting off the highway, and the offramp ended at a perpendicular road that seemed to go nowhere in both directions.

Just when we thought we couldn't take another night in an overpriced dreary motel, we got to Oregon! The Cascades were some daunting mountains to cross, especially in our ungainly truck. Luckily, the weather was clear and sunny, and we'd both gotten used to driving The Beast. I'm a little afraid of heights, especially while driving, and most notably when crossing bridges (it's called "gephyrophobia"). This kept me from fully appreciating the breath-taking views as we wound up and down around the snow-capped mountains, but I was still impressed with the scenery. There were some rain clouds trapped between mountains, and we saw dozens of rainbows as we drove in and out of the rainy spots. This was my favorite part of the trip, despite my anxiety about driving off the road into a rocky gorge.

In case you're unaware, one of Portland's many nicknames is the City of Many Bridges. I don't get to drive much, and we don't cross the river too often anyway, but I am blessed with the ability to cross more than 6 different bridges, whenever I like. Sometimes, I have no choice. The views from the bridges are amazing, and I'm getting used to it.

On a different note, I went to Etsy Tea Time today (I drove Sean to work and took the car for the day) and ended up in the deep southwest somewhere. The drive home took me through Hillsboro (past the big red tower you can just barely see at the top of the hill in this picture). I was on a 5-lane undivided highway that twisted through a dense forest. Passing a city bus in the middle of the woods is strange. You can't really get a good sense of the expansive views here from my photos. The city you can see in the background is only about 5 miles away, but you can see hills that are 25 miles away behind it. The view stretches too far to photograph the whole thing at once, but it's really impressive.

Cooking is the new Crafting

Yeah, yeah. I know I said it didn't actually rain here, but I had to be wrong sometime. One similarity between the weather here and in New England is that it can change dramatically over the course of the day. Even when the forecast predicts rain for 24 hrs. straight, we usually see some blue sky. I need to bike down to the hardware store to get Sean some "s" rings (to hang the light fixtures for his fish tanks at home, which are coming along nicely!) but I'm not going to go out in the rain.

There's something about the rain though...

People here say it's depressing, or that it inspires them to read more or do crafts. Me, I just want to bake. I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with two bags of chocolate chips, a box of bakers semi-sweet squares and a chocolate cake mix. I never buy cake mix. I know I was taken in by all the sales on baking items, but seriously. I'm thinking I'll make the cake today to celebrate our sixth week of living in Portland. That's worth celebrating!

I made apple fritters a few days ago (Obl Puffers, for those folks down with their Pennsylvania Dutch lingo) since it was the only dessert I could make with the ingredients we had on hand. Sean had just had the Worst Day Ever working on the fish tank lighting fixtures, and we haven't had any sweet stuff in the house for weeks. I got to use my new apple corer/slicer gadget (thanks, Mom!) which worked perfectly for this recipe.

I cut this recipe in half since it was just the two of us eating the fritters, and fried stuff doesn't keep. Even in half, this recipe was kind of a lot for just two people. It's super easy to make though.

Apple Ring Fritters
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
4 apples (very tart!)

Combine dry ingredients. Add milk and egg. Beat well. Peel, core and slice apples into 1/4 inch rings (wedges are fine too). Dip rings into batter and drop into a skillet with 1/2 inch of hot oil. [My recipe says "melted shortening", but I didn't have any. It sounds like this would use a lot of shortening, but it might be worth trying.] Fry until golden brown on both sides, then drain on paper towels. Mix cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over fritters. Serve immediately.

In case anyone wants to try this who hasn't had a lot of experience frying in hot oil, here are a few pointers:
1) Make sure the pan you are frying in is dry before pouring in the oil. If you're using a freshly washed pan this is still damp, the water will explode out of the pan as the oil heats up. This is very dangerous.
2) Don't dip plastic utensils into the hot oil. They will melt. If you don't have a fancy mesh frying spoon (you can get them at Asian supermarkets wicked cheap), you can use a metal slotted spoon, pasta spoon, tongs, or a small metal strainer.
3) Reuse your oil for frying by straining it into a plastic container once it has cooled. If you don't strain it, you'll get little bits of food debris that will spoil the flavor of the oil.

