Au revoir Sylvia

Yes, Sylvia has a new home now. I sold her this morning to a woman who has just bought a "fixer-upper" house, and needs a truck for her "project." Her mechanic was pretty impressed with the condition the truck was in, and I think she'll continue to take good care of it. She told me that she was fighting with herself last night saying "I don't want a truck!" but finally gave in to the practicality of it and admitted that she needed a truck. She was coming around pretty quickly, though. After she told me she definitely wanted it, she said "There are two ways this can go. Either I fall in love with the truck and keep it forever (which is very likely), or after a year, when I'm done with my project, I can try to resell it." She said the former was the more likely possibility. :) So I think Sylvia has gone to a good home, and I have my new little car, and everybody is happy. Hooray!

Portland's weather motto in action...

It's interesting living on the top of a hill. You get all sorts of weather, all at the same time. It can be rainy out one window and sunny out the other. This morning we had a tremendous hailstorm that covered the house, cars, and ground in what looked like two inches of snow. Shortly after that, it was all blue skies and sunshine. It has continued to be alternately rainy and sunny for most of the day, definitely living up to the old optimistic Portland saying "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes!" :)

It's all downhill from here

Here being Hugo's house, which is on the top of a hill, and which is about to become my new home. Yep, I'm moving in with Hugo. Again. :} He's been living up here for the last few months and I've been keeping the apartment, since it's got good public transit access for getting to school, etc. But the apartment's drawbacks are beginning to outweigh its perks, mostly in the cigarette smoke department -- several of my neighbors smoke, and apparently not within the "non-smoking" rules of the apartment. What with the shared forced-air heating in the apartments, the smoke from their units gets drawn into the heating system and blasted out into everybody elses' apartments. The upshot being that everything in my apartment now smells like smoke, including my yoga mat, and every time I open the door I get hit by a blast of smoky air. It's not very pleasant. Anyway, what with one thing and another, I've found myself spending all the time I possibly can away from the apartment at Hugo's house, and have decided that it has become impractical to continue paying for an apartment I'm hardly living in. Which is why I bought my car, because I'll be driving to school next quarter and wanted something with a bit better mileage than poor gas-guzzling Sylvia. Anyway, to make a long story somewhat shorter, I'm "officially" moving some time within the next month or so (I still have to sort that out with my landlady), but am pretty much up at the house full-time now. I'll send out an email with my new contact details (after I get my computer up and running - see below), because I don't really feel like broadcasting that on the web. :}

I still haven't sold Sylvia, but I've got a couple of women interested in looking at her, so hopefully will show her once or twice tomorrow. I just want her to go to a good home (and I'd love it if another woman bought her!), so she doesn't feel neglected. And I promise, I will try to post those pictures of my new car soon. My computer is currently sitting in various piles of technology on the kitchen table at Hugo's house, and will hopefully be reassembled into a working unit some time in the next couple of days, and I'll post the pictures as soon as I can. :)

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

I just bought a car! Wow! It's a 2002 Hyundai Accent, dark grey, 2 doors, manual transmission, 20K miles, and gets about 40mpg on the highway. It's in great shape, it handles wonderfully, and it's soooo zippy! I didn't realize how much I enjoy driving a manual transmission. (Of course, this car is a far cry from the 1971 VW Superbeetle I started out in!) The dealership experience was rather excruciating, and I of course spent more than I had anticipated (and it wasn't even what I was looking for), but I got it for a fabulous price. It's still got 40,000 miles left on the factory warranty, and it's less than 2 years old, so it shouldn't have any problems for quite a while. I was a little down about the whole thing by the time the whole negotiation process was finished (I almost didn't buy the thing, but Hugo worked it out pretty well for me), but by the time I'd rounded the first bend up the hill to Hugo's house I was happy. Now I just have to sell Sylvia for a decent price so I can justify having a new car. :} This car is so fun! I'll take pictures tomorrow and post them, and take suggestions for suitable names. :)

Vacation Time!

