March: money AND home-life stuff!

And now we have March. It's possible that 2016 is shaping up to be the year of Getting Stuff Done. In February I finished painting one single tiny wall that had been sample-splotched for two years, and got air conditioning installed.

So far in March I've ordered curtains for the three bedrooms, and got one set actually hung! (Okay, thanks to my boyfriend, but I totally could've installed that curtain rod on my own. It's not like I've had it sitting around for three years or anything...yes, he looked a bit disbelieving when I confessed that.) Anyway, it's done and I'm making big plans to hang/help hang the other two sets of rods & curtains soon!

I'm also thinking about removing the closet doors in the guest bedroom. It's a very small room, and I have a Murphy bed in it (a decision I semi-regret, but oh well) and when the bed is down, the person using the room has to very carefully squish between the foot of the bed and the closet door. Removing the door will allow a bit more clearance, but may lead to another future project in terms of building out the inside of the closet with organizers. I've been thinking about it for a while and then saw that a blogger I follow did just that (scroll WAY down for the pic), and it looks great!

I also had a small financial breakthrough. I have 27 years left on my mortgage and intend to pay it off at least ten years sooner - or faster, if possible. I have waffled on how exactly to accomplish this - is it better for me to just send in extra money every month, or should I invest extra cash in a stock fund with an eye to better returns and paying off the mortgage in a big chunk down the road? My mortgage interest rate is really low, so on the one hand it makes more sense to chase better returns in the stock market, but on the other hand the more I pay now the better, for psychological and amortizational reasons.  I finally remembered I've got an extremely stable money market fund earning NO interest, so I just closed that and will use it to pay down 3% of my mortgage. That doesn't really answer my bigger-picture question, but it will help me get the balance below a certain large dollar amount by the end of the summer, so that's exciting.

I did make some other decisions about mortgage prepayment: in the short term I'm going to focus on rebuilding my savings, and then once I hit a specific balance in that stock fund, I'll shift to splitting my non-retirement savings between mortgage prepayment and the stock market. Mathematically it may make sense to put it all in the market, but I don't wanna.

Other items on the to-do list:
 - add plants in my yard. We'll see about that one.
 - finally paint the single wall in my guest room - or at least pick & purchase the paint and let one or two friends who actually enjoy painting know that I would welcome their time & effort!

All the good things

So, I'm ramping up for five weeks of total madness. Tonight I leave for a week in a warm place with friends, and 12 hours after I get back home I turn around and go to Seattle for 24 hours. Then I'll be home for almost a week before heading to San Francisco to start my new! job with five days at HQ. And I'll be home from that for four days before heading to Paris to visit a friend, and as soon as I'm back from THAT I'll have friends coming to stay for the weekend.

It's daunting, I admit it. I'm loading up on vitamins to try to stay healthy, and I'll do my best to get lots of sleep. Well - I'll go to bed in a timely fashion. Staying asleep has not been my strong point lately, and the 2am hour is all-too-familiar at this point.

It'll probably be good for me to have a little less vacation time at my new job - sad, but good. I tend to say YES to absolutely everything and then run myself ragged. Weirdly, I don't get much sympathy!

So Paris will be my last hurrah for a while, in terms of big trips. I negotiated taking the time off without pay since I won't have earned any time yet. I actually wanted to start working in May but they were eager to get me going, so this is the compromise situation.

It's going to be great - all of it - but I sure hope I can sleep on the plane tonight.

The game is afoot

So, I've accepted a new job. It's kinda crazy - my current gig has introduced me to SO many really great people, and I'm happy I've been able to maintain some level of friendship with them even when I moved away from the office to become a remote employee.

Now I'm going to start a gig as a remote worker, so it'll be interesting to see if and how I make good connections with my new coworkers. I hope so!

I wasn't super unhappy with my current job, but I was open to making a change, and it came together very quickly in the last 3 weeks - I actually applied to the job I've accepted exactly three weeks ago today. That's lightspeed in corporate America!

I already mourn the amazing vacation benefits I'm leaving behind. I AM getting a good raise, and I think this job will give me some new, very marketable skills. But mostly I feel half excited, half scared. It's going to be a whirlwind!

One year, or seventeen

It's officially been a year since I moved back to Portland! It's also just over seventeen years since I moved here for the first time - how's that for a concept to bake my noodle (as the Oracle phrased it so well in The Matrix).

I'd had a few things I wanted to accomplish in the month of September, to round out my first year back in town. I did get a few bike rides in, and I went to an Oregon winery's tasting room (and bought a pinot noir), but I didn't make it camping. I had sites booked, and friends lined up to participate, but we wisely cancelled when we were hit with massive volumes of rain - and had a pizza and game night instead!

