Moving always takes more out of me than I think it will. It takes more time and more energy than I budget for the experience.

Packed and ready to go…

Ten days ago, I received the keys for my condo. Since then, my life has been a whirlwind of activity. The morning after I got the keys, I recruited help to move my stuff from my apartment to my new home. Friends like Adam Baker and Becca Borawski did an awesome job of hauling heavy boxes (full of books) and heavy furniture down four floors and then up four floors. I’d only planned on five hours for the move but it took eight. (And I didn’t get everything done that I’d planned.)

Becca, Baker, and Kim helping with the move…

Kim — who was fantastic at filling in the gaps during Saturday’s move — then helped me unpack boxes on Sunday. We also took a trip to Ikea to pick up a few pieces of furniture. By the end of the weekend, we had a functional kitchen and living room, plus a mattress on the floor of the bedroom.

The first week in the new place felt a little bit like being in college again…

All last week, I worked on the condo. I continued to unpack boxes. Friends helped me pick up odd pieces of furniture here and there. On Tuesday night, my cousin Nick helped me move and install a washer and dryer. Almost. The dryer turned out to be more of a challenge than we’d anticipated. In fact, it’s still not completely functional (though I hope it’ll be usable by the end of today).

As Monday turned to Tuesday turned to Wednesday turned to Thursday, I raced to have my place clean and ready for a romantic Valentine’s dinner. Fortunately, Kim’s expectations were low. She wanted something simple, and that’s what she got. I ran out of time to have everything ready, so we ate our steak and salad at the bar.

The living room is now mostly finished…

Over the weekend, Kim continued to help me unpack boxes and put together furniture. Now here it is on Monday morning, and I’m still not completely moved in. The kitchen, living room, master bedroom, and master bedroom are finished, which is comforting. But the laundry room still doesn’t work (and I’m running out of clean clothes), the office isn’t complete (I need to print some stuff but can’t find my spare toner cartridge), and the back bedroom is filled with boxes of books. Plus, I still have a bunch of stuff at Kris’s place that I need to move.

The bedroom in a usable state. Still need to decorate, though.

I’m content, though. Even though things are still in disarray, my new condo feels like home. I love the condo itself, and I love the location. I’ve already hosted more people here in one week than I did during a year of living in the apartment.

On Friday morning, Kim and I strolled in the sunshine down the multi-use trail that’s right outside my door. We walked to the wildlife sanctuary, then up the hill to the next neighborhood over. We stopped at the grocery store and the hardware store. She stopped to pick up lunch at the Thai place. We talked about our plans for the future.

Living here is going to be fun!

Happy Boxing Day, everyone. I know I’ve been quiet around here lately but, as usual, that means there’s been lots happening in Real Life.

For one, the holidays have taken much of my time, as I’m sure they’ve done with you. For another, I’ve taken on some extra writing gigs to bring in a little extra cash. (I always try to follow my own advice about the importance of making more money!) Plus, I’ve been working on next summer’s World Domination Summit. I’m responsible for the content at the conference this year, and I want to make sure I get it right.

For the past few days, though, I’ve been taking it easy. Last Friday, Kim and I left Portland for central Oregon, where we’ve rented a small house (from a Get Rich Slowly reader, no less). We’ve been relaxing completely while ignoring the rest of the world. (At this very moment, we’re both waking up to coffee on the couch while puttering around on the internet.) Friends are stopping in to visit now and then, but for the most part we’ve been sitting in the hot tub, riding the dogsleds, and playing in the snow.

On Christmas Eve, Kim and I went dogsledding on a cold, bright afternoon.

While we’re here, I’m going to conduct my first-ever annual review. Every year, my friend Chris Guillebeau spends a week in reflection, looking at what went right with his year, and determining what might have gone better. He also sets goals for the coming year. I’ve never done anything this formal with my own end-of-year self-reflection, but I like the idea. I’m going to try it to see how I like it.

I’ll share the results of my annual review in a couple of days. For now, though, I’m going back to my books and my coffee. Happy holidays, my friends. May peace be with you.

