Winding down

As summer begins to fade, and life slowly winds down (this is the
first weekend Claire and I have to sit around like bums in what feels
like a couple of months) it’s hard to look forward and try to
anticipate what this fall will bring. In a way that’s great, it’s much
easier to live in the moment when you aren’t worried of some perceived
impending doom. In another way, it would be nice to be able to get my
head around a few things before I am in the thick of them, things that
I know are coming, but can’t seem to focus on. For instance this will
be the first year that I don’t get to see any family for Thanksgiving
or Christmas since I don’t start having vacation pay until January. I
know that this will become a big deal, and I may be able to do
something about it, but it’s still so far off that it hasn’t come into
focus yet.

However, in looking back, it has been a wonderful summer. Claire was
able to visit her family in D.C. and Texas, my family came up to see
us, we’ve had a lot of time to build on our Corvallis friendships with
trips to the coast, plays in Portland, and game nights with various
hosts. I’m finally becoming more active and feeling like my life is
finally settling in a little to the switch of locales. My disc golf
game has improved vastly, I’ve read several good books, my faith is on
more solid ground and my job situation has improved.

My faith, disc golf prowess and work situation all still need major
improvement, but to feel that I am taking steps in the right direction
is incredibly encouraging.

Anyone looking for a really good book to read should check out C.S.
Lewis’ Perelandra. It is the second in a trilogy, and makes more sense
if you first read Out of the Silent Planet, but it can still hold its
own very well. You may want to have a dictionary close at hand if you
are not a philologist (lover of words), as the main character is, as
was Mr. Lewis.

Cats and Dogs

One of those oddities I’ve recently discovered about our friends in Corvallis (the first being that everyone plays disc golf) is that everyone seems to have an older couple that they dog/house-sit for. Not wanting to be left out of this integral part of experiencing life as a Corvallisite (Corvallisinian?), Claire and I will be watching this really gentle giant of a dog for the next week or so and staying in this great house on the side of a hill. Hudson, who’s a newfoundland (read as the size of a small horse), is as laid back as, well, as I am.

We’re really looking forward to watching Hudson (and the three cats he lives with), since that’s kind of what we’d like to have once we know where we’re going to settle for the long haul (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for the U.K.). Though we may trade the newfoundland for a beagle or a north american shepherd.

The whole bed

With Claire being gone the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten back into a habit of mine (I’ll leave the judgement of good or bad to you) where I take up an inordinate amount of space on the bed. After mentioning this on my last post I was asked why guys like to do this. For me the answer is simple, I spent roughly 20 years of my life getting the bed to myself, jumbling the covers however feels comfortable at the moment, deciding to get up on whichever side happens to be closer when I wake up and so on. Then, while I was in high school my parents bought a queen sized bed for me, the idea being that it would be the bed I took with me when I moved away (they were apparently looking forward to this time). So I soon adjusted from my twin sized bed to the majesty of a queen, and it was wonderful.

 So to make a short story longer, it was odd adjusting to having someone else asleep in the same bed, especially someone who sleeps lightly and apparently doesn’t like being hit across the face with a flailing limb in the middle of the night. So those few times a year when she’s away I get to go back to being a bed hog and not worrying about anyone’s comfort but my own.

To any nay-sayers please try this, kick whoever is sharing your bed out to the couch for a night, arrange the pillows so your favorite is dead center to the bed, with a standby or two on whichever side you may want to roll over to (no use waking up enough to drag your pillow over, you have the whole bed). Make sure the sheets and blankets are all as loosely or tightly tucked as you like and that everything about the bedroom meets your personal approval (temperature, light, where the clock is, everything). Just see if you don’t have a great nights sleep.

Hello again

I know it’s been awhile, but nothing too huge has happened, okay, there was the birth of Jackson (Claire’s new nephew), and my whole family visiting Oregon (and not killing each other), but that’s basically all there was between backpacking and Claire leaving to visit family.

This past week has picked up quite a bit though, and it’s been nice to be busy while she’s been gone. It’s also nice to take up the whole bed, but that’s beside the point. My favorite from this week was poker night, yeah it wasn’t for a lot of money, but it was still a lot of fun. Other than that I’ve been hanging out, playing disc golf, and watching B movies. (Highlander, Zoom, Shooter, all very good).

So nothing exciting, but it’s been fun. And now that this week looks like it will be a lot slower then I’m really looking forward to Claire getting back.

Rain, Hallows and Family

Well the rain was kind of a mixed blessing. Whlie it was much cooler than it would have been during our backpacking excursion, we also had to make our hike into base camp up a few paths that were still carrying water down to the creeks. It did not help that most of the parts I am thinking of were also overgrown with salmonberry bushes, so at parts you couldn’t see the loose, wet rocks you were walking on, as you went up a 6-7% slope. Needless to say, we were glad that things had a chance to dry out on Saturday and that Sunday was nice and sunny for our trek back to the trailhead.

So what did I do to recover after such a trip? The only way one could after that particular weekend, by staying up late reading Deathly Hallows every night until I was through the book. I really enjoyed it, and that’s all I will say so that I don’t ruin it for anyone.

So with  backpacking and Harry Potter behind me, I now get to look forward to my family visiting. They actually fly in tonight, and we’ll go meet them tomorrow morning in Portland. As a family we haven’t always been close by any stretch (it’s my humble opinion that an older brother who enjoys seeing how far he can throw you tends to also throw kinks into that relationship). However, recently we have all started to enjoy each other’s company quite a bit more. I really miss hanging out with my little brother (who I got to share an apartment with for a year when he first started at Texas Tech), and my parents are so much nicer to be around now that their relationship is better than I’ve ever seen it. Add in my older brother’s kids, who I really like hanging out with as long as I can also get some adult time, and this promises to be a great week. I just pray that the won’t get on each other’s nerves too much with all of the driving that they will be doing.