I LIIIVE
The trip to Portland is over, and it went interestingly. It even went well, for certain values of well.
We got quite lost on the way to the airport; we actually found St. Paul's other airport. I missed my plane, but the very kind man at the check-in desk got me onto standby on the next plane to Denver, which was upgraded to 'on the flight' within five minutes of checking in at the flight desk. I made my flight from Denver to Portland with no difficulties.
Ian, my boyfriend, had some vacation time to use up, so we'd planned to take him along on this trip. He met me in Denver and we took the same plane to Portland. His brother had been in and out of the hospital for a couple weeks previous, and looked to be in for a long stay at the beginning of the trip. Ian and his family agreed that he should still go on the trip, since there wasn't much he could do for Ben. I am SO grateful he was there with us - more on that later.
We found Dean, my soon-to-be housemate, without much difficulty, though we went to the wrong gate first. Dean passes very credibly as a boy even though he hasn't started T yet. He's very small and very excitable, and while he is definitely a Delicate Flower, he is indefagitable in calling apartment managers to make appointments to see the apartments they offered, and endured four-mile hikes in summer weather with great courage and good humor.
We found Cass, ate lunch at a cafe on the corner of her street, and immediately began developing in-jokes. We found the hostel very easily, and checked in; that took care of the remaining cash I had on hand. I don't remember if I cooked that night - the first night I cooked for everyone, I mis-timed the chicken cooking and scorched the gravy pretty badly, though they were all more than polite about it. The leftovers went like lightning, too, which says more than words.
We visited about three apartments a day, on average, varying between half a mile and four miles away. The first full day there, we didn't have any appointments with apartments yet, though, so we went out for lunch with one of my commissioners who lives in the area, Abbie. She turned out to be exceedingly awesome, very intelligent and lively, with many stories about nursing and publishing - two subjects I'm quite interested in - and really got along well with Dean.
In the evenings, I cooked dinner, with lots of eager assistants - roast chicken a couple nights (the second time I got the timing right and didn't scorch the gravy), quiche another night with little fruit tarts for dessert since I accidentally made a double batch of pie dough. The winner, though, was the spaghetti Alfredo - took less than half an hour, and I think I nearly killed everyone with the tastiness. Apparently, a couple fine-chopped cloves of garlic and half an onion, plus about half a box of white mushrooms, in an olive-oil based Alfredo sauce = YUM. Good to know! The rest of the time we ate bread, mostly - I baked twice, four-loaf batches. Cass pulled a stomach muscle kneading the dough right after we heard that her grandparents didn't approve of one apartment we kinda liked. The buns we made split partway during baking, so they all had ghastly grins - it was awesome, I've never seen a whole batch do that.
The last day, we toured a studio (periscope studios) where I'm thinking of applying to intern. Dean's friend Erica works there already, as does a comic artist I quite admire, Dylan Meconis. A lot of the people there have contracts with big-name comic publishers like Marvel. It'd be a good chance to see what the work load is like. Erica also took us to a very nice sushi place - turned out quite cheap, too.
Ooh, and at one point we'd had a rough day, so we went and got ice cream at Cool Moon. They have an astonishing variety of ice cream and sherbet. The raspberry-green tea I had was marvellous.
We played DnD at the end of the day each day, if we weren't too tired. It was Ian's first time DMing, and he was the best DM I've ever had. I am clearly not biased, either; Cass and Dean both had a hoot. The encounters and rewards were balanced, the NPCs were lively, and he gave us beginners just the right amount of advice and leeway to screw up. The first half or so, we were all rolling terribly. We just barely managed to pull through - but dammit, my Warlord trying to leap from a ceiling beam and falling on his face was FUNNY. Our wizard getting shanked by two goblins wasn't so hilarious, but when he stood up again to smite them saying 'I've got something you to say to you guys...', rolled a one on his fireball, and let it fizzle with a '...I forgot,' that was hilarious. And then the rogue shurikened the goblin who'd beat the wizard up JUST as he was about to make it off the board to go warn the others, and the wizard sighed and said, 'Oh yeah. That.' And then later my cleric got blinded by a spell, his brother made an assinine remark and then got blinded by the same spell, and both of them stumbled around trying to give each other noogies until my cleric smacked into the spellcaster (rolled a natural 20 on perception, I seem to recall) and fried him with his Lasers of God (another good roll) - which power also gives one character a saving throw against spells and poisons, which my cleric gave to his brother, (ANOTHER good roll, or at least good enough to shake the spell) just so he could go 'Look what I did.' ...Oh yes, and there was Dean's fighter. His byword was 'Can I attack it with my face?' He (probably he. It's hard to tell, with dragonborn) had an interesting relationship with his dwarven mentor - Kazzak found him being raised by lizardmen, and took it upon himself to teach the poor thing the culture of his illustrious ancestors. He read stories from dragonborn history to Hrall at bedtime.
