Day 1 in Portland

Recruitment season has begun for me! I started with an appointment with an advisor at Portland State University this morning. PSU is located right in the heart of Portland - very accessible because the Portland Streetcar actually runs right through campus. This was very convenient for me as I did not pick up my rental car until this afternoon so I had a way to get around after my appointment was over. The meeting went really well - a great way to start of recruitment this year. Better to start off on a high note.

I've been trying to work on decorating my office at work, so I decided that I would pick up a postcard from each university I visit this fall and purchase a shadow box or something like that so I can display them in my office. I also pick up pins whenever I visit universities and I plan to display them in a glass container on my desk. That project is a little more pricey than the first :) I picked up my postcard at PSU this morning, but accidentally bent it so I'll have to pick up another.

After my appointment I took the streetcar, then the MAX lightrail, then the bus to where Alice works at Tiger Tiger on Alberta Street. I was proud that I took a look at a map of the public transportation available in Portland and figured out how to get to Tiger Tiger on my own. I ran down the street to pick up some lunch for Alice, myself, and one of her co-workers from a local bakery. I had a fantastic salad with fresh greens, apples, candied walnuts, blue cheese, and a creamy viniagrette. Fantastic! Alice was not working when I was there, but was having one of her co-workers color her hair. When she was done, she took me to pick up my rental car and I headed to the University of Portland, a Holy Cross school with a gorgeous campus. I took a couple of pictures but I don't have a way to get them off my camera right now so I will have to share later.

My visit at the University of Portland went really well. I saw a couple of very interested students and was able to share some information with some advisors. I love visiting college campuses. I think that is one of the way I know that I have choosen the correct career. I love to see the layout of campuses and see the environement where students are learning - I think it tells you so much about the school and the students who choose to attend school there. The University of Portland is situated just off of a cute little neighborhood in Portland fairly close to downtown, but campus does not feel like you are in a city. The soccer teams were practicing as I was walking through campus - there women's soccer team has won several D-1 National Championships, and the campus has tons of green space. I wasn't able to pick up a postcard here because the did not sell any, but I did take some photos. My cousin, Sam, is currently work at UP as an athletic trainer for the basketball team.

The University of Portland is definitely one of my favorite campuses so far. The most beautiful campus I have seen is Santa Clara University in California, but the University of Portland came in pretty close. I'll share photos of Santa Clara when I visit there next month.

After my visit at UP, I headed back to Nick and Alice's and met up with Alice for some shopping. She is in need of new shoes for her cousin Katie's wedding and has not been able to find any so we headed downtown to visit Macy's and a couple of other places. We did not have much luck, but did run into a completely crazy homeless guy on our way home who was standing in the middle of the street yelling at pretty much everyone. Alice and I had actually seen him earlier today when she dropped me off at PSU. He either walked or jumped on the streetcar at some point during the day because he was several miles from where we had first seen him. There are many homeless people in Portland - mostly because of the mild climate, and most of them mind their own business, sometimes taking money or food from people who walk or drive by. But there are some who are very loud and obviously disturbed. Alice and I have talked about this everytime that I am here because it is hard to see all of the homeless and not want to help each and every one of them. It is however, difficult to know how to react to the ones who are screaming at anyone and everyone in the middle of the street - especially when they are dropping the F-bomb and any number of other vile phrases incessently. I struggle internally with knowing what to do or how to react. I feel I fail miserably at being a compassionate human because it is just "easier" to walk on by.

Our trip was unsuccessful (ie, no shoes for the wedding) and after a quick trip to Whole Foods for some miso for Alice (she has a cold and wanted some miso soup), some grilled veggies for Nick, and some brown rice for me to add with the leftover Thai. Alice did find a pair of shoes at Whole Foods so the trip was not completely unsuccessful. The leftover Thai might have been better than it was the first night :)

Wonderful

The wonderful smell of homemade banana bread in the oven is filling my house right now. Matt and I had some bananas that had moved beyond the edible point so I whipped up some banana bread for him while he was at the softball coach's meeting tonight. I'm not a huge fan of banana bread, but the smell filling my house right now is pretty incredible. I'm excited to see how the recipe turns out because it is a new one and I was intrigued because it includes plain yogurt. I guess we will know soon how it turns out.

I stayed home from work today. I woke up at about 4am this morning and felt like I was going to be sick. I never actually got sick, but I still wasn't feeling 100% when my alarm went off at 6am. Stephanie is 38 weeks pregnant and we have an agreement in our office that we will not come to work if we are sick, so I called in. The last thing I want to do is give Stephanie the stomach flu or something like that. The good news is I don't think I have the stomach flu, but I still don't know why my stomach was so upset in the middle of the night.

Matt and I spent Friday night watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We decided to enjoy some Chinese food to keep with the theme of the evening and then spent the evening ohhing and ahhing over the opening ceremonies. I'm a huge sucker for the Olympic Games and I usually enjoy the opening ceremonies even though some people find them boring. Friday night's ceremonies did not disappoint. The Chinese put on a wonderful show for the world and it was fantastic to see all of the athletes together for the Olympics again.