This morning, I drove half an hour from Portland to Canby to run a bunch of errands. I stopped by the family box factory to do some computer programming (paper prices have risen), had lunch with my accountant (who is also a close friend), and had my girlfriend clean my teeth (she’s a dental hygienist). I left the dental office at about 4:30 and was stuck in traffic for almost the entire drive.

“This sucks,” I thought, as I sat on the freeway with everyone else. “Plus, I’m hungry.” I hadn’t eaten much despite the fact that I’m supposed to be increasing weight.

“Maybe I’ll eat at Screen Door,” I thought. Screen Door is one of my favorite Portland restaurants. It features great southern food, including the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Fried chicken has a lot of calories. And there’s lots of protein there, right? It seemed like a great way to get my daily dietary intake up to where it ought to be.

Screen Door is usually packed. Not tonight. Tonight, there were maybe five tables full, plus one fellow at the bar. Two fellows at the bar after I sat down.

“I don’t need a menu,” I told the bartender. “Just give me the fried chicken and a Rhett Butler.” A Rhett Butler is like an old fashioned, but with ginger puree. I pulled out my notebook and prepared to take notes on this month’s book group book, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.

“What are you reading?” asked the fellow seated next to me at the bar.

“Hemingway,” I said.

“Can I see?” he said as he picked up the book. He leafed through the pages. “John Donne,” he said, noting the inscription at the front of the book. (“For whom the bell tolls…” is a quote from Donne’s famous mediation on death.)

“That’s very buddhist, you know,” my companion said, handing Hemingway back to me. “‘No man is an island’ and all that.”

“Is it?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Nothing in the universe stands alone. Everything is connected. Everything can be broken down into something smaller. Everything arises from causes and conditions. All things that are born are subject to death.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s interesting.”

“You know what,” my companion told me. “You ought to go online. Go to YouTube. Look up this guy Dzongsar Khyentse Ripnoche. Look for the videos where he answers questions.” I offered him my notebook and he wrote it down for me.

“You might also be interested in a couple of other books,” my new friend told me. “You should read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda and On Becoming a Person, which is a great humanist book by Carl Rogers.”

“Wow,” I said. “My girlfriend really likes Paramahansa Yogananda. She says Autobiography of a Yoga was very influential for her. In fact, in my car I have a couple of his lectures on CD.”

“He’s the real deal,” my companion said as our dinners arrived. My fried chicken smelled delicious. He had ordered a cheeseburger, which I didn’t even know you could get at Screen Door. “He’s not a charlatan like a lot of those guys in the east. He’s a real avatar.”

As we ate, the guy next to me asked me a bit about my life, and I asked a bit about his. I told him that I make my living writing about money. He told me that he makes his by practicing naturopathic medicine. Or he used to anyhow.

“I was building my practice,” he told me, “and everything was going great. But then fate intervened. I got hit by a drunk driver. An eighteen-year-old kid t-boned my car and I lost everything to medical bankruptcy.”

“That sucks,” I said. “What a shitty thing to have happen.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It just reinforced how nothing is permanent. You can thing you have security, but it’s really just an illusion.” He paused for a moment, taking a bite of his burger. “But you know, there have been a lot of blessings that came from that. You’d be surprised.”

“From the accident?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I learned a lot about myself. I’m much stronger now. I’ve never been happier.”

“Good for you,” I said, stirring some of my mashed potatoes in the tasty tasty gravy. We sat in silence for a while.

“How old are you?” my friend asked eventually. “Forty-eight?”

“Forty-three,” I said.

“Forty-three!” he said. He seemed surprised. “You have a little grey hair there, buddy.” I was dying on the inside, and I wanted to laugh. Nobody’s ever thought I looked older before. Most people think I’m in my thirties.

“You eat paleo, don’t you?” he said.

I laughed. “I try to,” I said, “though I’m not sure fried chicken counts.”

“You should try the Cultured Caveman,” he told me. “It’s a paleo food cart. Also, take a look at Nora Gedgaudas. She wrote a book called Primal Body, Primal Mind. You might like it.”

