big sky, (un)employment and cupcakes

tomorrow night i'll head down to seattle. spencer and i will fill ourselves and souls with dank sushi and warm sake before catching a noon flight on the 19th to big sky, montana. here we will meet up with estranged professional long-distance best friend ben. good enough to let us crowd the floor of his apartment, byron will supply the means for not sleeping in the snow. five days. skis, friends, snow. i really need to get my planks waxed, though, as it has been at least two years.

angela and i are kicking around the idea of a move to seattle/portland/hood river. i'm comforted because even if things go completely pear shaped we will still manage to stay in the pacific northwest, not far from the I-5 and I-84 corridors. it remains worrying, however. these are some sort of scary times but it certainly helps to have somebody to go through them with. everyday i think about how glad i am to be home: despite the current climate i have somebody to get through them with. there have been some pretty startling work-related developments over the past five days and ang and i just spent a weekend back home in (surprisingly) snowy trout lake discussing how to handle it all.

the only solution we were able to reasonably conclude on was "meet up with jill and her friend molly for cupcakes at cupcake jones in portland". here are two pictures of the cutest solution in the world:


cupcake, out of control


molly, jill, ang and cupcakes of varying species

the sun was even out! evidenced by my shadow:



-e pics n' things!

home (usa)

i have been back in bellingham for three days now. my room is starting to take shape and the apartment is lovely. joel, i must say, has done a fabulous job with the little place. we have a great view of south bellingham and the bay. the weather has been classic pacific northwest with rain and clouds today. i can hear the train down by the bay that is so familiar to town.

it is difficult to construct a summary of my experiences in england so i should probably not even attempt to. rather i can just say that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, i learned more there than i have in the last four years here. a little laundry list:
-i learned what type of people i want to surround myself with
-i learned that you can communicate with people and not speak the same language
-i learned the card game trumps
-i learned that the bigger the dinners the better
-i learned that staying up until 5am every night weeks before departing severely reduces jet lag
-i learned the underground to the best of my abilities
-i learned how to cope with travel hiccups, both small and large.

major discoveries:
-i discovered that truly amazing hospitality comes not with money but hugs and family
-i discovered i could live in london
-i discovered who i truly love (and i would not have been able to had i not gone)
-i discovered that nothing is permanent (doubly true with the unfortunate news regarding siggy)

it has stopped raining outside. the clouds are starting to burn off, i think.


lovely mrs. banerjee


la familia

-e

[edit] for those of you overseas here are some fotos of my new room:









pics n' things!