A Clean, Well-lighted Place

I love my new place. There is nothing fancy or remarkable about it, but it is quiet and private and close to work. Yesterday evening I walked four blocks to Winco and bought groceries. I bought two pounds of fresh blueberries for 3.98, bananas, nectarines, kiwi fruit, broccoli, carrots, and tomatoes, a nice deli sandwich, two baked chicken breasts from the deli, a quart of chocolate milk, a box of Kix, a box of Dreyer's lime bars, and laundry soap, Purex liquid, 32 loads with all-fabric bleach for 2.98. A lot of things at Winco end in .98 or .68. It's a bargain hunter's paradise.

My three roommates are all mellow working guys. Padrick works maintenance for McMenamin's Pub at Kennedy School, Doug is a truck tire installer for Superior tires. He handles the fleet at my work. Portland is really a small town with big town aspirations. Rick used to work for Comcast and he has an interview with Aetna tomorrow. He's stayed busy this summer remodeling the house, installing egress windows for the basement and french doors leading out to the patio.

It's comfortable here. The house is tidy and drama free, quiet and pleasant. I can bike to work in a half hour and drive in fifteen minutes. We have wireless internet, a nice yard and a storage shed for the bikes. 106th is a quiet dead end street. There's a group of boys who play sports on the street most of the day, neighborhood kids from the surrounding houses, ranging in age from 10 to 14. Nice kids, about the age of Richard's son Ryan. I pulled out the lime bars when I got back and shared them with the boys. They all said thank you and the father of two of the boys smiled from the driveway and said hello. It's just a mile and a half to the gym and just blocks to the Pig N' Pancake or Changs, six blocks to the light rail station and ten minutes to Target or the movie theater. There are several quiet neighborhood spots I could go to watch a Duck game and have a beer and it's 4 miles to my favorite pizza by the slice joint, American Dream at 48th and Glisan. A good Saturday afternoon bike ride for a slice of heaven.

My room is spacious; it has hardwood floors and I laid down the rug Steff gave me and set up the reading and thinking chair in one corner. There's room for an ottoman, a lamp and lamp table and a bookcase, the garage sale purchases I'll fund with my next poker jackpot. I played like a stone idiot earlier this evening though--I lost 1200 chips with a pair of pocket queens. The guy hit a monster draw; I never saw it coming. It takes the air of you for a minute, walking into a trap like that. Texas Hold 'em can be a treacherous game, a hard way to make a dishonest second income. But it beats having people snarl at me over spilled trash. Geez Lawheez, they get upset. And they make it SO personal. But every two hours I get to get up and take the headset off and have a delicious snack, and at end of the week they give me money. I remember the scene in "Big" when Tom Hanks gets his first paycheck. He stands up and starts shouting out the amount, he's so excited to have real money of his own. Grownups forget how cool that is, having money. Remember how he decorated his apartment, the loft with the nerf basketball hoop and the pop machine and bunk beds? The girl comes over and he says, "Sleep over? Okay, but I get to be on top." That really is a tender, funny, heartwarming movie. If I ever fall in love again or win my wife back I'm going to microwave a big bowl of popcorn and watch movies on the sofa on a winter afternoon, cuddled up under a blanket. We'll start with that one and then "The Princess Bride", one of the most enduring and original and deeply entertaining movies I've ever seen.

Hemingway said all a writer needed was a clean, well-insulated, built-in, shockproof crap detector, and a clean, well-lighted place. $375 a month it costs me to stay here, plus utilities. Richard bought Papa Aldos just now; he stopped by my window and invited me to share. I'm grateful to have a place to lay my head. The Son of Man had no such luxury.