erim.net

Yes indeed, for those of you who care (and you know who you are), I’m now an official resident of the Rose City. Good god, you ask, why would you move to the god forsaken Pacific Northwest at the beginning of winter, with nothing but months of rain, fog, and soggy, downtrodden hippies to keep you company?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Oddly enough, I’ve always loved this town. I first came through here back in 1992, on my way up to Alaska to work for the summer. I was visiting some friends of my then girlfriend, and was struck by the mellow and esthetic vibe of the place. It’s a nice size city, nice folks, pretty scenery, lotsa water, and most notably, it lacks the hectic, in your face with the road rage from hell atmosphere of the lovely Bay Area I just left. Don’t get me wrong, the San Francisco Bay Area will always hold a special place in my heart. Berkeley and Oakland are cool, hip towns, and San Francisco is the jewel of the west coast. But Portland, she just suits me better.

Alas, rumor has it that some ignorant folks up here hate Californians. Can you believe it? Yeah, me too. However, I’m from California, no question about it. Fifth generation, in fact. My first ancestor came to Cali for the gold rush. He was a blacksmith, and being a wise and thoughtful soul, quickly realized there was much easier money to be made gouging the odd, naive prospector than there was stooping over in a stream all day, swishing sand around in a little metal pan. Unfortunately, sound business insight like that seems to skip more than five generations, but I’m still holding out hope.

So here I am, sitting in my new, tiny, very sparsely furnished studio, writing this blather and swilling cheap wine. And strangely, life seems pretty good. I’m living up in the north west area of town, which is between downtown, and the hills where the plutocrats live. It’s tiny, as I think I mentioned, but after eight years of living on a thirty foot sailboat, it feels positively spacious. And, get this - there’s both hot and cold running water. No, really. Right here in my apartment. I no longer have to walk a quarter mile to shower amidst other hairy mens’ cast off skin cells in a public marina bathroom. Life is good.

And there you have it. I realize I haven’t updated my blog in quite some time, but really, who cares? Let’s be honest. The upside is, now that I have so much free time and no real life, I might actually get around to it. Then again, I might not. Only time will tell. And after all, what are blogs about if not wanton and unrelenting self-indulgence? For those of you who notice some typos or grammatical errors in this post, well, I’m kinda drunk. I’ll see if I can run a spell check tomorrow morning.

Big smooches, y’all.