Back when the schedule first came out, I divvied it up into several Chunks, picking out stretches of games that seemed to have a pattern to them. The fourth chunk has just come to an end, so it's time for a Chunk review, where I note the performance of that section and identify the next Chunk.

First things first: Hello from lovely Portland, Oregon! It's good to be home. I can say no more without going on about it at documentary length. Suffice to say it's been emotionally riveting. Also, if any Bedgers were at The Agency tonight around 5:00 to 6:00, I was the chap at the end of the bar with the Timbers Army scarf and the black shirt with "ODEN" scrawled on it with a bleach pen (drawn in a drunken fit the night of the 2007 draft lottery).

Next, the format of these reviews is gonna change a lot starting now; the first four chunks were long stretches of 6, 8, 11, and 11 games, and the rest of the season is comprised of alternating road trips of 3-5 games and homestands (well, usually stretches with a single road game in the middle of a bunch of home games) of 4-7 games. As such, the chunks are gonna be much less of a journey of the team revealing some level of growth and development, and more just a simple how many games we won and lost, and change in the standings. These reviews will be more frequent, less analytical, more like a balance statement on the account.

Onward! Here's what I had to say in advance of the past month's worth of games:

CREAMPUFF
9 of 11 at home in 30 days
2 home games in 10 days to start

A lot of you called me on the carpet for that CP word, and you all turned out to be correct: This stretch was murderous in the quality of the opponents. Two things made this stretch much harder than I had anticipated: Brandon Roy missed four games (of which we lost two), and Dallas and New Orleans were playing at a much higher level recently than they were for the first month or two of the season. My sense of how tough they'd be to beat was sadly outdated, based on early-season struggles for those two teams which ended weeks ago. Those two teams (like San Antonio) are much tougher now than they were before Thanksgiving, and they got Rose Garden wins to show for their improvement.

So, I expected us to lose 2 or 3 games in this stretch, and we lost four instead. Still, not bad, especially considering that, yes, New Orleans and Dallas are, right now, top-tier (if sub-L[xxx]r) conference rivals, as good as Phoenix and Utah were during the early-season stretch where they went a combined 4-0 against us.

Of course, we did have two extremely killer wins, both in our Royless stretch: The Boston game (less impressive now, in light of Boston's performance lately - they've gone in the opposite direction from Dallas' and New Orleans' improvements lately), and Detroit (who, in contrast, are also much better lately than they were a few weeks ago).

Certainly, viewing this past chunk, you gotta notice less that we played without Roy and won two great games without him but went .500 overall, and pay more attention to the fact that the injury happened, the games were missed, he's back, end of episode. Based on how last night's game went, you know that as of now, this team is in the same state as if the hammy thing never happened. We're rather used to things like Oden's missed season and Martell's aborted comeback, where when a player re-enters the lineup after missing time with an injury, the recovery is still a story. With Brandon, it's not, and it takes a conscious effort to not treat him as a Blazer Returning From An Injury. He's not - he's just Brandon Roy, same as ever.

The rest of my analysis was more focused on how much downtime at home we had; in 30 days, we had 11 games and 4 travel hops (IF one doesn't include the flight to Chicago, which probably happens tomorrow) - that leaves FIFTEEN of the thirty days between December 12 and tomorrow as days off at home. So, I expected the team to go into semi-training camp mode, do a lot of practicing, get healthy, spend some off-court time gelling as teammates, and taking the lessons of the hectically paced first 1 1/2 months and pressing reset, approaching the "January 12 game in Chicago to start that four-game eastern swing" as "a sort of Game 1 for that 46-game sub-season." As far as that goes, I can't really look back at the past month's events and judge how well that's been accomplished; only the performance from here (all season long, not unduly applied to the next few games or anything), and ESPECIALLY our state at season's end going into the playoffs, will tell how wisely we spent this past month as prep for 46 games-plus-playoffs.

Lastly, the whole idiotic Darius thing doesn't enter the picture when I look back at how this past chunk went. Not an aspect AT ALL.

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On to the next chunk (and here's where the shift to shorter chunks, with less to analyze and less development to expect, ensues for the rest of the season):

EASTERN ROAD TRIP
Jan. 12 - @Bulls
14 - @Philly
15 - @NJ
17 @CHA

First of all, these are NOT GOOD TEAMS - New Jersey was apparently a Good Team earlier this season, and Devin Harris is still a flat-out stud, but the impression lately has been that they're not actually "good", they're just surprisingly not actually "bad", or maybe just not AS bad as we thought they'd be. With the current state of the Western Conference, we're not used to the concept of neither-good-nor-bad; we're used to one KILLING team, 8 good teams, and six bad teams, no middle ground. New Jersey is in that middle ground - and the other three teams are BAD.