Okay, anyone who has read this far deserves a piece of cake. I have to say, the cooking inspiration has been sort of slow in coming. Sean and I loved to cook at home in Framingham, and we loved our dinner parties with Jon and Erin. Since we've moved, we've only been out to dinner once (a burrito joint on Alberta), and we had Thai food for lunch two weeks ago (at Appethaizing, which tasted like a home-cooked meal). That doesn't mean we've been excited about cooking though.

We've been overwhelmed with the amount of changes to our daily schedules, and it's hard to develop of cooking pattern in there -- it's even harder to get excited about it. Sean's schedule is a bit tighter with his new job, since he goes to work a bit later than when he was roofing, and he comes home around 6 or 7 instead of early afternoon. This is great for my business, since I get a lot more work done at home when there isn't someone there to talk to and distract me. Unfortunately, it also turns me into Little Suzie Homemaker, cooking all the meals, doing the dishes (we still don't use the dishwasher) and cleaning the house. Since Sean is away all day long, 5 days a week, this doesn't seem unreasonable. I even like cooking and cleaning! It's just king of a big adjustment from our previous habit of taking turns with the chores and alternating the cooking duties.

It's tough too, since I don't have my own car. I'm certainly not confined to the house, and I'm getting a lot of great exercise from walking and biking almost every day, but I still can't buy a week's worth of groceries during the day. Sean is also the more adventurous cook between the two of us, so we're sort of stuck eating the predictably simple meals that I like to cook. I'm glad I'm getting the baking bug though, because that means I'm enjoying being in the kitchen! It's also weird going to the grocery store and not knowing where anything is. I used to be able to do my shopping without a list, since I'd know everything I needed when I walked down the aisles. Now, I'm still figuring out the Safeway organization system, and it's really easy to miss the key ingredients to all our meals (taco seasoning is in a different aisle from the taco shells?). Shopping at 2-4 different grocery stores doesn't help much either.

Okay, enough complaining. We have been eating really well, and I've discovered some great new foods at Trader Joe's that I swear our old TJ's didn't have. I'll save that for another day...

Now I'm off to write an interview for DIY Alert and PDX crafting celebrity, Diane Gilleland. Woot!

Cannibals in the News

Just thought I'd post these news articles I found while searching for info on the Cannibals shop. Since the owner made a big deal out of the fact that she doesn't use computers, I knew they wouldn't have a website. These articles were sort of fun to read, and gave me an idea about the store and its history. Maybe you'll get an idea what's it's like too.

Willamette Week (which, by the way, is pronounced "will - AM - et")

Portland Picks from a year ago. (Scroll down to number 4, or check out the other cool shops in PDX from last year.)

Sculptoff - This looks like it was a cool event. Maybe I'll get to meet some of the other people involved in this some day.

Finding a "system" that works for you

Thanks for all the comments! Now I feel better about all my talking. :) I added a picture of the back of my haircut, as per the request. You can't really see how well Becky blended in the weight-line (that's an industry term) with the clipped portion, but you can trust me that she really knew what she was doing.

I had a little adventure today, walking around downtown. Our car needs to pass this thing called DEQ in order to get our Oregon license plates. DEQ is an emissions test thing. Our "check engine" light has been on for a while, and they won't even look at your car if that's on. We know. We tried. So Sean's been working on the car on the weekends to try to figure out what the problem was, but we got to the point where he'd run out of home-remedies.

Today we brought the car to an autobody shop that was recommended to us downtown. Sean and I got coffee together at a cool place (really, it was chilly since they had the door wide open) called the Backroom that had a pool table, wi-fi, and french pressed coffee. Then Sean took the bus to work while I wandered over to the shops on NW 23rd Ave.

