Vox sports an amusing feature called the QotD. Today’s was interesting enough that I’ve decided to cross-post my answer here, because not all of my loyal readership is likely to go over there and read the corresponding entry…

How many places have you lived in your life?

You’re kidding, right? Let’s see if I can remember them all:

• Ketchikan, AK (first three months of my life).
• New York City, NY (two apartments over the course of six years).
• Portland, OR (stayed with grandparents for a while).
• Vancouver, WA (two apartments over the course of about a year).
• Brewster, WA (grandparents’ place again… same grandparents, that is… then about five different house-like places in and around town over the course of one-and-a-half of Mom’s subsequent marriages).
• Bridgeport, WA (along the Bridgeport Bar, actually).
• Soap Lake, WA (during the stretch when Mom dumped us off for a few months with an elderly couple we knew from church).
• Back to Brewster, WA (just one place, still along the Bar, but going to school in Brewster instead of Bridgeport).
• Salem, OR (staying with aunt & her girlfriends, then two different apartments once Mom got out of rehab, for a total of three homes… within just three months).
• Back to Brewster, WA (yet again, and back to the same place as before, so maybe that doesn’t count).
• Hillsboro, OR (with a brief layover at some guy’s house, for a total of two places, one of which is mere blocks from where I now work!).
• Kent, WA (an apartment w/ the aforementioned guy, now stepdad #3).
• Bellevue, WA (one house, amen).
• Des Moines, WA (on a boat, no less, for part of the summer).
• Anacortes, WA (same boat, new location, for the remains of the summer).
• Concrete, WA (first living in tents at a campground site up in the hills, then crammed into a tiny hotel room, then finally in our house!).
• Back to Portland, OR (two apartments in the same building with my father, then living with my wife and her family in their house, then rooming with a friend in a house off of NE 82nd, then back to the wife’s family in a different house, then rooming with another friend in a house off SE Foster, then an apartment along SE Powell, then the house near SE Holgate where I lived in one place longer than anywhere else in my entire life, and… finally, my current residence near NE Broadway).

So, what does that all add up to? Thirty-seven “homes” in thirty-four years? That sounds about right. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that I hate moving…

I seem to remember telling myself that I’d get back to writing here more often. What happened to that? Maybe when I’m a bit less frenzied in my day-to-day life, I suppose.

My life at the moment, in a short paragraph: Work is going well, in some ways better than I had any reasonable expectation of it going. The kids are awesome, which is nothing new but is always worth mentioning. I don’t get to spend as much time with friends and loved ones as I’d like. I need to focus on getting my finances back in order and re-learning good habits. I think I’ve made progress on my eating habits… small progress, but I’m not knocking it baby.

Oh, and: This Fox 12 WeatherBlog posting made me think: How neat would it be to spend a night or two in a fire lookout? Then again, I imagine those things are raised high above the ground, so that probably wouldn’t work for me. (I couldn’t manage the Astoria Column, and that staircase was entirely walled in!)

Anyway, good night, all, and may the gods watch over you. I’ll try not to be such a stranger.

There are two amusing things about Alex’s birthday today.

The first is that everyone I work with insists that I’m too young to have teenaged children. Well, obviously that isn’t true, now is it? So we started early. So what? It just means we’ll have lots of time and energy to enjoy life after the kids are adults. (Let’s not think about “the g word,” though. Nuh-uh.)

The second is Alex himself. He’s a funny kid, and I don’t mean that in the snarky way. The boy has a genuinely keen sense of humor, so I decided to further his comedic education this year: I bought him the boxed set of Marx Brothers movies, featuring all five films that included all four brothers. This evening we watched Duck Soup (his choice), and I think Alex liked it. I picked Cocoanuts as the follow-up. Apparently restoration can only accomplish so much with such an old gem; the audio was as washed-out as I remember it. Such is life, I suppose.

Now I just need to figure out what I’m getting my daughter for her impending official entry into teenagerhood…