As a Olympic junkie I've been pretty attached to the television for the last couple of days. However, a DVR is an Olympic junkie's best friend - as long as you can keep up with watching. The US women's basketball team played during my workout on Saturday morning (beating China handedly) and I tried to stay caught up until I picked up my mom for some shopping on Saturday afternoon. I was in desperate need of a new work shoes - both winter and summer and I managed to find a pair of each at Yonkers on Saturday and only spent $55! I found several items at Pottery Barn I could have purchased on the spot, but held off for the time being.

After shopping I came home, watched a little more of the Olympics and then Matt and I headed to Becky and Dan's for their annual fiesta. It was a little tamer this year that it has in the past and we had a great time chatting with them, Becky's mom and playing with Josie - their chihuhua who was absolutely thrilled with all the people at her house (insert sarcasm here). Poor Josie. Interestingly enough - it was the tamest fiesta I have been to, but apparently the cops paid them a visit after we left. Isn't that how it always goes?

Yesterday, my family attended Flip's memorial service. Flip's wife Kathleen, his daughter Rachael, and sister Phyllis all traveled up from Kentucky for the service and it was nice to see them. Ron's brother Richard also attended and while I've heard many stories about him, I had never met him before. We got the chance to laugh and share stories about Ron and his life. And, as would be fitting, we ended the evening at Pizza King in CB, which was Ron's absolutely favorite. I don't think he ever returned to the area without visiting Pizza King.

Matt and I are currently wtching the US Mens' Gymnastics Team in the team competition. Holy Cow! They totally rocked it on the high bar! I love when the underdog succeeds!

Snow?...In June?...In Nebraska?.... (Warning - this is a long one)

It sure looks like snow, doesn't it? These photos were taken the evening of Friday, June 27th at about 7pm. Two hours earlier a sudden, violent, and crazy storm blew (quite literally!) through the Omaha metro area. Matt and I were not at home as we had planned to spend the evening at the Summer Arts Festival in downtown and the storm literally followed him as he drove across Omaha toward Creighton. We waited out the storm in my office and then decided to head home. We knew our house had sustained some damage before we arrived home because Matt called out neighbor, Lee, and Lee told him that our garage door was damaged along with everyone else's on our block. We managed to get home fairly quickly on the interstate, which was a surprise because we heard reports of power outages and traffic jams caused by power outages across the city. We decided to drive to my parent's house first because neither of them were home and their is very unprotected. You can see what greeted us in the picture below:

Those are hosta plants that prior to Friday night were huge, green, leafy and gorgeous. Now it looks like someone ran them through a shredder. Behind the hosta plants was this sight:

This is my parent's air conditioner - which is looks like someone took a baseball bat to it. You can see all of the dented areas.

We made our way around my parents house and except for some MAJORLY damaged plants, bushes and trees, it appeared that their house was in pretty good condition. So, we headed to our house. I'm including pictures below of some of the many sites that we found.

You can see our majorly mangled garage door. It looks like someone took both sides of it and twisted it around. My car was, at the time, stuck inside the garage and there was absolutely no way that we lift it up. The hail you see in the last picture is what was piled inside of the left side of our garage. The wind was blowing so hard that it blew rain and hail all the way to the back wall of the garage after it blew the bottom of the door inward. It also blew the cover of the opening to our attic in the garage upward and dropped the cover back down sideways.

You can also see that the storm blew one of our downspouts off and literally wrung the remainder of the downspout like a dishrag.

We found the downspout in our backyard.

The storm completely shredded the screen off of our bedroom window.

And if you look closely in this picture, you can see the leaves from our gorgeous front yard tree absolutely plastered to the side of our house :(

Matt had to use the hose to get them off.

Once we had assessed the damage outside and made a list of items to discuss with the insurance company, I headed upstairs to change my clothes so we could start some clean up and we were also going to wander around the neighborhood to see how everyone else faired.

Unfortunately, I found this in our bedroom.

Somehow, water got through our bedroom window, ran down the wall, and across the floor. We don't own a wet/dry vacuum so I headed to my parent's house to borrow theirs. I spent the next hour or so vacuuming water out of the carpet and have spent the last four days running fans in our bedroom so we don't get mold.

Matt and I certainly did not count on having to use the insurance that we arranged for last October so soon, but we certainly appreciate the necessity of it now. There was so much damage in the Omaha metro that most of the insurance companies sent catastrophy teams to the area and have been able to respond quickly. Our adjustor visited today and actually dropped a check by our house tonight. We will definitely be arranging for a new front door, a new bedroom window (there are cracks around the seal of the window) and half of our roof (the part that faces west) needs to be reshingled.

We drove around a little on Friday night and traveled to 132nd and Maple, which was completely without power because the power lines were hanging on top of buildings and trees.

The picture above is of a gas station that was hit by wind so violent that it literally shredded the metal off of the sign.

