Friday, November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving

Well, at least the spiced persimmon chutney was a hit! Nick and Barb inherited the persimmons (think: bastard child of a tomato and an apple) from a neighbor and passed them on to Aunt Beth because they didn't want to mess with them (who subsequently passed them on to me for the same reason). Always one to rise to a challenge, I found the recipe online, and with Alisha's help, a new Thanksgiving tradition was born? Perhaps.

That's about the only good news to report on the weekend, aside from the fact that I invited an out-of-towner coworker to partake in the festivities with my crazy family, and he, like the naive good sport that he was, humored me and came over. So that's the moral of the story: alcohol always makes things better!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Peace Corps

I'm going to French-speaking Africa to teach English and ride a bike in July. Assuming I can get medically cleared. I began the medical adventure today...trying to land as many cheap or free doctor's appointments as I can (you hear that Keith Olbermann? you bringing your free clinics to Portland anytime soon?). So far, I've got a free dentist appointment out of this Peace Corps business. Wahoo! One down, a few more to go. I'm not giving up hope because I can't, being the Obama-loving yet un-insured cheap American bastard that I currently am.

Leaving for the Peace Corps so soon will be just the fire under my butt I need to get out there and discover Portland, pay off the bills, and have a good time with friends between now and then. Like last Thursday night, I went out with my cousin, some coworkers, and some old college friends. We hit up Scandals and CC Slaughter's (gay Portland, I love you so!), where I had a brush with celebrity: I was shimmying next to Beau Breedlove, the former lover of Sam Adams, mayor of Portland! Some (crazy?) lady on the Max tonight was asking if there were any Oregon voters afoot who wanted to recall Sam Adams. I didn't even look up from my Obama book. Politicians have been sleazing and sleeping around for hundreds of years, this is no reason to call for a resignation. In fact, we should be commending Sam Adams: Beau Breedlove's hot!

Happy Thanksgiving one and all. This weekend promises to be full of emotion and alcohol, hopefully mixing together into a balanced elixir of good and crazy times!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

La Nouvelle Generation Perdue

"...all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be..." -Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

You can say that again! Hey, looks like someone already did (looks like Dan Schmitz is running with an awesome crowd: he can identify with the likes of Princeton the puppet and me!). I can name at least 6 friends who are A. college graduates, B. back living with 'the folks' (or 'grand-folks'), and C. currently looking for a job or are presently underemployed. We can spend our time getting angry at the economy for screwing us over (hello! we have degrees! shouldn't we be squeaking by the uneducated folk? or are our degrees our enemies right now: potential employers know we'll bolt as soon as things pick up and we can move on up?), or maybe we need to just grin and bear it and do the best we can. Perhaps that won't be in the US: this economy is driving a lot of people to look for gigs overseas. This in itself is a good thing; hey, is the crappy economy actually encouraging globalization? (Some economist somewhere should look into that...) I'm definitely a part of that exodus: I'm doing a phone interview for the Peace Corps next week!

Maybe I sound a little too sunny, but I've always been an optimist. And fortunately (read: miraculously), just when things were beginning to look really bleak, I got a job (and my first day of training was on Veteran's Day, no less...tying back into that lost generation thing...everything's connected...). Let me repeat that incredible news: I got a joerghb!! After only about a month of looking, and it's a great job too: I'm not flipping burgers, folding shirts, or dressed like an elf and to top it all off, it's actually a resume-builder--something that ties into my future career goals! Many have said that I'm lucky. I'm becoming more and more aware of that.

Meanwhile, I'm eating my way through the world, in a very Portland way: food carts!! I read about them last year in the New York Times article (here, if you insist, but I'm sure anyone who's anyone has already seen it, and I already linked to it on facebook), but had never eaten at them, until now! Yesterday it was a chicken schnitzelwich at a Czech cart, and today it was an old favorite: a lamb gyros at a Greek cart. I'm also 'eating' A Moveable Feast right now, and even though I'm slightly less than halfway done, it has already skyrocketed to '2nd-favorite-book-of-all-time' status. The title is perfect: it's chewy. Each chapter is a delicious morsel; a combination of romantic Parisian reminiscences and frank 'here's how I did it' advice on being a writer. Anyone who's been to Paris, is planning a trip there, or just loves the city of love needs to read this book! (I've especially been remembering lazy sunny days spent lounging next to the Rhone last year in good company with delicious wine and insanely incredible food...Steve, Zandra, Lauren, Zandra, Ruth, Becky, Cotes du Rhone, big fat cherries, goat cheese: you know who you are!)

Hemingway's famous admonition to "write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know" is contained therein, among others. That, in concert with the professions of Project Runway contestants, encourages me. Writing isn't my profession, but it's my passion, and I know I'll always be doing this, even after long days at work (couldn't resist mentioning my fabulous job! yet again!), in the middle of the night, and with no loftier goals than personal satisfaction.

I read on the bus and Max to work and home again. Talk about a typical Portland experience! Riding Trimet you see a true cross-section of society: poor people, environmentally-conscious people, (not mutually exclusive categories, btw), knitting people, reading people, people grooving to their iPods, smelly people, drunk people, commuters, high school kids, thugs, hipsters, bicyclists, their bikes, families. Working downtown, commuting on public transportation: I love feeling like a Portlander in a realer way than I ever have before!

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

On turning 24

Happy Guy Fawkes Day everybody in England. Happy Birthday, me!

