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September 30, 2006

housing, volcanos, who knows

Ben and I put down money to hold an apartment in North Portland -- roughly at the intersection of N. Ainsworth and N. Michigan -- this afternoon. We'll know by mid-week if we were approved.

The rental market has completely changed since March, when we moved in to our current -- and short-lived -- home. Suddenly there are hordes of cash-flush renters knocking down the doors of property management places. Rents are up several hundred dollars per month since the start of the year. We looked at a place yesterday that had received 18 applications before we even got there -- and had a number of people walk through who didn't apply, as well. I guess it's connected to the high price of homes.

I'm excited about this new place, if we get it.

It would be a two block walk to the MAX, Portland's light rail line. If Ben chooses to take the MAX, he'll probably halve his current commute time. This duplex is also closer to I-5, which I take to work, and that could shave five minutes from my 15 minute commute as well. The MAX could whisk us to Mint and Mississippi Pizza, two of our favorite food-and-drink establishments, which means we could both have fun without designating anyone to stay sober.

The neighborhood's not nearly as hip as Alberta Arts, where we live now, but it's got a lot going for it. We'd be just a few blocks from the North Portland campus of Portland Community College -- convenient, considering that I've been wanting to take a few classes. We'd also be near Penninsula Park, which has a large rose garden, a public pool and a community center. Nearby are New Seasons natural food grocery store and the farmer's market I've been getting food at all summer, as well.

I guess now we just wait to see if we got it, and then we can start making plans with U-Haul. We might as well pack up a few boxes in the mean time.

But there's another sort of packing I need to do first. Now that we have that squared away, I need to load up my car with camping gear and Ben. We're heading to the mountains this afternoon. Tomorrow before dawn we'll be climbing a steep trail toward the summit of Mount St. Helens.

I'm excited.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2006

Ben's got "chops"

We've checked out jazz jam sessions around the city over the past several weeks. Tonight, Ben brought his saxophone to Proper Eats in North Portland and joined in the music making.

He was really great -- one guy told him, "You've got chops." Some of the songs they played were tunes I've heard him practicing around the house, but he also had to sight read some.

I was in a really mixed-up mood tonight, after learning we'd have to move. It was nice to get away and spend the evening drinking coffee and listening to my husband make beautiful music.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)

Wow!

Our landlord sold our house, and we're getting kicked out at the end of October.

To be honest, Ben and I were already talking about moving. This place is beautiful, but it's been a nightmare. Leaky ceilings, ruined beds, poor insulation, noisy neighbors, clogged drains, disappearing water pressure.

Mike Selker is an asshole. When we moved in, he told us he hoped we'd be here for a year or more. Clearly he was full of it. I don't know why I believed him. This was the man who told us that he'd pay to replace the mattress ruined by his adventures in incompetent plumbing, and who then conveniently forgot about his promise when we approached him with a bill.

Fuck!

This morning, I e-mailed Ben about this place, and now it looks like we might be going to the open house on Saturday with our check books.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:54 PM | Comments (3)

September 24, 2006

Chance encounters

At the grocery store, I bumped into Renee, the college kid who serves me coffee once or twice a day from a little stand near my office. She was buying kefir starter, which I always thought was used to grow a kind of yogurt. It turns out it's a cousin to yogurt, with much more active cultures. And if, like Renee, you're vegan, you can make kefir out of soy milk.

At the airport, I bumped into Andre, the editor who hired me at The Daily News and who was a really great boss. I miss working with him. He was picking up his wife, who was on the same flight as Rian last night. Rian's asleep in the other room. Andre and family are probably at church in Longview right now.

At the jazz jam, Ben and I bumped into James, a guy who works in Ben's office, though they hadn't really talked much before. James lives in the North Portland neighborhood where we've been twice now to hear live music. He was with his wife. Proper Eats, the vegetarian cafe that opens its doors to jazz fans, is also a small grocery store and a bar. We all sat together, nibbled muffins, listened and talked. This place has bright rough paint on the walls, haphazardly arranged tables and chairs, amateur art at odd angles and dreadlocked hippies minding the till. It brings back memories of Bob's Underground, a college hangout.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:09 AM | Comments (2)

September 22, 2006

It's a pretty good life

This was a pretty good day, and a nice cap on several consecutive pretty good weeks.

This month at work I've taken on new responsibilities, survived a performance review, set goals for the coming year, and broken some pretty important news.

This month outside work I've attended a half dozen jazz shows with Ben, started doing three mile treadmill runs, subscribed to a new daily newspaper, made my first ebay purchase, and watched the first season of 24 on DVD.

Right now Ben's practicing his sax. When he's done, I'm hoping we can order a pizza and sit down for a mellow evening with our latest Netflix DVDs.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Longview for a Daily News reunion and to wish well a colleague bound for Alaska. Then Rian gets in late from the airport.

If there's time, I might buy a new camping stove and some gear for next weekend, when Ben and I plan to summit Mount St. Helens and stare into its still-erupting crater.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2006

cooking

Yesterday I made coriander potatoes, corn muffins and plum pudding. Just doing my part to get us unburied from this giant mound of produce.

Tomorrow I'm thinking of making rice-stuffed bell peppers, or maybe something involving pesto and zucchini.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2006

I'm the woman with the power. What power?

I sometimes think I invest too much anxiety into my work, I'm too crazy about my career, something like that. I just really, really like what I do, most of the time. I'm pretty excited right now, because I've added the local electric utility to my beat.

Public government agencies generate, control and distribute much of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest. In the three and a half years before I came to this paper, I covered two small public utilities. Now I'll be covering a slightly larger one. Pretty neat.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

getting older by the hour

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology being what it was, there is, of course, a web site. I kind of want to go. I kind of really want to go. But not enough to spend $500 to get there, which I think is what the travel and tickets would add up to.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:16 PM | Comments (2)

September 09, 2006

Jazz and Rian

Thursday night Ben & I checked out another jazz jam, this one in the North Portland neighborhood of St. Johns. There's a big jazz festival under the St. Johns Bridge every year, and we went to it a few years back. That's pretty much the only time I'd been in that part of town until now. Driving around a bit on the way to the jam, I formed a really favorable impression of the area. I could definitely see living there, if it only had slightly better public transit access to Ben's job.

A lot of the folks at Thursday's jam were the same people we saw at the North Mississipi jazz jam we went to a few weeks ago -- that one's in our neck of the woods.

Ben's been practicing his sax a lot, and I have a hunch he's working himself up to eventually bringing it out to one of these bars and adding to the show.

Now Rian's in town. She's visiting for three consecutive weekends, though this is the only real visit. Next weekend she'll drop her car off here on the way to the Portland airport, and the weekend after that she'll pick it up before heading back south to Corvallis. I wish she lived in Portland.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2006

ordinary life

Slow on the old website about Courtney's life these days. Not really much exciting to report. I went shopping Saturday, signed up for an ebay account Sunday, won an auction Monday. Ben played the saxophone every day this weekend. Mister and Mouse catted around the house. I cooked. Ben and I cleaned. We all sat down together on the big red couch -- two cats and two people -- and watched some Muppet DVDs. And then it was Tuesday and time to go back to work.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:24 PM | Comments (1)