So Long to the Beaver State

New Year's Eve in PDX was very fun, as was a long afternoon of bloody marys the next day. This morning it's raining buckets and I've got a few hours left at the House of Pants before I'm off to the airport.

It's been a reflective trip for me, not least because I did a terrible job sleeping every night except last night so I had plenty of time to think. It was wonderful, of course, to see my family and friends. After being cooped-up in SC for months, the open spaces, the big cheap apartments, and the all-purpose elbow room was a visceral relief. The strongest impression I'm coming away with, though, just has to do with the space itself, of Oregon and of Portland. People are really, truly happy to live here, even while they deal with the usual laundry list of problems in their respective lives. I know lots (most?) of people feel the equivalent for either their home towns or the places they adopted after they moved away from home, but I also know that all of my roots are put down here in the Willamette Valley.

I also know that I completely fucked up in planning this trip. I really miss B and it was only because of my confusion and negligence in the middle of last term that she isn't here. Living-and-learning is a cold, unsatisfying recompense for mistakes, but I'll make the best use of it I can so that something like this won't happen again.

So it's back to the Cali central coast, just in time to dodge the big storm system that's apparently coming in. Expect the return of lots of whiny blog posts about me teaching + QE-prepping + second MA paper writing in the very immediate future.