For all you curious minds who have been wondering what I'm up to here in Portland....
ARCHIVES
Here's me!
Calendar!
02.11 Visit DeMara
02.22 Amory Lovins lecture
02.24-28 Mom visits!
03.11-13 Graham visits! (hopefully)
03.18-27 Spring Break
04.22 Earth Day!
Renegade Rose Morris!
www.renegaderose.org
Photos!
See all my Flickr photos
Quotes!
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
-Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
"To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s."
-Dostoevsky, ‘Crime and Punishment’
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
-Marian Wright Edelman, ‘Families in Peril’
"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success."
-Thoreau, ‘Walden’
Yipee, hooray, and Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Guess what I just bought ---- plane tickets to Costa Rica!!!!!! Graham and I are going to fly down at the end of August to see our fabulously wonderful amiga Quena! If you can't tell, I'm very excited about this. :) We'll be down there with Quena for just over a week, and I'll be staying a few days longer than Graham and doing some adventuring on my own, hopefully (see sidebar calendar). I figured that since there's nothing I absolutely have to be back for that early, I might as well take the opportunity and have as much fun as I possibly can. After all, who knows when I'll make it to Costa Rica again? And it will be a fine opportunity to practice my Spanish. :)
I was just thinking the other day how well things work out for me sometimes. In particular, I was thinking about the whole plan I had to be in France this summer that I gave up on because I just didn't quite want it enough. I had a feeling when I cancelled that trip that there was some other reason, and a few months afterward, the reason popped up -- the house sold and we had to find another one and move, right around the time I would have been leaving for France. And if I was in France for the summer, I wouldn't be able to go visit Quena in Costa Rica. So it all works out pretty darn well in the end, I think.
I'm a happy Lacey. Quena and Costa Rica, here I come! :)
Monday, June 21, 2004
Miscellaneous catching up
Well, well, where to start? So much has happened since I last blogged. I could spend an hour detailing the horrors and catastrophes of our move, but I don't think I need to rehash that experience quite yet. I'll just say that the "whole thing" (as in, just the getting out of the old house part) took two days rather than seven hours, and that we still can't find our phone (not that we have phone service with which to use a phone...) Things have settled down a bit, we're partially unpacked -- in fact, I think I can safely say that we're more unpacked than we are packed, but I'm not entirely sure -- and, despite the fact that we either can't close or can't open the majority of the windows upstairs and can't close the garage door when it's sunny, we love the new house.
What else? My Spanish class started today. I was really worried about jumping into second year Spanish, since it's been three years since I took first year, but to my surprise (and occasional cringing horror), I think I'm actually better off than a lot of the students in the class. Fortunately (or maybe not), the teacher doesn't really care that we get things right all the time, as long as we can all understand each other. :) He's not a native speaker, but he did both his BA and his MA in Spanish (at PSU) and studied in Spain, so he's pretty fluent. And I've never had a Spanish teacher with a Spanish accent (all my previous teachers have been Mexican), so it'll be interesting.
I discovered last night while perusing the bus schedules for my first day of class that the buses that run close to the house really aren't conducive to my class schedule. I could get to school alright, but would have to wait an hour to come home, which wouldn't really be pleasant. So I decided to ride my bike. I haven't ridden my bike at all for about a year, and we live in twisty, hilly country, so this is no easy feat. My route to school involves a fairly steep and long uphill at the start, and then several miles of exhilaratingly speedy downhill to bring me to downtown. The uphill was longer than I expected, but I survived, and the downhill made me forget all about it. My route home involves taking a bus partway home and then riding uphill for a mile or so to get to the house. I went the only way I knew today, but we just discovered an easier route that I'll try tomorrow, that's exactly a mile. So if I survive the first week of it, I should get into pretty good shape pretty fast!
Anyway, that's life for now, pretty much. Still unpacking, trying to figure out where to put everything, trying to find the phone (we're hoping it didn't get into one of the Goodwill boxes -- or worse, the boxes that got taken to the dump). And now I have studying and homework to add to it. It's going to be a full summer. But we have a lovely new house with a lovely view, and my office is in the basement where it stays (relatively) nice and cool. Hugo and I have been eating dinner out on the deck, and last night we went for a walk after dinner, a habit we're going to try to get ourselves into this summer. The weather has been extremely hot and dry, and the evenings are the best part of the day.
Now it's time to go enjoy some milk and freshly baked cookies before bed. Good night!
:)
