Breakfast in Estacada

I've mentioned my friend Patrick a couple of times here. He is a Navy vet and he's now battling cancer in the esophagus and brain. Not long ago, his oncologist gave him two years at best.

More recent reports, though, have been cautiously optimistic in terms of giving him at least a slightly better life expectancy; and he's able to move around and do stuff again.

Patrick and his wife Abby and I had planned on going shooting this morning in the Mount Hood area; Patrick had it all planned out, and sent me the GPS coordinates where he wanted me to meet him by 7am. He said he would bring paper targets, frames, and extra ammo in case I was short.

I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing - my shooting arm is still a little gimpy, for one thing, and I'm still new to driving in the area. Plus I wasn't keen on the idea of hiking around in some unfamiliar wilderness - what if I tripped and broke my arm again? But I agreed to go, and set out this morning around 6:30, the earliest I could manage to drag myself out of the house.

I called Patrick at 7 to let him know I was on my way (I was about halfway to the destination by then) and he said the road was closed, and why don't we meet in Estacada for breakfast instead.

So that's what we did. We met up at the Cazadero Inn and had good conversation over a diner breakfast and coffee. No shooting and no trekking around the wilderness got done (for which I was secretly grateful) but we had a great time. And it got me out of town - I haven't driven outside of the city since I've been back in Portland, and I needed a change of scene.

I invited them over for dinner at my place, and we agreed to set it up as soon as it's doable.

First Week of School

So yeah, I'm back taking classes at Portland State. My major is officially either Physics / English or Engineering / English; I can't remember what I changed it to last.

I was nervous about going back to school at first but by the end of the first week I was just stoked. I made up my mind to dig in and try to do well in all the classes I'm taking. I'm signed up for full-time, 16 hours, four classes.

US History to 1840 - I am not crazy about the instructor's delivery style but I am warming to her. And I'm getting interested in the material, and I'm excited by the idea that if I make the effort and master the material, I'll end up actually knowing something about American history - which was always kind of a blur for me.

Linear Algebra - This is just what it says, algebra with linear equations. What's different from high-school algebra is we just drop all the x's and y's and write the coefficients as matrices. Later I guess we're going to do other stuff with vectors and matrices. As with History, I felt nervous and intimidated at first, but once I started buckling down and trying to really gain control of it, it wasn't so hard and turned out to be kind of fun.

Modern Physics - The instructor is a chubby, jovial German with round glasses. He hasn't assigned any homework yet. He says the math in modern physics isn't really that hard, the hard part is just wrapping your brain around the concepts.

Intro to Acting - You know, I've always secretly wanted to take a course in acting, and this year I finally decided I was going to do it. The instructor is a gentle but commanding presence, a sort of mild-mannered drill instructor. (You just have to try to picture a mild-mannered drill instructor.) All of the first week was spent in team-building exercises. One of these was to get up and simply answer fourteen questions - mostly about your family background and your relationship to the theatre. Then you were to write your answers into the form of a two-minute talk and deliver it. To my great shame, I missed the original deadline last Wednesday (I'd simply misunderstood the instructor, and hadn't bothered to double-check) but he gave me an extension to next Monday, and by golly I'm ready!