1) Can we win on the road? We're right back to where we were at the beginning of the second chunk, when I asked in advance, "Did we learn to win on the road?" Well, back then, when we had 7 out of 8 games on the road, we went 4-3 after having gone 0-3 to start the season.  Similarly, at this point we haven't won a road game in over a month, since the December 7 win in Toronto. Of course, we've only PLAYED 3 road games in that stretch, losing them all, but to teams we would be expected to lose to, at least in THEIR cribs (Utah, Denver, and the L[xxx]rs), just like our opening 0-3 road stretch was at the L[xxx]rs, Phoenix, and Utah. And just like then, our ability to (re)learn how to win on the road in the coming stretch presents us with less imposing competition. And speaking of which . . .

2) Can we beat the teams we're supposed to beat? The take-care-of-business look of last night is a good sign. Road issues aside, this road trip is just four sequels to that Pyrite State game. What we did last night, do it again, do it, do it, do it 'til you're satisfied.

As I said, from here, these chunk review/preview posts need to be less analysis and more like an account statement. So, here are some numbers that will be in every chunk review/preview from here on in:

Record at the start of this next chunk: 22-14

Western Conference 2-through-9 standings, in "Team names ( games out of second )" format (I expect this 8-teams/7-playoff-spots situation to last all season long, unless the L[xxx]rs come back to the pack, in which case it just changes to showing 1-through-9 standings):

Spoors, Nougats ( - )
New Orleans ( 1/2 )
Houston ( 1 1/2 )
Portland, Phoenix ( 2 )
Utah, Dallas ( 2 1/2 )

In all chunk review posts to follow, I'll post these data sets from before AND after the just-ended chunk, and compare the change (heck, given the small chunks, I may not do much more than that). Also, I'll throw in a third piece of data:

Combined record of opponents in the upcoming chunk: 65-84 (.436)

See you all with the next Sked Update in a week, on the 18th.

First, the two trivia bits, both regarding the announcers:

1) When Blake stuck yet ANOTHER jumper in the 4th, all I could think was: Do it, Steve. Do it 'til you're satisfied.

2) After LaMardridge's post-game on-court Haarlow talk, the Mikes were commenting on how (overly?) tactful he was in his comments, especially towards Cagey, and Rice alluded to LMA not wanting to rile the Celtics up for a future game, saying something along the lines of, "We won't see them again this season, but of course, we will next season." Well, pardon me, but WE MIGHT SEE THEM AGAIN THIS SEASON. Might wanna amend that to "we probably won't see them again this season." Come on, Rice - one of these teams is expected to be in the finals, and the other team is YOUR TEAM. At least don't go ruling it out so casually. Could happen.THIS season.

--------------

Now on to the more serious stuff:

1) There's a lot of talk here about this win being bigger than the Houston and Phoenix wins. Of greater note is the way this Roy-less win is the perfect complement to those Roy-driven wins. He can carry this team to big wins on his own, AND this team can get big wins without him. This game was the Yin to the Rockets-Suns Yang.

And I'm sure both Roy and the guys on the floor last night feel that; they had to be looking at him with a regard of, "That's what YOU did for US. Now we've returned the favor." And Roy had that satisfied, admiring look of a man repaid in full, carried as he himself has done the carrying.

2) Our season introduction to 6 good teams (L[xxx]rs, Suns, Jazz, Hornets, Celtics, Denver) was a road loss. (Also, one not-so-good team, Golden State.) Now, four of those teams have then made their season Rose Garden debut just to see us return the favor. And this is purely about getting them back when they get to OUR place, rather than winning the second game against a team that beat us the first time (as shown by the follow-up road losses to Phoenix and Utah). I noticed this for the Hornets game going into the Suns game, and I was thinking, yeah, cool, do it again, get the home win against the team whose building you lost in, but I didn't wanna jinx it, so I didn't say nuthin'. And then we took care of that bit of business, then the Denver pair, and now this.

So there's that: We avenge our road losses when those teams come into our house. Golden State is the next shot at this, and you gotta think the boys in red and black will be up for that bit of revenge. And on top of that, consider how a team that engages in this sort of home-payback-for-road-losses is gonna function in the playoffs!

