Return Visit

Over the fourth of July weekend, I had the opportunity to return to Oregon for a few days to visit family and friends. It is hard to believe I’ve been here for over a month now. In some ways it feels like much shorter, and in others much longer. I have enjoyed my time in New England pretty well so far.

I had an action packed weekend in Oregon, including visiting my parents, calling ECD, seeing my Oregon coworkers and commiserating with them about our crazy line of work, and staying with my brother and sister in law. I was also able to do another insane hike in the Columbia Gorge with several good friends who share my taste for misery.

We must have looked quite funny hobbling from the car when we finally got dinner that evening, but sometimes you need a hike like that to feel alive.

I went to see Cars 2 with some family friends of mine, it was quite different from the first one, but I thought it was pretty good.

Playing volleyball  twice in a week was super fun, as well as wrapping the weekend off with a big 4th of July party at my friend Josh’s place. There is nothing like having all your friends together to enjoy the time!

And before I knew it, it was time to fly back eastward. Now I am in Maine, working on several jobs up here. Two months to go.

Previously, I had compared myself to Riley Poole from the movie National Treasure, because he is always finding ways to make technology work, and getting into secret places. Working out here, often alone, without any friends or coworkers around, I sometimes feel like the agents in the Bourne series of films (except I’m not getting assassination orders or getting in fights), because I get orders on my cell phone to go there and fix this, then go over here and do that. It’s funny at times…

I will see you all again soon, my friends…

Bahston!

This weekend, I traveled down to Boston to see some of the sights. It worked out that some friends I hadn’t seen in a while were going to be in the area, so it was a great time to meet up!

We intended to take a train into the great city, to avoid having to drive its crazy streets, but we managed to miss the train by minutes (hey, this is what makes fun memories later on, right?), so we had to drive in anyway. Thankfully one of my friends lives in MA and has driven into Boston several times, so she was our excellent (if somewhat crazy) driver. We drove to the main station and hopped onto the ‘T’, the city’s subway system. There’s a famous song about it by the Kingston Trio, called Charlie and the MTA:

In honor of the song, the tickets are called Charlie Tickets:

We went to Chinatown to get some lunch, which was good, and then we headed to the North End of Boston, which is also home to ‘little Italy’, as well as the Old North Church, and Paul Revere:

It is really neat to be standing where so much history took place. We didn’t explore a quarter of what was there, due to time constraints, so I’ll just have to go back again. It’s an amazing town.

One of my other friends that came along is of Italian heritage, and she insisted I try a Cannoli, which is a pastry made with a ricotta cheese based filling. It was really good, and really rich.

We went down to the waterfront to see the USS Constitution, but alas, we were too late to take a tour. Still, it was neat to see it.

We then decided to go to Harvard, and walk around that campus.

And, since we were all Car Talk fans, we searched for their office in Harvard Square:

There are always random performers in college towns, it seems:

All in all it was quite a fun day. All the more so because I was able to share it with some friends.

On Living Alone

Living alone can be challenging in many ways. It can also be a crucible in how you live your life and who you want to be; taking the time to figure out what is good or bad in your life, and making a determined effort to move towards those goals, with God’s help.

Here are some things I would like to change or improve on in my own life:

• read the Word regularly and with purpose
• exercise regularly with a goal of improving my speed and endurance in running, and getting better general fitness
• make the effort to talk to strangers more, and be more friendly to people
• rebuild my guitar skills, and teach myself more advanced pieces of music
• make more meals from scratch that are healthier

What do you see in your life that needs to change? What are you doing about reaching that goal?