It's a hot one!

So, we finally got hit with some hot weather here in the Hood. And in this usually windy town (windsurfing capital of the world), a breeze is nowhere to be found. We don't have ac in our house so I'm just trying not to move much, which is not easy considering the clean up I need to do after our party last night.

That's right, we had our first party in our new place in our new town last night. Erin, Jim, Aaron, and Emily came in from Portland, and some of Doug's friends stopped by (including the old tenant of our apartment). We made some eggplant rotini things stuffed with a cheese mixture, and they turned out delicious - it was the first time we'd made them and I was happy. We chilled on our upper deck until it got dark and we ate, and then headed over to 6th Street to have a drink in honor of Christine's last night there - she's full time working on opening the brewery now.

Anyway, back to the hotness. Yesterday to beat the heat we went down to the "beach" of the Columbia River with Aaron and Emily. The water was chilly, but it felt great! And Ika swam on her own accord for the first time - I was so proud of her! And she had a great time digging in the sand. Today we went with Jim and Erin to Tucker park which has a trail that goes by the Hood River. So, we sat on rocks on the edge of the rushing river (I guess stuff is still melting up on the mountain so it was pretty active) and waded in every once in a while. Jim and Abe actually fully submerged, but they were the only brave ones, or should I say fools? The water was FREEZING. And I mean that literally - it probably was in the 30 degrees. My feet started hurting every time I put them in the water. But it was beautiful and a nice way to spend part of a very hot day. Ika thought the water was a bit too cold to swim, but Chunk enjoyed wading in it.

Hopefully our wind will come back soon and cool us off. :-)

Going to work today

That's right, I got a job!  It's just a part time retail job to earn some sort of income, but it's a job none the less!  I'm working at the Ruddy Duck.  It's right across the street from the library so it's a 10 minute walk to and from work, which is excellent.  I had my first day (2 hours actually) on Saturday and it went really well.  It's a clothing store for men and women and they some really cute stuff, and fortunately for me (or not since I might be tempted to spend my paycheck there) I get 40% off.  (They also own and are connected to an ice cream stand, which could also be dangerous!)  The owners and the people who work there seem really cool, laid back and flexible, so that's great.  I'll be working there about 20 hours a week so I'll still have plenty of time to stalk the Hood River County website waiting for that part time library job to be advertised and to have some fun outdoors.

Speaking of fun outdoors, Abe, Ika, and I went on our first real hike yesterday.  We hiked a mile and a half up a hill to McCall's lookout point (and then back down).  The wildflowers were everywhere and very beautiful and the view from the top of the hill was amazing!  We had a clear view of Mt. Adams, could look straight down the gorge for miles and miles and we would've been able to see Mt. Hood had a giant cloud not been in front of it for most of the time we were up there.  But it was amazing none the less!  Ika loved her first hike!  She was tearing up and down the trail having a great time and being a good girl (except when she was sitting in poison oak, but I guess you can't expect too much out of a 3 month old puppy ;-)  needless to say she got a bath when we got home).  

Wi-Fi! And Jobs.

We finally have wi-fi at our house! Yay! I was kind of going crazy without internet at home, even though I could go to the library, a coffee shop, or our friend's house. It's just so convenient to have it at home and what that means for you? Now I can update my blog, flickr and facebook much more often and in a timelier manner. Aren't you excited? :-)

I had an interview for a librarian position in Corvallis on Monday. I just got a call that they offered the position to someone else, so the job search continues. But it's ok really. We really want to stay in the Hood River area, so I don't know that I would actually have taken the job had it been offered to me. But the interview experience was good to have either way. They actually sent me the interview questions beforehand, and can I just say that I wish everybody would do that? It is so nice to be able to be prepared. And like one of my interviewers said, it's not a game, they just want to know what we know. It totally took so much of the pressure off and I was able to hit key points and not freak out because I couldn't think of what I wanted to say in the moment (which happens to me quite a lot). Anyway, she also said she likes to offer interviewees feedback and advice for interviewing better next time, but she said that I did a really good job and she really didn't have any advice for me. Which I guess is a good thing, but doesn't help me all that much. She also said that they were very impressed with my Floating Librarian Position (so if anyone from PBCLS is reading this, thank you again, and do your best to keep that position going!).

So now I'm working on finding job(s) around town. I walked around downtown yesterday and several businesses were open to taking my resume, so I'm going back today to pass it out. And actually, I think it'll be kind of nice to do something different for a while. I've applied for a position at the brewery our friend is opening, and I checked in on the part-time Hood River library job yesterday which still isn't posted yet. So there are some possibilities on the horizon, but so far nothing too immediate. And of course I have my eyes open for any library jobs in the area, but there seems to be a shortage at the moment.

Anyway, that's the update on the job situation. And in the mean time I'm enjoying my time off. I know this doesn't happen too often in life, so I'm enjoying it while I can (and trying not to spend too much money in the mean time ;-).