Better, broader point? At this point in the season, here's how the 29 other, lesser NBA teams break down:

• 9 teams we haven't seen yet (mostly BAD TEAMS - Cavs are great, Hawks are good, Nets are an inconsistent enigma,Sixers have the talent to be good, and then it's OKC/Grizz/ChaCha/Pacers/Bucks)
• 5 teams we've got a split going against, 4 of which are what i just mentioned: Teams that had our number in their house, and then we got one back at home. (The other team is Orlando, where the road team won both games.) We're done with two of these teams (Celts and Magic) for the season, and won't see again, finals notwithstanding.
  
• 7 teams we've beaten and haven't beaten us, but we'll see again - we might sweep, we might split, but we won't get swept.
• 3 teams we're done with for the season, and we swept them. Miami, Toronto, and Sacramento, take a bow. We're done witchoo now.
• 5 teams that have beaten us and we haven't beaten, but we'll see again - we have the chance to avoid being swept, but so far, we're winless against them. That's road losses to Utah, the L[xxx]rs, and Pyrite State, and single home losses to the Mavs and Clips.
• ZERO teams that have completed the season sweep of the Blazers. The Celtics were the first team to get a shot at that last night. DENIED!

So there ya go: Of the 20 teams we've faced, 10 of them are winless against us, and the other 10 are evenly split (5 and 5) between teams we've beaten but have also beaten us, and teams we're pulling an ofer against, but still have the opportunity to change (like we've done against the 4 teams we opened with losses to, and avenged those losses). Can we keep it up? 4 avenged, 5 needing vengeance. L[xxx]rs, Jazz, Mavs, Clips, and Warriors.

Small side note: For all 14 teams we haven't beaten (5 we've seen and lost to, 9 we haven't seen), we'll not just see them again; we'll see them multiple times. So it'll be a long time before a team gets another chance to sweep the season series against Portland, like Boston could've done last night. The first two teams to get a chance at it (if they beat us TWICE) are Charlotte (last game against us on January 28) and Golden State (last game against us on February 12) - not likely. Realistically, the first team to get a crack at sweeping us is Dallas, who we visit February 4 and come back to Portland on March 11. It'll be TWO AND A HALF MONTHS before anyone gets a realistic chance at sweeping us; meanwhile, we've already swept 3, are 1 home win away from sweeping 4 eastern teams (the upcoming Pistons game, plus the VERY beatable Knicks, Bulls and Wizards - all ready for the Miami/Toronto treatment) before March 11, and have our final two games apiece against the very sweepable Charlotte and Minnesota: That's a realistic shot at having swept 9 teams before anyone even has the OPPORTUNITY to sweep US.

I guess this calls for a POLL . . .

(Note: This was written after the Sac O' Mentos game, but represents a pre-Sac viewpoint. As such, the lovely results of that beatdown are not considered in the following observations.)

Back when the schedule first came out, I divvied it up into several Chunks, picking out stretches of games that seemed to have a pattern to them. The third chunk has just come to an end, so it's time for a Chunk review, where I note the performance of that section and identify the next Chunk.

This one comes a little differently, as the end of the third chunk is, more largely, the end of a 3-chunk mega-hard opening stretch I called "BRUTAL START: 9 home, 16 road, 7 travel back-to-backs".

FIRST CHUNK:

Oct. 28 - @L[xxx]rs
31 - Spoors
Nov. 1 - @PHX
5 - @Utah
6 - Houston

SECOND CHUNK:

10 - @Magic
12 - @Miami
14 - @ N.O.
15 - @Minny
18 - @GS
19 - Bulls
21 - @Sac
22 - @PHX

THIRD CHUNK (What I'm reviewing most here):

24 - Sac - W
26 - Miami - W
28 - N.O. - W
30 - @Detroit - W
Dec. 2 - @Nix - W
3 - @DC - W
5 - @Celts - L
7 - @TO - W
9 - Magic - L
11 - @Utah - L
12 - Clips - L

Obviously, the 3-game skid at the end colors the story. But overall, here's what I had to say in advance of the third chunk:

1) The task this time isn't further progress, but the avoidance of backsliding.Blazers, just confirm everything you seem to be, but weren't as of November 2. Be competitive against the best (Key games: road games at Detroit, Celtics, Utah), win most of the tossups (at Toronto, home games against Hornets and Magic), and sweep the rest (at DC & Knicks, home for Sac, Heat, and Clips).