Am I where I thought I would be at 24? When I graduated from high school 6 1/2 years ago, did I imagine I would be living with my mom, in a house on the Columbia in Portland, scrambling for a job (as opposed to starting a career), at this age? In a word, HELL NO!!! Honestly, I can't remember what I was thinking then...I was vaguely planning on going the Dolphin Trainer route, but I must have known that wasn't going to last because I don't remember having any real concrete forecasts of my early-mid 20's.

I remember figuring out years in advance how old I would be when 2000 hit...(14, woohoo!)..., but I haven't been so preoccupied about 2010 (apparently, I'll be 24). My biggest timeline-related goal has been to fill up my passport with visas and stamps before it expires in 2013 (assuming we all make it past 2012-were those loco Mayans right?). I've also spent much of the last 6 1/2 years obsessing about 'being successful' by my 10 year high school reunion, which I realize now is a pretty arbitrary benchmark. 10 years out from high school I have a feeling I'll just be getting started. 'Pretty arbitrary benchmark' and also: 'aiming low.' Compared to my high school peers, I'm already kicking ass. :) Time to aim higher...

I'm 24 years old and I've been to 16 countries (not including the US) on 5 continents (N. America included). I certainly hadn't foreseen that. President Barack Obama has been to 15 countries in his first year in office. Compared to the POTUS, I've got a long way to go. Australia and Antarctica, here I come! It's all about perspective. Hmm, new life goal: join this.

I'm not the only one of my friends who's back living with the 'rents post-college. We're redefining success. Successful in your 20-somethings is no longer working a crap entry-level job at your dream company with aims of clawing your way to the top. Success is bumming off your parents, working a crap entry-level job that has nothing to do with your degree or future aspirations, and enjoying every day for what is it. Rock, rock on.

I'm not Oliver Wilde, John Keats, Chris McCandless (thank goodness!), Rihanna, Mark Zuckerberg, or any other freakishly talented, freakishly awesome young person. But I AM Annette McAwesome: traveler extraordinaire, student of life, cool-ass bitch. I'm 1 in a million, er, 6 1/2 billion, if you will. :)

SO, to sum up? Jobless and looking, carless and (trying to be) content (the western US is not Western Europe, public transportation- or other-wise), planning my next adventure (possibly Vietnam for 5-7+ weeks next June-July-August, and then *hopefully* the Peace Corps sometime next fall). I'm giving myself a 12-month limit back in the states-by no later than September 22, 2010, I'm outta here. There's just too much to see and no babies, terminal diseases, or significant others to tie me down (knock on wood). :)

I don't want to be one of those people who says: "I always wish I had done X, Y and Z." I want to be one of those people who says: "Yeah, I did X, Y, and Z. No big deal. I also did A-W too! Tell you about it? I haven't the time. Read my book!"

Off to celebrate. Tonight was good: 2 new McMenamin's locations (Ringlers and the St. John's theater, if you insist) and Henry's, which I hadn't realized I had already been to with Megan and her hs friend. I hope at some point this weekend I have (another) occasion to say: "Another pitcher of Puby, Snakes! And make it snappy, it's my motherfuckin' birthday!"

As Courtney has predicted, 24 is going to be my action year! Bring. it. ON!

Monday, November 02, 2009

Yeah, fuck that!

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future." -Chris McCandless, in Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild (emphasis mine)

Word. THAT'S why I don't have a job right now. I'm nurturing my adventurous spirit, thank you very much. (...This year is going to be very trying, I can tell...) Adventure here I come! Relatedly, working on the next step of the Peace Corps application at the moment. Work it out! In unrelated news: I went to yet another McMenamin's today - Oregon City, check!

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Apples!

I'm getting Oregon shit done! On Thursday cuzzie Alisha and I drove up to Hood River. We picked out lots of interesting types of apples (the 'hidden rose' is red inside!) with which to make apple sauce! Then we tasted some wine at Wy'East Vineyards...delicious, locally owned and operated, and I got to pretend like I know a thing or two about wine (and I learned a thing or two too...so that makes, a thing or four?). I love the NW! The next morning we made some awesome applesauce...only 10 quarts (my mom and aunt said their record from when they were kids is 120-odd quarts in one day), but we didn't have any cheap child labor handy.

Last night I went out downtown for Halloween with Alison and Hannah. We hit up some old favorite haunts (Portland City Grill, where I felt uncomfortable...a classy joint like that wasn't quite the place for this skanky pirate wench, and Kell's, a great but expensive place, where I got my Irish on to Amadan), and discovered a new place: Kelly's, right next to the giant purple octopus. Cheapish (in all senses of the word, so I felt right at home), with lots of 'interesting' characters. I liked the IT geek, which, as it turned out, wasn't a costume but his actual clothes! Oops! My bad!

In other news:

~I still haven't found a job. Not for lack of trying. But I've got a lead I'm going to check out tomorrow... Also, I've decided not to place my perceptions of self-worth on whether or not I have a job. I'm awesome, employed or otherwise!
~This is my 42nd blog post this year. In 2008 I only wrote 21 posts. So I've doubled my output. It seems vaguely important. Maybe next year I'll double it again. 84 posts! Here's hoping 84 interesting things happen to me in 2010. ...
~My birthday's coming up this week. I think I'm officially old...I don't care about birthdays anymore! Maybe it's just because it snuck up on me this year, and I don't feel like I deserve a good birthday. Maybe I'm just being ridiculous. Meh. C'est la vie.