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In October 2006, I moved to this country’s mediocre city of Vancouver, WA. To this day, I still tell people when asked how I like it – “It is a nice place to sleep”. Until this last October, I had a great 1.5 mile commute to work, so living there made some sense. I never really liked it though.

This past weekend, that all changed. I am now (half) living in Portland again. Thus far, it rocks. My commute this morning as a three mile bike ride down hill into the city. Not a bad way to start summer.

My goal for the weekend was to move my day-to-day things, making sure I could begin living at the new place by the end of the weekend. Strong friends were busy this weekend, so, at times, that seemed like a challenge. After seven car loads and no truck, we got it. I am now living at the new place minus my bed, couch, dining table, and desk.

Planning a move around a holiday is less than ideal. Tomorrow I leave for Wisconsin.

The experiment is over. When I started biking to work, I actually stopped driving. Today marks the 105th day. Zero car for more than three months. Not to work, play, or even groceries. Impressive – maybe; ridiculous – definitely.

Now I have mooched off a couple people from time-to-time to avoid riding home at 4:00 a.m. or the monsoon that was May in PDX. I, like most people, am far from perfect.

The car took a couple cranks today, but mostly had no issues starting. For a 14 years old, this car is lasting quite nicely. GM might take note of how it used to make cars.

How did I celebrate my re-entry into the car world? Apartment hunting, purchasing bike parts (ironical), sitting in traffic (woohoo), and grocery shopping. (For all those would be no-car-peoples out there, grocery shopping is a pain without a car.)

No, I am not going to now stop biking. I will be riding to work tomorrow – rain or shine. Pattern continues. I will probably only drive to errands.

I actually have not felt this great, physically, in years. About seven years. Exercise rocks. With exercise comes, eating to keep up. For those of you who thought I ate a ton before, now I eat double that, making grocery shopping even that much harder.

Hopefully, I will be moving to PDX at the end of this month.

There are a few events in life which stop you in your tracks. Literally. The Packers winning the Super Duper Bowl. Hearing one of your best friends is no longer around. Your big sissy calling saying she is engaged.

I had just a moment a couple weeks back. This time a song caused it. When it came on my Pandora station, I literally stopped working and could not focus again for about a half hour. Since this day, I have had the song on repeat.

The song: Where have I been all my Life from George Strait.

You can listen below:

God bless.

Yesterday, Jason and I traveled over to the John Ross building for an information session about its upcoming auction. For all of you who are wondering, wow, this is a nice building.

Going into the day, I was still leaning toward actually attending the auction. Yes, yes, I know I said I would not buy a house this year. Looking at the possible purchase prices of some of these units, I was curious enough to get more information.

The building was open to the public, so we went through about a dozen units. I found two units I was really, really, really interested in 1618 and 2018. Both are the same floor plan – one bed, bath, and study – facing Southwest.

I spoke with two realtors while traversing the building. One basically told me I would be an idiot to not – at my age – buy one of the units. The other thought anybody who bought was an idiot since purchase prices were expected to be 60% of the minimum auction price. This person also told me unit 1218 – same floor plan as I liked – was a short sale she was trying to sell. The most recent offer on that until was $215k, putting it at ~40% increase.

Those purchase prices plus huge taxes and larger HOA convinced me to not buy – again. Although it is a lovely place in an area of town that is most likely going to boom, I still should not buy.

I was lucky enough to be part of the chosen few to get a Census pack in the mail this last week. A process that took nine minutes of filling in bubbles with a pencil.

After taking this test (hoping I passed), I had a question. Why is this process manual? In today’s world of data aggregation, we still manually obtain Census data. Really? I would imagine there are data feeds out there to get the ball rolling in the automation realm of this process.

Private industry should be conducting the Census and selling it to the Department of Commerce with wicked audits. In its ten-year Census off season, it could, for example, generate much of the data for the Department of Labor and Statistics.

Anybody out there agree? Disagree?