We definitely consider ourselves lucky in the grand scheme of things. Some homes in Omaha are still without power four days after the storm and some estimates indicate it could be Saturday before power is fully restored. Several of our neighbors have damage far worse than ours - windows completely broken by wind and hail, fences literally ripped from the ground or twisted a million times, outside playsets that are completely toppled, and a deck hanging from the back of a house. Our neighbor two doors down had part of his roof completely ripped off and unfortunately his ceiling fell in on Sunday sometime. And one of our neighbors about a block away just finished building a new deck on their house, only to have it hit by a huge section of the fence, and to have most of the vertical supports disappear.

And just so everyone knows, the hail was still in our yard Saturday morning.

After Matt and I were married at the end of December and he moved into our apartment in Lincoln we started a tradition that I really love. Every Friday night we go out to dinner together. I think it gives us a chance every week to just spend time together and decompress after the busy week. Neither of us is worried about what we have to get done at work the next day, neither of us is thinking about getting to sleep early because of a need to get up early the next morning - we can just sit and talk about our week and really spend some quality time together. I spend the entire week looking forward to it and Matt told me last night that he does as well. While it does cost us money to go out every week I know that those quality hours we spend together are worth the little bit of money that we spend because if we stayed home we would not be spending the time together in the same way. We would probably each be preoccupied witho our own activities at home and we wouldn't have the chance to truly connect the way we do by leaving our apartment, choosing a restaurant together and enjoying a few hours of each other's company. We usually take turns choosing restaurants, which makes it fun.

Last night, however, we made a poor choice. We went down to Southpointe because I wanted to get some cards at Hallmark for various birthdays, anniversaries, wedding showers, and other events that are coming up in the next couple of weeks and the Hallmark at Southpointe is the best card store I have been to in Lincoln. It was also a b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l evening and we were able to walk around a little bit as Southpointe is an outdoor mall. As we were walking back to the car deciding where we wanted to eat Matt spotted a restaurant called Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill. Matt suggested we try it and I'm willing to try just about anything so we went. I should have known when we walked in the door and I noticed it was one of those places that lets you eat peanuts at your table and dump the shells on the floor that it probably wasn't going to be a place I would like to eat - but we proceeded in and ordered. Long story short - we both ended up being disappointed with our food - I ordered overpriced, sub-par chicken fajitas. I love fajitas because I love spicy food and I'm all about assembling it myself so that I can kick up the spice. I also the love the tortillas that they serve with fajitas because they come in the little warmers that keep them soft and warm. However, mine were horribly over cooked and half of them were crunchy by the time I went to use them and they totally skimped on the good stuff - the "extras" - cheese, salsa, and sour cream - the stuff I look forward to. I realize that instead of complaining on my blog I should have just complained while I was there, but the truth was that Matt's meal wasn't great either, the atmosphere left MUCH to be desired and I really just wanted to eat and get out.

To make up for our sub-par dinner experience we decided to go to Ivanna Cone for some ice cream, but it turned out it was prom night or formal night and the place was packed. So we moved on to Plan B - Cold Stone Creamery. Matt swears that he has been to a Cold Stone before, but I don't think that he has - I know he has been to a Marble Slab Creamery which in my honest opinion is not nearly as good and decedent as Cold Stone. Matt loves Cinnamon Apple Anything - Pie, Crisp, the list goes on and on - therefore he thoroughly enjoyed the Apple Pie a la Cold Stone made with Cinnamon Ice Cream, Crumbled Graham Crackers, and Apple Pie Filling. I enjoyed a dish of the Mud Pie Mojo - coffee ice cream with - get ready for this - Oreo cookies, fudge, peanut butter, almonds, and whipped cream. It was simply wonderful. So rich and wonderful that we both ate half last night and saved the other half for today. It is an expensive treat, but we thorougly enjoyed splurging a little bit last night - it made our meal seem like not quite such a bad choice :)

Matt and I filed our taxes yesterday - we have only slightly procrastinated on that one! We actually went through the whole process twice because Matt used an online program to do the entering and the first program we used indicated we owed the state of Nebraska about $600! YIKES!! It also said that we would get money back from the federal government - but not enough to cover what we owe. So, we decided to start over using TurboTax and after we got everything entered we ended up getting money back from the federal governement and the state of Nebraska and only owe Missouri a little bit.

Moral of the story - use TurboTax if you plan to do your taxes yourself :)

All of the money is going into savings which is exciting - in my single life I was rarely able to be able to afford to put money into savings. Just my monthly expenses kept me living almost month-to-month. But now that Matt and I are married and sharing many of those expenses we have been able to really save some money and getting some extra perks like a tax return (yes, I realize it would be better if we didn't pay our the money in the first place, but a refund is better than owing) really help in that whole process. We would like to be able to purchase a house sometime in the near future and eventually we will need to replace one or both of our vehicles - Matt's first, likely. We have both discovered that it is easier to save money when you have money saved. It is very important to me to live with financial security. I don't buy into the idea of saving so much money that you aren't able to do the things that you want to do now, but I do want to feel secure in knowing that if something happened to either Matt or I - we would be okay financially. We aren't quite there yet, but we are definitely on our way :)

All of this talk of taxes and finances makes me feel like a grown-up - yikes!