Portland Gym Culture

As an avid people watcher, I find the gym to be a pretty entertaining place. If you're really paying attention there is almost always something comical going on. In Arizona my gym was filled with ASU sorostitutes, douche bags and wanna-be muscle men. People were constantly on their phones and checking themselves out to make sure they were looking good in their name brand work out gear and baseball hats. It was utterly ridiculous. The gym was clearly someplace to be seen and I hadn't gotten the memo.

Such is not the case here in Portland. Instead the gym is filled with hippies, hipsters and relatively normal folks. My personal favorite it still the hipster girl on the eliptical in her skinny jeans and v-neck. But a close second is the long-haired ginger hippie in his Thai fisherman pants. I'm constantly surprised at the people that show up. Many of whom are wearing the trainers they probably wore to 5th grade gym class. This is not a judgement, but an interested statement. People here apparently go to the gym to work out. Crazy! They don't seem nearly as concerned with how they appear to their fellow gym goer and they get their stuff done.

Clearly a testament to the differences between people in Arizona and Portland. Clearly a little less entertaining.

The Art of Brunching

I love me some brunch. I love breakfast, I love lunch. I love the combination of the two because you can sleep in late but still have breakfast and a bloody mary.

For those of you who are not as enamored with this amazing meal option, let me fill you in a little bit on it's benefits (other than getting to sleep late and still get breakfast). In my mind there are two kinds of brunches. There's the nice brunch that you might have with your parents or on a weekday. This kind of brunch is usually at some place nice. Some place where you can expect to pay as much for brunch as you would for dinner. It involves a nice latte or some orange juice (maybe a mimosa if your parents are liberal) along with your pancakes. You would generally shower before this brunch and make yourself presentable. You'd probably even slap on some make-up.

The other kind of brunch is where you're gonna get some more bang for your buck; it's the hungover brunch. Now this kind of brunch is the one you have with friends (quite possibly the ones that woke up on your couch that morning). There's no need for dressing up and you're probably not gonna shower either. However, you might want to consider some make-up to go along with what's already left on your face. Seeing as though you were over served the night before you probably want to consider a bloody mary and something greasy. My personal favorite? The Brewer's Breakfast at Four Peaks. Marvelous.

I miss brunching. I can hardly remember the last time I was able to brunch and I long for the day when I will be able to brunch at Four Peaks again.

It's Always Harder Than You Remember

I have lived in 3 countries, 5 states and 10 cities in my 26 years. I have moved 7 times (just between cities, not houses) in the past 8 years. This means I've had to make new friends 7 times. Yet, somehow every time seems to feel like the first time. You conveniently forget the process of making friends when you leave one city. All you think about is how much you'll miss the friends you are leaving, but that you will undoubtedly make friends in your new city. You will, but not the day you move there. It's easy to have selective memory when it comes to this all important aspect of relocating.

And somehow it only seems to get more complicated when you get older. Frankly, I love the friends that I have a am convinced that I have more than enough of them. However, only 2 of them live in my current location and as a social butterfly this is not nearly enough. Dilemma. Further complicating this current issue is that in my old age (ha!) I have definitely become far more discerning when it comes to forming friendship. I no longer feel the need to bond with the first person that appears to share a similar interest and hope that it works out. It rarely does, which I have learned the hard way one too many times.

So I struggle and simultaneously try to convince any friend with a slight interest to move to Portland. I busy myself with the hours of reading assigned to me each week and half-heartedly search for a job. I countdown to my boy bestie's visit and look forward to the holidays with an enthusiasm I haven't had since childhood. I reflect on how I am in the exact opposite situation I was in in Phoenix; I'm now in a city I love but have very few people to share it with.

Please, don't misunderstand me; I'm not sad or even lonely. I'm taking time to contemplate and focus.