As I said, though, the apartment hunting was interesting. There was one bus stop that seemed to be cursed for us. Every time we were supposed to use it, we thought we were supposed to be at one a block over, or a few streets down, then decided to check it, and discovered that we'd just missed the bus we wanted and the next wasn't due for an hour.
There was a house we tried to find twice, first walking four miles to find the dead end of the street we needed, a block before the housenumbers reached the right point. We wandered for half an hour trying to find where the street re-started, and finally caught a bus home.
We went home and looked up the route again; Google maps actually failed us. We eventually managed to find it anyway. The street did indeed dead-end, as we had found. About a mile down the highway it ended against, down a side street, and zig-zagging along two streets around a cliff, it started again, for a block, and deadended once more. ...and then started again across the freeway, where it ran for another block and died a third and (we THINK) final time.
We set out once more, and managed to find a dead end, labelled with the right road name, with an apartment of the correct number (repossessed, apparently broken into once, and since secured - also housed in a hideously orange building, kind of dusty salmon-pumpkin orange) - only to call the manager, and find that we were supposed to be on a different dead end, around the mislabelled corner, where a grey apartment that had not been repossessed or broken into and the manager awaited us. We looked it over and took the bus back without hardly getting lost at all.
There were a whole bunch of places that were too small, or too expensive once we figured in utilities. About halfway through, we found a two-bedroom with a living room well-separated enough to use as a third bedroom, washer-dryer and dishwasher, really classy apartment building, just under a mile from the college. We took Cass to see it, called her grandparents, and after a long discussion found that they'd prefer her to stay in her current place - which, admittedly, is a block from the school and a block from the store, about the same rent, and her own place - no worries about housemates flaking out on one.
So, we started looking for two-bedrooms in earnest. And we found, again, lots of places that were too small. One had Murphy (Murray?) beds, with little dressingrooms built over them, and tubs with claw feet.
There was the place that turned out to be special low-income housing, for which full-time students did not qualify. There was the place that smelled of mildew and despair, with the balcony that was the only way to reach the upper floor apartments, and that reached ALL of the upper floor, crappily locked apartments. There was the place where we called twice to confirm our appointment, showed up at the correct address, at the correct time, to an apartment manager who was expecting an appointment to show rooms...to a gentleman who'd seen the room before, and they didn't have any two-bedrooms, nor had she made an appointment with us.
And then we found the two-bedroom that we finally applied to, and as we were putting away Dean's laptop and my notebook to go see it again and turn in the applications, I STUPIDLY left the completed applications and Dean's bank information out on the hostel dining area table with no-one around to guard them. We discovered halfway there (at the bank, as we got cashier's checks to pay the application fees) that Dean's bank info had gone missing, about-faced and came back to the hostel to search, then call credit unions and banks to put holds on our accounts and report potential credit fraud and get another copy of Dean's bank information to turn in with the applications.
So. We applied to one place, and I need to send them my tax information and a notarized statement from my parents saying they're helping to support me.
Thanks entirely to Ian, I still got to eat and ride the busses, even though I'd frozen my bank account til I could get home and close it (there are no TCF banks or ATMs in Portland, but I discovered the magic of cash back debit card purchases.)
We managed to get to the airport on time, none of our flights were tragically delayed (though Ian really had to run to make his connection), and my housemates managed to pick me up at the airport with only half an hour's worth of confusion. The dog got into the kitchen trash while they were picking me up, but such is life.
The next morning I closed my bank account at TCF and bought myself four bucks of really nice chocolate. Now I'm looking for a bank in Portland that I can use, and trying to figure out what sort of limbo my loan paperwork is lost in.
The Metanoia update, Myristica's commissions, Abbie's paintings, and the sketches for Empire are coming along just fine - late, but I'll get there eventually. I've been distracted by cleaning up some sketches from the trip, and packing. If my financial information is satisfactoty, I could move as early as next week. Terrifying thought!
The garden here in Minnesota is actually doing beautifully this year! It looks like a real garden, everything's filling out really nicely. The lettuce tastes good, too. I think I'll be gone before the tomatoes and beans do anything, sadly.
