The Beard joins corporate America

I've been living in Portland now for three months. In that time I've spent my holidays alone and moved twice (the first time being moving out here). The Ben's and I moved into this great house in the North East of Portland near the Alberta Arts District. This house is one of nicest houses I've ever lived in. Its kinda like living at your folk's house without your folks. This, compined with the fact that I now have a "real job" is kind of making me feel like I'm growing up. I don't know how I feel about this.

As for the job, I have joined the ranks of corporate America. I now work at a big insurance company which covers the Pacific Northwest. I work in Medical Management as a tech. What this means is that I enter data all day and help the nurses I work with call medicare recipients who have diabeties, asthma and various heart aliments. I do this by collecting the various pieces of litriture we have gotten from companies which I'm sure are fleecing the government in some way.

My free time here is mainly spent climbing at The Portland Rock Gym, where I have been training almost as hard as I want to be, so I'm in good climbing shape for my trip to Indian Creek. This means that I spend at least five days a week in the gym, climbing on four of those days. Then I try to stay active the days I'm not at the gym.

Climbing in the winter here is hard. Part of this is because I can't find anyone who is dedicated enough to show up on the day that they say they will. But mainly is because it is wet here all the time. Then, without fail, if its been dry for a couple of day, the day I do get to go climbing it starts raining. Even if you are lucky enough to have a dry day the rock will probably still be wet. So I've been trying to make do, but I'm jones hard to climb out side. I here that it doesn't rain here during the summer, so hopefully I'll be able to get lots of climbing in.

All of this hard training has been paying off. I look a lot different than when I left for here. I've gotten stronger, but more importantly I've gotten lighter. I've lost fourteen pounds so far, which puts me about 5 or 6 pounds from my original goal. Though I would still like to lose ten more.

I've been able to do this because I've been training hard, walking or riding my bike everywhere, and eating right. I'm getting to the point where when I'm not eating well I can tell. When I'm eating either, a lot of junk food, or when I'm just not eating enough of the right stuff, I can feel it. My diet is mainly vegitarian because I can't afford to buy meat because it is so damn expensive out here.

I'm not sure what else to write. I will try and follow up with some pictures of some of the good things out here soon. I'm going to use this as my main space for people who may actually be interested in what's going on in my life. From this point on my myspace page will point to this page. If you want to read it, fine. If not I'll just write for myself.