jimbo.info

Four moves ago in DC, I hired the help of a Scottish-owned and operated moving company for some help. It’s a luxury for one with a bad back. During the move one of the Scottish guys looked at a piece of furniture I had planned to move and stated abruptly in a thick brogue, “Yuir furniture is crap! Are ye shore yew wont me to move this?!” Admittedly, it was crap, but move the goddamn furniture cuz I hired you to do so. On that particular piece of rotten particle board I relented. But still – STFU and move my crap!

Many years later as I pack again for another move, I realize the Scotsman was right. Most of my shit is crap. You realize this when you live with someone else for nine months and don’t really need most of it. Granted I’m living in a furnished situation, but most of it is still crap. Three large boxes are kitchen stuff that will come in handy once I settle, but most of my furniture is indeed crap. I guess I was counting on the likelihood that I would meet a guy with better crap. It’s 90% probable that a guy I move in with will have better crap than me. The hitch is I haven’t met a guy I want to move in with yet. So I settle with my crap and move my crap from place to place and will spend money to store my crap too.

Still haven’t heard back from the design firm in Hood River after my second interview last week, so I’m planning on moving in with two friends outside of Portland by the end of this week. Most of their furnishings are not crap, so I will bring very little of my crap into their home. All I really need for the short term is my clothes, outdoor equipment, computer, bike and Dungeons and Dragons books.

Picture of me was taken last week while I was showing a friend the neighborhoods of Portland. I look skinny, but have been in excellent health during my time in Portland. This is fortunate since I haven’t had health insurance. The bike rides to and from my volunteer gig have kept me trim and I’ve had plenty of time to work out at the gym as well. I’m at a weight I haven’t been in a long time. I hope wherever I land I’ll be able to continue to bike to work. It’s a lot nicer than driving or taking a bus and is good for my mood.

I’m home in Wisconsin for a visit and came across this abomination:

The words “Cajun” and “cheese curds” should NEVER go together! It’s wrong! It’s Against God! It’s Against Scripture!

And there are…things watching me wherever I go. I can feel their eyes following me:

I drove from Minneapolis to my hometown in that snowstorm. It was quite harrowing for quite a long part of the trip, but eventually the snowstorm thinned out. But it snowed for almost 24 hours, making it necessary to go over mom’s driveway twice with the snowblower. And today I vacuumed up the basement. Mostly because there’s nothing else to do around here in the winter, which reminds me why I try to visit Wisconsin in the summer.

Heeey! It’s been a while. Apparently some people are complaining that I haven’t posted in a while. I was surprised to discover that the holidays are still busy even when you don’t have a job! Still haven’t heard from that job I interviewed at before the holidays. I’m hoping it’s just state government and post-holiday lag. Until then, still on the job hunt around here.

For my 42nd birthday we went to the coast of Oregon where a rare parliament of snowy owls had gathered for the winter. Snowy owls prefer open space and were very easy to spot and photograph:

Apparently it was a good (i.e. warm) year up in the tundras of Canada and life was good for the snowy owls, so more owls mean more space for winter competition, driving more owls further south.

Later that week we went to see two contestants from the upcoming Season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race perform at a local club:

Jinkx Monsoon (right) sings her own songs – lip synching queens beware! Alaska Thunderfukk (left) was good too, and I love her name.

I went to Seattle to celebrate the New Year. I caught up with a number of friends, many of whom had also just moved to the Pacific Northwest. They’ve had better luck with jobs, but then again Seattle is a bigger city with more opportunity. Anyway, the weather was clear and I even got a tan (on my face). Here’s a lovely picture of the Seattle skyline. I think that’s Mt. Rainer?

We watched the fireworks go off from the Space Needle, which was cool. It’s too bad they can’t as easily shoot fireworks off the Washington Monument, as more people could see the fireworks from afar.

I also found the place where BrettCajun gets his hair done:

In other Northwest news, someone is changing Portland stop signs to “Poop.” I swear it isn’t me!

Hmm…so the world didn’t end today despite what the Mayans said and gays getting married all over the place. Anyway, moving on…

I signed up for a gym near where I’m living. I know lifting helps burn off stress and lift my spirits in the dark grey gloom of Portland’s winter. It’s not very crowded and has enough machines and stuff to keep me busy too.

Good news: I just got an email for an interview. The bad news is the job is in Salem, about an hour drive south of Portland. Obviously it’s too early to count my chickens but my hope was to live in Portland. But it’s an interesting job doing crisis communications for the whole state of Oregon during emergencies. However, it’s only part-time, which confuses me. Either the state doesn’t have enough money to fund a full-time job, or they think the job doesn’t take that much time, which I question. But I’ll ask about those aspects in the interview, and my interview suit is all dry cleaned and ready to go. Time for a haircut soon.

