A new adventure

I started this blog to track my fiction writing (as opposed to my poetry). But I haven't written much fiction in a long time, and it was never really more than a sideline for me.

So I'm repurposing the blog to chronicle a real life adventure: My husband and I are going to Thailand. In a couple of weeks. Probably permanently.

This is... big. I first came to Portland in the fall of 1982, for college. That was (does math) 42 years ago. I went away to grad school and came back; overall, though, I've lived in this city for nearly forty years and that's two-thirds of my life. We've lived in our house since 1998, I've been at my job since 2001, I've been involved in different community volunteer stuff on and off since at least 2012. That's a lot of roots.

On the other hand, I grew up as an expatriate in Tanzania and part of me has never really settled, here, or anywhere. Part of me thinks the sun should be overhead at noon, and tolerates cold weather only grudgingly. Part of me yearns for warm oceans (have you ever tried the Pacific off the Oregon coast? Brutal!) and coral sand and fresh tropical fruits.

And part of me just wants to go somewhere new. The last time that happened was fall 2019, when I went to Vancouver (BC, not WA). Even that wasn't really new, I had been there before though not in a long time, but I was there long enough to explore and see new things. Before that, I have no idea.

Adventure!

I feel that I should capture the starting point: as a data scientist and evaluator, you must have baseline data. So, expect some pix of our house and neighborhood before the trip starts.