So close to leaving Portland

Having had many flights cancelled and rebooked and cancelled again, then rebooked the Portland airport feels like a bad wine hangover. Like somebody frozen and thawed over and over again. The vacuous parking lots covered in snowy slush and ten foot high piles of snow plow pileup along the runways, suggest an organism scrambling to get it's shit together. But people are relieved, smiling a little and generally feeling like they might just make it out of here. We were in line for over an hour, and a woman fell over. Folks didn't know when they could approach the kiosks and the people behind the counter seemed happy just to avoid being shouted at for the first time in days.

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It's Christmas, and we're ready to board our flight. Being stuck in the house for a few days, with Tiff and my sister, who also has been delayed in returning home, is an opportunity to reflect and remember why I am with Tiff. We get annoyed with one another, yell a little bit, never really feeling mean and in the end it turns out that we still like each other - even when we're trapped in the house for a week.

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We did venture out after our friends lent us some chains for the car. Driving around in the snow is so much fun. It's too bad that Tiffani hates being in the car in the snow, cause I can pull some serious cookies when allowed. We had a nice little gift exchange last night and I received some new clothes. I always get clothes, even when I want motorcycles and bike parts and video games. . . I do like the clothes.

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2008 was a good year, my Mom beat Cancer. I started at PSU and passed a very difficult Japanese class. Tiffani has been very fit and happy, and I avoided death on the Hawthorne Bridge.

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It's snowing a lot right now, and everybody is sort of staring out the windows of the airport at the flakes with a laser glare. Maybe if we all hate those flakes enough, they'll melt and we'll make it out of here.