Last month me and the grrrls went for a hike in the Tillamook State Forest, and we stopped by the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I’m no stranger to the smell of manure, but the whole town reeked of it. They must have just spread some on a field or stirred it up that day as it was almost overwhelming. That’s why I’m grimacing in this photo, but I don’t know why Mary was smiling so much:

On Sunday we went out with the Portland Pink Pistols for some shooting out on a safe range in the Tillamook State Forest. To be honest I had just as much fun setting up the clay targets on the range as I did shooting them. It was like hiding Easter eggs, but putting them out in the open instead:

While I had considered getting a gun after my home invasion two years ago, I didn’t know of any shooting ranges where I could practice in DC. Plus guns are expensive and you need to maintain them and practice, so I decided against it. I still don’t really want a gun and would rather stab or tackle a home intruder than shoot one, but it was fun to get out and test my accuracy:

I was most accurate with rifles, but not so good with pistols. Apparently that is not unusual as rifles are easier to aim. I used a H&R 622 in .22 caliber (above left), a Taurus 851 in .38 special with wood grips, a 1970’s Yugoslavian SKS in 7.62×29 (that one had some kick) and a Ruger 10/22 in .22 caliber. I did not get the chance to use the good old fashioned 12-guage Mossburg pump shotgun or the Glock G17 in 9mm as my shoulder was starting to ache and I had enjoyed what I did get to shoot.

This Robyn song was going through my head the whole time, where she compares herself to a .22 caliber Ruger:

Sorry for the writing absence lately, I’ve been busy on the job hunt. When you write about yourself constantly on job applications, resumes and insincere cover letters it’s hard to build up the energy to write some more.

There are jobs here in Portland opening on a weekly basis that I’m qualified for, but it’s a very competitive market. My primary target job would be to continue work similar to what I did at the U.S. Department of Agriculture doing public affairs. I like workin’ for the government and I have a good chunk of years vested in retirement savings with them as well. And I’m good at it too. But those jobs are competitive here due to a large number of returned veterans and federal employees displaced from layoffs elsewhere. I’ve sent out a number of applications to U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Soil & Water Conservation Service and other similar agencies. I like doing my public affairs work for organizations that have something to do with my biology/wildlife/natural resources background.

I had an interview a few weeks ago with Portland’s major medical university but did not get the job despite having a lot of people put in good words for me. I think they had someone else in mind to start with as I got the feeling during the interview that I wasn’t The One. I’m pretty good at interviews and feeling out interest. But I’m not too heartbroken about it as it was not entirely in my realm of interest anyway. I’ve applied to a different job at the same institution that I’m more interested in.

What made it easy for me to find jobs in DC was that there are always a lot of jobs there being the HQ for many federal organizations. That and I had 14+ years of contacts built up from knowing so many people there from either the rugby team or other organizations I did things with. Here I’m out of my major network but have been working on that. I know some people cringe at the concept of “networking” but it’s one of my strong points and I’m not hesitant to do it. I’ll talk to anyone about what I want to do and where I want to work, so I have that going for me.

From an emotional standpoint I should chill out though – I’ve only been in Portland for two months and I have money saved up to survive on. I’m living with friends and not paying rent so there’s no looming need to start work immediately somewhere. So I’m not desperate and have been choosy about what jobs I want to apply to. I only apply to jobs I know I’m qualified for and interested in, rather than blanket the area with impersonal broadcast applications and resumes.

But it’s hard to explain that to my inner Midwest Scandinavian troll who gnaws at my psyche on a daily basis telling me I must work to have value. I’m trying to be aware of that inner troll so I can also enjoy this down time going hiking, exploring Portland and meeting people.

During some of this down time I went to one of those paint-your-own ceramic shops to make this fabulous sunshine coffee mug:

I am an artist. This is my work.

Dearly Beloved:

We are gathered here today to remember the Durban Bud blog, which had been dying a slow, painful death for some time. The blog is the latest casualty in a string of departures due to the horrible plague on mankind known as The Facebooks.

Durban Bud is survived by two hateful siblings jimbo.info and BrettCajun, who will likely continue bickering on their respective blogs until the Internet shuts down due to a massive electromagnetic storm in the distant future. Other survivors include his partner and cat, who will undoubtedly receive even more dotage in years to come.

The author sure was thorough in the shutdown though – I couldn’t even find a masthead to screenshot. I could only find this seasonal pic of the departed blog author and Charlene enjoying a night on the town.