Finished my last final this morning, so I'm on Spring Break now -- hooray! It's hard to believe that my first quarter at PSU is over already. It's been a good quarter all in all, but it'll be nice to have a week off. I spent much of this afternoon cleaning up Sylvia (my lovely truck) in the hopes of selling her in the near future so I can buy a small car that gets better mileage. It's funny, when I spoke with a guy who was interested in coming over to look at it, I admitted to the cosmetic damage, saying something like "yeah, it's got a few dents and scrapes, and a bit of rust at the top of the cab." I honestly thought I was telling the truth, but I realized when I was washing her this afternoon that she's really pretty beat up all around. Lots more scratches and scrapes than I realized, and quite a bit more rust. And the jet washer I used unfortunately accelerated the peeling process around some of the rust spots. So she's not very pretty, but I still love her anyway. And I did advertise her as a "work truck" and warned that she's not cosmetically beautiful. :} So far I've only advertised her on Craigslist, because the Oregonian ads cost about $50 for the weekend, which is the best time, and she's not quite worth that at this point. I think somebody is coming around to look at her tomorrow morning, so we'll see how that goes.

Morris practice went really well tonight. We actually managed to run through quite a few dances with minimal review, which is great. Especially since we're dancing at the Pagan Faire on Saturday, and at the Rose Schnitzer Manor (an assisted living facility) next Thursday. Gigs are always good motivators for serious practice. :) And we had exactly 12 dancers for most of practice tonight, so we had a perfect two sets so everybody got to practice everything. I like it when practices happen like that. :) On a slightly related and random fun note, I've also been tagging along to Bridgetown practice for the last few weeks (except last night because I had to study). There's no way around it, I just like dancing with the men. (But haven't I always played with boys?) :)

Off to bed now. I need a good night's sleep to start off my vacation. :P

Happy Birthday, Hugo!

Enough said. :)

Random chance and happenstance

Well, this story is kind of old, but I haven't blogged for a while, so I have to catch up. ... After dropping Ellie off at her piano lesson last weekend, Hugo and I stopped by the Safeway across the street from the piano school to do some grocery shopping. I've never actually been in this store before, and probably won't be going there very often in the future, which makes the following occurence even more coincidental than it might otherwise have been. While wandering the aisles looking for something or other, we passed a man pushing a stroller with a boy in it. The boy looked very much like his father, and the father looked very much like somebody I knew. I did a quick double-take, told myself it was impossible, then did a triple-take when I heard the man's voice. I still told myself it was impossible, and turned the other way down the aisle. However, curiosity got the best of me, and I accosted the man and his wife as they left the store, saying, "Excuse me, but you didn't, by any chance, used to teach at a high school in Santa Cruz, did you?" It turns out that I was right -- I had met Dennis McLain, my US Government teacher (for one semester) from Soquel High! Turns out he moved up to Beaverton about the same time I did, and has been enjoying it almost as much as I am. I was pretty surprised that he remembered me. I had to remind him of my name, of course, but he said he had done a double-take on me as well, and commented, "You had longer hair back then." So he actually did remember me as an individual, not just a random student from the past. Anyway, that was kind of cool. I like it when funny, completely unexpected things like that happen.

Happy Birthday to Robbie yesterday, and Happy Birthday to Hugo tomorrow!

And there was much rejoicing....

Guess what I had this weekend -- a Mom-visit! She flew up on Friday morning and we spent the weekend shopping and getting amazing deals on everything, going to Powells, walking around downtown, watching movies, knitting, and chatting about life, the universe and everything -- you know, typical girl stuff. :P It was a wonderful weekend, and I now own a pair of boots! (This is a big step for me, made much easier by the fact that they were heavily discounted because the store was going out of business so they only cost $10.) We went to Value Village, always a favorite. The big bargain this trip was a full-sized, perfect-condition down comforter.... for $7.99! We shopped for two days and brought an enormous amount of stuff home, but really didn't spend all that much money, and Mom still managed to get it all into her suitcase! Yes, it seems strange that I survived two straight days of shopping, but I only seem to do it when I'm with Mom. I realized that I hadn't spent any money on clothes since the last time she was here in September! So, all in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend, and I still managed to finish my 8-page paper and my 3-page paper that are due tomorrow -- before dinner tonight! Boy, am I good. :P