We got quite lost on the way to the airport; we actually found St. Paul's other airport. I missed my plane, but the very kind man at the check-in desk got me onto standby on the next plane to Denver, which was upgraded to 'on the flight' within five minutes of checking in at the flight desk. I made my flight from Denver to Portland with no difficulties.
Ian, my boyfriend, had some vacation time to use up, so we'd planned to take him along on this trip. He met me in Denver and we took the same plane to Portland. His brother had been in and out of the hospital for a couple weeks previous, and looked to be in for a long stay at the beginning of the trip. Ian and his family agreed that he should still go on the trip, since there wasn't much he could do for Ben. I am SO grateful he was there with us - more on that later.
We found Dean, my soon-to-be housemate, without much difficulty, though we went to the wrong gate first. Dean passes very credibly as a boy even though he hasn't started T yet. He's very small and very excitable, and while he is definitely a Delicate Flower, he is indefagitable in calling apartment managers to make appointments to see the apartments they offered, and endured four-mile hikes in summer weather with great courage and good humor.
We found Cass, ate lunch at a cafe on the corner of her street, and immediately began developing in-jokes. We found the hostel very easily, and checked in; that took care of the remaining cash I had on hand. I don't remember if I cooked that night - the first night I cooked for everyone, I mis-timed the chicken cooking and scorched the gravy pretty badly, though they were all more than polite about it. The leftovers went like lightning, too, which says more than words.
We visited about three apartments a day, on average, varying between half a mile and four miles away. The first full day there, we didn't have any appointments with apartments yet, though, so we went out for lunch with one of my commissioners who lives in the area, Abbie. She turned out to be exceedingly awesome, very intelligent and lively, with many stories about nursing and publishing - two subjects I'm quite interested in - and really got along well with Dean.
In the evenings, I cooked dinner, with lots of eager assistants - roast chicken a couple nights (the second time I got the timing right and didn't scorch the gravy), quiche another night with little fruit tarts for dessert since I accidentally made a double batch of pie dough. The winner, though, was the spaghetti Alfredo - took less than half an hour, and I think I nearly killed everyone with the tastiness. Apparently, a couple fine-chopped cloves of garlic and half an onion, plus about half a box of white mushrooms, in an olive-oil based Alfredo sauce = YUM. Good to know! The rest of the time we ate bread, mostly - I baked twice, four-loaf batches. Cass pulled a stomach muscle kneading the dough right after we heard that her grandparents didn't approve of one apartment we kinda liked. The buns we made split partway during baking, so they all had ghastly grins - it was awesome, I've never seen a whole batch do that.
The last day, we toured a studio (periscope studios) where I'm thinking of applying to intern. Dean's friend Erica works there already, as does a comic artist I quite admire, Dylan Meconis. A lot of the people there have contracts with big-name comic publishers like Marvel. It'd be a good chance to see what the work load is like. Erica also took us to a very nice sushi place - turned out quite cheap, too.
Ooh, and at one point we'd had a rough day, so we went and got ice cream at Cool Moon. They have an astonishing variety of ice cream and sherbet. The raspberry-green tea I had was marvellous.
We played DnD at the end of the day each day, if we weren't too tired. It was Ian's first time DMing, and he was the best DM I've ever had. I am clearly not biased, either; Cass and Dean both had a hoot. The encounters and rewards were balanced, the NPCs were lively, and he gave us beginners just the right amount of advice and leeway to screw up. The first half or so, we were all rolling terribly. We just barely managed to pull through - but dammit, my Warlord trying to leap from a ceiling beam and falling on his face was FUNNY. Our wizard getting shanked by two goblins wasn't so hilarious, but when he stood up again to smite them saying 'I've got something you to say to you guys...', rolled a one on his fireball, and let it fizzle with a '...I forgot,' that was hilarious. And then the rogue shurikened the goblin who'd beat the wizard up JUST as he was about to make it off the board to go warn the others, and the wizard sighed and said, 'Oh yeah. That.' And then later my cleric got blinded by a spell, his brother made an assinine remark and then got blinded by the same spell, and both of them stumbled around trying to give each other noogies until my cleric smacked into the spellcaster (rolled a natural 20 on perception, I seem to recall) and fried him with his Lasers of God (another good roll) - which power also gives one character a saving throw against spells and poisons, which my cleric gave to his brother, (ANOTHER good roll, or at least good enough to shake the spell) just so he could go 'Look what I did.' ...Oh yes, and there was Dean's fighter. His byword was 'Can I attack it with my face?' He (probably he. It's hard to tell, with dragonborn) had an interesting relationship with his dwarven mentor - Kazzak found him being raised by lizardmen, and took it upon himself to teach the poor thing the culture of his illustrious ancestors. He read stories from dragonborn history to Hrall at bedtime.