First Week

Life is going well here in Oregon. Our first week in Hood River was great! We're making our apartment our own - it's still a work in progress, but it's coming along. We picked up our belongings out of our pod in Portland on Tuesday with the awesome help of Aaron. We were a little disappointed that so much of our stuff got a little damaged in the move. We thought we packed a really tight box, but apparently we didn't pad enough. So, if you find yourself packing a truck or a pod anytime, just remember to pad pad pad your furniture. But we got it back to Hood River and unloaded with assistance from Doug on the heavy stuff (which I was very grateful for with that set of stairs to deal with!). We've been working on unpacking and putting stuff in storage (since our place is kinda small and we have too much stuff). Yesterday we made our very first trip to IKEA. What a place! It's a crazy maze that you can easily get lost in and probably spend a week in looking at everything. We got a futon and a cart for our small kitchen to maximize some counter space. But now we have something to sit on in our living room, which is very nice. Hopefully it won't be too much of a pain putting it together!

I made my first trip to the Hood River Library on Friday. It's a really nice small library with a great view of the Gorge. I got my library card (very easily - didn't even have to show any proof of anything! Small towns are great!) and got word from the library director that a part time library assistant position should be advertised very soon. It's not my dream job, but I'm definitely going to apply just to try and get my foot in the door. And the library is only a 10 minute walk from our house, so that would be an awesome change from my 45 minute drive to the Main Library in WPB. I noticed that they use SIRSI, so at least I'm familiar with their ILS.

Other than that we've been checking out the town, visiting some breweries, drinking some very tasty beers, meeting lots of very nice people, and trying to find our way through the grocery stores. We took Ika to Puppy Kindergarten on Wednesday which was super cute. It's a great opportunity to have her play with other puppies and I think she did pretty well for her first time. We can already see her getting braver and playing really nice with other dogs.

Next on our agenda is some serious job hunting and exploration of some beautiful natural areas close by us. Can't wait!

We're Home!

[Written on 6/9 but posted today due to some spotty wi-fi service at our new apartment]

Well, as it turns out, I guess I’m not a very good road blogger. As I mentioned in my last post, I can’t create posts from my iPhone, and if I could’ve I think I would’ve been better at my mission. But since I could only do it when we stopped and found wi-fi, and those times were usually spent catching up with family and friends, I was more inclined to visit with them than write on my blog. I guess maybe I’m not a true blue blogger, huh?

Anyway, the good news is we are now official residents of Hood River, OR!!! We arrived in Hood River yesterday afternoon, met with our new landlord an hour later and were handed a key to our new home! As of right now we have nothing much in our new home (only what we brought with us in our car, including some Publix mayonnaise we’ve been lugging around for a week for sandwiches and that I’m so sick of looking at I think I just might throw it away :-), but our ReloCube has arrived in Portland, so we are planning on going to unpack and uhaul it over here tomorrow. Then we can begin making our new place our home. We spent our first night in our new place on our sleeping pads and mats, but it felt awesome to be here. We even met some new friends our first night in town. Our good friend Doug brought us over to his friends’ Matt and Wendy’s for an awesome dinner and some drinks. They were very cool and it made for a great first night in town.

TX to OR

[Written 6/9 but posted today due to some spotty wi-fi service at our new apartment]

If you’re interested in some of our travel details between Texas and now, I’ll try and give a quick summary of what we did. We left Denton at night so we drove through West Texas in the dark (well, mostly. we didn’t actually get out of Texas until the next morning - that state is huge!) We drove through El Paso and saw Mexico on the other side of the interstate, but not the official border. New Mexico was beautiful - a pretty drastic change of scenery for us. We weren’t in the state very long since we were driving on I 10 at the narrow bottom part of the state. Then we entered Arizona. I hadn’t been to Arizona since the last time I visited my grandparents there in probably 1999 or so. I really love the state and it was great to be back, looking at all the magnificat cacti, and especially great to visit Phoenix again where my grandparents lived. We pulled into town about 4pm and went straight to my friend Elizabeth’s house in Scottsdale. Her place is awesome and we spent a while catching up, we met her fiance Justin, and then we met my cousin Bert and his fiance (well, now wife - they got married on Saturday!) and the mother of his soon to be born daughter, Yolanda for dinner. It was so much fun seeing everybody and we had a really great night.

