Reflections on 2004 pt.2

I began ’04 with two fewer friends, a loss.

I began ’04 with a job- working retail at the Oregon zoo’s gift shop.

I wasn’t on the “first string” of employees there.  I was consistant, reliable, conscientious- a good worker.  I was not young, nubile, and female.  Those employees got more hours than I did.  It was more or less an “ok, that’s the way it is” kind of thing,  and since my living expenses were low and there was no way I would lose my home, I wasn’t stressing too much about it.

Not too much, but I did end up applying for and receiving Unemployment- the lowest, most basic form, since I had not been working much since the car wreck.  The food stamps were something that I valued- it would have been better for my self esteem to buy my own food, but with the FS, I could save my cash for the non-food items that had to be paid for- light bulbs, cat food and sand, the bills, etc.

It snowed here in January- New Years Eve and Day, and the city was all but paralysed.  Snow is rare here and the city wasn’t as prepared as they thought.  The zoo, which is normally closed only on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, was closed for nine days because of the ice and snow up there.  (It’s a few hundred feet above most of the rest of Portland)

During the snow storm, the news one night told of a shortage of blood crisis here, and since I have donated blood all my adult life and had nothing to do, I trekked over to the Red Cross and gave ’em a pint.  They gave me my 1 Gallon pin.  I have donated over a gallon of blood since I was 20, but here in Oregon the records just recently caught up with me. I am proud of that pin.

I’m sort of superstitious- I figure that if I give blood I won’t need to get blood.  Besides, I’m O+. The Red Cross likes my blood.

I began 2004 with a car sitting down there in the lot.  A 1984 Ford LTD wagon which I had bought the day after I came back to the US in 1996, but which had broken down in 1998.  I had kept that car and bought another like it, thinking “well, there’s my parts car-”  and then crashed my newer old car and lost it.  I had held on to the wagon for various reasons but hadn’t been able to fix it.  I remember thinking that 2004 was the year that I would finally deal with my wagon. 

 I did, finally, but dealing with it meant getting rid of it, since Housing, which hadn’t said a word about it for over five years was beginning to bitch about my dead, unregistered car in the lot.  Keeping it hadn’t cost me anything and it gave me a kind of storage unit (haha).  I used to go out and sit in it, burn a bowl and listen to the stereo, and think back on where I’d driven it and where I’d like to go.  But fixing my car and really driving it again was looking like a pipedream.

I got rid of the wagon in September.  True, I didn’t get anything for it, but niether did it cost me anything to go away.

I rented five cars in ’04, all from Enterprise.  They really do come and get you!  And they’ve got reasonable prices.  I had always rented from Hertz in the past- they have Ford cars and I liked Fords, but Enterprise had General Motors cars.  I hadn’t driven many of them- none ‘new”, so this year has been fun for the car lover in me.  I rented two Chevy Malibus,  two Chevy Impalas and 1 Pontiac Vibe.  I liked them all.  I really try to avoid renting cars I won’t like, but these days any car that moves on it’s own is good.

With those cars I made road trips with friends from the zoo.  We went to the Columbia Gorge a couple of times and to Silver Falls state park down east of Salem.  I posted pictures from all the road trips but the hacker attack wiped out some of those entries.  I reposted some of the pics under the titlle Highlights 1, 2 etc so I recommend looking at them again yourself.  Oregon is a beautiful place and although I chose to live here, I feel lucky to live in such a pretty place.

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