Escape to the Beach!

Buddy and I decided it was time to get out of Portland, so into my truck we jumped and up Highway 30 we went! The plan was to head south from Astoria and stop at every beach sign we saw until the sun set.

In Astoria we hit traffic heading south, getting out to stretch our legs and take a bathroom break and check out the sea lions in hopes that the traffic jam would break up...it didn't, so we changed plans and headed north!

"Long Beach!" I said. "Woof!" said Buddy. I figured pretty much that meant lets go! And so we did. We hit Long Beach and drove on the sand till we couldn't see anyone and set up "camp." First we played fetch, then went for a wade in the waves.

I sat and read "Emma" for a bit then broke out the bread and cheese (and cheese burger dog bites of course.)

As the sun went down we watched a dad and his kiddos fly a kite to our left and an old couple set up a campfire to my right.

The moon rose behind us the sun set before us and we went for a run down the beach in the dark. It was absolutely fantabulous and exactly what both of us were looking for!
Then we tried to drive home...that was a mess. I decided to follow my Garmin home and anyone who drives in the dark following a Garmin deserves to get taken for a ride! The normal two hour drive up 30 or 26 turned into a 3 hour back road tour of the turny topsy turvey logging roads complete with gravel and potholes with glimpses of Orion and a sliver of the moon to guide our way.

Finally arriving home we both fell into bed exhausted and perfectly happy with our day.

My First Royalties Check!!!

Okay, how exciting is that! I think I'm going to go cash it now that I've played around with it for a while...hehehe...most fun $10.79 I ever made...oh simple pleasures!

Changing Seasons

Life has many seasons, some of them earth bound others in personal growth, even others socially, economically, romantically, etc. When too many seasons change at once, one tends to look back on their life either in awe or curiosity wondering what caused so many changes all at once. I know there is no answer to this as I look at several new seasons. Weather wise, spring came early this year. First week of February I saw my first flowering tree! This was shocking to me. I know nature follows its own internal clock and tells us whats coming next but, I thought someone should tell this little tree that its a bit to early to be showing off it's beautiful buds. I was right, we had some beautiful weather broken up by rain storms, wind storms, even snow this week, yes this very first week of March! I keep turning the heat off and back on again. Spring is such a tease!

Economically, the stress of our nations situation is starting to show signs of serious strain on my field. Jobs are far and few between and the competition is fierce. Its becoming more than just tightening the belts to wait it out. It becomes a way of life as the dry season is looking more like the seven year drought. There are lots of conversations around this subject and it is interesting to hear what different people have to say about it and how they are dealing with it. Some are traveling, which sounds like the wrong way to go when money is scarce, but if one has no bills and a little bit of cash saved up, a little goes a lot farther in some countries around the world compared to here. Others are scraping by on one income rather than two, lucky dogs. Some are parking cars and using bikes and transit faithfully, even others have lost everything and are couch surfing among friends and family. For me, I got a roommate. Hopefully this will be enough help to stave off any more moves in my near future.

Socially, I have found a few girlfriends who's schedules actually match mine. We have been enjoying "Happy hour Wednesdays" and "Soaking at the Kennedy School Saline pool" on Thursdays. Once a month we have been going dancing at Holocene or taking adventurous outings such as OMSI after Dark and trips to Seattle. This season has filled me with hope that a season of new friendship has arrived, a new wave of female companionship has started to partially fill the void left by friends and sisters far away as well as a significant other now gone from my life. That hole has also opened up a new season called "dating." The freedom to accept the offer of a dance, or drink, or phone number. This season is full of excitement, disappointment, anticipation, surprises, ups and downs. Gone is the days of unspoken understandings or givens, or knowns. Everything is new, history is a mystery, the future unknown. Sometimes I think, I'm too old for this. Other times it makes me feel young. Mostly it makes me feel lost. Humans are creatures of habit, change is not something they do well, no matter how much they profess being efficient at it. I, for for one do not claim this. I understand that I am at fault when I do not accept change with grace. My patience is nil when it comes to a new learning curve which doesn't make meeting people very easy at all. So starts the calamity of dates, one after another. I give them all nicknames since a lot of them have duplicate names and the names are not important really until one of them fits with mine. This may be a mistake but it is how I've decided to keep things interesting and light.