Scenery of note: I passed a toupee on the sidewalk while crossing a bridge over the highway; I also passed a sausage and smoked meat factory that at first smelled like burning rubber, then like a pleasantly smoky woodstove.

I passed a florist where I got to poke through the plants on the sidewalk and find out what some of the local flora is that I've been photographing. The pink and white dangly guy up top is an Andromeda plant. I gotta say, they're kinda ugly when the whole bush is blooming. The colors look like they've faded in the sun when there's too many of them.

The yellow bell-like thing to the left is a Euphorbia. This plant is on our block, and I pass it on the way to TJ's and the library.

The pink flowering tree from the top of the last post is a Quince tree. It's really pretty. I think I'll replace that pic with the original hi-res one so you can click on it and see the flowers close-up. Sean's mom was kind enough to send us a link to a website that encourages Portland residents to pick the fruit from public trees. There's a catalog of fruit-bearing trees (that you can add to), harvest times, and organized fruit gathering get-togethers. I've never had a quince before, but maybe I'll check back when they're ripe.

I don't know what this tree is, but it's funky. This picture does not do it justice, either. This guy is some kind of pine tree, but it's got a whole bunch of spread-out branches, each totally covered in thick spikes. There are a couple really tall ones of these in the neighborhood.

So, back to the story of today's outing. I tried really hard to shop for birthday presents, since there are now 3 people on our list whose birthdays have gone by. For some reason, I just couldn't find anything! It's pathetic, I know. There were a lot of cool shops in the NW, but I couldn't find anything just right for any of these people that didn't cost $80. [Teresa, if I ever have a spare $80, there's an awesome ceramic Day of the Dead lady with your name on it. Val, if you want a giant red teapot from Italy, I know where to get it. Amy, if you want an inflatable moose head for your wall or a bobblehead gnome, I know where to get them. Seriously, just let me know...]

I did discover a new store called Cannibals where I met a very excentric Artiste lady who wants me to sell my work with her. She told me all kinds of success stories about the homeless artists she's discovered who've become stars. I'm enchanted by her store and encouraged by her enthusiasm for my work. She wants me to work on more expensive, creative art pieces, which is really the direction I'd like to head anyway. I'm going to try to meet with her again soon, but I'm trying not to cut off the crafty market just yet. Her store's focus is also on recycled materials, so I'm going to check out a new store tomorrow that sells scrap glass pieces that I can get creative with. I'm really happy that I'm finding some of those job opportunities that I knew existed out there for someone like me!

So that's pretty much how my day went. I walked past the Thai restaurant that Sean and I had a fantastic lunch at two years ago (Beau Thai, which does in fact use a bowtie as its logo). I ate a not-so-great burrito at Santa Fe Taqueria. And we ended up paying $723 for a new throttle body... yikes. But our car idles very smoothly now, and we should pass the DEQ test. Yay. It's about time I sold some real art, methinks. I'ma get on that now...

Is there a peanut gallery?

Hey folks, just a reminder that Sean and I would love to read your comments about the blog. Someone out there must have an opinion. You don't have to register for anything to leave a comment, although it will be public. Of course, the only other people invited to read the blog are other family members and friends, so it's not like the whole world is going to read your comment about how awesome you think we are and then judge you on it. ;)

I guess not everyone wants to write things, and that's cool. I was just hoping for a more positive response. This is what I get for becoming addicted to the interweb. I expect immediate responses and strong opinions.

There isn't really any other new so far. I'm cat-sitting for our neighbor's cat, Ramona, who is a sweetheart. Sean and I played with her for hours last night while watching Desperate Housewives. Life is good. This morning I gave Ramona a piece of yarn to play with and her delicate, graceful disposition almost exploded.

I'm going to knit her some fuzzy mice and see what happens next.

The picture up top is a great example of the cityscape around us. Notice the mossy sidewalk and overabundance of ivy. Those little red flowers are super cool up close. You can see them better in the big version of the picture, but they're still out of focus.

