Two jobs and bike rides

Last night I went out on the town in Portland (finally). I started off at a lecture series at the Portland Museum of Art (the Architalx series; last night the speakers were Nieto-Sobejano, an architect team from Madrid). An old friend who lives here in Portland invited me, and through him I met lots of new people, and I learned just how small this city is.

When my brother was over yesterday morning helping me set up the couch, we looked out my window and saw, for the first time, a group of people at the top of the Portland Observatory (see photo for view from my apartment, and see this link for more info http://www.portlandlandmarks.org/portland_observatory/observatory.shtml). We figured they must have been on the first tour of the season. Last night, the first person I was introduced me to was someone who worked for Greater Portland Landmarks. I asked if he happened to have been in the Observatory that morning, and sure enough, it was him I saw through my window that morning, teaching new docents how to give tours. Small town.

Nightlife here is certainly different from that on New York, in so many ways. First, there's the fact that you are bound to see at least one person you know when you're out on the town. I've only been "out" in Portland twice, and both times I've seen one of the young city council members, who both my brother and my friend know. (A true politician, he remembered meeting me, that J was my brother, and where we met the first time.) Second, at least three people I talked to mentioned that they were planning on going for a bike ride today (Friday). I don't recall every being out on a weeknight in NYC and hearing people making such laid-back plans for the next day (besides Noah, my old housemate, a bike-riding aficionado!).

Some similarities: attractive, accomplished women complaining about how hard it is to meet men. Through my friend, who as I said knows everybody, I also met this beautiful, funny woman last night--she literally looked like Julia Roberts, or Juliette Binoche--who was talking about how hard it was to meet a man. Now that I finally have one of my own, I almost feel like a traitor when I talk to women about this, even though I know exactly where they're coming from. I always thought it was a NYC thing: men there are so focussed on their careers, or they're too metrosexual, or they're fixated on meeting a model. Apparently not. The difference here though is not that the men are just elusive in these ways, they're just actually unavailable, as in married. Though I was surrounded by many more married couples in my last year or so in NYC, it still wasn't a given that a man in his mid-thirties as most likely married, the way I assume it is in the rest of the country...