Fantastick.

I'd say the usual response to "We are moving to Portland!" was, "Hope you like rain." Given that it was over 60 degrees and sunny for the fourth day in a row, perhaps a more fitting response would have been, "Hope you like ticks."

We knew of the rain, of the inflated gas prices, but what no one warned of us was the ticks. Turns out the Pacific Northwest has quite the population, and the little blood-suckers have thrown us our very own "tick"er tape parade! With tick combs and dog spray in hand, we are now armed and ready. Squeamish, but ready.

Despite our new eight-legged neighbors, we are getting on just fine. The cardboard boxes are slowly disappearing. Each day we seem to branch out of our neighborhood just a bit more. With each branch, there's a slightly different view of the not-so-distant Mt. Hood reminding us that we really have changed scenery more than a bit.

Some items to check off the to-do list:

• Try to visit, and get lost going to the "closest" Home Depot.

• Pulled two ticks out of the same dog hole.

• Devised multiple ways to make those punk kid neighbors stop playing their stupid game of banging a playground ball against their garage from 3:30 pm until dusk (admittedly, this is mostly Dave. "Damn kids! I'll pop their damn ball after they go to bed...")

• Found, and unpacked, all of Dave's sock collection (who really needs packing peanuts anyway?)

• Discovered that Target sells wine, and bought one of their fine "cube" varieties. ("Cube" is hip Marketing-speak for "Franzia.")

• Found it funny that K Records owner, Calvin Johnson, actually is playing in Portland tonight.

• Created multiple reasons to visit the best organicish grocery store in the world, New Seasons Market (damn - we're out of pencil lead - I think we need to go to New Seasons). We finally found veggie chorizo!

All of this is to say that we're slowly spreading our Midwestern wings a bit. Oh, and checking them for ticks before we go to bed.