Portland

As previously foreshadowed, the idea was placed in his head back in the 90s to eventually move to the Pacific Northwest.  Inception.  But he never pursued that impulse and instead remained settled in the Southeast, first buying a condo and then later a house in Atlanta, and settling into a career serving clients along the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts.

He had started working for a new firm at the beginning of 2007, and one day toward the middle of the year, the owner of the company walked into his office unannounced and made him an offer: they had a large project that needed his help over in Portland, Oregon, and would he be willing to go out there for a couple of months and help out?  He was told that his skill set, such as it was, would make a good addition to the Portland office, and if it all worked out and everyone in the office got along, there was even the potential to permanently relocate out to Portland.

Even though the original vision was to move to somewhere near the Puget Sound in Washington State, in a startlingly short amount of time he found himself over in Portland, living in a Pearl District corporate condominium, working on the large Oregon project, meeting the office's Northwestern clients, and getting along quite well with the staff in Portland.  By the end of the year, an offer was made to relocate to Oregon, and they even offered to let him move to the Seattle office instead, if that was his preference. But by that time, he had already tasted enough of the Portland experience to choose Oregon over Washington.   All he had to do was sell the house in Atlanta.  

All this was just before the 2008 collapse of the real estate market.

In other news, the Toronto band Metric finally released the album Grow Up and Blow Away in 2007  Even though the album had originally been recorded in 2001, it was still one of his favorites of that year.