Land of Ports, Land of More

It's winter for sure, and Boston has pretty much looked like this going on about a month now. It's snowy, slushy, icy, and cold as hell. While I admit, it's kind of a pain in the ass having to walk over piles of ice and snow everywhere, I kinda like it. I've always liked winter and cold weather, probably because of moving from Hawaii to Seattle when I was nine and suddenly being able to see my breath in clouds of smoke. Before that, breath-clouds were to me like snow, a romantic impossibility that happened only in movies or cold weather football games (not only did we not have cold weather in Hawaii, but no, we did not have professional football, and no the Pro Bowl doesn't count). Anyway, so I like the cold weather. I like the tingly shivery feeling of holding my coat closed. I like the way my face feels in the cold, and the way it feels when it warms up indoors. I like getting into a warm bed after a cold day. It's all nice. I like Boston because really, it doesn't get this cold in the Pacific Northwest; even though it did snow before and during our trip to Washington and Oregon (the snow in Seattle was nothing compared the amount of snow we got here in Boston). That being said, I've been thinking a lot about Portland. Rachel and I want to move back to Oregon and to Portland whenever we finish school and the other stuff we have going on out here.

That's Moreland Hall up there, home of the English Department at Oregon State University (Go Beavs!), and a picture taken near a covered bridge in Corvallis. Yesterday I wrote about Powell's City of Books over on the Vernacular Blog, and that got me started wanting to go back to The Land of Ports. Then Rachel and I started looking at houses in Portland, and that of course made me want to go back even more. Who cares if buying a house is pretty much impossible right now? That doesn't make me miss Oregon any less. The two years I spent in Corvallis were pretty damn fantastic. Sure, Hawaii is a nice place to visit, Seattle is a beautiful city, and I like Boston a lot, but those two years in Oregon are the only time a place has really made me feel truly and totally at home.