Some Things Have Been Happening

Like, for example, we found an apartment. In, um, Lake Oswego. Yeah, everyone has that reaction. But really, it’s better than you think. It’s like a small town. Kind of a snobby small town, but still. We are 500 yards from a river and 100 feet from a lake and Bismarck can swim in both of them.

And my commute (oh, yeah, I have this new job ...) is an eight mile bike ride through a forest.

And it’s exactly halfway between the places we work (Wilsonville and Lair Hill).

And they have a good farmer’s market. And bike shops.

And have you tried to find an apartment in Portland lately? Everything’s for sale and nothing’s for rent.

Hey, I don’t have to defend this decision.

So yeah, the new job. I’m a (actually “the”) web designer at Mercy Corps. This is so amazingly sweet and so utterly fortuitous.

Many cosmic events conspired to keep my jobless for a month yet simultaneously offered me several opportunities. I took a job with a software company like four weeks ago and yet the deal was bungled by the company wooing me ... I mean, they actually hired me but couldn’t finish the hiring process because of boneheaded bureaucracy (and whew did I dodge a bullet there when you think about it). And that opportunity kept me from snatching a really tempting tempting opportunity with a former employer...tempting because a) they offered me a lot of money and b) it would have meant really returning to where I was before we went to China, and you know what they say about going home again.

So working at Mercy Corps is really sweet for me on a cosmic level. The Mercy Corps vibe is good. “Good” in a Matthew 7:16 way, and “good” in a “generous employer” way. It’s like drinking a tall glass of milk.