Portland Oregon and sloe gin fizz

Finally back home! I should be working my applications now, but I thought I'd update this quickly since it's been a while. This past week found me driving over 8 hours in the dark, rainy Pacific northwest to Bellingham, Washington where I attended a two-day gathering of Community Land Trusts. It was fun, enlightening, networky, and beautiful. Aaron was in Portland for a continuing development training for VISTAs from Oregon and Washington, learning about grantwriting and attending the Oregon Micro Enterprise Network's annual meeting. He had a lot of good VISTA bonding time, I hear, while I had a fun time bonding over ground leases and condo dilemmas.

We then spent the weekend in Portland with our VISTA friends, watching Michigan win the game against Iowa at the Thirsty Lion again and walking around Portland - a lot of Portland. It's a great city and I think Aaron might be up for living in a similiar city some day, which is good - I think I'd like to live in an urban area for at least a while, if not for the long term. Today we went with the crew of VISTAs - Matt, Phong, Rebecca, Kris, and Matt's partner Katie - to the Plumper Pumpkin Patch outside of Portland where we flung pumpkins with giant slingshots and watched others shoot off huge pumpkin catapults and cannons.

I am really going to work on this essay now.

Peace out,
Allison