Another season, comes with me personally. (as if the last season wasn't personal enough!) It has to do with becoming a published author. To Google my name now comes up with all kinds of interesting stuff! Honestly, I used to Google my name to see what my alter ego was up to. I have been a dancer, photographer, singer, lived in Britain, New York and Japan. Now, the real me can be found on Amazon.com and an Artists website, a blog and Facebook...I used to be so obscure! People are already selling used copies of my book on Ebay and it only came out two months ago today!!! I have bumbled through 3 book signings and as much as I don't care for selling myself (mostly cause its all so unexpected and new) I am learning the ropes slowly...probably more slowly than my marketer would like but I'm still working on it. The fun part of it all is sharing my amazing Granddad with people all over the world, and yes my book has been purchased all the way over in England! And bragging on my Aunt's amazing water colors. Another fun part is hearing peoples' stories about their own grandfathers and all the sweet memories that are resurfaced by the book. The not so fun part is remembering how to spell my name when signing copies and counting correct change after hearing such touching stories or watching someone wipe their eyes after reading through it. Through all these changing seasons, three things remain the same: I am still Jen, I still love my job and I am still a crazy Alaskan girl looking for the next Adventure.

Ciao Bella!

Spring Cleaning in February

I will not attempt to reiterate the last two weeks where everything that could go wrong did. I am in a good place now and would like to not relive or dwell on the hell I passed through...somewhere in the world, someone had it worse I'm sure of it. Instead, spring arrived early and with it came a visit from my parents. God's perfect timing. Every morning dad got up and took Buddy for a walk exploring the area, and mom put more and more clothes on. Saturday we went on my trek for the best waffles ever and mostly just enjoyed the sun. I had lots of plans and trashed them all because it was so nice and sunny we spent three days pulling ivy and black berry bushes, burning brush, rearranging flower beds and cleaning up the yard. We hung my lights and now I have a little bit of Italy in my back yard. I really wish it was just as warm! Dad re-vamped my bbq, mom showed me where plants were coming up. There was a pile of brush from last spring and we added just as much to the pile. Being a city I googled the rules for burning in city limits...you can't. But you can have a 2'x3' fire in a fire bowl with a fire extinquisher near by, Alaskan-Speak for go ahead!...so mom and dad got me one for my birthday and dad started chopping up the pile into little pieces and burned almost the entire thing!!! Now I have a beautiful yard to play and entertain in. Garretts and Verheydens and Nana came over Sunday to break it in. We had a fire pit, took walks, bbqed lunch, made home made ice cream, played Apples to Apples and had a grand ol time. Brenna made Uncle Paul an amazing brownie cake decorated with pansies for his birthday. I ignored my phone for 4 days and got a lot of rest and physically worked my body to permanent state of sorness! I'm ready, come what may...

