Catching Up

Hi, friends!  Let's catch up.  Here are some snippets from the last six months:

You already know the part where I quit my job, packed up my life, and moved to a new city in a new state to start graduate school, thereby checking off the first goal on my 30 Before 30 list: make a bold move.  

I've had a lot of awkward interactions with Portlanders.  Initially, I thought it was just Portland keeping weird.  Then, I realized that I was the common denominator.  Have I always been this awkward, and none of you ever told me?  Friends tell friends when they're awkward.  And when they have kale in their teeth.  

Every breakup needs an artist or album to serve as its soundtrack.  In this case, it was the talented James Morrison on Undiscovered, followed by Awakening.  Thanks for the suggestion, Pandora!

My mom sent me a big box in the mail.  I got home, opened it up, and it contained eight identical bags of baked cheese puffs, and nothing else.  Best. Care. Package. Ever.

I discovered that it's not that it rains that much in Portland, but that it essentially drizzles constantly from October until the end of June.  This makes Portland the perfect place to be a graduate student, because curling up with a stack of textbooks feels a lot more natural when it's cold and gray outside.  But then, in the course of a few days, you go from sweaters to shorts, and the weather is glorious, and nobody in their right mind wants to write a paper.  But are graduate students really in their right mind?

At this point, I’ve pretty much stopped caring about how pale my legs are.  It's Portland - nobody really cares what you wear or look like, in my experience.

And speaking of Vampires and other such creatures, I finally watched the Season Finale of Grimm, and discovered that Portland is under attack by Zombies.  I thought those were just hipsters.

I actually saw Grimm being filmed at a restaurant near campus!  We basically just spotted a mess of film equipment and extras, no stars, but it was still fun.

A friend asked me to keep him company at his organization's booth at the annual Portland Pride Festival.  Through our conversations over the last six months, and after an eye-opening afternoon at the Tom McCall Waterfront, I realized how little I actually know about gay culture (or, at least, urban Pacific Northwest gay male culture).  I'm grateful to my friend for inviting me into his life.

While I was walking to class one day, a well-meaning student advisor asked me if I was looking for freshman registration.  Err, no.  

The Portland State University Farmer's Market is one of my favorite activities: good food, beautiful produce, and a lovely way to spend a morning surrounded by Portlanders of all stripes.  It's also, apparently, a great way to get fashion inspiration.  I overheard a female patron tell a young woman passing by, "I really like your aesthetic."  I think this is a uniquely-Portland compliment. 

Summer wasn't all about school.  I got to host family and friends in Portland, and only got us lost a few times; I was also able to fly up to Alaska to spend almost a week hanging out with some of my oldest and dearest friends - the kind of friends who have serious blackmail on you from embarrassing teenage moments.  We took a road trip from Fairbanks to Anchorage, which allowed us the chance to spot a mama and baby moose near Denali National Park!  When I came back to Portland, I was very disconcerted that it actually got dark at night. 

I really started to lose it on hour 30 of working on a paper, wondering why I was paying to write and be graded on my analysis of a Supreme Court legal argument instead of just stabbing a fork in my eye.  Then, I took a deep breath and reminded my privileged self that I was sitting safely on a comfortable couch, with a mug of tea brewed in clean, disease-free water at my side, and plenty of food in my kitchen.  Perspective.  Still, that was by far the hardest class I've ever taken, and even though I only grasped about ten percent of the material flung at us, that ten percent will come in handy.  I think.

I found that singing the Pitch Perfect soundtrack at the top of your lungs is a great stress reducer/study break.  Thank goodness for the thick concrete walls in the garage-turned-apartment I call home.

I spent a lot of time by myself.  I learned that there are limits to my introversion, but also appreciated the space it gave me for a lot of growth and reflection.  And yoga.  And baking multigrain banana muffins at 11pm.

I wrote a two-part article for InterVarsity's Urban Projects blog on the real cost of fast fashion.  I'm not sure if anyone read it besides the kind people who reviewed it before publication, but I enjoyed writing it.  

A guy at the sandwich counter offered me a free pickle - but we all know there's no such thing as a "free pickle."  By the way, this is also the introduction to "the sex talk" with my future children.

I finished two quarters of graduate school, and have five more to go.  I guess I really could have just left it at that.