Chez moi

I just love the City of Roses. I always feel so at home and happy here.

Driving is not stressful (something I never knew could be stressful until I'd been in other places). Watch the Portlandia about the 2 drivers at the intersection, waiting for the other person to go. SO TRUE. Today I was driving home from the store on a 20 MPH local road in front of a school. The oncoming traffic was blinking up ahead and was going to turn left (would cross in front of me). He was about a third of mile in front of me and sat there with his blinker on, waiting for me to pass before turning left. It's not like I was speeding or anything (20 MPH), but he wanted to go after I went. He was waiting for about 10 seconds while I slowly crept past him. The same thing happens with pedestrians -- often, you will be walking down a street and will be about 20 feet away from an intersection, but the cars will stop and wait for you just in case you decide you're going to cross the street. You're not already at the intersection or anything, so they're preemptively waiting for you to cross the street (if you decide to). It's very nice. But it also makes sense why that Portlandia episode was created because people do this all the time. It's like no one is in a hurry, everyone is lazily driving around like it's Sunday afternoon in July and they don't have anywhere to be. At least, that's my experience. I really appreciate the general trend because it gives pedestrians the right of way. It's a cultural no-no to try to beat a pedestrian through the crosswalk with your car. I always felt ashamed of doing this. However, in DC, I had nearly forgotten what that was like. I came to expect no guarantee that I had any right of way, and I became very cautious (which is probably a good lesson to learn, but it definitely made me very stressed out after being in so many near-misses with others cars).

One of the family friends who had also moved to DC had joked, "After living in DC for a few years I went back to Portland and was driving through yellows and about to lay on the horn, when I realized what I was doing!" (no one honks, and people shake their heads in disgust if you run a yellow lol) She said it took a while to get accustomed to the style of driving here again. But I really value the lack of stress when driving here. Portland is a big town that feels like a small town in many ways.

Last night I was watching Doomsday Preppers in the background while doing some work, and a couple of the episodes were set in California and Washington. The level of drama in that show (by the producers and the narrator) is comical, but I like to see some of the creative things they come up with. It does also disturb me sometimes when I hear the children saying, "I just graduated high school last year. I took a year off to help my dad prep. It's probably the best thing I could be doing with my time." Hmmm...you took a year of your childhood to prepare for a potential future disaster and that's the best way to spend your time? The logic there disturbs me because many people on the show have totally ditched their previously "normal" lives for preparing for disaster. Not that preparing is the disturbing part, but the level of preparation is disturbing. It reminds me of the definition of a disorder -- must greatly interfere with your functioning in daily life. Well, arguably, prepping is similar to a hobby -- people spend time and money on hobbies so what's the difference between a hobby and prepping?

Well, I think it's great that people have these cool farms and plans in place; in fact, I am often inspired by some of them. One of my current dreams is to buy my own house with a couple acres and grow my own stuff there. I'd love to have a horse, a garden, potentially a couple animals, and be more self sufficient. I love the idea of being self sufficient, which is why I love that show. I really get inspired seeing some of those people's independent farms and things like that. This one lady had a place in the California country and it looked like such a nice retreat. Chickens, goats, garden. She spun her own wool and bartered for things. I don't want to go that far (mostly because I prioritize other experiences in my life more highly, not because I'm against bartering). I actually love the idea of bartering (like at Burning Man) but I just can't spend all my time growing things for bartering if I want to travel, kayak, have a horse, see friends, have a job, etc. There's only so much time, so you have to choose what you want to do with your time. If I were a millionaire and didn't have to work, I can see myself becoming one of those people full-time...riding horses on my acreage with a view of Mt. Hood, growing organic food, chickens, goats, a couple border collies, making little crafts, playing the banjo on my front porch while overlooking the Willamette Valley...it sounds wonderful :).

The woman (one of the women -- there are many of those farms on that show haha) with the self-sustaining farm on the show inspired me to look up houses last night. Portland had a lot more ideal choices for me as far as land where I would like to live -- some gorgeous undeveloped land with great views. I need to start figuring out where I want to live. Do I want to try to work in Portland, even though it will be much harder for me? Do I want to live in Seattle? Geez. How do people ever make a decision where to live?! I saw a number of cool places in Seattle on some of the islands, but the rest of them I'm not sure about (I don't want to live near Tacoma). I'm not sold on the idea of living on Bainbridge or Vashon, just because I feel like it would be much harder to be social (having to get home on the ferry and trying to convince your friends to visit you). I know someone who lives there -- maybe I should see what she thinks. There were some awesome houses on the water, which is another big selling point for me so that I can kayak easier.

I don't know, I need to do some serious thinking about this soon. I need to figure out what city to live in, where I want my career to go, what I'm going to do about this job, and how I'm going to make money. I desperately want to buy a house and settle down. It's a struggle at the grocery store to not buy a window basil plant because I'm really missing having a garden! I will spend a lot of time thinking about this in October.

In more pressing news, I'm struggling to finish my draft. I felt so awful (flu-like yesterday) and am really trying to focus on getting some of the questions answered before I go about finalizing and editing my draft. I reran my analyses yesterday to try out some different statistical methods, but I think I just need to stop doing that. I need to move forward with whatever I have written up now, and then after I send my draft I can go play around with the data between now and my meeting. I need to clean up and send what I have now. It's so, so hard to know how "good" to make the draft. I need to finish up all my last-minute statistical things by 2:00 and call it a day. Then I need to go back through and update my paper based on changes found from the new analyses. Then I need to work through advisor's changes from drafts 2-4. If I can do all of that tonight before bed, I will feel okay. Tomorrow I will work all day on doing some hardcore editing (L's comments, three rounds of my comments, checking for typos, APA style, etc.). My plan is to get up and send it at 8 AM on Thursday morning.

P.S. - had some Tillamook Oregon Strawberry ice cream last night...what is it about Tillamook that is so good? Is it because I grew up on it? I don't know...I love it so much!!! I love visiting the Tillamook Creamery too. Best ice cream....mmmmmmmm. I also had some Tillamook Medium Cheddar last night...reminded me of my childhood. That's basically a staple of my diet from childhood. It's hard not to keep eating the Oregon Strawberry -- I'm totally not a fan of ice cream by itself, but this stuff has changed my mind 180 degrees. I can't wait for dessert tonight!! :)