Seattle had a sad sports year. Mike Holmgren finished his 10 season tenure with the Seahawks, finishing just 4-12, one of the worst teams in the league. The Mariners only won 61 games compared to 101 losses. The Washington Huskies did not win a single college football game, while the Washington State Cougars went 2-11. And, the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City after 41 years of being in Seattle. This article on ESPN.com sums up everything pretty well. It's too bad all our sports teams had to be so crappy our first year here.

Seeing as how we've taken quite a few pictures over the past few months, we decided to put together a 2009 calendar. We made one for ourselves and sold a few online. Calendars are still available if anyone wants to order one. Visit our calendar page to view the pictures and place an order.

Here's a few pictures from our Christmas trip. It was fun making Christmas cookies with my Mom and sister. Seeing all the family on Christmas Eve was nice too. We also went to a Stars game on Saturday night against the Ducks. I probably won't get many more chances to see Mike Modano score a goal, so I'm glad he scored the game-winning goal in OT when we were there.

One thing I really noticed on our Christmas trip to Texas is how fast everyone drives. The speed limit on most freeways is 60, but most drivers were doing 70 or faster. People tailgate all the time and cut you off. I like to complain about how people here drive so slow, but I guess it's better than driving insanely like they do in Texas and feeling like your life is at risk. I wish these places weren't so extreme, somewhere in the middle would be nice.

When we left Seattle, Lesley thought that our suitcase was over 50 pounds, which I was told is the weight limit above which the airlines assess extra fees. We emptied out a few things to make sure we could bring it without having to pay extra (in addition to the $15 bag fee). It turned out to be 36 pounds with everyone's gifts included. However, with all of our return gifts (which included several books), it was exactly 50 pounds. So, I'm glad we left the hair drier at home.

It was snowy and in the 20's when we left Seattle. It was in the 30's when we arrived. On Friday it was 83ºF in Fort Worth.

We definitely did notice differences in the air, aside from temperature. We kept shocking each other with static electricity, and there was a lot of dust in the air, in addition to allergens that bothered Lesley throughout the trip.

Prior to our trip, we spent hours planning a schedule of who we would see and when in order to figure out when we'd be able to do the things we wanted and see the people we wanted and to help us spend a fair amount of time with both sets of our parents. It didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, since some people who we had hoped to see were at work during the day on Monday and Tuesday. Still, we were able to see everyone and eat and do everything we'd wanted to. We ended up seeing both sets of our parents equally and for about 4 hours more than we'd planned.

We were able to spend the night with several different people, which was nice because we didn't get tired of any one person and we were able to spend more time with some people, like our grandmothers and Lesley's sister. We were able to leave our suitcase at Lesley's parents' house and just brought our backpack and duffel bag with us each night. It wasn't bad, but became a little bit of a hassle.

We especially enjoyed eating out at various places and spending quality time with our family and friends. Lesley's parents took us out to a hockey game. We looked at Christmas lights in Dallas with my parents. We went with our friends to see a Beatles cover band perform.

It was great to see everyone again and do some fun things. We don't have any immediate plans to come back, so I'm glad we were able to do so much this week.

We just got back to our apartment after spending the last week in Fort Worth. After a delayed outgoing flight, there were no problems with our flight this morning, aside from the fact we had to wake up at 5:10 (3:10 pacific time) to get to the airport. It was a busy week with a lot of driving around and seeing different people, so we're both very glad to be back home where we can stay in one place and relax. At least until we have to go back to work tomorrow.

We've been in Fort Worth for three full days and we have three full days left. It's been nice to see everyone again. It seems like we haven't been gone long and not much has changed, but it doesn't feel like home anymore. It was exciting to see everyone at first, but now it's almost routine again. The first day seemed the slowest and since then, the days have gone by faster. It's fun to do things with our families that we have always enjoyed and I'm looking forward to the things we have planned for our last few days, which will pass quickly.

Here's a short video of the snow falling the evening before my birthday. It fell pretty heavily for quite a while.

