Posts from — October 2009

I packed up my clothes last night.  Just put them in plastic tubs to go to storage.  It was a strange experience.  (I’ve had a lot of those lately.)  It took less time than I thought it would.  Evidently, it doesn’t take that many clothes to be extremely well dressed…

I also packed up my backpack with most everything I’ll be taking and wore it around the house – in my new shoes.  The animals think I’m insane.

My little sister is a big-wig buyer for a sporting/technical clothing company.  When I asked her what she thought I should bring on the trip she responded, “Uh, duh.  Icebreaker, Icebreaker, Icebreaker.”  She was right, of course.  Those who work with me know my love of Icebreaker products.  For the last year I’ve worn Icebreaker to work probably 70% of the time.  So, why not wear it for trekking around?  That’s what it’s made for after all!

If you’re not familiar with Icebreaker, here’s the deal:  It’s the most comfortable, beautiful merino wool company.  You can actually track the shirt you wear back to a specific sheep in New Zealand.  Awesome.  I’ll probably have to go visit the sheep when I’m in that neck of the woods.

I’m going to put a packing list up  so that you all can comment and let me know if I’m forgetting anything.  Here’s a sneak peak:

Icebreaker mid weight sweater
Icebreaker base shirt
Icebreaker other base shirt
Icebreaker another base shirt
Icebreaker light weight x2

I’ve got a couple of Icebreaker t-shirts that I need to pick up and then I should be good to go.  Fortunately, there’s an Icebreaker retail store in Portland!  Truthfully, these are made so that I could use one shirt for the entire duration of my first 6-week trip.  They stay warm even when wet, they’re very breathable, soft, fast-drying and even keep odors down.  I think it’s probably important to be fashionable, however, so I’m bringing them all.  I mean, I am going to Italy after all.

I’m fairly sure you’ll be hearing about my Icebreakers on a regular basis, as I’m pretty much in love with them.

You’re probably asking yourself, “how much did Icebreaker pay Kristin to talk about their products?”  Here’s the answer – zero – for now.  I’ll let you know when they start paying me.

(Note to Icebreaker staff:  I would gladly accept sponsorship dollars, and would be a perfect candidate for any type of travel testing.)

One of the great things about working in downtown Portland is the access to great, cheap food.  When I lived in DC for a semester, I fell in love with street vendors.  There, the kind of food I got from carts was “Chipwich” ice cream sandwiches and big, soft pretzels.  The kind of food I enjoy from Portland food carts is some of my favorite food ever.

Just around the corner from the office where I worked for three and a half years there is an Indian food cart – actually there are two.  It’s a long story, but basically, one cart operated for a number of years, and after a divorce, a second cart opened up in the stall next to the original one.  (It took a coworker and me about two months to figure out which one we were loyal to.)

There are three great things about eating at the Bombay Chaat House:

1.  Food:  The food is excellent.  It’s all vegetarian, and has vegan options.  Along with a complete menu, the cart features a 5-item lunch special that changes slightly every day.  You can follow the menu on their twitter feed, or on my sidebar.

My absolute favorite Indian dish is Navratan Koorma.  The Bombay Chaat House has it ALMOST EVERY DAY.  It’s amazing, with nuts and fruits and spices and creaminess.  I heart Navratan Koorma.  And their naan is amazing.  It’s soft and fresh and yummy.

For $5 you get naan, rice and three fabulous dishes, one of which is almost always a dal (lentil).  And you get free chai.  Not chai from a box, mind you, real chai.  Yum.  The food is far too much for most people to eat in one sitting.  For about a year I ate at the Bombay Chaat House.  I went every other work day, ate half, and put the other half in the fridge for the next day.  (Tip: if you put the naan on top of the food when you warm it up in the microwave and add a little water to the dish, it steams the naan.)

2.  Friends:  This is a great place to go with friends.  They have a little covered seating area, but I prefer to head one block over to the public corner of the garden at First Presbyterian Church on Morrison and 12th.  Hardly anyone uses it, so it’s quiet, and it has great seating.  (If the gate is closed, just reach around and push the lever to open it.)

3.  Family:  The folks who own the Bombay Chaat House are some of the warmest people you’ll meet.  I think food is a marvelous way to know people.  I love cooking for others, because it’s a way of sharing something personal to me.  I love food, and food made by people from their own recipes is special.

Every time I go to Bombay Chaat House, I feel like I’m going to someone’s house for a meal.  People waiting in line talk with each other about the food and about the people cooking it.  The owners recognize the people who frequent their cart and greet them like old friends.  When I became a fan of the cart on Facebook, one of the owners thanked me the next day.  He just recognized me and wanted to thank me for supporting them.

I’m really going to miss the Bombay Chaat House.  When I went last week for what might very well be the last time for a while.  I asked one of the owners for a picture.

