This morning we packed all of the things we had accumulated from a year of fourth floor studio apartment living in Wilsonville, Oregon into a 5×8 U-Haul. It is amazing how much stuff one accumulates, even in such a cramped space. Dinner is planned tonight with our dear friend Gladys followed by church tomorrow morning and evening with Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah. After that, we are off to Texas.
It has amazed us how everything worked out for us to return to Oregon, but then nothing worked out after that for us to stay. We are not too excited about spending too much more time in an apartment so we are working hard to find a house where we can settle down for the long term. In the meantime, we look forward to some time with Christian in Tempe next week.
Betty Blonde #493 – 07/07/2010
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It is amazing to me that the best pictures of me are almost always on my drivers license. Lorena drove me down to Woodburn yesterday to get my license transferred from North Carolina to Oregon and I am amazed at the quality and speed of service we received there. They did a great job. Oregon is one of the few places where you have to take the “written” test (on a computer) to do the transfer. The whole process was actually quite pleasant. Lorena got her license changed in Lake Oswego where the service was very bad and very, very slow.
Our car got towed this morning because we did not have a sticker from our apartment complex to park there. Unfortunately, we had never gotten one even though we had asked repeatedly. Fortunately, if you do not count all the notarizations, hassle, faxing emailing, use of public transport and associated costs, we were not charged for the towing and storage because the apartment complex acknowledged they were the ones who caused the problem. Of course, they will not do anything about the crazy hassle they caused us, but as I tell my kids, “don’t whine!”
We have had an amazing run of good weather in Oregon since we got here. Today started out as another bright and sunny one with temperatures supposed to get up into the low 60’s. Meanwhile, Raleigh is getting slammed with a boatload of snow. We love this picture that was taken not to far from the kids campus at North Carolina State University after only two inches of snow. Today, four inches are supposed to fall. We are still on the school-closings text list at Wake Technical Community College and everything is shut down today. There could be all out war and starvation. Keep Raleigh in your thoughts.
I have moved away from Oregon what seems like enumerable times. Every time I return I am amazed by Oregon’s unparalleled beauty, the freshness of the air and the rain in the Willamette Valley. Up until now, my thoughts after a couple of weeks in the state have generally been, “I do not remember it raining this much.” Now, though, on the way up to Oregon from Tempe, Arizona through California we drove on dry pavement and have had several days of the couple of weeks we have been here with sunny days–I took the picture in the post out the window of our apartment. There is not a cloud in the sky. I think the East Coast is getting all our precipitation. This does not bode well for the coming summer. There appears to be almost no snow pack in the mountains which means low water levels in rivers and lakes and drought in Oregon. We have even seen rationed water here in the summer under these conditions.
The really cool part is I am here in time to meet up with a bunch of my church buddies for breakfast in Tigard. My buddy Curt had set it up a long time ago, not for me, that is just the way the roll in Oregon.
