We made it to Seaside and killed time before checking into our cabin by visiting the beach. It was a good beach day.
The tide was coming in, and we watched this crab deal with the back and forth of the water.
Then we played Clank!, Matt’s new deck building game.
Since we were headed to Seaside for our vacation, we planned to hike to the top of Saddle Mountain. We did this hike early in the relationship. Maybe year three? For me, this was a good reminder at how different one’s fitness level can become in a decade, plus a few years.
In our previous hike, we got to the trail early. So early that we took some naked hiking pictures, because there were no people around. At various times on our hike today, one or the other of us would say, “I think this is maybe where we took the naked hiking pictures?” This was one of my guesses. I’m not entirely sure where the naked hiking pictures are right now, so I can’t check to see if I was right.
Someone is committed to keeping this picnic bench in this location. Matt stands on the precipice.
From the top! There were a ton of bugs at the top. They were flying into our mouths as we were trying to take this picture. That’s the ocean behind us, on the horizon.
Along with our fellow hikers, we retreated to a non-bug area below the top. There we rested, and took this self-portrait. It was windy.
Matt wandered out to the precipice area and grabbed this photo.
After hiking back down, we ate the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever made. There’s something to be said for one’s appetite after such physical exertion.
Here’s a great example of interesting characters who come together to form an incredibly uninteresting movie. The acting was good, but the plot meandered, and I was bored. I’m also uncertain as to why we needed the 1990s setting, though that time period was nicely recreated.
Cost: $3.00
Where watched: Laurelhurst with S. North.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/landline.html
Back in 2003-2004, I borrowed $31,064.02 to attend graduate school. This was okay at the time, as I was following the conventional wisdom to not borrow for education more than your first year’s salary. The amount listed above was just under what my starting salary as a first-year teacher would have been.
But I didn’t get hired. I also didn’t substitute teach, which is the quickest path to becoming a teacher, outside of a weak job market (it wasn’t) and outright nepotism (I didn’t know anybody.)
Instead, I got a job as a secretary, which paid much less than that first-year teacher salary. My Secretary I job brought in a paltry $9.10 an hour. There is a lot to be said about why I made this decision, but that is not the focus of this essay. The consequence of my decision was that I signed up for the 20-year graduated repayment plan instead of the 10-year one. This means my expected payoff was scheduled for June 14, 2024.
In hindsight, when I switched jobs after a year an a half and got an $8000/year raise, I should have switched payment plans to the 10-year plan. But I did not. For many years, I trundled along paying just my monthly payment. Only since I’ve begun my new job have I been making extra payments.
As mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot of Mr. Money Mustache. Yesterday, I encountered his post News Flash: Your Debt is an Emergency. This was the second time I’ve read this post, as it is also part of Start Here: Getting Rich from Zero to Hero in one Post. When I read the debt emergency post the first time, I nodded. Yesterday, when I re-read it, plus the linked post about the guy who paid off $90,000 of student debt in 10 months, something clicked and I’ve been reborn.
I’m putting all hands on deck to get rid of this debt.
My current balance as of today stands at $13,441.22. My current budget allows for my regular scheduled payment of $189.37, plus an extra payment of $180.00. My goal is to scrape off wherever I can to add to that extra payment.
I’m not going to go to the extreme measures the $90,000/10 months guy did. But I’m going to massively economize.
From now until this debt is paid off, I will report the following by the fifth of the month:
What I paid toward the loan the previous month
How much I paid toward the principal and how much toward the interest.*
Where the money for my extra payments came from.
A list of what I didn’t buy in order to put more money toward this project.**
Any roadblocks I’m having toward this goal.***
To get us started, here’s a quick Excel graph of my progress over 13 years.
*Here’s something I’ve already learned in the 25 minutes I’ve been doing this project: my extra payments aren’t going to the principal only. I will make it a priority to find out if I can change that.
**This is something the $90k/10mo guy did, and I like the idea.
***Right now one major road block I have is the number of friendships centered around socializing while purchasing food/drink. More on that later.
I’ve shared the train car with these two several times this summer. I’m guessing they are sisters, or good friends headed in the same direction. They spend their time reading together, which I find sweet.
It’s wildfire season. It makes for some smokey mornings.
And here’s where I should have kept to what I had planned. 
Instead of following the Oregon Bikeways path between Salem and Champoeg, we made the mistake of using Waze. Waze kept wanting to put us on the freeway. Unfortunately, every entrance to the freeway had very long backups. We would wait for a while and then Waze would re-route us further south, to wait in another long line for the freeway. We did this four times, never actually reaching the freeway, before I called, “Uncle,” we stopped at a truck stop to have a mediocre meal, and I took over the navigating.
This man was walking faster than cars were moving.
There was a lot of this:
I didn’t keep track of what time we left Salem, probably 1:15-1:30 pm. After the truck stop, I used Google Maps and chased the roads that were green. It meant we went out of our way, but at least we were moving. Once we got far enough north on back roads, we easily popped onto the interstate and had a quick trip home. But overall? Probably five hours in the car. It took us an hour to get there.