The roads were pretty bad before we left and with the snow that Seattle continues to get the roads are probably still pretty bad, especially since the city doesn't use salt to melt the ice:

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."

I'm sensitive to environmental issues, but at the same time, it sure was a pain that the roads were so impassible. Anyway, it's just kind of interesting that the city doesn't use salt even though it would surely help a lot.

Macy's downtown has a neat winter train display that we videoed. Here's a clip:



Sorry for the low video quality.

Another reason I'm glad we're not in Seattle now is because our neighborhood was hit with another power outage. I don't think we have anything critical in the fridge, but apparently Seattle is still dealing with some winter weather that I'm happy to be avoiding.

Before we checked out of our hotel, yesterday, I was notified that our flight was delayed from 1:20 to 2:15. Then, shortly after that, we found out that it was delayed to 2:40. After seeing that several other flights were canceled, I'm glad it was just a delay rather than a cancellation. Due to the holiday travel and the delays, we expected the lines at the airport to be incredibly long, so we left the hotel around 11 for our 2:40 flight. Checking in, dropping off our luggage, and going through security took less than 30 minutes, though, I was impressed. So, then, we had a long wait in the terminal.

We ate lunch at the airport and watched a plane at our gate. It left once and returned to be de-iced again. I think it left and came back again, too, but it finally left. We heard several cancellations announced, including all of Alaska's and Jet Blue's flights, but fortunately our flight wasn't canceled or delayed further. I consider ourselves very lucky that we were able to leave. After some anxiety about the weather and wondering whether we'd get to leave, it felt great to get off the ground.

My parents picked us up from the airport and I was very happy to see them again. It's nice to talk on the phone with them, but it's no substitute for being in person. And I got to ride in their new Prius. Lesley and I had some food to eat with my mom and then we chatted in the living room. We got to bed a little late, and I had forgotten how tiny my old bedroom is, but I was happy to be visiting my parents' house again.

I had to adjust to this job for the first few months that I worked here. I didn't know anyone and was mostly just assigned individual tasks to work on rather than being given the opportunity to take ownership of things and work with others to get things done, like I had at my previous job. However, I would say that phase has ended and I've involved myself more and things are going better.

Again, my position is new and not pre-defined so what I do will evolve over time as I find the best things for me to work on. A few weeks ago I was mostly doing web development for a particular project. That project has slowed down lately and I've been doing a lot of work for another project, which involves upgrading the lighting controls for a customer in order to help them turn their lights off when they're not needed in order to save electricity. I've been communicating with the customer, answering questions from the electrician, and identifying and requesting the data that we'll need to have provided for the interface that I've also been developing. I've also been working on helping our group coordinate better and protect and prepare ourselves better by developing standards and backing up some of our project data.

What's been most interesting to me as I've adjusted to this job is how much my previous job has influenced me and helped me here. The familiarity I gained with information technology at my last job has helped, but what I've really noticed is how my last job taught me to be assertive and take initiative. I've been given almost nothing to do here and almost everything I'm doing is because I've looked for it and started to do it. The lessons from my last job are what have really helped me to find things to do here and just start doing them. I think if I came straight to this job right after college, it would be totally different for me than it is now and I wouldn't be doing nearly as much.

I think it was good for me to leave my last job to come here, though, because as I've said before, this job and this company, especially, fit me a lot better than my old job, and I'm optimistic about the opportunities I'll have here. Right now, I think everyone's happy with what I'm doing, including me.

Our flight was scheduled to leave today at 1:20, but has been delayed until 2:40 due to high cross winds. Lots of other flights have been delayed and even canceled. I don't know what we'd do if our flight were canceled. We've heard on the news that lots of people are stuck at the airport and won't be able to get on another flight until Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully our flight will take off at 2:40 with no problems. We'll leave the hotel soon to take the shuttle to the airport and wait there for 3 hours until our flight. Hopefully security won't be too bad...

