One of the main reasons for my relocating to Portland, Oregon from Dallas, Texas six years ago (and there were many, many reasons) was the vitality of its downtown. You can tell a lot about the consciousness and soul of a city by its downtown sector. In Dallas, people go to work then they go home. It's not a place you really want to walk around. Or drive around for that matter. The suburbs are so large that no one needs to leave, there's no reason to go to Dallas unless you're called for jury duty.

Downtown Portland is busy, constantly busy but in that casual northwest way, where no one is in a hurry to get anywhere, there's no place to be but walking around and people watching, like the people who are watching you walk. Cafes, shopping, sushi, the parks outside City Hall and Portland State University, free concerts in Pioneer Square -- I am most at home when I am in the center of things.

That is why I am ecstatic to finally be moving to downtown Portland. It's taken me six years to be in the right place at the right time but it's finally here. As hard (unspeakably hard, I won't even try to express it) as 2003 was for me, all of that has turned around in amazing fashion in 2004. New job (more money), new bureau, completing the marathon and now moving to a seventh floor highrise with Mt. Hood filling my living room window and Mt. St. Helens claiming a corner of it for her bad self.

As long as I am in this city, there is nowhere else I want to be. As much as I have loved Hawthorne Boulevard, with its extinct volcano Mt. Tabor in the background (a beautiful place to walk) and its wall to wall carpeting of pubs, hipsters and protests, I am so anxious to be downtown...

Walking to work...
Walking to the farmers market...
Walking to the Saturday Market...
Walking to one of three movie theaters...
Within stone's throw of the opera hall...

I will definitely be cranking the Petula Clark...