3.19.99

    Let's get this out of the way: I haven't been ignoring you. Well, not really. I've just been very busy and out of town.

    I got back from Portland Wednesday night. T. and I both had job interviews and we looked at apartments and found a few that we liked. We picked one and secured it with a deposit and now we're moving. In three weeks.

    Yeah, I'm a little panicked but how bad can things get? Famous last words, I'm sure. T. hasn't heard yet whether this job he interviewed for will hire him. We are just hoping and praying and crossing our fingers that they will. It's a good job in a good place with a good salary. I don't see how he couldn't have made an excellent impression on them even though they made a less than perfect impression on us.

    I think this company was a little shocked at how young T. was. Although, technically, they shouldn't have been shocked because they knew from his resume when he graduated from college. They'd be stupid not to snap him up right now. Hopefully, they'll realize that.

    I interviewed with some staffing companies who seemed very excited about my skill set. They primarily staff IT and web development places so I don't have any fear of being stuck doing data entry or "light phones." It sounds like they have plenty of work for me and are very flexible with what I want to do. They also offer full benefits and a 401(k) plan. This is not your mother's staffing agency. They also hinted that I should up my salary request so I did. It'll be nice to be partially taken care of for awhile.

    We flew up to Portland on Thursday on America West. Not a bad airline but they give you no food. We got our tickets through Priceline. I don't know how the kids at Priceline did it but we got the cheapest tickets going. Tickets so cheap that we didn't even know that they were going. The key is flexibility. You give them a price and they have an hour to turn it up for you. If they turn it up you have to buy it because they've already charged your credit card.

    A week before we left, T. is sitting at the computer looking for fares and he says, let's go to Portland on the 11th. I, of course, start hemming and hawing and worrying and he says that there's a ticket for $120. I muse and reason that that's a good price but why don't we try to go the following week. No, he says, it must be Thursday 'cause I already bought it.

    Cheeky bastard.

    So, we call up America West and try to get the same ticket for me. They wanted to charge us $300 citing "spring break" as the reason prices were so high. I'm sorry but spring break for who? We turned back to Priceline and put in a price cheaper than what T. had put in and got another ticket. Although we had to route through Phoenix I've had worse flights. I don't know how Priceline gets those tickets, though. Mafia tactics, I presume.

    When we arrived in Portland we rented a car and got an upgrade through a friend of mine. We were so frightened because their cheapest car is the Geo Metro, otherwise known as The Speck. Because of my friend we got a nicer and roomier Neon. We immediately set forth in search of the Kennedy School, the newest McMenamin's pub in Portland. We nearly killed each other trying to find the place as we were so damn hungry. I made some quip about how it was a good thing I brought a map and he made a quip about how if I had read his directions right we wouldn't need a map. Heads were bit off. Stoney silences were exchanged and then the school appeared on the horizon and all was forgiven.

    The Kennedy School is a renovated school turned Bed 'n' Breakfast McMenamin-style. It's a huge building with a large restaurant and brewery, a theatre, three bars, a courtyard and small swimming pool. The whole thing was decorated. Everywhere you looked was a theme, an idea, a scattering of art for art's sake. It was really fun to just wander the halls and point and look. T. and I ate there and put away a pitcher of Rubinator. We were happy as clams.

    Afterwards, we went to T.'s cousin's house in North Portland where we'd be staying the weekend. The cousin works for Bridgeport Brewery, another Portland staple, and had a keg-erator in her basement with yummy Bridgeport IPA on tap. We bummed cigarettes from her (the first of way too many) and drank late into the night.

    Friday we went on our interviews and spent the rest of the day running around. Friday night, we went to the Bridgeport restaurant on the SE side of Portland. It's kind of yuppyish on the inside but the food was delish and we got all our beer for free. We even did the whole sampler thing which, as I recall, was around 16 samplers. We met a friend of the cousin who also works at the brewery as some sort of technical guy. He's British so I of course couldn't let him alone with talk of England and the differences between American's and European's. I tried really hard not to ask him about it but the drunker I got the harder it was to resist.