Still totally worth it.
After the eclipse, I stood in line to have the letters and postcards cancelled, and then we took a self-guided tour of the capitol.
Here’s Matt, sitting at the governor’s desk.
And now let’s see Matt as the governors. As Theodore T. Greer:
As Julius Meier: (note that after that first picture, I neglected to take photos of the name plates, and there is not a convenient State Capitol Virtual Tour of all the portraits. So I’m matching faces to Wikipedia entries, especially for the pre-1960’s governors. Feel free to suggest corrections.)
As Oswald West:
As Vic Atiyeh: 
As Ted Kulongoski:
As John Kitzhaber:
As Tom McCall:
As Barbara Roberts:
As Bob Straub:
And also as the dog:
I was quite taken by this very large mural of a good lookin’ shirtless guy. Who was that guy? Why did a shirtless worker make the cut for official statehouse murals? 
Here’s what time we arrived in Salem. We left at 3:30. There was traffic all the way, but not significant slowing. Mostly my driving was in the 50 mph range.
In all my planning, I forgot to think about parking. Happily, we grabbed the last space in front of the State Library, paid for a full day of parking, and headed out to the capitol grounds. There we set up our space. There was one other group on the lawn when we arrived–it turns out we were there before the park opened. That was probably why all the other people were still hanging out at their cars. Then we both fell asleep.
Time stamp: 5:52 am
Matt’s sleeping setup.
Here we are more awake. 6:27am.
I made breakfast pizza for our trip. Breakfast pizza was AMAZING! Thanks, Cooks Illustrated for creating such a delightful concoction of ingredients.
My work-mate mentioned that there would be a special postage cancellation at the capitol, so soon after the 8 am capitol opening time, I went in search of it. This is Helen, who not only works at the post office, but also designed the special cancellation. I bought commemorative envelopes from the gift shop and a sheet of eclipse stamps, plus some postcards and headed back outside to do some on-site corresponding. (Sadly, I took pictures of none of this, not the many postcards, or the special envelopes, or the special cancellation.) You can do a Google Image search though, which is more fun, because you get to see cancellations from across the country.
Look at these amazing stamps! They change color when you apply heat!
I also couldn’t resist the pressed penny machine.
Here we are in our glasses. 9:09 am. The eclipse has begun! When you put on those glasses, everything went black, except the sun. Hence the not-great framing. Notice how many more people are around us. They kept coming.
These two were among my favorite of our neighbors. While most people, myself included, would put on the glasses and then take them off, look around, do other stuff (write letters, postcards) and then check back in with how the eclipse was going, these two put on their glasses and kept them on.
The stamps in the sun!
Our nearest eclipse neighbor to the left. He had a lot of cameras going. There were a lot of cameras in general. The fountain in the background came on early in the morning. Overheard: “I work at the capitol, and that fountain is never on!” 
My favorite young viewer.
Improvising filters for the phone cameras. 10:03am.
And then it got colder and colder. I put my sweater back on. And then it was dark. Total eclipse. These are photos I took on my normal camera on the auto setting with no filter. I zoomed and pushed the shutter button. I’m thrilled they came out so well. 10:18 am.
The cold was surprising to me. Also surprising was how it didn’t really get dark. This is mid-eclipse. It was more of a dusk, than of a midnight thing. 
Back to the sun/moon thing.
What it looked like without zooming.
So many cameras!
I think this one is my favorite.
Totality is over. Seeing the huge difference between 99% and 100%, I was very glad we made the journey.
Time stamp: 10:29 am. I was very surprised how soon after totality people packed up and left. There was still another hour of eclipse. Ten minutes prior, this was full of people. My work colleague was among the early leavers. It took her only two hours to get home. This was a far shorter trip than we had. 
Some eclipse supplies.
Heist movies, I like them. Channing Tatum, I’m a fan. This was 118 minutes of fun for me.
Cost: $8.00 (big spender, due to CT)*
Where watched: St. John’s Twin Cinema with Matt, who also enjoyed.
*After coming back from vacation, I discovered I had free admission for two to this movie. I had won a promo. Alas, the movie had already been seen, and I was too busy to see it again.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2015/trainwreck_ver2.html
“How big is that car?” Asked someone from the IMP peanut gallery. Fair question.
Here’s a trivia item from IMDB.
The film was distributed by cutting out studios, in order to have creative control and make money directly from the film itself. Accordingly, for this atypical distribution, Steven Soderbergh raised the budget by selling off foreign distribution rights, and then sold everything except the movie showing up in a movie theater in order to pay for advertising and prints of the movie (for example, selling post-theatrical rights to the likes of HBO, Netflix, Video-On-Demand, television, and airplanes). By following these two steps, Soderbergh was able to sidestep a Hollywood studio, and had creative control the entire time (for instance, the trailers that dropped earlier this summer were by his design, as was the poster and the entire marketing plan). Also, according to Soderbergh, under this set-up, the box-office bar for success is lower. With nearly everything prepaid, and no hefty distributor fees coming off the top, even a modest fifteen million dollar opening would be a win.