The house to the right is my favorite house in the neighborhood, although there are some great ones. They have their whole yard decked out with Japanese-style plants and it just looks great when your walking past. This picture might also give you an idea of how cool the sky looks. You can see for miles in all directions, so you can see the weather patterns moving around you. This was a typically gray day, but you can see the clouds way off in the distance. There aren't any huge skyscrapers or ugly buildings jutting up into the way of the view around here.

I had to add this squirrel too, since I'm looking at him right now out my window. He sits in the gutter of the building just outside my office window to eat nuts. The roof is covered in thick moss. It's a little weird to see all the squirrels here with that orange coloring. It feels like we're in Bizarro World sometimes.

Spring

We're still a day away from the official first day of Spring, but here in the Pacific Northwest, I think spring starts at the beginning of January. I walked around our neighborhood the other day and took pictures of some of the flowers that are blooming, and of some of the fantastic views we have.

I have tons more pictures than I'll be able to fit in this post, so I'll just have to save some for the future.

The flowers at the top are Japanese Cherry Blossoms, or Sakura. They're all over the place here, and they come in pink and white. Their petals litter the sidewalk in some places, and I had to resist breaking off branches to bring home each time I saw one of these trees.

The scene to the left (click to enlarge) is from a nearby street. It's looking west, across the river, at the downtown area. I think the residential stuff on the hills (left and middle) are in Beaverton, but they may not be that far away. I haven't been over there yet. We have views of the city from all over the place. It's pretty hilly around here, so you'll just be driving or walking or riding your bike, and you'll just look over to the west and there will be this amazing view, poking out between houses and trees.

To the east is Mt. Hood, but we can't see it from our neighborhood. It stuck up unexpectedly when we were walking east of 82nd Ave on our last visit here, but that's too far for me to walk just for one picture. It's sort of weird to be driving past Wal-Mart and see a giant snow-covered mountain sticking up behind it.

I finally discovered what all the "rose trees" around here are! They're camellias. They totally look like roses, blooming on trees all over the friggin' place. Every single yard has one. Some places seem to have them trimmed like hedges, but none of those are blooming, so it might be something different.

Camellias bloom in the winter, and every tree seems to be in a slightly different stage of "blooming". Some only have a single flower popping out, and others have almost completely finished -- sidewalk or lawn coated in yellowing petals.

This next picture is take on one of many moss-covered walls that I passed. If you take a closer look, you'll notice that most of those little green plants are actually succulents! I don't quite know why succulents thrive out here, but they do. I couldn't even count the number of varieties on this one wall. Further down, there was a plaque on this wall that said it was made out of recycled materials.

I love the crazy hippies out here. :)

The 'do was due

To some people, getting a haircut is just something that needs to be done. Or it's an annoying thing that costs money, so they put it off until their significant other starts making offhanded remarks.

To me, getting my haircut is a deeply cleansing experience. It's like wiping the slate clean, and starting fresh. I always feel like a new person after a haircut, and if the cut was good, I feel like a super-charged new person.

Normally, I'm not above cutting my own hair. Gone are the days, however, when I could turn on the electric clippers and be my fresh new self within 10 minutes. Now that I'm representing my business full-time (even at the grocery store) I prefer to look a little more approachable. To attain a look that I'm comfortable with (one that says, "Hey, I'm hip enough to know what's cool right now, but I'm down-to-earth enough to talk to", or something like that... I hope...) I have to give someone else
the scissors.

My most recent stylists have been students in beauty school (cutting hair at their home) and a woman who hasn't moved past the 80's. Not that there's anything wrong with that. She could do some seriously big bangs, if you didn't leap out of the chair in time. Neither of these folks were really giving me what I wanted. In fact, the worst of it was when they nodded emphatically while I described the style I wanted, then swore up and down that they knew exactly what I was talking about and then cut my hair however they felt like. Not how I wanted.

