Found a home!

We've been accepted as the new renters of a one-level, 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with double garage in Canby, Oregon! There's also a fenced back yard (big by some standards, small by my standards). We've been living out of suitcases since April, so we're itching to get moved in. Unfortunately, that won't happen until Sept. 12, at the earliest (it may be a few days later). And who knows when our things will arrive from storage in Los Angeles. I'll send the address as soon as we've signed paperwork and all that (I'm suddenly superstitious these days and don't want to jinx it).

Yes, it was listed on Craigslist, but we found it instead on the Canby newspapers online classifieds, which turned out to be WAY more reliable than Craigslist (no scams!).

We will be ready for overnight visitors for sure by mid-October (maybe earlier). So consider yourself invited! Email me with your proposed dates whenever you have them.

Inshallah, it's our last rental home, and our next house is one we own.

Stefan is on a German online social networking site and found a group of Germans living in the Portland area that have their own stammtisch (an informal social group that meets regularly in a bar, usually weekly). It's called PDX Stammtisch. We met them last night at the Racoon Lodge in Beaverton and had a WONDERFUL time. The last four photos here are from the stammtisch. We will definitely make this a regular gathering. It's fascinating to hear the German perspective on living in the USA.

We also finally got together with a couple that live near Eugene, that Stefan met years ago in Greece while on a motorcycle trip. Eric and Gail are living our dream: they are retired and living on a large estate in the mountains outside of Eugene, on land that was once a plant nursery. The road that leads to their land is a National Forest road, they have a huge house, a three-car garage, access to the middle fork of the Williamette River, and woods all around, with plenty of room for motorcycle friends or RV friends to camp on their land. They have a motorcycle in Europe and another in South America, and they take regular trips on both. Heaven...

Albi has gone into heat almost three months early. I know she's had a great time camping and being around us all the time, but she's also stressed at moving so much and not having a regular routine. She needs a regular place to live as much as we do.

The other day, Stefan and I were sitting outside of a grocery store with Albi, adjusting our bags so we could carry them home (we like to walk rather than drive), and a woman gave us two dollars "to buy something for our dog." I guess we look like homeless people!

Stefan signed up to take a class in a 3-D CAD program, and the class turned out to be two blocks away! He did really well in the class, and diligently practiced with the software every night and over the weekend-break in the class.

I recently did a small consulting gig for an organization I used to volunteer with back in Austin, and I was reminded of this video of their first event where I was a volunteer trainer. I'm in it for 10 seconds, at about 19 seconds into the video. Sweet memories.

The Discovery channel and the Travel channel are EVIL. Hypnotic... entrancing... can't look away...

We rented Valkerie, which didn't at all suck, as I feared it would. Stefan says Tom Cruise speaks German with a French accent. I had no idea how far that coup in Germany went, and neither did Stefan. A lot of the movie is historically accurate, according to research I did afterwards. I highly recommend it if you are a history nut. We also rented Wall-E, and I LOVED LOVED LOVED it. It got to me hugely. Great film!

Send me lots of job karma, so I can get this 20-day consulting gig in Nigeria that a former co-worker asked me to apply for. Send both of us all the job karma you can, actually -- that's the final piece of the moving-back-to-the-USA-puzzle (other than finding affordable health care insurance).

And speaking of health care insurance, I'll end with this from here:

It's a pity we can't just seriously divide the country in two. On one side, all you people who don't want "socialism" can go and live without Medicare, municpal sewer systems, roads that are maintained by government funds, running water, fire departments, police departments, national/state/city parks, public libraries, and other such disgusting features of life under brownshirt Obamcare socialism. The rest of us commies will hunker down together in our socialist nightmare and finally craft a universal health care system to go along with the rest of evil socialist empire.