I see the light! For hours.

When we decided to move 900 miles north, it didn’t really occur to me what that might mean. For instance, it still surprises me that the flight from Portland to Oakland is nearly two hours long. I keep thinking it’s a really short flight, that the flight attendants will barely have enough time to serve drinks. Instead, I almost always have time to finish all four Sudokus in the in-flight magazine as well as get a refill on my Diet Coke.

The other aspect of living well north of the 45th Parallel (there’s a sign on I-5 near Salem) is the sunlight. This time of year, our internal clocks get totally messed up. According to our occasionally trusty weather guy (not brother Matt), our longest day is 15 hours and 40 minutes of sunlight – a day we are fast approaching. This has become obvious because:

• Our neighbors’ solar powered driveway lights are currently incredibly bright at midnight. Their overcharged driveway looks like an airport runway. During the winter, only one or two of the several dozen lights pathetically flicker at the height of darkness, starved -- much like the rest of us -- of any hint of solar.

• The newspaper delivery lady doesn’t need to use her headlights when she comes up our driveway at 4:15am (did I mention I have insomnia?). In fact, I could grab the paper as soon as it arrives and read it out on the patio without turning on any lights.

• Our night stands, as well as our guest room, now come fully equipped with sleep masks.

• We keep finding ourselves scrounging for dinner around 9:00pm because the sun is finally sort of setting and we haven’t looked at a clock in hours. This is especially problematic since we’re not much into cooking and most of the restaurants in town are closed by 9:00. Tonight Rob grilled us up some hot dogs at about 9:30.

• Neighbors come home from work, eat dinner, and still have time to mow 2.5 acres.

• I keep having to advance the “On” time on the timer for our entry way lamp. It is currently set for 8:45pm but I’m probably wasting the light bulb.

• Ads for the upcoming 4th of July extravaganza say fireworks will start at about 10:15pm. When we lived near San Francisco, our hot chocolate was long gone and we were back home warming ourselves by the fire by 10:15.

Although we only considered it for a brief time (it didn’t make the second cut on our “Where to Live” spreadsheet), I’m relieved we didn’t end up moving to Alaska. I can only imagine the insanity and hunger up there this time of year. Although I bet all the yards look fantastic.