In Chuck’s name we pray,
Amen

After Missoula, Montana I had to get over the Rockies. It wasn’t so bad but by the time I got to Idaho I was feeling waves of nausea and exhaustion. I figured out it was probably the altitude I had gone through – and perhaps the toll of driving for so long. At the Kwik Stop in Kingston, Idaho I observed a woman lighting up her cigarette at the gas pump. This disturbed me since my truck and all my belongings was adjacent to her pump. Idaho was methy like that, second only in skeeziness to Indiana.

The stretch from Spokane, Washington to the Oregon border at the Columbia gorge was the worst. A whole lot of nothing but high desert and dust devils. And there wasn’t anywhere to pee either. It’s no wonder the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility is located there in the middle of nothing.

I made it as far as Arlington, Oregon that day, which was kind of ironic after driving through Arlington, Virginia on my way out of DC. The next morning I stopped at my brother’s place on the Columbia Gorge in Mosier, Oregon. He lives right by the river and windsurfs on the Columbia as much as he can. This view is just a short walk from his home:

I wanted to get my truck into Portland before rush hour, so my visit was brief and I headed further west down the Gorge. I made a stop at beautiful Multnomah Falls and took a picture:

I’ve got some friends from DC who moved to Portland. I’m currently crashing with this blog’s administrator and her partner. She used to play in my D&D group in DC and we’ll be starting up a new gaming group once I get my shit together.

I was eager to unload my truck and start to have access to my stuff. This was the view of the inside of my truck:

I will be moving into another home soon, but the place still needs some work as my landlords are still working on it. But I did have the great convenience of unloading my stuff in that home’s attic. The landlords of this new place also lived in DC, one of them was also in my DC gaming group. This is one of the landlords, crazed on floor varnish fumes after treating the floor:

The kitchen and bathroom in the place still need to be made liveable, so I am still crashing with the lesbians. This is OK as I’m not working yet and still learning my way around Portland. But am having a great time!

I had camped in bear country in Alaska, but Yellowstone was a different matter. The bears in Yellowstone are more accustomed to people and had learned to associate humans with food. So camping outdoors in soft-sided tents (as opposed to campers and such) was forbidden. That was OK with me since it was also raining, and the long drives tended to make me want a decent bed and a shower at the end of the day. So when I arrived at Yellowstone I ended up staying in some cabins. This was my view in the morning when I woke up:

It was lovely, and the air was fresh and clear. The place was called Pahaska Tepee Resort.

As I drove into the park I could see evidence of the Yellowstone fires of 1988. Many large trunks still stood with evidence of a wildfire. I made it to Old Faithful with minutes to spare:

As I left the geyser, there was a traffic jam just outside the parking lot:

I didn’t have time to see all the geologic features of the park, and had just been to Iceland in June, so I only stopped at one feature, Artists Paintpots and hot springs:

I liked the milky mud pots that made fart noises, and smelled like them too!

On that leg of the trip I also saw a herd of elk, but didn’t see any bears. I was also getting tired of driving behind very slow tourists, mostly retirees who drove 10 miles below the speed limit and slowed even further at every attraction. I had to get out of there, eventually leaving the north exit to Montana. There was a cool feature just outside the park, Devil’s Slide:

After Yellowstone my fun stops would come to an end. I was starting to get tired of travelling and wanted to get done with it, so planned on gunning it to Missoula, Montana. There I stayed at an expensive Holiday Inn adjacent to some all-night construction. I didn’t get much sleep, but took my time in the morning and had some coffee at a nearby cafe.

After clearing the Black Hills and Sturgis area I continued to head west through north central Wyoming. Out of the hills and into the mountains proper, and the scenery started getting spectacular:

I wondered how my truck would do as we got higher in altitude but it did fine, unlike my tiny Ford Festiva did back in the ’90s, where it chugged and gasped when we crossed the mountains back then. I stopped to pee at the roadside and took another scenery shot:

By that point I had seen my first coyote, many pronghorn antelope, two bighorn sheep in the Badlands, and two mountain goats outside of Rushmore. Mountain goats are very large! Crossing through the Bighorn National Forest, I stopped at Medicine Wheel National Historic Site, a sacred stone circle made by native peoples. Here I saw a pika, a sort of mountain rabbit:

The pika is the inspiration for the Pokemon character Pikachu, by the way. But this one wasn’t shooting lightning. There were a pair of marmots by the parking lot as well:

Marmots are a kind of mountain groundhog or woodchuck who live amongst the rocks.

I’d been through quite a few national forests by this time and the lack of facilities, signage or even staff was notable. I guess they’ve had to cut back on public services. I’ve heard the same thing about national forests west of the Rockies as well. This isn’t good – national forests are multiple-use sites that get heavy usage, and without staffing or funding they’ll just go to pot. Another casualty of the economic downturn. I hope things get better soon.

Wyoming was a long drive, but by evening I was approaching Yellowstone.