The adequate, forgettable, and occasionally regrettable

An interesting thing about Eugene is that it has streets named after presidents. That's not so uncommon, except Eugene doesn't just have the popular or well known presidents. They've got the standard Lincoln, Jefferson, and Madison to be sure, but they also have people like Hayes, Garfield, and Fillmore represented. My only beef with their system is that the presidential streets aren't in any order. In my mind, it makes the most sense to place them in the order they served, so if you're driving around looking for Harding and you come across Coolidge, you know you've gone too far. I also secretly hoped they'd have more than one street named after Cleveland in honor of his two nonconsecutive terms, but alas, they do not. So, here is a sample of the new improved set-up I am proposing:

Pretty snazzy, right? Also, where a president intersects with the street corresponding to his presidential number, a statue will be erected. That way when you come across a statue of a man stuck in a bathtub you'll know you're at the corner of Taft and 27th. Suggestions on how to pose the other presidential statues to ensure instant recognition are welcome.

The state of things

A month ago we left Provo, dragging all our worldly possessions behind us in a trailer. It's a 14 hour drive to Portland, but we were buoyed up by the thought that we'd probably never have to make it again. So we drove and drove and drove some more, and eventually arrived at Optimistic.'s folks, where we were planning on staying a few days until we could secure an apartment in Eugene. However, instead of moving into anywhere, we got jerked around and promised apartments that would never actually become available. This is because all realtors are lying pieces of crud. So instead of four days, we spent four weeks in Portland, and are now down in Eugene staying with some nice members from the ward because Optimistic.'s classes started today and his job started a week before that.

We did find a place (without the help of the many realty agencies we paid fees to), and I'm pretty excited about it, the only snag being that it doesn't open up until Oct. 1st, hence all the commuting and living with people we don't know. It's a triplex, with the owners living on site. Our apartment is built just off the side of their house, and then there's a third apartment upstairs and around the back.

Here's our apartment off to the side.

And a shot of the kitchen, which is pretty small, but there's a nice big living room, and you can kind of see off to the side there's a bonus room with sliding glass doors leading to the back yard.

And our bedroom upstairs has hardwood floors.

The hardest part of this whole excursion has definitely been having all our stuff in storage. I packed a very limited set of stuff to take with us, which means I've been wearing the same outfit to church for the last three weeks and I'm running out of Q-tips. All my books, movies, craft supplies, and pots and pans are packed away and I'm going a bit stir-crazy not being able to do any of the things I normally do. Worst of all, this weekend should have been my fifth annual Hobo Fest, which rather ironically can't be held because I don't have a place to live.