He consented and then told me that he reads my blog.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him I won’t be around for a while.  I think I’m in denial.  Did I mention how good the navratan koorma is?

One of the first things I learned in high school Spanish was the phrase “poco a poco se va lejos.”  It means, “little by little, one goes far.”

Over the last few days I’ve taken a lot of little steps.  I purchased a pack and a new sleeping bag.  I picked up a new pair of walking shoes – after 8 years – and even a pair of fast drying underwear.  Fancy.

Right now, I’m typing on a new netbook, one that I think will work wonderfully for keeping in touch and updating MidLeap as I travel around.

I don’t know that I’ve ever purchased so many new things in one weekend.  It makes me vaguely uneasy.  I think it’s because it reminds me of the consumerist life I used to live.  Still, I’ve purchased a handful of things that I will be depending on every day for the next while, and I know they’ll help me in my grand adventure.

The thing I had the hardest time purchasing was my plane ticket.  That’s taken a while.  I’ve put it off because I have a lot to do.  I’ve put it off to work in the yard.  I’ve put it off because I wanted to play RockBand.  Today, I stopped putting it off.  Once I clicked the “submit” button, I felt a great relief.  But in the days leading up to it, I had a hard time figuring out why I was delaying.

Today I realized that the plane ticket was the last thing keeping me from moving forward…well, the last thing, aside from me.

I have great ideas almost daily.  Inspiration is never far off for me.  It’s the follow-through I struggle with.  I’d love to be part of a think-tank, developing fantastic, cutting-edge ideas, or an inventor, creating new things – and handing them to a team for implementation.

My decision to change the direction of my life isn’t totally out-of-the-ordinary for me.  My follow-through is.  When I bought my plane ticket today, it was a breakthrough moment.  I literally felt the push-back as I moved from the world where I have held myself back, into the world where all there is is opportunity, and support and love.

I know that my friends and family have always supported me in whatever it is I’ve done.  For the first time, maybe, I feel like I’m supporting me, too.  Now it’s time to see just how far I can go.

I am exactly 1/8 Greek.  I was brought up, however, approximately 120% Greek and 110% Italian, depending on the day.  You see, the Greeks invented math, so we get to change the rules.

My grandfather is 1/2 Greek, but I think he’s pretty much all Greek.  Because his mom was from France, he wasn’t allowed to attend the Greek Orthodox church, or the Greek School at the church.  Well, they let him attend, but they wouldn’t speak Greek to him.  So, he is still making up for it.

When I was a kid, my mother made amazing Greek food.  We had a small group of Greek folks in our town of 3000.  That meant that the neighbors would show up to summer bbq’s with tiropita (cheese pies), and there was a Greek festival at the local Greek restaurant.  Yummy.  My dad would wear a funny hat that had a Greek soldier and the word “Yasou!” on it.  Yasou means literally, God is great, and is used as a type of greeting.  I can still hear “Yasou” hurled through the air as friends joined the festival.

When I moved to Portland for college, I had no idea there was a rather large Greek community here.  Every year when the leaves start to change, I start getting excited for the Portland Greek Festival.  It’s held every October on the grounds of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.  Being away from home, the festival always makes me feel better.  When I’m there, I’m not the only one with bushy eyebrows or big hair.  I don’t have the huskiest voice, and I’m not the only one gesturing wildly.  In fact, I’m pretty mild in comparison.  (I know, hard to believe.)

Today, I’m sitting in front of the computer eating leftovers from the festival (a first – I can’t remember ever having leftovers), and remembering the olive-pit-spitting contest from the little festival in Ketchum Idaho.  I’m also wondering if the next time I have Greek food it will be in Greece, and whether it will be at the Plaka in Athens, or a little village on an island.  It makes me giggle.  Yasou! indeed.

My house sale recorded last Friday.  Hooray!  It had sat empty for nearly two years.

TWO YEARS!

Yeah, I know that’s pretty ridiculous.  I tried to sell it myself for about 6 months, maybe more, but for over a year, I did nothing to sell it, nothing to rent it, and very little to maintain it.

When I finally decided that I wanted to sell, I wasn’t able to.  I put new carpet in, made from recycled pop bottles; my parents came and helped tile the counters in the kitchen.  We cleaned, spruced up the yard and I even hired a Realtor.  Still, the house wasn’t moving.  Yes, I know it’s not a great real estate climate right now.  Thanks.

I am one of those people who believes that you make your life what it is.  I believe that when I’m ready for something to happen, the universe will align things so that it can happen.  And I was ready to sell my house – well, mostly.

I’ve done enough work on myself to know that, if the house wasn’t selling, it wasn’t just because of the market.  I knew that there was something inside me that was keeping me from moving forward.  The house was the last piece of the life I had chosen for myself – my white picket fence – and I hadn’t let it go.

