Right about now I imagine you’re probably thinking that Hell has frozen over. Yes, I’m back online (for my journal that is, I’ve had connectivity for a while).

So where the fuck have I been? Well, I moved to Portland, and have been looking for a job. Mostly that’s about it. I know that may not seem like much, but it’s enough. Having moved all of my crap, even after getting rid of an awful lot of it, I’ve decided that I’m done moving.

Never again.

Now obviously I will have to move again, since I live in an apartment, and I’m certainly not staying here forever (the upstairs neighbors make the former “beast next door” seem like a treat). But I am not going to move my things again. It’s all about the movers from here on out. I’m of the mind that if I can’t afford to have movers move my shit, I don’t need to move that badly. I’ll take out a loan if I have to. I’m that tired of packing and unpacking trucks.

I honestly can’t count all the times I moved as a child. Even as a teenager. I think I can estimate childhood moves after the age of four at ten or eleven. That’s just until I turned 18 and moved out. After that I’ve got another twelve. That’s a total of twenty plus times, and those are just the ones I can actually remember. Apparently we were some movin’ fools when I was a child, but since I can’t remember them I don’t think it’s fair to use them in case.

Alice was quite the mover too, so she’s now in the same state of mind that I am on the subject. It’s good to be in agreement about things like that. You know, important stuff. Like: “Hey, can we just set everything on fire and start from scratch?” Or: If it’s out of sight and mind for more than a year, I must not need it.

But back to Portland. It’s nice. The lack of work isn’t nice, but that’s really not too much different from Seattle. Our apartment is in an okay area (though now we’re realizing that we could have done better for rent, but it’s always hard to move to a city blind). Everything we need is close by. Groceries, video store, a bar with Fat Tire on tap (and really spicy burritos), and not too far away, a wonderful collectibles store that makes me feel like I’ve died and gone to childhood heaven.

Drawbacks: The upstairs neighbors. Not only do they seem to have some kind of nervous problem that makes them literally want to pace back and forth for hours on end, but the younger kid who lives there has serious anger management issues. The yelling at the top of his lungs on a regular basis kind.

To make matters worse, they’ve got some kind of generator or fish pump, or something like that in the room that’s right over our bedroom. It fills the room with a low hum. The kind of hum that isn’t just noise, but it makes the air vibrate, without actually being that loud. I don’t know how it works, because I never got that serious about physics, but I’m sure involves lots of mathematics that all boil down to making our sleeping lives hell.

I keep meaning to go up there and ask them about it, but either I forget, or I think to myself during the light of day “It can’t really be as bad as you remember it. You’ll get used to t eventually.” Well, I’m not getting used to it. Alice has taken to wearing earplugs.

I just drink enough that I pass out and it’s not an issue.

Okay, not really. I’m too poor to entertain such indulgences.

Our next door neighbor, however, is much friendly. He’s an retirement age coach for disabled girls. He used to live in the apartment that we now live in, but then moved over one. Before that, he owned a house, but when one of his two girls got to be old enough to move out, he let her live in the house by herself and moved into the apartment with his other daughter. Now, how do I know all of this? Remember that bar I was telling you about earlier, well it’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name.

I went over there to get a beer one sunny Sunday, and John was sitting there (yes, another John – and it gets better… he’s not the only one). I nodded, and figured it couldn’t hurt to take the chair next to him (we are neighbors after all). Well, between the basketball game and pieces of other conversations I managed to get his abridged story from him. Now, he must be some kind of unofficial ringleader there, because every person that entered the bar from that point on came over to him to say hello.

So it went that I met at least 10 new people that day. I’m trying not to remember their names, because I really don’t want to join their little gang, tempting as it may be. I’ve got too many other things to do than be a Sunday drunk at the local joint.

I can certainly understand the magnetism of it though. For a couple hours there I had dreams of myself as Mickey Rourke in Barfly.

It was probably just the beer talking.