It's been such a full and busy and great year. Highlights:
October: enjoying the terrific chef's tasting menu at clarklewis with three friends, putting to rest for good my admittedly ridiculous fear that I wouldn't get amazing meals here; house-hunting with my new friend/realtor; spending a weekend in Seattle and once again vowing to get there more often!
November: going on a hike with women I've known since the first time I moved here; seeing a wide range of local musicians all covering Bruce Springsteen songs at a local venue; continuing house-hunting; making an offer on what would become my house; joining a new book group; having Thanksgiving at a friend's house.
December: eagerly stalking the house I was in contract for, visiting the Bay Area for the first time post-move; traveling home for Christmas on the same flight as my brother.
January: starting the year right with a New Year's Day bike ride; closing on the house; moving in with the help of old friends; starting winter hiking up in Forest Park; having my sister arrive to begin living with me.
February: snowshoeing on Mount Hood; having a rocking housewarming party with friends from near and far!
March: starting the quilt project; visiting Hawaii 
April: showing my parents my new house; enjoying another Bay Area visit, this one including an absolutely perfect day in wine country - I felt tangible happiness that day that I can still experience when I remember it.
May: completing the quilt; getting a promotion at work; attending a friend's daughter's first communion; seeing another friend's band play at their very first gig!
June: risking a weekend at the beach with the women in my book group - and having it pay off when the houseful of semi-introverts had a lovely time; hosting a couple of friends from the Bay Area.
July: delivering the quilt to the brides; attending Happy Hours in the Park most of the summer; starting to harvest some garden bounty; picking something like 50 pounds of berries.
August: seeing Pink Martini at an outside concert; starting to consider painting in my house (project has stalled, but we'll get there); finally experiencing Trek in the Park; having a bunch of friends over for a potluck for an out-of-town visitor; having lots of birthday celebrations including three houseguests at once!
September: Enjoying a Festa di Pomodori with friends (about which I have yet to blog); generally appreciating how great life is.

And many happy returns!

Waiting for an epiphany

Last spring when I was traveling in Europe, I remember very clearly having an epiphany while in Amsterdam (no drugs involved!). I was reflecting on a conversation I'd had with someone back home in the Bay Area, who had just returned from six months of continuous travel. I expressed some puzzlement over how he managed to do it, and he said: you just have to set up your life so you can travel!

In other words, decide what you want and make it happen. Thinking about that conversation, and in the middle of a fifteen-day European trip, I realized that what I wanted most was not to travel for months at a stretch, but to make my home in Portland. That was the ONE BIG THING I wanted.

That epiphany was the beginning of a chain of events that resulted in just that, and I'm grateful and amazed every day that I figured out what I wanted and I made it happen.

Is it selfish to ask for more? Like so many others I know, I'm wrestling with the work question. There was one time in my life when I was passionate about my job, but it was over a decade ago, and it was the first time I'd found a job that really tapped a lot of my skills AND let me work with fun people. I know if I were still there I would be far far over it by now.

Now here I am, with about 20 years of work behind me and facing the next 20, and I can't figure out what exactly I am looking for. It's frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I'm asking from a very positive space, and know I'm lucky to feel like I'm appreciated and my skills get used on a daily basis. So maybe I just won't ever be super stoked about work, but it seems like that would be oh so nice to have.

Calendar:June

This is the third and, I think, last calendar shot from my trip to New Mexico last year. You can read my February post if you want a little more about that trip!

Sorry for the radio silence. I know it's the way in blog land. I've had a LOT going on behind the scenes with a large possibility of major life uprooting (in a good way, but it's scary too) so my brain has been churning but I haven't been sharing. I hope everything's settled in a few more weeks.

If not, well, I'm off to Germany again for a chunk of time in the middle of July, so I'll be sure to drink plenty of beer!

Get a swim suit. Use it!

For years and years I had a bathing suit that I didn't love, but I had it in case of emergency swimming need. As an adult I haven't lived in hot places where swimming happens much, so I rarely if ever used it.

Finally in the fall of 2009, for no reason I can recall, I decided it was Time for a New Swim Suit. I figured this would be rather painful (in that whole moment of truth sort of way) but I learned that Lands End offers lots of sizes and combinations, and you can return their products to Sears. I must have ordered ten billion different bits and pieces, but I found a suit that works for me!

And since then I've gone to hot springs with a friend in New Zealand,

went to an amazing spa in the high desert of New Mexico,

learned to scuba dive in preparation for a week of sun and sand and scuba and snorkeling in Honduras,

swam and waded and swam again in Greece,

and just came back from a weekend in a cottage with a hot tub, where I could hang out with friends in steamy bubbly bliss. Get a swim suit! Make a point of using it!

WHEW

Well, the weekend went better than I thought it would. It even went better than I dared hope! My sick friend didn't die, and my widowed friend was moved out of her house in an incredibly efficient manner.

It was really an impressive amount of work but it was well organized. We arrived at the house to see a big dumpster, a storage pod, and a moving truck. Everything in the house was NOT packed but was labeled according to its ultimate destination (new apartment, storage, trash, donation) so the helpers could work independently. There was also a stack of index cards with various tasks on it (gather chemicals in laundry room and put on Haz Mat pile; remove pictures from walls; etc.) so we could tackle those jobs as well.

My friend held up in what must have been an unthinkably hard day. In some ways I'm sure it was a relief, to be out of the house, into an apartment, and DONE with all that stuff in all one day. In other ways it's a very definite end to a part of her life that was very happy and all too short.

Happy October!