Ardbeg

The cooker is working, the boxes are all unpacked (I’m ignoring the cardboard mountain in the garage), the central heating is sorted, we have a TV and DVD player and a handful of channels (we went for the "limited basic" cable package), pictures are hanging and the new mattresses have arrived. Ah, the new mattress: space-age foam technology, divinely comfortable in every conceivable position. It’s just like the jingle promised: "it’s not too late to sleep like a baby: Mattress World." Nearly the best $1000 I've ever spent. Still to come: new French (freedom?) doors for the back of the house, sofas, broadband internet (don't get me started on that subject: suffice to say the cable company has lived up to its reputation i.e. a level of customer care I thought I'd left behind in Lewes). I have got as far as emptying the hot-tub (easier said than done as it recessed into the deck and thus lower than any nearby drain – a hosepipe out to the street seemed to do the trick however) - but have not yet refilled it.

I've started cycling / train-ing to work and am slowly returning to my normal proportions (Rachel has of course shamed me on this latter issue and has shed twenty pounds via vigorous application of an iron willpower - a quality I clearly lack. but I digress). By American standards, Portland is very bike-friendly with cycle routes criss-crossing the city and bikes allowed on buses and light rail. Still, the streets are not well lit and it remains somewhat dangerous; I take it gently and don a nerdy flouresecent tabard and cycle clips - you know, the kind of thing you wouldn't have been seen dead in when you were twenty. That what's so liberating about being thirty-two. It takes twenty-five minutes to get to the train station on the other side of town, from where it's a thirty-minute journey to work. Door to door it's just a touch over an hour, which is a bit more than by car, but a lot less stressful and better for me (presuming I don't get hit).

Have begun the excruciatingly slow and expensive process of restocking the old drinks cabinet from scratch. First on the list, a bottle of Ardbeg, winner of last year's Danish-hosted malt whisky competition (you had to be there really). Ah, the good stuff. It would probably be OK to halt the collection there actually. Not that I will. Am also hoping that "Lady Di's" English food shoppe of Lake Oswego will come through with the two cases of ginger beer I ordered a few weeks prior. Lady Di's (could I make it up?) is run by an English-born Portlander of some twenty years standing. Refreshingly she has not lost her accent at all and her little shop sells all those things only bought by little old ladies in Safeway plus a couple of lines that I actually miss, like Cadbury's chocolate and ginger beer. I will do a bit of a stock-take for you next time I'm there as it will make you nostalgic even if you still live In England.

Two days of work next week and then I'm on unpaid leave for the Christmas shutdown til Jan 3rd. Marvelous! No such luck for Rachel however, who has been cursing America like a stateside Alan Partridge virtually since our return. Much of this is work-related: with the exception of the Sussex Institute, she been cursed with bad management her entire working life, and this job is no exception: she's working far below her intellectual level with a large proportion of idiots and a few good apples amongst the rotten. However, no need to despair: changing jobs is remarkably easy, I've discovered. Just yesterday Zach, who works for me - and pretty much runs the operational side of things single-handed - announced he was going back to college to finish his Masters full-time. Starting in two weeks. Which means, given the aforementioned shut down, he gave me two days notice. This country…