i am hereby moving my camera into my purse even though it takes up too much room, because keeping it in my backpack clearly doesn’t do enough to ensure that i have it when i want it.

i got back last night from a little trip to palm beach, FL, where my mother is living now and where she was just officially ordained as a unitarian universalist minister after many years of preparation and hard work. the ceremony was a big success, and it was nice to see and hear so many people telling my mom how cool she is, because they are right. :)

congratulations, reverend momma. i am proud of you.

[insert touching photograph here]

it was fun to see both of my parents - my dad flew down for the weekend and i realized that i hadn’t seen him in nearly two years! - and i am going to colorado and then florida again during the holidays, so there will be more time to catch up, which is good.

i also enjoyed seeing the ocean, and floating in it for a little while yesterday morning before we ate lunch and headed to the airport to send me back west. i have been to the pacific ocean a couple of times this year but i swear that the water in florida is warmer and bluer in november than the water in southern california even under the august sun, and the shells on the beach push some buttons that giant seaweed creatures still don’t quite reach, as much as i love them and as much as i learn to appreciate the beauty of rugged, rocky pacific views.

[insert super blue ocean shot here, followed by fun close-up of the broken shell section of the beach where i made little mosaics for a while]

the autumn weather in portland has made me hesitant to make too many rain jokes, lest i reinforce false stereotypes or tempt bad weather sprites to teach me to be careful what i ask for, but last night i flew in to heavy fog and drizzling rain, which continues today, so perhaps winter is starting to stake its claim on the PNW. flying into PDX at night is kind of a ripoff because you can’t see any of the mountains, which are absolutely stunning from the air. i had a window seat on both flights this time, too, and it was fun to fly over cities at night and try to guess where we were. it’s actually quite hard. i started wondering whether, as we enter the age of satellite photography on every desktop, a new dimension of urban planning will emerge to play with how we look from above.

so now i’m back, WAY behind on nanowrimo, and confronting the task of gathering and/or redistributing my portland material footprint before i head out for a while. i am both glad to be here and glad to be in motion. the west coast has set some deep hooks in me over the past eight months, and now i begin the task of determining which lines i want to sever and which i want to continue to play out, no matter which ocean i swim in next.

tonight lauren and tif celebrate their november birthdays and some time in the next day or so victor returns from his bowling and supercomputing convention, at which point he may or may not have energy for portland adventures that will most likely involve neither. and sharon and i are inventing a tofurky dance. and chakra wants me to make a pie. and there may be another boat? and i might be hijacking jonathan’s car?

hello, friday. another cup of coffee, anyone?

folks here in portland don’t think it’s supposed to rain in the summer.

pretty much not at all.

i have learned since arriving here that summer is considered oregon’s best kept secret (oops!!), because everyone’s first reaction to the idea of living here is “but the rain!” and oregonians are just fine with encouraging that, because seriously, the summers are amazing - clear, dry, warm but not hot, berries so numerous as to be considered weeds, and rivers full of salmon and an ocean and mountains in which to play. not much more to ask for, really. it’s like california, but cheaper, and with fewer californians. and the californians are people like victor and sharon, and we like them. :)

the tradeoff (and the source of the weather stereotype) is that it rains all winter, but i prefer water that falls from the sky to water that just hangs in the air as humidity anyway, so that seems a better tradeoff so far than indiana summers, where it quite honestly feels as if air is something through which one must swim. also, the corollary of there being more rain than snow in the winter is that it doesn’t really get all that cold, which appeals to many. since i actually love the snow and embrace the cold as a good excuse to drink hot beverages and wear fuzzy clothes, i expect that if the rain annoys me it will not be because it will make the sky grey and the world wet, but because i will not be able to throw it at my friends or sled upon it. aforementioned mountains might help with that, though, so we’ll see.

in colorado, it rains every day in the summer. for five minutes. accompanied by booming thunder. and that is one of my favorite features of colorado. oregon is winning points with me for being less dry than colorado (yeah, i’m picky. colorado? too dry. indiana? too wet. oregon is like the baby bear of humidity.), as i appreciate things like moss and mushrooms and the ability to grow produce, but it loses points by not having thunderstorms. because that’s the other thing i didn’t know about the rain here. have i blogged this already? it rains a lot. but there are never thunderstorms. and this is very, very sad.

but anyway, yeah. in the summer? it’s not supposed to rain at all. i know this because it has been doing so this week a fair bit, and people are grumbly. you would think that rain would be such a part of life here that people don’t notice much, but apparently that is only because they know what they have to look forward to on the other side of the calendar, and it doesn’t take much to make them feel swindled. because it’s not even raining that much. drizzle, i would say. it is making our pre-burning man construction projects more difficult, but i have heard dismay from all of my local friends in all of their various undertakings, so it seems to be striking everyone as against the laws of nature.

which is an interesting reaction to the workings of nature, isn’t it?
;)

off to run rainy errands i go.