“Well, I can’t eat any more of that,” I said, pushing my plate aside. “Who am I fooling?”

The bartender was standing right there. “You need to finish that, young man,” he said with mock severity. We all laughed.

My companion and I talked a bit more, and I mentioned that Kim eats paleo too. (In fact, she’s much better at it than I am.) I’d already told my companion that she was familiar with buddhism, and that she knew about Paramahansa Yogananda. He seemed impressed.

“Your girlfriend must be very thoughtful. How old is she?” he asked.

“She just turned forty,” I said. “And she is very thoughtful.”

“You’re lucky,” he said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“To meet a woman our age who’s thoughtful is very rare. It’s unusual. It sounds like you found a winner. Don’t screw that up. If she actually believes and adheres to this stuff, it’s like finding a treasure buried under your kitchen floor.”

I nodded in silent agreement. I wanted to ask more — why is it rare to meet a 40-year-old woman who’s thoughtful? — but the conversation moved on. We talked about Tibet, about buddhism, about money, about divorce. We discussed John Steinbeck and Robert Kiyosaki.

“I wish I had unlimited time to read, study, and contemplate,” my friend said. “And to meditate.”

“Me too,” I said. “Me too.”

“I’ve traveled around,” he told me. “I’ve met a lot of thinkers. I knew I’d found the right teacher when he told me, ‘The ultimate goal is to become your own teacher.'”

“I like that,” I said.

We stood to go our separate ways. “You can write about this,” he told me (he’d seen me taking notes), “but please keep me anonymous.”

“I will,” I said. “Thank you.” We shook hands and walked out into the rain.

With rare exceptions, I’m not a fan the horror genre. It’s a little too real for my tastes. Still, now and then, a little horror can be fun.

This year, Jennifer threw a late party for Kim’s 40th birthday. Because we held the event at the end of October, naturally she chose a funerary theme. For instance, she rented a hearse to transport Kim and me to the celebration:

Brett and Vicki gave us (sort of) spooky masks:

And, of course, the cake (a “rice krispie cake”) was shaped like a tombstone:

Last weekend, we joined a couple of dozen other folks to play along in the gym’s second-annual “zombie apocalypse” game. The game involved lots of running for us humans, but the zombies didn’t get much of a workout. I think the zombies had more fun, though. Take a look at Kyra and Kim’s makeup:

Nobody — not even her boyfriend or family — could tell which zombie was Kim

Kim and Kyra vowed that they were going to “kill” me during the game. I vowed they weren’t. Ultimately, however, Kyra prevailed and I was forced to join the walking dead…

All of this is prelude to the following: Although I’m not a fan of the horror genre in general, I do like ghost stories. Ghost stories are great fun. I like complex novel-length ghost stories (like Wilkie Collins’ wonderful classic, The Woman in White) and I like short, simple ghost stories — like “The Velvet Ribbon”.

When I was a boy, my sister Shelley had “The Velvet Ribbon” on vinyl record. It scared the hell out of me, but I listened to the story over and over. A few years ago, one of my readers sent me an mp3 file of the story. And now, in the age of YouTube, somebody has posted the story online:

Spooky!

If you’d rather read than listen, here’s a text version of the story:

The Velvet Ribbon
by Ann McGovern

Once there was a man who fell in love with a beautiful girl. And before the next full moon rose in the sky, they were wed.

To please her husband, the young wife wore a different gown each night. Sometimes she was dressed in yellow; other nights she wore red or blue or white. And she always wore a black velvet ribbon around her slender neck.

Day and night she wore that ribbon, and it was not long before her husband’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Why do you always wear that ribbon?” he asked. She smiled a strange smile and said not a word. At last her husband got angry. And one night he shouted at his bride. “Take that ribbon off! I’m tired of looking at it.”

You will be sorry if I do,” she replied, “so I won’t.”

Every morning at breakfast, the husband ordered his wife to remove the black velvet ribbon from around her neck. Every night at dinner he told her the same thing. But every morning at breakfast and every night at dinner, all his wife would say was, “You’ll be sorry if I do. So I won’t.”