2 for three on the first point (beat Detroit, kinda competed at Utah, didn't compete in Boston), totally good on the second point (won 2 of the three), and a Clippers barf shy of fulfilling the third point. Really, mission accomplished overall; don't let the 3-loss clump distract you from the overall pattern.

2) As I alluded to, the chunk AFTER this one is the one I labeled this way:

CREAMPUFF
9 of 11 at home in 30 days
2 home games in 10 days to start

The real danger during this chunk is that we look forward to this soft part of the schedule (especially that "2 home games in 10 days to start") as our BRUTAL START winds to a close: Do we take our eye off the ball near the end? (Key games: The last 3 in 4 days, after the eastern road trip ends.) This is the equivalent of getting outscored massively at the end of the first half, getting caught looking forward to halftime.

NOW we're talkin'! Let me repeat that: Key games: The last 3 in 4 days, after the eastern road trip ends. I called my shot here.

And in the overall 3-chunk BRUTAL START, it's clear that we finally GOT TIRED. Well, of course, and why not? And know this: It ain't gonna get the opportunity to happen again. We will never see as exhausting a schedule as that, let alone for a month-and-a-half stretch.

Between games, we had 3 days off once (with travel), 2 days off twice (both with travel), 1 day off 14 times(11 times with travel), and NO days off (always with travel) seven times.

That's right: Back-to-back home games only 3 times, each time with only a single day off.

And but well then so YEAH, we hit the wall. I can't believe there's any meaningful analysis of what we did wrong in the space of 4 days, where we lost 3 times (twice barely at home). Forget it! The schedule killed us! And we let it affect us for the last 4 days! Nooooooooo BIGGIE. And now it is O-V-E-R. Totally irrelevant to the rest of the season, and to the status of this team as of the morning of December 13. Consider it a who-killed-JR-type dream sequence, mkay? Mkay.

3) Come December 12, how is Martell doing? I expect a return date to be identified by then; dream case scenario, he's back right around then. More likely, we start looking forward to his return.

Eeesh. Not good. We'll be back to this November-24 point sometime around Obama's inauguration. Sorry, Martell. It would've been nice to hit this stretch with your imminent return as part of the scenery. Try again in a month.

4) How's Quality Pie doing? Let's just say things are changing at this end of the wire. My status in relation to both The Bedge and the Blazers is poised to change a heckuvalot (a good-news/bad-news picture if ever there was one); by December 12, I'll probably be more open about that. But not now.

Here. And you can add to that a date: I'll be rolling back into Portland on January 9th.

And I just want to emphasize that the point was NOT intended to be a venting of my troubles, but to say that soon, I'll be posting at the Bedge a lot less, but I will be amongst all you fine, fine Portlanders. See you on the street rather than here.

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THE LOOK AHEAD:

CREAMPUFF
9 of 11 at home in 30 days
2 home games in 10 days to start

Dec. 16 - Sac
18 - PHX
22 - @Denver
23 - Denver
25 - Dallas
27 - TO
30 - Celts
Jan. 2 - N.O.
4 - @L[xxx]rs
7 - Detroit
10 - GS

Look back at my summary of between-game breaks over the first 25 games above. Compare to this. ONE back-to-back with travel, and our opponent will be in the same boat. 30 days, 11 games, 9 at home. I can't even fathom the difference.

Some individual things to look for:

1) ENERGY. With our depth, we outlasted a lot of teams back when our schedule was brutal. Now, with rest and rehab? Now's the time for some serious up-tempo pacing and hard, physical banging. Every opponent we see in this month should be totally gassed by the start of the fourth quarter. Physical AND fast: Learn it, live it, love it.

2) Practice, practice, PRACTICE. With so many days off at home, we should spend some time back in training camp mode, working on things like defensive rotations, more complex offensive sets, emphasis on team play and gelling. By January 11, we should be a smoother, more practiced, more complex team.

2a) There should be some non-basketball downtime at home as well; I hope our Blazers find the time during the holidays to not just get re-acquainted with their homes and families, but get to know each other a bit better as non-basketball friends and family. I want to see Blazers going bowling together, visiting each other's homes for holiday dinners, taking up a whole row at the Laurelhurst Theater to see A Christmas Story or I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Blazer teammates = BFF!

3) DON'T BACKSLIDE. The big danger is that we start getting lazy and/or out of shape. This is kinda an extensio of point 2); Nate needs to keep the team busy and ballin'. But the temptation to get into off-season mode may be there, and maybe just subconsciously, the unthinking reaction to a dramatic drop in physical demands. This is how muscles tighten and sprain.

