strike that

keys

Today I drove a city car.

And it wasn’t a pickup truck, but still. I signed it out and picked up the keys and drove it up Grand Avenue with the driver’s side window down, and on the door it said City of Portland, with little roses, because we are the City of Roses.

So perhaps things are looking up.

I parked in a neighborhood in Northeast Portland and locked the car with the little magic remote that makes the lights blink on, and then I walked around taking notes. And the beautiful thing was, I knew exactly what I was doing. Which, let me tell you, has not been the way of things recently. I had a map I made with my remedial GIS skills, and a spreadsheet I made in Excel, and a clipboard and a fine-tipped green pen and my city badge bumping off my hip. And I walked and took notes for three hours, and I only stopped when I needed to return the car. And I didn’t get lost, or even take a single wrong turn, and I didn’t crash. And all afternoon I saw the backstreets of Portland that you’d never drive out of your way to see – warehouses and garages with record stores and art studios hiding in between; residential streets that dead-end on the highway. All the places where people make their Portland lives.

Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and go to a café and read House Resolution 2869 (The Small Business Liability Protection and Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act, of course) and I Can’t Fucking Wait. Sooner or Later, I Will Not Suck At This Job. Really. I Will Not.

And either way I’m not getting fired this month, because this morning my boss signed me up for another conference.

posted by tortaluga @ 9:20 PM