With more snow on the way, we decided to stay in a hotel tonight. We finished packing and getting everything together and left the apartment around 2:45 to catch the bus. It was very cold outside and started snowing more while we were waiting. We had to wait about 30 minutes because the bus was late. I was beginning to wonder if it would even show up. It was almost empty when we got on, but got really crowded by the time we went through downtown. A bunch of other people were also going to the airport and so all of us had our bags and suitcases in the isles. There wasn't much room on the bus at all. It seemed to be snowing pretty heavily, so I'm kind of surprised the bus was able to make it all the way to the airport with the snow and bad roads. We finally arrived at the airport around 4:20 and then we waited for a while to catch the shuttle to the hotel.

We finally arrived at the hotel after 5 and found an illegal, but very choppy, feed of the Cowboys-Ravens game to watch. We walked in the snow to get some food from Taco Bell and then finished watching the game.

We're really glad we got down here today instead of waiting until tomorrow. We'll probably leave pretty early in the morning just in case the security lines are long. I'm already not very fond of this holiday travel in the winter. So far it's been a big hassle.

It was really snowy the past 3 days here in Seattle. Here are some pictures of the beautiful snow everywhere:



We also took some video, but who knows when and if we'll post it.

The snow stopped falling yesterday and was compacted by feet and tires turning it into ice this morning. I wasn't sure whether I'd go into the office today and after seeing the buses running way behind this morning and hearing that all the school districts were closed, I decided to work from home today. I walked with Lesley to work and it was a little slippery, but not unsafe. It was nice working from home again.

However, another storm is expected Saturday night and Sunday. Considering how the recent storm caused 100 bus lines to be canceled, we didn't want to be stranded away from the airport for our flight on Sunday. So, we decided to stay at a hotel room near the airport on Saturday night. This is a slow time for hotels but the one we chose was almost full for some reason. So, anyway, now we should be able to make it to the airport in plenty of time and hopefully the flight won't be delayed.

I was awoken in the middle of the night Wednesday night by thundersnow. It's not very common here, but neither is regular thunder and lighting with rain.

It snowed basically all day. Since the roads weren't getting any better and people were leaving, I figured it'd be in my best interest to leave work early rather than wait until the end of the day when the buses might have a harder time getting around. Around 1:00, a lot of the bus routes on steep hills were closed. I checked online and it looked like the buses that go by work were all running 30 minutes late and that one of them was about to show up. So, I left work and walked through the snow to the bus stop. There weren't many cars out and there was a lot of snow on the ground. Like 4 or 5 inches, maybe, except for on the roads.

After about 10 minutes of waiting at the stop with a couple other people, a bus went by, but it was going back to the base and didn't pick us up. After about 10 more minutes another bus came by that said it was going to the terminal, but it stopped and picked us up. I didn't know where it was going exactly, but knew it would take me closer to where I needed to be. There was a Metro Transit driver on the bus (in addition to the one driving the bus). He said that his tire chains broke off and wrapped around the axle so his bus got stuck. I'd heard stories of buses jackknifing and sliding down hills, so I'm glad where we live is relatively flat.

It actually worked out really well because the bus I was on took me downtown and it got right behind the 70 bus, which goes right by our apartment. I was able to transfer to it and make it home without having to walk far.

I got home less than 5 minutes after Lesley did, because she left work at 2:00 and took the streetcar home. I had to do some work from home this afternoon, but I'm glad I made it home without too much trouble. It took me maybe an hour and 10 minutes, including the time I waited for the bus. Unless the roads get significantly better somehow, I don't think I'll try to make it in to work tomorrow, which is fine with me because I have some experience working from home.

I was at work the other day and someone mentioned getting some Frango. I had no idea what they were talking about. Apparently it's a brand of chocolate that Macy's sells in the Pacific Northwest states. It was first made in 1918 by Seattle's Frederick & Nelson department store. Apparently people go crazy about them here, so I tried some of the chocolate at work and it was really smooth and tasted good. They come in all kinds of flavors too, like dark, mint, toffee, coconut, and raspberry to name a few. It's fun to learn all these things that only locals know.

