Portland Japanese Garden

One of our first stops in Portland was the Japanese Garden. If you ever have a chance to go I highly recommend it. It's like a dream.

 

I'd love to spend every day here. The sound of the breeze through the trees. The faint trickle of flowing water. I was certain at times I was walking through one of my own dreams on the winding paths. Need to get one of these for myself.

Portland

Sister J and I took a weekend trip in August to Oregon for our cousin D's wedding. In anticipation of my departure from the US I jumped on the chance for what might be my only trip to fabled Portland. I'd driven through but never had a visit. With a lengthy list of restaurants to visit and stores to stop at we booked our single day to the fullest.

Flying is one of my favorite things in the world. I'll admit I'm a window seat hog - I love watching the earth pass below me. The perspective is so outside my daily one, it's uninterrupted thinking and reading time. 

One really can't beat the views. You sit down in Sacramento and stand up here - 

Baseball with B

The Giants had a depressing season. Back in August a man walked into the firehouse off the street and offered my dad tickets to a game for the next week. Sadly he had to work but brother B and I picked up the tickets and had a lovely time.

The weather was perfect, the game was wonderful, the day was great.

Grateful to be sitting in the shade.

 Quick stop at the Ferry Building afterwards for treats.

 Dinner afterward with D & N in Berkeley.

It was such a nice surprise to have such a lovely day off and good times with B mid-week. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get time off, my boss surprised me by being willing to let me take the day off when I was already taking several days off in August. Very grateful.

A perfect summer day. 

Whirlwind

I'm just putting the pieces of my life back together. They've been shuffled and rearranged completely. Last Monday I started a new job at Williams-Sonoma Inc. working in the Customs Operations and Compliance office. I'm currently there until December, but I'm hoping they will extend the post for a few more weeks. That timing should work perfectly if the Foreign Service has me start in January.

Lots of great things have been going on. The Saturday before the new job started I moved down to my grandparent's house near San Francisco. The weekend before that I moved all my stuff to my parent's house. It's been more packing and unpacking than even I could handle. I'm now at 31 moves.

I'll be slowly catching up on happenings. But for now I'm enjoying how picturesque life is right now.

 Lunch with books and live Jazz music.

 View from the terrace at the office.

 I love the walk to work.

 Jogging near the beach a few blocks from my grandparent's house.

 Finally settled on a direction - it's nice to have a plan for the next few months.

 I still can't get over that I live and work here now.

Feeling overwhelmingly blessed and grateful. Now to settle in, get some projects done...and wait for the end of November and hopefully good news about the next phase.