As I said, though, the apartment hunting was interesting. There was one bus stop that seemed to be cursed for us. Every time we were supposed to use it, we thought we were supposed to be at one a block over, or a few streets down, then decided to check it, and discovered that we'd just missed the bus we wanted and the next wasn't due for an hour.
There was a house we tried to find twice, first walking four miles to find the dead end of the street we needed, a block before the housenumbers reached the right point. We wandered for half an hour trying to find where the street re-started, and finally caught a bus home.
We went home and looked up the route again; Google maps actually failed us. We eventually managed to find it anyway. The street did indeed dead-end, as we had found. About a mile down the highway it ended against, down a side street, and zig-zagging along two streets around a cliff, it started again, for a block, and deadended once more. ...and then started again across the freeway, where it ran for another block and died a third and (we THINK) final time.
We set out once more, and managed to find a dead end, labelled with the right road name, with an apartment of the correct number (repossessed, apparently broken into once, and since secured - also housed in a hideously orange building, kind of dusty salmon-pumpkin orange) - only to call the manager, and find that we were supposed to be on a different dead end, around the mislabelled corner, where a grey apartment that had not been repossessed or broken into and the manager awaited us. We looked it over and took the bus back without hardly getting lost at all.
There were a whole bunch of places that were too small, or too expensive once we figured in utilities. About halfway through, we found a two-bedroom with a living room well-separated enough to use as a third bedroom, washer-dryer and dishwasher, really classy apartment building, just under a mile from the college. We took Cass to see it, called her grandparents, and after a long discussion found that they'd prefer her to stay in her current place - which, admittedly, is a block from the school and a block from the store, about the same rent, and her own place - no worries about housemates flaking out on one.
So, we started looking for two-bedrooms in earnest. And we found, again, lots of places that were too small. One had Murphy (Murray?) beds, with little dressingrooms built over them, and tubs with claw feet.
There was the place that turned out to be special low-income housing, for which full-time students did not qualify. There was the place that smelled of mildew and despair, with the balcony that was the only way to reach the upper floor apartments, and that reached ALL of the upper floor, crappily locked apartments. There was the place where we called twice to confirm our appointment, showed up at the correct address, at the correct time, to an apartment manager who was expecting an appointment to show rooms...to a gentleman who'd seen the room before, and they didn't have any two-bedrooms, nor had she made an appointment with us.
And then we found the two-bedroom that we finally applied to, and as we were putting away Dean's laptop and my notebook to go see it again and turn in the applications, I STUPIDLY left the completed applications and Dean's bank information out on the hostel dining area table with no-one around to guard them. We discovered halfway there (at the bank, as we got cashier's checks to pay the application fees) that Dean's bank info had gone missing, about-faced and came back to the hostel to search, then call credit unions and banks to put holds on our accounts and report potential credit fraud and get another copy of Dean's bank information to turn in with the applications.
So. We applied to one place, and I need to send them my tax information and a notarized statement from my parents saying they're helping to support me.
Thanks entirely to Ian, I still got to eat and ride the busses, even though I'd frozen my bank account til I could get home and close it (there are no TCF banks or ATMs in Portland, but I discovered the magic of cash back debit card purchases.)
We managed to get to the airport on time, none of our flights were tragically delayed (though Ian really had to run to make his connection), and my housemates managed to pick me up at the airport with only half an hour's worth of confusion. The dog got into the kitchen trash while they were picking me up, but such is life.
The next morning I closed my bank account at TCF and bought myself four bucks of really nice chocolate. Now I'm looking for a bank in Portland that I can use, and trying to figure out what sort of limbo my loan paperwork is lost in.
The Metanoia update, Myristica's commissions, Abbie's paintings, and the sketches for Empire are coming along just fine - late, but I'll get there eventually. I've been distracted by cleaning up some sketches from the trip, and packing. If my financial information is satisfactoty, I could move as early as next week. Terrifying thought!
The garden here in Minnesota is actually doing beautifully this year! It looks like a real garden, everything's filling out really nicely. The lettuce tastes good, too. I think I'll be gone before the tomatoes and beans do anything, sadly.