A week passed. The husband no longer looked into his wife’s eyes. He could only stare at that black velvet ribbon around her neck.

One night as his wife lay sleeping, he tiptoed to her sewing basket. He took out a pair of scissors. Quickly and quietly, careful not to awaken her, he bent over his wife’s bed and

SNIP!

went the scissors, and the velvet ribbon fell to the floor. And

SNAP!

off came her head.

It rolled over the floor in the moonlight, wailing tearfully: “I…told…you…you’d…be…s-o-r-r-y!”

Tonight, I’ll be doing decidedly non-Halloween stuff. If it’s autumn, it must be time to plan next year’s World Domination Summit. The action team will be gathering at WDS HQ to discuss speakers, venues, and more. But when I get home, I’ll spend an hour or so reading ghost stories. Any recommendations?

Losing things is one of the hazards of travel.

I’ve heard horror stories of people who have lost their luggage, for example. Or had it lost for them. Last autumn, for example, I was fast asleep in my room in Lima when my roommate arrived.

“Sorry, mate,” Steve announced as he turned on the light. It was 2am. “My plane just got in from Australia, and my luggage isn’t with it.” For the next three weeks, Steve was constantly on the phone with the airline trying to track down his bags. He never found them.

Other times, folks lose things to pickpockets.

Me? I have a tendency to lose things to carelessness. I get distracted and leave things behind.

I did great on my recent trip to Turkey, though. I made it through Denver, two weeks in Turkey, and four days in New York, and I didn’t lose a single thing. Not until the airport, anyhow.

At the TSA checkpoint, I showed my driver license with my boarding pass. I passed through the scanners, gathered my things, and flew to Atlanta. When I went to show my ID at the hotel, my driver license wasn’t there. Crap.

Then, on my last night in Atlanta, I was upstairs in the bar, dancing with the ladies from the Savvy Blogging Summit. I was hot, so I pulled off my sweater (my $180 sweater) and tossed it on a nearby sofa. Not a smart move. Guess where that sweater still is…

This week, my first week back from my trip, I’ve been running all sorts of errands. Top on the list, of course, was obtaining a replacement license.

I stopped by the DMV yesterday at lunchtime. I pulled number 116 and looked at the board — they were only up to 79. It was going to be a long wait. I sat down and looked around. There, before me, I saw the Oregon Motorcycle Manual.

“What luck!” I thought. “Don’t I want to get the motorcycle endorsement for my license?” Indeed, I do. I picked up a copy of the manual and started reading.

Much to my surprise, I found out that you can actually get a motorcycle permit in Oregon. That’s right. If you pass a written test, the DMV will give you a motorcycle instruction permit, just like you might get when you’re learning to drive a car. On a whim, I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I looked at the board — they were only up to 84. I began to read as fast as I could.

Forty-five minutes later, I had skimmed the motorcycle manual twice and could answer the practice questions with ease. When they called number 116, I stepped forward, applied for my replacement license and asked to test for the motorcycle permit.

“You want a motorcycle permit?” the woman asked. She seemed skeptical.

“I do,” I said.

And so I took the test. There were 25 questions. I could miss five. Which I did. But in the end, I passed and was awarded the prize:

The thing is, this permit is nearly useless. All it does is let me ride a motorcycle as long as a licensed motorcyclist is riding near me.

In order to get the actual motorcycle endorsement for my license in Oregon, I need to complete a motorcycle rider education course through the one organization in the state that offers them. Without completing this course, I can’t legally ride a motorcycle by myself.

When I showed the permit to Kim, she was baffled. “But you don’t even know how to ride,” she said.

“I know,” I said. I don’t even know how to turn a motorcycle on. The permit is useless, but it’s fun to have. And one of my goals is to actually be able to ride a motorcycle come spring. This winter, I’ll take the motorcycle rider education course, and when the weather warms, maybe I’ll be buzzing around the backroads of Oregon on two wheels.