I’m officially moving
It looks like the career switch is now official. I was up in Portland, Oregon last week finding an apartment and a job, and thanks to the power of Craigslist, I got me both. The job is a web job that’s big and corporate, but not super interesting coding. The upside of the job, though, is that at 5:00 it’s done, and the job stays at work. It doesn’t come home. That will leave me with plenty of time to do some freelancing on the side, to continue playing with Ruby, and do all of the more fun aspects of web design.
The apartment I got is pretty sweet, too. It’s a 1940s vintage unit with great hardwood floors and a small but highly usable kitchen. Its only downside is that the stove is electric and not gas. Sigh. I’ll just have to make it work, but I’ll miss the easy chile roasting capacity of the gas stoves.
I was super excited when I was up there because I locked in the apartment and the job within 48 hours of landing. I was kind of surprised at the job offer that came the day after the interview, but I was really surprised about finding the apartment. I’m told by my PDX friends that I’m backwards; I should be shocked at the job offer given the tech job market in Portland these days, but that finding an apartment is really easy. I guess that living in Santa Barbara for so long really skewed my understanding of what a normal housing market is like. I’d sort of forgotten that landlords aren’t always despots and that there are places in this country where apartments stay on the market for more than 48 hours before being rented.
Cheers to Portland!
Castilleja hispida (Scrophulariaceae); Harsh paintbrush
