I’ve lived in the SF bay area since 1991, when I first moved up here from San Diego (Encinitas, if you want to be picky about it) for a contract job at the mothership. Nearly ten of those years was in the same house in Cupertino, the longest I have ever lived in one house my entire life. If you combine contracts and regular employment, I have worked at the same company for over 12 years.
It’s time for some major changes. In January, I will be moving households to Portland, OR (Gresham, if you want to be picky about it).
- For the first time ever, I will be living in a house I own. Well, okay, a house I have a mortgage on.
- And my dearest friends in the world will be just down the street.
- We’ll be doing some more traveling once we’re relocated. There will be camping in the bus, as well as a big trip to Thailand in the Spring.
- We’ll be spending a lot of weekend time in WA state, seeing family members and helping them deal with illness.
- The chickie-babe will be starting chiropractor school in the fall.
- And I don’t really know what I’ll be doing. Find a way to work for the mothership remotely? Write? Go back to school? Get a bunch of piercings and work in a coffee shop?
There’s a lot of change on the horizon, but I’m looking at it as change for the better, an opportunity to grow.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” Maybe this means I’m working on a series of one act plays. I’ll see you after the intermission. I hope you like the show.
Wheeeeeeee! Yippeeeee! Um, I mean, yes, what a delightful piece of news.
Congratulations!
I’ll be in Portland for Thanksgiving. It’s a great place to be, as I’m sure you already know.
Congratulations! May this be a wonderful set of changes for you.
Congratulations, and I think Portland will suit you just fine! Thailand sounds like it will be great — I’d love to go myself sometime, but that’s not going to be in the cards for a few years, I think.
Exciting! Maybe it’ll be a loooooong intermission ;-P
And here you’ve been tempting me with SF!! 😉 I liked Portland, it was solid. There is an AWESOME Thai restaurant downtown kinda near Powells and it’s not the one of millions that other people will tell you is good. If you go the piercing route there are plenty of coffee places to have you. Congratulations. 🙂
Welcome to the neighborhood… looking forward to having you here!
Great news!
So glad to hear you’ll be joining us here in the PNW! I’m looking forward to getting to know you both better. I did Thailand (northern mainly) a couple of years ago and it was the most wonderful trip I’ve ever done – you’re gonna love it!
Re: Great news!
Oooh, tell me more! What time of year did you go? What’s the optimal season? What were the “must see” highlights of the trip?
Re: Great news!
I was there most of January, during their dry and cool season – after February it gets hotter but it’s not Monsoon season until May so you should be fine in Spring. There are many ways to travel Thailand and so much to do and see depending on your tastes. My preference for travel is to experience something as far from my *norm* as I can and still stay within the comfort zone I have at that moment in time. I was in a space where my comfort zone was wide opened so I did the backpacker thing – always moving, no reservations other than my ticket there and back, taking public transit and staying in cheap guest houses ($2-5/night) with the Lonely Planet Guide as my Bible. But there are plenty of ways to travel first class or anywhere in between. I knew I wanted to get away from the main tourist areas so I took a train north after 2 days getting more than my fill of Bangkok. If Northern Thailand suits your style (cooler, not-crowded, jungle, mountains, National Parks, rural), Chiang Mai is the largest City and you definately should spend some time near the Old City there and it is a good base for many other day trips if that is what you want to do. I know massage is something you enjoy and it doesn’t get any better than a good Northern Thai massage. I had a massage nearly every day (less than $5 an hour), but got the BEST massage of my life at a small massage school here – it transformed me. I didn’t have time to do it, but taking a 5-day Thai Cooking class at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School was something people I met were doing and raving about. I took a 3-day guided trek instead as I was on a mission to find wild orchids (only found one in bloom – apparently it’s a rainy season thing). The trek got a little touristy at times (stopping for an elephant ride, etc), but not too bad. I went North after that, eventually to Chiang Rai (wonderful small town) and hired a private guide to take me to the Golden Triangle and Mekong Delta. The Myrnmar border is still too dangerous to travel alone and I wanted to stop at different places than the tours offered. It was the smartest decision of the trip – he took me not only to where I asked, but to places only locals know about and gave me a wonderful “one man’s view” of the culture, politics, religion, etc. of the area. I age myself when I say I was more than slightly moved to look out over the Mekong Delta, remembering flashes of the news reports of my youth. There are lots of places I wish I got to – the people I met on the way convinced me that Pai and Mae Hong Son were better places for natural scenary and jungle terrain and much less touristy. I’d love to go back and spend more time. The Thai people, outside of Bangkok, are generous and kind and trustworthy – even for a woman traveling alone. I never felt unsafe or taken advantage of. The language is almost impossible to learn – I think I mastered “Thank You” by the time I left and even then people grinned with pride when I said it right. In the cities, you can always find someone that speaks English but not as easy in rural areas. If you venture out that way, make sure your maps and any Thai-English dictionary has the translations for everything (even city names) written in the Thai alphabet so you can point to it – Thai words do not translate into anything remotely phonetic in English.