Seattle or Bust

Technology is an amazing thing...when it's working, when you don't forget it somewhere. Sitting at my computer, IMing back and forth with Saamanta, we were agonizing over the fact that 3 o'clock wasn't coming as fast as we liked. We had big plans to drive to Seattle and 'paint the town' as they say, or used to anyway. Margaret's company likes to send her places and this week happened to be within driving distance of yours truly! Saamanta wanted to visit her sister and friends in the area so we found ourselves squirming in our seats biting the bit wanting to hit the road before Friday rush hour clogs the road from Mexico to Canada. Throwing what I could in a bag, Saamanta waiting on my porch, we finally hit the road. Hitting the carpool lane, we sped past the parking lot through Portland and Vancouver, stories flew by like the country side. I straightened my hair, we stopped for gas and a Mocha Perk, with visions of pizza and beer to come...then we hit Tacoma. SCREECH!!! putt putt putt, 5 mph, we are NEVER going to get there!!! We were both so glad we were stuck in traffic together instead of by ourselves. We found some good tunes on her ipod and enjoyed the unique city scape. First stop, Stellar Pizza with her friends in an old industrial section of town. It was a birthday party for a girl named JoJo. I met a bunch of people and remembered maybe 4 names. Margaret got off work around 7pm and called me for the address, plugged it in her garmen and promptly got lost. She called me to get unlost and said, "the lady is telling me to go straight but there is a fence!" I handed her to a person with an iPhone who knows the area better. LOL!!! After a bit of back and forth, I eventually stood on the side walk, just in case and there she was! We were both very excited. After some REALLY good cheesy garlic bread and salad, Margaret gave us a key to her room and directions and went home to bed. Saamanta's friends were a lot of fun and it made me miss my girlfriends back home. There was a lot of reminiscing and catching up and giggling over old antics. We crawled into Margaret's King size bed around 2am.

Good morning sunny Seattle!!! Saamanta and I woke up LATE! She had a hair appointment so off she went and I struck out to find black gold. It was a chilly beautiful morning, I enjoyed a bit of coffee and Pride and Prejudice before the day got started. Afterwards, Saamanta and I (and her hair dresser) walked down to Pikes Place for lunch and met up with Margaret and her senior Jennifer. We had just ordered some Russian pies when Margaret ran past me down the street with her camera up trying to catch a picture of a mounted policeman...it was hilarious!!! Wait, do I know her? Do I want to know her? After introductions and a farewell to the hairdresser, we went into pikes for the best fish and chips EVER. Saamanta took off to meet up with a friend and the rest of us perused the isles of colorful produce, and artisan crafts. I showed them the layers of shops below and the infamous post alley gum wall. We walked back to the hotel, stopping at Ross, for a "quick" shopping detour. They were raising money for the heart association and all over the store with each transaction announced another dollar raised, please yell 'whoo! hoo!' Jennifer was trying to reserve and orchestrate a dinner at the space needle for all the KMPG Alaskans in the Seattle area that evening. It was hilarious! Eventually we made it back to the hotel for a short nap=get ready for a night out. we ordered a cab and went to the top where the spinning restaurant gave us a 360 degree of the city at night. Margaret and I shared a salad, shrimp cocktail and the king crab. 4 of her co-workers met us there for dinner, one of them being a cute guy from Montana named Collin. After dinner we went to the top of the space needle only to find out that Jennifer was scared of heights and Amy had fallen 300 ft higher than the space needle with a defunct parachute during a stint in the military and was there to tell us all about it...after we were on the ground of course for Jennifer's sake! We wanted to go out for after dinner cocktails but Amy and Mark insisted on walking up to Capitol Hill (unbeknown to us, lacking in bars but full of gay clubs). Margaret and Jennifer caught a taxi home. I remember some snogging and loosing my credit card but lets just skip to Sunday...

Found my card!!!! I had left it at the space needle when paying the bill. We started with crepes from Pikes Place (fantastic!) They are huge, if you can share, DO! Then we walked back to the space needle to recover my card. Found a photo booth and after passing the second one figured it was a sign so we all crammed in and took some photos. We also found a rail car that takes you from the space needle to down town 2 blocks from our hotel for two bucks! Arriving down town I discovered I had left my purse in the photo booth with my camera and phone in it! two bucks to get back and voila! It was still there! With everything in it! two bucks to get back and my feet still love me. Margaret and I spent most of the rest of the day shopping while the others watched the super bowl. We found some cute clothes and hot boots. Margaret totally made out but then come to find out her boots were two different sizes! Saamanta met back up with us and showed us some cool spots like in the Fremont area the troll under the bridge as seen in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, and a park that overlooks Seattle at sunset. We went to pick up my bag and drop Moe off and back to Portland we went.



It almost felt surreal, like we had never even left. We found ourselves back at our computers, IMing each other, chatting about different events of the weekend, wondering when the next adventure would be...