Time flies

"We only have 12 days left here in Portland"~said by a fellow NCCCer at the worksite on saturday
Now it's 10.
It feels like we only just got here, and I'm starting to finally get into a sort of groove with this job and this city. Met some nice people, Almost got some theatre stuff happening... And now it's winding down. I have to have some final reports for this project finished by midweek. Next weekend we're going to seattle, because it's only 3 hours away, and how can i not go see it when i'm so close?

And since i haven't updated in a while, here's a week in review:
Last Sunday i went to the L Word premiere with one of my teammates. It was cool, it was a fundraiser for HRC (Human Rights Campaign) and it was fun to know that i had friends going to different premiers in different cities the same time i was going in mine. The after party wasn't bad either :)
Monday we went to the falls at Columbia River Gorge. It was amazing. So many beautiful waterfalls, so many great hikes. When we got to the top of a few of the falls, it was snowing! I wish we'd had more time to spend, i would have liked to do the longer hikes. With any luck, i'll be back in this area again and i can.
Tuesday thru saturday was the work week, of course. I spent the week, along with half of the team, doing things like reorganizing the Habitat storage shed and the garage at the office (which was a lot more fun than it sounds) and doing a few 'warranty' projects on older houses. There was a house built 8 years ago where half of the porch roof shingles were stapled on instead of nailed down. So we had to take them all off and then nail them down row by row. It was a fun easy project, and it was nice to look at the end of the day and see what we'd done, to have a finished product. But it was also frustrating to know that this house wasn't completed correctly in the first place, and they've had half their roof sliding off for the last few months until we went out and fixed it.
The next day, we went to complete the handrails of a porch on another house. When we got there, we discovered the frame of the hand rails was there, and pieces of plywood had been put up temporarily because the individual vertical posts (which have a name that i can't remember) had never been put in. I asked again how old this house was, it was 9 years old! They completed this project 9 years ago, and just never went back to finish the porch. How do you do that!? It's pretty appalling. The habitat office has had a complete turnover since that era, and now these are just papers that are filed and processed and then we go out and fix things. None of the people in charge now were around then. But it's still appalling to me that such neglect could happen. How can you say you're providing people with decent homes when you don't finish them?
Saturday was one of my teammates' 21st birthday, so we went out. I've never gone out for someone's 21st when it was intended to be a wild and crazy party before. And i actually wasn't even going to go. And then i agreed to go for one drink, and a few of us were just going to get a ride back in the van. But the van came to pick us up about 10 minutes after it left, and we had only just gotten our drinks. So 2 of us agreed we'd just stay to finish our drinks and then go... Yeah, that didn't happen. There was a private party happening in the back room of the bar, and we crashed it. Our birthday girl met the birthday boy, he got super excited and said of course we were all welcome in his party. We met a few people and ended up going to a different bar with them and stayed out dancing til 2 am. So much for being tired....
Yesterday, we went to the Rose Garden and Pittock Mansion. It was a beautiful clear day and we'd heard the views were great. It was awesome! We got to see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier! I tried to get some pictures, i'm not sure yet if they'll turn out. I'll post a couple if they did.
Last night, after walking miles and miles up and down hills i was exhausted and fell asleep at 7. I woke up at 9:30, ate dinner, read for a bit, and went back to sleep til 7:45 this morning. I guess my week caught up with me.

And now it's monday again, i'm going to spend my day doing laundry and reading and hopefully not too much else.