    If you haven't caught it by now, I used to live in England, near Oxford. I was there for around two and a half years which were the last two years of high school. I really loved it over there and miss it tremendously. I don't come across that many people who have been there, let alone lived there, let alone are natives, so when I do I tend to want to reminisce. We ended up talking quite a bit about all manner of foreign differences and who's better than who. I quite enjoyed myself; I hope he did.

    Afterwards, we went to the Trump Card for more conversation, cigars and drinks. T. and I both started losing our voices at this point. I had just gotten over a voice-losing throat thing so I was not happy at all about having a recurrence.

    Saturday morning I could barely croak. Nonetheless, we went apartment shopping. We had two complexes that we were going to look at. We are so not interested in apartment hunting at this point. So, I called my friends whose apartments I had been to and got the rental office numbers and those are the places we went to.

    The first one we went to was a ways out of Portland but we're going to get it anyway. The Max, Portland's version of light rail, has a Park 'n' Ride that extends out there and heads into downtown. That should be fine for us as far as we know. The complex is brand new and we're getting a two-bedroom with balcony, washer and dryer and dishwasher. That in itself is such a massive improvement over our current apartment that we couldn't say no. They're also giving us our first month's rent free and a covered parking spot for the MG. The rent is only around $100 more than our current, 1 bedroom rat-hole on a stinky street with stinky neighbors and white trash landlords. Our new place will be paradise.

    The second apartments we went to was fairly nice but it was the freakish saleswoman who ultimately turned us off. First, she motioned out the living room window to a drainage ditch flowing right under the window and said, "this looks just lovely in the summertime -- there's ducks!" T. and I tried very hard to stifle our giggles and absolutely not look each other in the eye. She had some other nonsense to sell us and then we headed back to the rental hut and T. asked whether there was a lot of families in the area with children. I explained that in our current complex that we were the only ones without a family and felt a little out of place. T. agreed. She turned to him and said:

"T., that's a very discriminatory question. We have a variety of people here and we make no discrimination between who can live here and who cannot. We do, however, have a set of quidelines that everyone must meet and if they meet these guidelines they are welcome here. We try and handle all complaints as timely and as fairly as possible. But when people start asking those kind of discriminating questions we start thinking lawsuit."

To say we were taken aback by this little speech is to be kind. I suspect that she lives there with a cabal of noisy, bratty children. Either that or she totally misunderstood our question. T. and I were sorely tempted to call her and tell her that in addition to our concerns about children we'd also like to know if Jews or Latinos might be sharing the complex. I think that age is probably the most defining factor of compatibility with neighbors. At this point I don't want to be the sole single couple in a sea of families, nor do I want to be the only young kids in a sea of retirees. How scary was that 'guidelines' statement anyway?

    That night we met up with some of my friends at the NE Bridgeport location which is a weathered warehouse out in the middle of train tracks and massive puddle-filled potholes. We had the best pizza I've had in ages. This whole trip was basically about T. and I completely blowing our diets. I think we must have drank a whole keg by the time our trip was through. It was all good though. Mmmmm...beer.

    Sunday, T. flew home and I drove up to Seattle to do another interview and stay with Sonia. Sonia is an L.A. transplant and we talked a bit about the things she misses about L.A. I also got to know her fiance a lot better and I had a great time just relaxing and hanging out with them.

    Tuesday, I went back to Portland and stayed with my buddy Byrne and finalized details on the apartment.

    So, we're leaving. We really are. We're leaving fast. I'm nervous and worried. But, I feel good. The Northwest is a good place full of lush forests and kind people. I was stunned when traveling in the middle lane someone pulled over to the slow lane to let me by. No one does that in L.A. Also, people in the shops were a little bit nicer and customer service over the phone was more congenial. It wasn't my imagination either.

    One thing that T. and I discovered in visiting "home" and friends is how many fun and unique experiences we have had here and how much we have enjoyed certain things. There are parts of L.A. that I will miss but it's a lifestyle. L.A. is a lifestyle that hasn't entirely suited us. Moving up to Portland and perhaps struggling to find work will be nerve-wracking but I don't think we can help but be happier up there.

    Now... what to call the new journal? Suggestions, please.