New dog

Chloe adopted a dog today! A pug. I think she's naming him Karl Pilkington. He's 7 years old and overweight but very relaxed and loveable.

Back!

I still don't have my laptop and probably won't for another week or so, but I found the blogger app for the iPhone which makes it slightly easier to make posts. So, I'm going to start by posting pictures from the camping trip I took to the San Juan islands a few weeks ago as well as random photos of things that I've been doing.

I'm not sure how this gets formatted so I can't really explain the photos. Anyway, not a whole lot is happening and it's hard to type for a long time on the phone, so I'll write again soon!

Moving in

Hello all. It's Monday the first of August and I'm sitting in my new bedroom in my new house.

It's nothing great yet but it's getting there! All I have so far is the bed, which Tim was nice enough to sell to me for rather cheap and is letting me pay in installments. It's not a huge room (I'm standing in the doorway while I take the picture) but it has two closets with plenty of room for all of my clothes. I need some kind of dresser drawer set for odds and ends that don't have anywhere to go, and against the wall where the door is is enough room for a dresser drawer, so I am going out today to look for a cheap one.

There's this cute little inlet against the wall by the bed and a small wall shelf below it. Right now it's covered with random things that don't have anywhere else to go, but it'll eventually have books and other small decorations on it. And of course, pictures of baby nephew.

Getting the bed from Tim's to my place was quite the adventure! We had to strap it to the top of his Prius since neither one of us knew anyone with a big enough car that was available yesterday. It worked out fine, but he tied the string through the doors, so him and Steve had to climb through the windows to get in and out of the car!

Luckily it's only a 10 minute drive from his place to mine. They were also nice enough to put the bed together for me while I went to work for a few hours.

On most Sundays my housemates have a bad movie night, where their friends come over to watch a bad movie. Last night we watched Samurai Cop which is probably the worst movie I've ever seen! It was fun though, not a lot of people came over, just Chloe's boyfriend, their friend Andrew and then Tim and our friend Sam. I think it's going to be really nice to live in this house. Seems like there's plenty of opportunity to hang out and meet people but also the room to do my own thing.

Our landlord lowered the rent! Only by $12 but it's still better than nothing! He also has a cabin on an island off of Washington coast, on the San Juan Islands than he lets us use whenever we want, so next week a big group of people are going camping there. I'm pretty excited! I've been wanting to go camping for a while and this is going to be a good trip.

Other than that, my month is going to be pretty slow. I got a second job as a nanny that is 2 days a week, but that won't be starting until the 29th of August. The other job I have, on Thursdays, I am not so sure about. I watched the kids yesterday and it didn't go very well, but we'll see how it goes this Thursday.

More later!

T-minus 4 days!

Well it's Tuesday morning of my last week of working for this family. Hopefully it won't be a long or bad week. Yesterday we received the last shipment of their stuff from the Netherlands so I've been keeping busy unpacking and trying to organize what I can.

On Saturday I went on an interview with another family for a M/W nanny job. I'm going to be looking after their kids (2 month old girl, 3 month old boy) this Saturday for a few hours to see if it's a good fit and if it is, then I'll have a second job and won't have to be too stressed about money for a while! I am still wanting to get another part time job working with adults, but at least I'll be making enough money to cover my bills for the month.

My weekend was pretty laid back - I did some biking around and spent some time reading and napping in parks. I went to a pick up soccer game with Tim and Sam, but didn't end up playing. I thought it was going to be more casual, but it was very intense! We did get some free pizza out of it and met new people. Otherwise it's been pretty low key around here. I'm just going to be spending my nights packing up my things so I can move them on Friday night and I'll also be helping Tim with some yard work. He's redesigning his back yard but hasn't gotten much done yet, and since his house is full again and I'm over there enough, it'll be nice to have his yard in better order so we can start cooking out and having fire pits!

Well, it's back to work for me! The weather over the weekend was really nice - in the 80s - but now it's back to cloudy and highs of mid-70s. This weekend will be back to the 80s though!

More later!

Count down

Those of you who read this blog already know what's going on with the work/living situation, so I won't go into much detail about that. Last week was a really hard one to get through, with little sleep and very high anxiety, but I got through it. When Friday night came along I was all geared up to go camping with Tim and his friends (I was invited but kind of re-invited myself for an excuse to be away from the house for the weekend!) but the weather was so bad and unpredictable that the trip got cancelled! :( Tim was still cool enough to let me crash at his place for the weekend and we ended up going to a housewarming party and then hanging around his place with my friend Sam who also happens to be Tim's housemate. It was a relaxing weekend, much needed to unwind before another stressful week!

I had an interview on Sunday for a part time nanny job with what seems like a really awesome family. The mother was so nice and friendly and works with kids with autism and teaches classes at Portland State University. They have three kids, 11, 5 (I think?) and a 20 month old girl who is just so cute and fun and playful. I was offered the job and think I might take it, even though it's only one day a week with the chance of more days on occasion. It's not the ideal job but it's something and considering that I do not want to do child care five days a week, this leaves room open for another non child care related job or even another child care job that is only 2 days a week. I've been applying to jobs of all kinds every day but haven't heard anything back...

As for apartment hunting, I'm waiting to hear back on a room I really want with three girls all my age. Tomorrow I'm going to look at a room available for 2-3 month sublet just one block over from where Tim lives. Ideally I'd like to find a permanent place but if that's not going to happen then a sublet will have to do.

No pictures or anything this time around! I haven't done anything new or exciting that was photo worthy and ma just trying to get through the days until the end of the month! But don't worry, I'm doing just fine!

Danielle

Donuts, street fairs and food.

Last week was pretty busy, as was my weekend, so I'm updating early Monday morning as Cayden rides his cars over my legs aka "bumps".