4) We have some tough games. This time, we can gear up for them very individually, the way a team gears up for a playoff series. Specific games: Phoenix, Boston, L[xxx]rs. I WANT REVENGE. We can be ready for these great teams in a way we couldn't be on October 28, November 1, November 22, and December 5.

Basically, it's time to remake this now learned and experienced team; here's how I put it in a reply-to-a-reply in the original sked post:

That December 12 break, their record should be the worst it’ll be all season.
That “CREAMPUFF” stretch should allow them to recover, adjust, and get calibrated for the more consistent homestand/road-trip schedule pattern of the last 46 games.

That January 12 game in Chicago to start that four-game eastern swing
should be considered a sort of Game 1 for that 46-game sub-season.

That's it, right there. Back to pre-season form, but with experience and a set rotation. Our REAL season starts on January 12, and is only 46 games long. That's the way to get ready for the playoffs. The first 25 games was the Beta prototype of the 08-09 Blazers, and this next chunk is the debugging and improvement. Press reset, and create "08-09 Blazers 2.0".

Last but not least, I'll be coming home at the end of this chunk. Back with the next update from a Portland computer on January 11!

Backstory here. (Most of you have read it, so I'm writing this without really spelling out ANYTHING included therein. If you try to read this post without reading that one first, you're gonna be lostLostLOST, baby.)

---------------------

And so but then well here's what it's come to.  These 5 years have just been awful; the early-'04 onset of the process left me totally off kilter, and the time since then (which I expected to be an adjustment period, whereby I'd become at home in my new surroundings/situation as I felt in my old one) has just been a slow, steady decline in my general state of being - mentally, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, you name it.

In particular, I've grown to truly hate this city. It turns out they call it "Hollywood North", and with good reason - this place is, in every sense, L.A.'s stunt double. As they say, "if you're into that sort of thing, you'll like it", but in Portland, we have a saying: Beat L.A. I don't belong here - never did, and the sense of alienation just gets worse by the month. Steve Francis had it right, I tell ya.

With that has come the opportunity to really appreciate what I had in Portland.  I guess I took it all for granted, but from up here, every little connection to the Rose City just swells my being with pride and longing. And far too often, I've found my self reacting to a PDX reference (an Elliott track playing in a coffee shop, occasional stories in the paper on Portland's urban development model, seeing bands like Menomena and the Jicks swing through town) by tearing up, slumping, and muttering, "I just want to go HOME."

Keeping track of the Portland Trail Blazers has been a regular recurrence of the phenomenon. During the 2004 calendar year when I committed to disrupting my life and leaving Portland, the Blazers' stories were: Zach, Darius and Ratliff got their horrendous extensions; Qyntel's dogfighting connections came to light; Damon was in the post-tinfoil penumbra; Bonzi was coming off of his November '03 finger-and-equipment-tossing incident; Sheed got his ring; and the Rose Garden became property of the creditors in the Bankruptcy filing. And it was January of '05 that Darius went psycho on Cheeks. 

And now look at them! I leave town for a few years, and THIS HAPPENS?!? And I'm supposed to be HAPPY to be gone?

Basically, I just spent 5 years of my life slowly going of the rails, getting progressively more at sea by the week. And recently, it's all come to a head: The school program has run aground, and my marriage has withered and died. I'm officially persona non grata in her life, and as such, no longer have any reason to spend any more time in this cocaine-playboy, lifestyle-industry, Olympics-hungry hellhole that calls itself "The Most Beautiful Place On Earth". Memo to all: There's a difference between a beautiful city, and a city that happened to a beautiful place.

So, yeah - bad news/good news boils down to this:

Bad News: I just wasted a half decade of my life in a bad city, pursuing a doomed love, and fell to pieces doing so.  With nothing to show for any of it, I roll back out of The Lifestyle Capital Of The World in pieces, needing to recreate a life out of nothing.

Good News: I'm finally coming home.

So as pertains to the Blazer's Edge, very soon I will not have a dependable internet at the ready, and will be mostly absent from this fine site. But in the real world, I will be back in the arms of Portlandia, frequenting Stumptown and Citybikes and Trade Up Music and Music Millenium and Hoyt Arboretum and the Horse Brass and Laurelhurst Theater and the Farmer's Markets and the Streetcar. A place where every bar has the Blazers game on, where the beer is good and the pinot is earth, where people are exactly life-sized and have no desire to be any larger, where bike lanes proliferate like mold in basements, where the music is real and real creative, where the Timbers Army defends the soil, where Greg Oden not only stalks the earth but is in the supermarket noticing the eggs are on the bottom of the cart.

