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Eugene, Oregon
9/29/2008 – 10/4/2008

I spent a few days in Eugene, mostly chilling out and seeing friends. Nothing too exciting happened during most of the time, but I got to see Jake and Steph a bunch which was cool. Also I discovered that Kristen has been playing World of Warcraft obsessively for more than a year. She showed me how it works and we played together a bit. Fun times, that. Traditionally, I’m the nerdier one. Haha.

On Saturday, Jimbo came down to DJ a party. He stopped at my mom’s house and we watched the Oregon game and ate pizza. We went to the party and ended up staying up most of the night. A couple hours of terrible sleep later, and we were driving up to Portland in his pop’s car. Good music, though.

This was the last time I’ll be in Eugene until Christmas Eve, if my flights work out right.

Portland, Oregon
10/4/2008 – 10/6/2008

The early drive to Portland was mostly my idea — I wanted to meet Gentiana for lunch. This was especially important because I hadn’t seen her in several years. It was really great to catch up, and to finally meet the “gentleman friend” as she calls him. After lunch we visited Voodoo Donuts and had a beer and played skeeball. Skeeball!! I’m not very good, but because of that book it’s pretty much my favorite arcadey game.

I spent the night at Nathan’s on the basement couch, then I woke up and played a lot of Grand Theft Auto on his giant TV. Dinner and drinks at Jimbo and Carl’s house before Carl generously drove me to the airport for my midnight flight. Also, I won a game of cribbage against Jim.

Reading: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Into Thin Air.
Departure: Jet Blue, Portland to Buffalo via NYC, $160; Megabus, Buffalo to Toronto, $9.
How Many Places I’m Behind on My Blog: 4. Yuck.

8/30/2008 – 9/1/2008

Due to my silliness in Eugene I arrived a couple of hours late, and even though Jimbo had been at the train station looking for me earlier (his phone was dead) he managed to borrow another car to come pick me up. Great! We stopped by Powell’s and grabbed a slice of pizza up on Hawthorne before heading back to his house. We went over to Nathan’s house to watch the Oregon Ducks football game, then kept hanging out there in the evening drinking beer for a while. Ended up in somebody’s basement watching people play music.

On Sunday we again hung out at Nathan’s with the big screen TV, eventually ordering a gigantic amount of fried chicken while watching Uptown Saturday Night (which was really great!). After eating way too much we went back to Jimbo’s to recuperate before heading to the west side to go to a karaoke night Casey had organized. He managed to get many of Portland’s famous and not-yet-famous musicians to show up and hang out, many of them singing a song or two. It was weird because I recognized many of the people in the room from Eugene. Apparently most of the U of O moves to Portland after graduation.

Monday afternoon I headed across town on the bus to meet my ride. I got on the wrong one the first time but managed to figure it out in time and was lucky with the timing so didn’t miss my ride.

Reading: Started reading Jimbo’s copy of Bomb the Suburbs–it’s great!–but I left my copy in Eugene so I’ll have to finish it later. Also still working on The Balkans.

Departure: Craigslist rideshare to Seattle, $15.