I'm at work right now and it's been snowing all day and it's still snowing. 3" of snow has fallen in downtown Seattle and there's more than that here. Supposedly snowfall like this isn't common. The buses are still running, supposedly, but they're so behind schedule that they're not tracked. The buses are having a lot of problems going up and down hills but fortunately my way home is very flat. I hope they're still running (and running frequently enough) when I'm ready to leave.

If I didn't take the bus to work, I wouldn't have been able to show up today. The roads are covered with snow, so it's impressive that the buses were mostly running. They were all running late, though, as you can see below.

I didn't think it would actually happen, but it snowed overnight and we have 2-3 inches of snow everywhere. It's still snowing too. I made it to work fine and walked on all the crunchy snow. Troy is going to ride his usual bus to work. The buses have chains on them, so it should be fine. I don't think it normally snows this much in Seattle proper, so this is really cool. I wish I didn't have to work so I could take pictures and video of it. It's a winter wonderland here in Seattle!

We're leaving Sunday to visit our family and friends in Fort Worth, Texas. It's been about 4 months since the last time I was there but it feels like longer to me. I'm looking forward to being back with family and seeing friends, though I'm dreading the holiday travel aspect of it. We'll arrive on Sunday and leave the following Sunday, so we'll be there for a while, though I'm sure it will pass quickly. We're planning to spend the rest of this week wrapping presents, eating our perishable food, and packing.

We've had many cold days since we moved into our apartment. But during all of those times, the temperature was comfortable. But, finally, after many months of not having to use our heater, we had to turn it on Monday night. We've had the coldest weather since we moved in and it was finally cold enough to remove enough warmth from our unit and make it uncomfortable.

It was kind of fun to finally get to turn the heater on. The thermostat to turn it on isn't accurate, though, since we had to turn it up above 75 ºF to get it to turn on, even though it was below 70 ºF in the room. We're only using the heater in the bedroom (we have two) because we put a bookcase in front of the heater in the living room. Anyway, hopefully it will be warmer when we get back from Texas.

We were supposed to find out this week if we were awarded any tickets to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Unfortunately, the notification has been delayed because CoSport has been allocated additional tickets to distribute to countries other than Canada, which includes us. So they're going to run another lottery process in order to allocate the extra tickets to everyone who requested them. So, I guess it's a good thing that we now have a higher chance of getting the tickets we requested, but it sucks having to wait until the week of January 5, 2009 to find out.

It snowed Saturday evening for several hours. There wasn't much accumulation, but some of it stuck. It stayed below freezing on Sunday so by now the snow that's still there has turned into ice. Most of the roads are fine, but there are some patches of ice on some roads. I thought about driving to work Monday, but wasn't comfortable with the road conditions. I took the bus instead, which has tire chains on it, and found more snow on the ground near work than near our apartment. The sidewalks were a little slippery but I made it in okay. It's supposed to snow more on Wednesday and not get above freezing until Friday. I'll probably take the bus every day for the rest of the week and we might not do any more driving until we leave this weekend.

I've been wanting to watch Frasier since we moved here and so we recently rented the first disc for Season 1 and Season 8 for our last two Netflix rentals. I liked it when it was originally on the air, but didn't really ever watch it religiously. I was also a little young for it when it was in it's prime.

The show is set in Seattle of course, and it's really neat watching the show and hearing them mention other cities and places around here. I like the title screen where they show the Seattle skyline, sometimes with an elevator going up in the Space Needle, fireworks, or a helicopter hovering over the city.

It's been fun watching some of it recently and I especially like the end credit song: "but I don't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs... they're calling again... goodnight Seattle, we love you!" I wouldn't mind owning it on DVD someday.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, either by phone, card, email, or Facebook and thanks for the gifts, too.

We spread my birthday out over both days of the weekend and Lesley basically let me do whatever I wanted. I mostly wanted to do stuff that I like doing that I don't normally get to do. We walked to a couple art galleries on Saturday afternoon. It was a little windy and cold, but I enjoyed the walk. We went to the Photographic Center Northwest, which I'd been to before and enjoyed, but I didn't like it as much this time. I'd also heard a lot about the Frye Art Museum, which was definitely worth visiting, but I was a little underwhelmed.