I don't like a hairstylist who refuses to cut my hair how I want.

With all that said, I'd like to announce my new SFL (stylist for life), Becky, who works at DO! salon!! Becky is my favorite person ever, right now. She made an appointment for me the same day I called, which was unexpected. Then she proceded to ask me a ton of questions about what I wanted, and listened to me when I answered. We cleared up all the possible things that could be done before she started, and she even showed me the back multiple times to confirm that I still liked what she was doing.

And it's perfect. She wasn't afraid to make drastic angles and really short bangs. She used fancy techniques that I've never had the pleasure of experiencing. I even walked out of the salon loving the minimalist styling she did! Normally, even a great haircut can look awful the first day when the stylist goes crazy with the hairspray.

I'm still waiting for some of the mistakes from the last cut (too-wide-bangs) to grow out, but I couldn't be happier with what Becky did. The color's a bit dark since I just dyed it, but it will lighten up to a nice chestnut color after a few more washes.

The new haircut makes me feel empowered, somehow. I feel organized. I feel confident. So fresh and so clean, clean.

Oh, and the salon is really cool. There's a ton of colorful, frantic-looking paintings all over the walls, done by the couple who lives upstairs (one of whom works in the salon part-time). It was cool, but still looked clean and respectable. Like I'm trying to look. And it's only a couple blocks from my house, with only a small hill to bike up. Rad.

DO! rad cuts and color
3835 SE Lincoln St
Portland, OR 97214
Phone: (503) 233-2723

Fishtank maintenance

Sean here. Apparently everyone keeps asking Amanda what my job is all about, and she feels she isn't knowledgeable enough to answer...

My job is to maintain fish tank accounts for a small company. I go to doctor's offices, schools, homes, businesses, etc where they have a fish tank, and I do whatever is necessary to keep it healthy and looking nice. Mostly I wipe the glass, clean the ornaments, change some water, and play with the water's parameters, such as salinity or pH. Other than that, there is a bit of equipment maintenance, making sure lights are on and pumps are working. The company also maintains a storefront, so I do the same things there, as well as feeding fish and ringing up sales.

So far it has been a lot of fun. I get to haul around buckets of water, and stick my hand into tanks full of venomous and predatory fish, so it will still keep me fit and aware of my surroundings!

Currently, I'm not making very much money. At all. However, I can see this job opening a lot of opportunities. My boss seems very open to good suggestions, and I'm sure he would be happy if one of his employees developed a reputation as the go-to guy for planted tanks...

Anyway, Portland is great. Good food, fun weather, less stressful driving. I do miss everyone quite a bit, and the lack of omnipresent family run sub shops is disconcerting, so it isn't all roses. (Groan if you get it)

In case you are wondering, I do have some quality rants about a few issues, but if you want to hear them, you are going to have to call me or send an e-mail as there are some things that are better left private.

-Word.

Fubonn

Today Sean and I went grocery shopping. (We also finally installed our papertowel holder and magnetic knife rack. Now our kitchen is complete!) Normally, a grocery trip involves shopping at 2-3 different stores, since we can only get certain things at Safeway (the "normal" supermarket), then we get some organic produce at Limbo, and round out the trip with some not-crap cheese and other fun stuff at Trader Joe's. Limbo is next-door to TJ's, so this works well for us.

Today, we broke with our three week tradition and went to Fubonn Supermarket first. This Asian market is a bit out of our way, (47 blocks to be exact) but it was worth the trip. We never got to visit Boston's Asian market (Super88) much, since it was in Allston, and not at all convenient from the suburbs. Fubonn is straight east, so we might even get to shop there regularly!

We were blown away by the amount of ingredients they had there. We even found vegetarian fish sauce, which I didn't even know existed outside of mashing your own fermented tofu! I'm really excited about this. Now we can make better Thai food. Which is our plan for tonight, actually. Sean is cooking up some green curry as I type this.

