Portland Week One

So we've been in Portland about a week now and it keeps getting better ... strangely, the weather has not been cooperating; it's been sunny, if a bit cold, every day. Where's the Portland rain? In fact, I've spent a total now of one month in Portland over the last five years, and I've seen only one or two days of rain.

Tomorrow the movers arrive with our stuff, and we can finally get into our apartment. We decided to stay in a hotel, rather than buy an air mattress or anything like that. Partly due to comfort issues, and partly so I could continue to do some work.

Of course, I have trips almost immediately. I fly down to San Francisco on the 13th and get back on the 17th, then fly down to Tucson on the 18th and back on the 21st.

We keep finding more stuff to like about our location; we're really hoping to use the car very minimally. Sure, there's a decent mall about 10 minutes away (we swung by last night to pick up a new set of cookware), but for a lot of ordinary items, including food, we can just walk.

Yesterday, we took the streetcar to the saturday market; it's clear to see that if we keep to that plan, we'll get a lot more exercise, just by walking more. This, too, was part of the plan in moving here. Boston makes it difficult to do anything without a car ... it's faster, easier and cheaper to drive into Boston than to take the T. Portland's excellent public transportation makes it just as easy, and much cheaper, to get around without a car.

And the funkiness of Portland is still wonderful. Yesterday, we stumbled across an all-tuba concert in courthouse squuare (dead center of downtown). Across the street, the salvation army was using volunteers dressed as Darth Vader and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers (pictures to follow).

Meanwhile, the only fly in the ointment is Suzanne's finger. It turns out to not be just an unlucky fracture; she has a kind of bone cyst or tumour (benign, not cancerous) that has been weakening that bone. It would have broken eventually, and would have been worse later. In any case, she's seeing a surgeon, and will probably require surgery to clean it up and repair it using either artifical bone or a bone graft.

Happy birthday everybody, it's Nerd Birthday Week!