Lesley had been asking me for weeks where I wanted to eat dinner and I couldn't figure that out. There were a few places that sounded decent, but I decided to go to a place with live music, because we rarely do that. We made our reservation for before 7 to save money on the cover charge and the jazz didn't start until 8. We were the first ones in the restaurant, which served Mediterranean and Italian foods. We started with some baked feta cheese with pita bread, which was very good. Lesley got a gyro and I got moussaka, which I'd never had before. Mine was okay, but Lesley's gyro was really good (I got to eat the leftovers for lunch). Before the band came out, it started snowing outside. The band had a vibraphonist, pianist, double bassist, and drummer. They were all very good musicians, but it wasn't really my favorite kind of jazz. Still, I enjoyed it. We stuck around for a couple hours of music and when we left it was still snowing. We took the streetcar most of the way home (it's free this month because of its 1 year anniversary). When we got home, I got to eat some of the super-delicious, sweet, moist, tasty yellow cake that Lesley made for me that morning.

On Sunday, my actual birthday, we weren't sure if we'd go to church because of the snow on the ground, but we made it there without any problems. After church, we had a quick lunch (with cake) and Lesley gave me a new wallet, which I kind of needed. Then we took the bus out to the U-District to see an independent movie. We saw Happy-Go-Lucky, which was pretty good. After that we ordered some pizza and watched the football game between the Cowboys and Giants. The outcome of that game was very satisfying, but not enough to overshadow the rest of the weekend, which was very good.

I've never had much of a Texas accent. For a long time I tried to hide what accent I had so that people wouldn't think differently about me because I had one. Sometimes it surprises people to hear that I'm from Texas and not hear an accent. I guess they think that everyone from Texas talks like a Texan. I do have a slight accent, I think I just hide it more in a work environment. I don't say "y'all" very much, but I've said it a few times recently. Nobody has seemed to notice, but it seems like the kind of thing that people wouldn't expect. I don't know what I've gained by losing my accent. I think people like accents. So, I might start letting my accent out a little bit more, I don't know, I'm just still not sure how I feel about it.

This past Friday night we went to my company Christmas party at a nice hotel in downtown. Almost 60 people were there, half of which were all my co-workers. It started at 6 with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. All the food and drinks were free, which was really nice. They had carolers and a small band playing all night too.

Dinner was served around 7:15, and included 4 courses of food from the local restaurant Lola. There was a winter salad served with apples and nuts, then a fried cod with leek course. After that was medium cooked steak strips with kelp and potatoes and cranberries. Everyone seemed to be complaining about the undercooked steak, but it looked fine to me. Then they brought out dessert and everyone received a small portion of crème brûlée, a coconut pie bite, and a tiny rich chocolate cupcake.

It was all very good and we both had a good time talking to my co-workers and enjoying the nice atmosphere. Parking was also free, so that was nice to do instead of walking in the freezing cold and wind.

Today is Troy's 25th birthday! Happy Birthday to Troy! Now I can give him crap about being a quarter of a century old! And he can finally find out what I got him for his birthday.

For most of my life, I barely knew that snow tires existed. They weren't something you ever heard of in Texas. However, I have been hearing them lately. They make a much different, louder sound than regular tires, kind of like the sound of driving on gravel. There hasn't been any snow in the city, but the mountains have been getting snow, so I guess some people have needed them. Anyway, I just think it's kind of neat to hear them around.

We've been having daytime temperatures in the upper 40s for the last couple weeks but it looks like it will get significantly colder over the weekend:

A storm bearing a threat of snow and some of the coldest temperatures seen since 1990 is expected to arrive Saturday evening in the Seattle area and declare winter is here.

Any snow and ice will probably be limited to the outlying areas, which are generally at higher elevations. Monday's forecast calls for temperatures in the mid 20's. So, for the first time since we moved in, we might actually have to turn on our heater.