Mary Beth's parents were here all last week which did give me the opportunity to skip out on work early one afternoon afternoon to go swimming with Tim and his dog Dean. We drove 30 minutes to Sandy River, walked a bit only to find out that the river was still flooded, so we weren't going to be able to swim. We walked for a little while more through the woods and found a shaded spot to have a picnic.

Tim's roommate Lori is in culinary school so she is always making food, so she packed us a pretzel and some bread which were delicious! We stayed out there until 9pm when we noticed that Dean had taken advantage of our distraction while playing Pictionary to run away! We found him not too far from where we were and headed back to the car. We ended up going back to Portland for dinner at Bar Bar.

Last Sunday I went out to Mississippi in NE Portland to visit some shops and ended up buying a bike!

It's a 2 speed cruiser from the 50s with back pedal braking and gear change. It was $175 dollars and is oh so adorable! I finally got a lock and lights for it and just need to get a wicker basket for the front. Since I have no use for the bike where I live (it's far too hilly to even consider biking and I'm far enough from downtown where it would take too long to bike) so I'm leaving my bike at Tim's since N/NE Portland is generally where I'm hanging out. We're all going to go in on a communal bike rack in his driveway so I won't have to rely on him or his housemates to let me into the garage to get the bike.

I've been doing a lot of experimenting with cooking. Lately I've been into making fruit salsas! I made some cherry salsa the other day and it came out great!

The cherry is so subtle (especially when you eat it with chips) and mixed with tomatoes, onions and cilantro, it makes a great, light summer snack. I'm going to make some watermelon salsa this week. I also made strawberry rhubarb popsicles which were pretty good, if not pureed enough. This week I'll try kiwi popsicles and/or blueberry! Or maybe watermelon!

Friday night I went over to Tim's for dinner and a movie. We went to see TrollHunter which is a Norwegian mockumentary about a group of students who meet up with a man who hunts and kills trolls. It was pretty funny but really long and I think both Tim and I fell asleep during parts of it!

Afterwards we were meeting his friend Jon who is from Canada and touring the US. We went to Voodoo Doughnuts, which is a Portland staple that sells some pretty standard donuts but also some pretty disgusting ones loaded with sugar. For example:

That is a bacon maple donut off to the left that Tim bought. There's also donuts covered with different kinds of sugary cereal and peanut butter and bubble gum.

Had to get a picture with the big pink box of donuts outside of the Sandy Hut.

Saturday I met up with Tim and Jon again to go to the Mississippi street fair. It's a giant fair of local artists with their stands, food, and 5 stages where bands play. All the shops on Mississippi also have stands advertising their stuff, trying to bring in business.

We were there in the morning for a couple of hours, then headed back to Tim's. He did some work, I took Dean for a walk and then we all went with the dog back to the street fair. There was suppose to be some weird costume wrestling in compost but it didn't seem like it was happening, so we went to dinner instead and got some ice cream.

So, all in all I had a pretty eventful weekend! Now it's back to working long days and long weeks!

Three day weekend

A few things have happened since my last post, some exciting, some important, some not! I guess the most exciting thing for me is that I now have an iPhone 4G!

I've been playing with it pretty much nonstop since yesterday morning. I love it! There is an application that I downloaded called Hipstamatic which is pretty much an app for the camera, where it changes the look and quality of each picture. You'll see some of the different options as I continue posting. The only downside is that the battery life is not super long. I'll be okay as long as I can charge the phone every night, but if I forget to or don't get a chance to, it'll die on me. I bought a car charger, but the thing you plug it into isn't working. I guess it's a matter of finding if it's a fuse that's broken, which should be easy for someone to do. I don't know when I'll have the time to take my car in somewhere for that, but I wouldn't mind being able to charge the phone while driving.

The other big "purchase" is that I got a credit card! The Chase Freedom card, to be exact. I went to the bank to make a deposit and they told me I was pre-approved for that card. I was a little hesitant at first because of my last experience with a credit card, but I am definitely in a better, more responsible place in my life financially. The card has a $700 limit and the guy told me that if I want to build up good credit, I should spend only 25% of that $700 which comes out to be $175 a month. It's a small amount but I'm glad he told me that. Since I do have a pretty high interest rate, having that small number in the back of my head as a spending limit will help me be responsible.

The weather is finally nice summer weather here in Portland. I snapped this shot in an attempt to get the background view in the picture as well.

Yesterday I went on a hike/walk with a friend Steve at Mt. Tabor which is more of a park than a mountain. It is a very nice place to get to after having to drive through the city at the tail end of rush hour. After that we met a bunch of people at a bar in the NE called Prost! which is a German bar. Tim was there as well and we ended up leaving to go get some food at a place called Bar Bar.

The worlds best veggie burger. Seriously. I was in heaven while eating this!

Tim and I at Bar Bar. We were messing around with the Hipstamatic app, trying to take a picture of ourselves, but the only bad thing about the app is that you need to be really far away to fit everything on screen. Anyway, someone offered to take this picture for us, and it came out nice!

This morning we walked 20 blocks to have breakfast at this dog friendly placed called Tin Shed. It was pretty good food, nothing special, but it has a really cool atmosphere.

This is what we saw while eating.

This is Dean looking like an adorable little puppy.

Other than all of this, everything has been pretty normal. Dave and Margie (Cayden's grandparents) have been having a good time being able to spend time with Cayden. Dave is a handyman so he's doing a bunch of stuff around the house, including power washing and restaining both porches. They're also going to put down some dog training pads so get Scout to go to the bathroom on the porch in on area, so I don't have to worry about getting peed on if I'm using my porch downstairs.

I think I'm going to go for a long walk in the woods this afternoon, and possibly go out downtown tonight. I have no plans yet for the 4th, but hopefully something will come up!

More later!