onfocus

It's finally starting to hit me that skp and I are in our last two weeks of living in the Bay Area. We found an apartment, reserved a truck, and we're beginning to fill boxes. This next week we'll be doing serious packing and making trips to our new home. We'll be living in transition. I haven't even had a chance to feel sad about leaving because I've been so busy getting ready to go. I know I'm going to miss it. I fell in love with Sebastopol and the whole Bay Area as soon as I moved here in late 1998—especially the Sonoma County geography, weather, and attitude. We have fantastic friends and family here, know back roads, and have favorite spots for working, eating, relaxing. We love being able to drive an hour to visit San Francisco, and we've walked hundreds of miles of trails from the coast to Yosemite. We love our house on a hill that has great views of Mt. St. Helena and west Santa Rosa. But we feel like it's time to start a new chapter. It's time to discover new favorite places, walk different trails, and explore different cities. Saying goodbye is the hardest part of moving, but we won't be out of touch. We'll just be 600 miles north in Corvallis, Oregon.

Bus sign - Corvallis, OR

Post Office Gargoyle - Corvallis, OR

We spent Sunday in Portland. We started and ended the day at Powell's Books. It's three stories and an entire city-block of books. I could have spent the whole day browsing there. There are other specialty Powell's stores around Portland: cooking, technical, and travel. (It's not the only game in town, though, because we saw quite a few book stores.) We spent the rest of the day walking around the city. It was a very nice time with beautiful weather. I'm looking forward to visiting Portland again. I took a bunch of pictures. I hope you like buildings.


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The painted cows in a few of the pictures are part of the CowParade project.