Mother Nature must have decided I was due, because I had to take the whole middle of this week - Tuesday, Wednesday, and today - off from work for this bug. Flu, or whatever it is. I think I'm finally on the mend, though, and I'm determined to drag myself back into work tomorrow (Friday) morning.
I might have a steady dating relationship on the horizon.
I like Portland, and I mix well with the hipsters here, culturally speaking. We can talk about books, art, music, exotic food, whatever, and it's all good. The minute we get into politics, though, everything changes. It's always the "elephant in the room" - so to speak - and there is just no getting away from the fact that I simply don't see the world the same way they do. This is what I mean when I affectionately refer to Portland as "the hipster ghetto". It's a densely populated place with a certain culture, a very rich culture to be sure, but it is a walled garden. There's this whole world of social norms, social signals, social codes, that you have to navigate. And politics is very much a part of that world. Deviate from the codes at your own peril.
Go outside of that walled garden, though, and the picture changes rapidly. A hundred miles to the east, across the Cascades, lies another Oregon entirely. It's a land of ranchers and Tea Partiers and Three Percenters; travel east from Bend and you're in John Day, the site of a recent memorial rally for LaVoy Finicum. And to the north, across the Columbia River, you're in Vancouver, Washington, a town I've so far only briefly visited but which seems more moderate and down-to-earth than my beloved Portlandia.
So I broadened my horizons, literally, and expanded my search radius on the dating sites. And long story short, I've met up with this very interesting woman who now lives in the 'Couv, and we seem to be well matched, in terms of values, interests, politics, education, and so on. No more details right now, but it looks like, at the very minimum, she could be a good friend and companion.