Portland, I'm coming home. I'm broken, but I'm coming home.

You may know my schedule analyses, broken down into chunks.

Well, in my latest chunk analysis, I dropped this little tidbit in at the end:

How's Quality Pie doing? Let's just say things are changing at this end of the wire.
My status in relation to both The Bedge and the Blazers is poised to change
a heckuvalot (a good-news/bad-news picture if ever there was one);
by December 12, I'll probably be more open about that. But not now. 

Well now. Much to my surprise, you all sure rose to THAT bait, as evidenced by the responses:

LaMarvelous: I obviously have no idea what you were hinting at near the end of your post but if it means that you will be spending less time here then you will be greatly missed. I hope that what ever it is, that it will be a positive thing for you.

My reply: That depends on the meaning of the word "here". I'll be in one "here" a heck of a lot more, and another "here" a whole lot less.

Then, this:

maid tu rek: i hope your HEAR is with the blazers, but for me, i hope its HEAR with us.

My reply: “with us” depends on whether or not you’re in Portland.

And:

KP Corleone: I'll be interested to see how your status is changing in relation to the Blazers and Bedge . . .
Getting called up to back up Dave and Ben? Getting called up to a role in the organization?
Whatever change is on the horizon, good luck.

My reply:Ohhhhh, no no no, nothing like that.
I'm just an attendee, same as the rest of you/us.

And this weirdness:

everett: Having a baby?

tominhawaii: I think he got a job at 1 center court.

everett: That'd be good too.

Last of all, this exchange that started with the responsible question, and ended with heresyHeresyHERESY:

MavetheGreat: I’m not up to date on your current status with The Bedge and The Blazers in order to identify any change that transpires at your aforementioned time. Can you bring me up to speed?

rmcdougall: I think that right now, he’s just a very interesting poster. He’s just like any of us, but has interesting things to say.

pualo: I'm not sure what his Good News is, but I’m pretty sure the Bad News is that he’s going to become a Laker fan.

I guess THAT (a L[xxx]r fan?!? You have me confused with Marentette. Which would be the very definition of Good News/Bad News if ever I've heard one, I s'pose) is my cue to straighten things out, and "bring you up to speed" with "my current status with The Bedge and The Blazers in order to identify any change that transpires at my aforementioned time."

Awright. You asked for it. Life story time.

• Raised all kama'aina and da kine (ask TiH - and hey, tom, where's the TiH index breakdown for this season?).
  
• Eugene, Oregon, for the '90-'91 school year. Dropped out of UO with 2 1/2 college years and moved back to Hawaii.
  
• Moved to Portland in the lovely autumn of 1993, following the 1993 non-summer which autumn made up for.
  
• Worked restaurants and became KQPW (Keep Quality Pie Weird) in the Sabas/Elliott era in PDX.
  
• Went back to school at PSU to finish the unfinished. Graduated a Viking (like Ime Udoka) at the end of the 2003 summer term.
  
• Celebrated graduation by going to see Radiohead on August 31, 2003. Met a girl. It felt promising/intriguing. Got her phone number.
  
• October 2003: Called her back. Calls and eMails ensued. Things happened.
  
• December: Visited her. Sealed the deal.
  
• Early February 2004: Left Portland to be with her.
  
• Late March 2004: Oh, hey. Did I mention she's in Canada? The bigger Vancouver? So I can't work/live there legally. I Drag my sorry [Bonzi] back down to Portland and try to figure out how to work this.
  
• December 2004: After several more visits, we marry, which allows the process for my moving up there as a permanent resident (by way of spouse of a Canadian citizen) to happen.
  
• August 2005: Canadian Permanent Resident status granted. I move up for good.
  
• So,  moved up here (Oh! Canada) just over 3 years ago, after getting set on doing so 5 years ago, getting married 4 years ago to facilitate it.
  

Been here for 3 years straight, with my aim here for 5 years. It's not been an easy 3/5 years. A few months as a wine shop clerk, a year in a coffee shop at the snooty end of town, a year in a coffee shop in the hipster realm, entered a technical institution's surveying program at summer 2008's start to get on a career track. 

Blazer fan since 1993, when I became a Portland resident until 2005.

Prelude over. Fugue next.