The next morning we headed out early when Liz had to leave for work towards San Diego to visit our friends Mandy and Rick in San Marcos, just outside of San Diego. Since they weren’t going to be home from work until early evening, and since this was the shortest leg of our trip, we decided to get off the highway (or as I guess they say in California, the freeway) and take a scenic detour through the deserty mountains south of I 10 and east of Escondido (right next to San Marcos) and take the back way into Rick and Mandy’s. I’m really glad we did this because the area is really amazing. We drove through a state park (Borrego desert or something like that) and experienced the highest wind I think I’ve ever experienced, maybe even more intense than the hurricanes we went through in Florida, or at least the highest winds I’ve ever been outside for. It was insane. I thought our car was going to blow off the road, and we got showered with tons of blowing sand. We saw several sand storms in the not to distant distance, and even drove though a couple. When we got out to take some photos, I didn’t want to get too close to the edge of the cliff things because I was afraid I was going to fall off, and I didn’t want to put Ika down for fear she would be blown away. Anyway, it was really great and I’ll have some photos on flickr soon. So once we got to Rick and Mandy’s we had dinner at their house and some drinks and spent the evening catching up. It was so good to see them again - like so many other people it had been a while! They both took Thursday off work and we spent the day touring the San Diego area, which was really cool cause neither Abe nor I had ever been there before and it was great to see Rick and Mandy’s new home (they moved out there at the first of June a year ago). We lunch in Carlsbad and drove through other beach communities on our way down to La Jolla to see the seals. Then we went downtown and checked the city out. That night we got some sushi and Ika and Roxy finally made friends and started playing together. That was some great entertainment!

After some breakfast Friday morning, we hit the road once again for our last leg. It took forever to get through L.A. (even though it wasn’t even rush hour), but I did get to see the Hollywood sign in the distance and eat at an In and Out Burger for lunch. When we got to San Luis Obispo we got on the Pacific Coast Highway. What a freaking beautiful drive! We took it to Monterey Bay, but I’d like to see more of the highway farther north in California and Oregon someday. We even got to see the sun set from the PCH which was beautiful. And I really think I’d like to vacation in Big Sur someday - it looked awesome! We made it just past Sacramento and then stopped to sleep for a couple hours. The next morning we got up and drove to Portland! We passed Mt. Shasta on the way, and whoa, what a mountain! The drive on I 5 in northern California and southern Oregon was beautiful. We pulled into Portland around 3pm on Saturday and drove straight to an Urgent Care. I had been having trouble breathing for the past few days and couldn’t take it anymore. And it’s a good thing I didn’t, because it turns out I was having an acute asthma attack and had to get 2 nebulizer treatments, be put on Oxygen, get a steroid shot in the butt, and take more steroids for the coming week. This was not how I was planning spending my first few hours in my new home state, but in the end I’m glad I did because when I left I could finally breathe again! We spent the night at our friends’ Jim and Erin’s house where Ika got to bother their dog Chunk. And we went out to dinner with Erin, Aaron, and Emily to a southern style restaurant which was fun.

And yesterday we took the dogs for a long walk, grabbed some breakfast, and headed out to Hood River and our new home!

And we're off...

Abe and I hit the road a little before noon on Saturday (which was our goal!). We had finished jamming all our crap into the pod by playing the biggest game of Tetris ever on Friday morning. We were pretty proud of ourselves that we fit as much of our stuff into that 6x7x8 foot cube that we did (and I must give props to our professional moving consultant Travis for that). Then the cleaning commenced, and I must say we left the place much cleaner than it was than when we moved in, so we better get all of our deposit back! Friday night I had one last rendezvous with the girls - we went to see the Sex in the City movie (which is great if you're a fan of the show and have been missing it for the past few years)! Then we met up for dinner with some more friends, including the boys. We had a very nice last supper together and said our sad goodbyes in the parking lot - Abe and I had to get back to finish the cleaning and let Ika out.

So, back to the point of this post. We drove [almost] straight through to Denton, TX. I say almost because we did stop to sleep at a rest area for a couple hours. We exited Florida as darkness was falling (I never realized how huge FL is!), drove through Alabama, Mississippi fairly quickly, and into Louisiana. I chose to drive south through New Orleans since I had never been there. Not that I would really get to experience it, but I at least wanted to see it. It was around 11pm local time there, so I got the nighttime view of the city. I guess I never realized what a big city New Orleans is. I saw the dark shadowy form of the Superdome which hit me emotionally a little bit. And driving through on the interstate just made me want to come back and visit this city for real someday. (And that's a pretty impressive thing for a drive by on the highway to do for me.) We drove up Louisiana on I49 and stopped right after we got into Texas on I20. We awoke in the morning, let the dog run around for a little bit, and hit the road once again on our final leg to Denton.

When we arrived at my Aunt Ellen, Uncle Dave, and Uncle Bill's house, no one was to be found - they were all still in bed! We worked on waking them up, which we eventually did, and had a really nice time with them. Mariah had fun playing with Ika, Kady, Bryan and AJ came over (Kady bringing with her a box of old photos for me from Grandma's collection which we had fun going through, and AJ in his superman costume), Uncle Bill came home from work, and Ellen picked up Grandma Goeke for dinner. We're still here, enjoying the feeling of not being in a car for a little while longer. We're taking my Grandma Goeke out to lunch this afternoon and will probably do a little window shopping in the Denton Square. We'll stay for dinner again tonight and enjoy our time with some family we hardly ever get to see (but will hopefully come and visit us in OR), and we plan on hitting the road after dinner and heading to Phoenix.

More to come from our next destination...

Edit: I'm very upset that for whatever reason I cannot edit posts from my iPhone, so, I can only update when we stop and find wireless connections. I'm going to file a complaint with Apple about this! I thought iPhones could do anything!