At the point that I learned about Diana Reinig, I had already reduced the price of my house, and I was considering reducing again, to a point where I’d be a little less than comfortable.  Walking out of work one day, a friend who works in the same building asked how the house sale was going.  We chatted a bit, and, after confirming that I am in fact “woo woo“, she offered up the name of a woman who does energy work on houses.  That is, she cleans negative energy out of houses.

I checked out her website, and found that she did more than house clearings.  She also did work on people’s energy fields, energy healing.  Fabulous!  I had done work with other woo woo types, and especially enjoyed sessions with Sally Baldwin a woman who channels.  I got a lot of good information and gained perspective from her channeling sessions, but I felt that, with the house, I needed a little more help breaking out of the place where I found myself hung-up.

So I contacted Diana.  We talked a little over email about what type of session I was looking for and found a time to talk over the phone.  I wanted a house clearing, but I also wanted to work through any energy blockages I had within myself.  For the one-hour fee of $150 she could likely do both.  That seemed like a deal to me!  I was considering lowering the price of my house a lot more than $150, so I thought I’d give it a try.  The woman who gave me Diana’s name had used Diana for a house she was having a hard time selling, and it had sold in less than a week.

So I scheduled a telephone reading, told my Realtor not to lower the price of the house and waited.

I shared my plans with a few friends.  The biggest question I got was “how can she do that over the phone?”  I don’t really know, but here’s how I understand it: when you’re working with energy, it’s not like you’re working on a car, or on someone’s yard.  You’re not working in the dimension where touch and sight live.  You’re working in the dimension where the energy lines up.  Kind of like the way I can jump on a computer anywhere and change my website.  I don’t need to be in the same room with the server.  Once you’re working with energy, time and space don’t so much matter.  That’s easy enough for me to believe, so the idea of a phone session was no problem for me.

My session with Diana was excellent.  It was like working with the most direct, up-front and knowledgable help-desk person you’ve ever experienced.  She asked a few questions, but it seemed only to confirm that she was on the right track.  She began by working through the layers of my energy.  She was able to identify specific blockages I knew were there, blockages I had already worked through on my own and others about which I had no clue.

Not only did she identify blockages, but she was able to release them – well, the ones I was ready to release anyway.  And she was able to give me insight into and suggestions for how to handle specific blockages (specifically relationships with certain people) that weren’t ready to go.

Fortunately, the house was ready to go.

I laughed out loud when she told me that Leigh had some energy stuck in the yard.  Really, really funny, as that was the last thing Leigh was connected to at the house.  She was coordinating its upkeep and had been quite resentful of the yard for a good long while.  There were a lot of other things that were actually keeping it from selling (Leigh’s energy was just causing her some discomfort), and Diana was able to release my energy from the house and align the energy of the house with the energy of some new buyers she saw coming my way.

Aside from the house issues, we talked about my upcoming trip, my writing, leaving Libby with Leigh, and even acne.  I left the session (it ended up going an hour and a half, but I was happy to have gone over) feeling lighter.  I had immediate response to some of the work that was done (I no longer felt tied to the house or the life I had wanted to live, and I no longer felt the unnerving sense that I was just barely surviving), while effects of some of the work took longer to feel.  Diana told me it would probably take a little while for the house to move, and to wait a couple of weeks before reducing the price again.

And I waited.  On the 13th day, my Realtor called to see if I wanted to reduce.  It was a Friday.  Confident that I was on a new path and that the house would find its new owners, I told her I wanted to wait until Monday.  Against her nudging, we left the price the same.  The next day – two weeks after the reading – I got my first offer.

Hooray!

That offer was the one that would stick.  It wasn’t full price, but it was close, and I had always considered any reduction in price an investment in myself and the new path I was choosing.  Sure I could have waited longer, but there are still 4-6 other houses for sale within 2 blocks of the house, and I was ready to move on.

It turned out that, through the twists and turns of the 30-day close (during which, Mercury was in retrograde almost THE ENTIRE TIME), the buyers were so in love with the house, that they were willing to hold tight as all manner of insanity ensued.  Several things came up that would have allowed them to walk away, but they didn’t.  In fact, the insanity pushed the closing just outside September, which is exactly what Susan Miller (and my mom) had been telling me to do.  Last Friday, we recorded, and ownership passed from me to the new owners.

My mom laughs every so often and says “who sells their house in two months in this market?”  Good question.  Answer:  someone who believes they can.

I have been waiting to post about my experience with Diana until the house was sold.  I wanted to see how it all played out.  I’ve recommended Diana (and also Sally) to a number of my friends and co-workers.  Some have already contacted her and had lovely experiences.  Some of them are people I would never have expected to be open to energy work.  I’ve put links in my sidebar to their websites.  I’m starting to think of sessions with them the same way I think of doctor’s appointments:  I can go to them when I’m really hurting, but if I check in every so often for routine maintenance, maybe I won’t find myself really hurting as much.