We found long beans for the curry (which I've never seen before) and some incredibly fresh Thai basil and kaffir lime leaves in perfect portions. If we were adventurous meat-eaters (I'm not, anyway) we could have had pigs feet, a pound of chicken skin, jars of fish in various states of preservation, or cross-sections of snake heads.

There's no giant cafeteria here like Super88, but there was a bakery where we tried a pineapple custard bun, curry beef bun and orange mini pound cake. What an awesome lunch for two people for just over $3! I'm starving now and can't wait for curry. Mmmm...

After a quick trip to Safeway, we decided to skip the other two markets until later in the week. I can walk up to TJ's and Limbo to pick up those few items since they're only four blocks away. It may sound like a lot of work to shop at all these different places, but it's actually pretty fun.

Fubonn Supermarket

2850 SE 82nd Ave
Portland, OR 97266
Phone: (503) 517-8899

Keeping everyone in the loop

Since we've moved to our new home in Portland, I've been bursting with things to talk about every day, and no real outlet to share with everyone. Keeping up with all the separate email conversations I'm having with friends and family is sometimes overwhelming, and I decided to start this blog to share all of my thoughts (well, not all of my thoughts...) since I feel like some people are getting left out of the loop. Also, I'd rather ramble a bit every day to the collective mass than to avoid sending emails because I can't think of what to say to an individual.

This is not meant to replace my personal conversations with any of you, and I encourage everyone to send emails as well as comment here on my posts. In this digital age, where I'm a click away from talking to anyone and everyone, I still feel very secluded in my new surroundings. We've had no friends over for dinner, no watching Buffy with take-out Thai food, and no Book Clubs. It's a big change for both Sean and myself, and we're starting to really feel the distance between us and our friends. Maybe we'll feel more connected with this blog.

Just because we don't have any friends here yet, I want to make sure that everyone knows we're not completely alone, and we're far from miserable! I have had a Tea Time at our house (three lovely Etsy biz women came!), I've attended Tea Time at someone else's house (and met 5 different biz women!), we love our neighbors and speak to three of them regularly, we had drinks with a crafty couple at a bar near our house, and Sean is getting to know his 3 coworkers. I even met my favorite hairdresser EVER (Becky Dawson at DO! rad cuts and color salon)--pictures of the new cut are coming soon. Everyone we meet on the street is a potential friend. And believe me, we meet a lot of people on the street. Hehe. The cashier at the bicycle shop even talked to me about Somerville for a while when I was there.

Our first month in the Pacific Northwest has been stressful, lonely and also full of interaction and new beginnings. It's all so very new.

In case you're wondering, I chose The Myth of Rain title because all we ever hear about Portland is how much it rains, how depressing it is, and how we're going to hate it. Everyone seems to think it's the worst thing ever and we'll be turning tale to come back to New England as soon as we can pack up again. I just wanted to clear a few things up about the rain:

1. It doesn't rain as much in Portland as it does in Seattle. Don't get them confused.
2. It didn't rain one drop the first two weeks we were here. Sunny, warm days welcomed us.
3. It has rained the past two weeks, but you can usually see the storm rolling in, drizzling on you for a bit, then moving along. Sometimes I don't even notice it.
4. I used an umbrella one day, and was the only person on the street with one. The rain doesn't even get you wet most days!
5. A little rain is 100 times better than shoveling snow off our porch, steps, walkway and driveway. I am not afraid of falling on the ice, or of being under- (or over-) dressed. I love it.

There was some crazy weather yesterday though. We drove from blue skies at our house, to gray clouds and mist on the highway, into a hailstorm a few towns over. The hail lasted a few minutes, then we drove back through black skies and home again to a light drizzle. With all the hills, valleys, river and mountains of PDX, you can expect to experience weather changes as you move around the area. It's also great to be able to see the weather moving and changing around you since you can often see for miles.

I can see how the rainy season could be depressing if we were here for a few years, but right now the threat of the rain is really just a myth.