Bionic Teutonic

This past weekend, Ariel and I got in the car and made our way south. Friday, we stopped in Portland and spent the night with my brother. We went to the greatest Tiki bar over by his house for a drink. Hula girl frescos, drinks that tasted like jolly ranchers, and some karaoke duets coming from the back room. My brother and I were pretty close for much of our childhood but for college and the few years afterwards didn’t keep in the best touch. As we’ve aged a little, it’s been nice to make meaningful connections again. Although we are quite different in ways, it’s funny to see him do certain things or tell a joke in a certain way that I think of as mine, and realize that it’s not a unique trait, rather that it comes from somewhere, a shared history. My brother is also just plain a good, decent person, and I’m glad I have family like that. On Saturday, we were able to meet his new girlfriend, the first I’ve ever heard him be really excited about. It’s nice to see him happy and I got a good read from her. She had a great sense of humor and seemed to be a good fit.

Saturday morning after breakfast we headed down to Eugene to hang out with our friends Rob and Kara. Rob is an acupuncturist and Kara is a Doula and massage therapist, and both a thriving down in Eugene. One thing I was thinking about and admiring about their respective careers is this: With most alternative medicine/ massage/ etc, the career path generally seems to involve setting up your own practice. The opportunities to get a job where somebody pays you every week are more scarce than those when you go down more traditional career paths. This means that to succeed, you have to have a certain amount of business savvy that really isn’t part of your schooling. I feel like I meet a lot of people with all the technical knowledge for a career in alternative medicine/ massage/ etc. but can’t quite seem to make it work on the business end. All this is to say that I was inspired by how well Rob and Kara seem to be doing creating a life and career that is very much their own and thriving.

On Sunday I spent a little time with my Grandmother, who is now living in a retirement community down in Eugene. She seemed to be doing fairly well, although she is a little bit more frail physically every time I see her. Her eyesight is really going and she can only get around with the help of a walker. It seemed like everybody had one of those things when I went to go pick her up.

On our way back up to Seattle, we stopped in Portland to have a brief but delightful dinner with out friend Esther. The ride back up was scary as hell. It was raining very, very hard and visibility was slight, at times bordering on nonexistent. I even considered pulling over and waiting for the rain to pass, but that didn’t seem like it was going to happen at any point, so I managed to white knuckle it back home. All in all, we managed to pack in some good social time with a bunch of different folks that I don’t get to see often. It’s nice to be able to get out of town without having to turn it into a large trip. Nothing more than gas and some time on the road.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Daily life. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.