As Troy mentioned, we bought a fake Christmas tree while in Oregon and saved money on sales tax. It's a 7.5' Douglas Fir tree that came with white lights already on it. It's sort of nice we didn't have to bother trying to put on lights evenly, but I'm not sure what we'll do when I get sick of white lights. The lights are well tied around each branch, so it would be difficult to take them off and probably even harder to get them on. I guess we'd just have to add colored lights on top of the white ones and have both on the tree at the same time, unless we leave the white ones unplugged, but you could probably still see them unlit.

We looked at several places for a nice tree skirt, but they were all so cheaply made, yet fairly expensive, and tacky. We finally bought a cute tree skirt from Macy's on sale. It's white with a red border and has holly on the outside edge too. We bought 6 boxes of ornaments with about 9 ornaments in each box. We got red, green, and frosty white ornaments, some in different shapes, and some with glitter. We also put our ornaments we made last year on the tree, as well as our first Christmas ornament we got from our friend last year. We also tried to find a tree star that would light up, but the one we found didn't fit the tree well at all, so we went back and got a plain silver one that doesn't light up. I think our tree looks pretty nice and it's cool since we finally bought our own Christmas decorations.

Before we moved here, we thought we might move to Portland instead. We liked both cities and sometimes I wonder what things would be like if we had moved to Portland instead.

We ended up in Seattle because Lesley got a job offer here. I don't know how long it would have taken for each of us to find employment in Portland, but Portland's economy is not as strong as Seattle's.

We've been fortunate here to have met a lot of people at our church and we'd probably miss out on that in Portland.

Lesley loves the view from her office of the Olympic and Cascade Mountain Ranges, including Mount Baker, Elliot Bay, the city skyline, and Lake Union and there just aren't as many landmarks to see in Portland.

Since Portland is a smaller city than Seattle, we'd probably run out of new things to see and do sooner if we lived in Portland. There would definitely be a lot fewer sporting events for us to attend in Portland. Portland has its share of thriving neighborhoods, but I'm not sure if they compare with the vibrancy and character of Seattle's neighborhoods.

On a day-to-day basis, though, I think we would enjoy living in Portland. For one thing, it's easier and more enjoyable to walk in Portland. Portland is flatter than Seattle and has a great public transportation system, with light rail, streetcars, and buses. As I've mentioned, there are a lot of obstacles that make it harder to walk here. Even if we lived elsewhere in Seattle, there are steep hills, busy streets, a freeway, bodies of water, and other stuff that discourages walking.

Another benefit if we lived in Portland is that we would get to see more Cowboys games on local TV instead of only getting to see the Seahawks.

Overall, though, I'm happy living in Seattle. I look forward to visiting Portland more but don't regret not moving there.

Troy and I were on our usual walk last night and we were just walking along on the sidewalk when I suddenly stepped on slightly uneven ground and rolled my ankle inward and sprained it. It's pretty sore and it hurts even while I just sit here. I can't really walk on it either. Hopefully it will be better by the time we leave for our trip.

One of the best things about our apartment is the awesome view we have. A few days last week, the sunsets were so beautiful that I just had to take a few pictures and share them. I love being able to see the Space Needle and the Olympic Mountains every day, along with the sunset on most days. Sometimes I still can't believe we live in Seattle, it's great.

Click below and scroll down to see more sunset pictures from 12/4 and 12/5.

Here are two more pictures of Pike Place Market. It's now decorated for Christmas, along with the rest of downtown.

Downtown Seattle has had its tree lighting tradition at the Westlake Center for 20 years. It sounded like a big deal, so we made plans to watch the tree lighting and the lighting of the Macy's star. There was also the Macy's Parade Friday morning, but it started at 9:00, which was too early for us to want to get up for. We watched some of it on TV and it was really similar to the Seafair Parade.

So, anyway, we started walking downtown around 4 and it was really really busy. There were people everywhere shopping and eating out. It was so busy that we could hardly walk through some sidewalks. Every Starbucks we walked by had long lines too. All of downtown is decorated with lights on most trees and decorations on buildings. The Sheraton hotel has some ginger bread houses on display that I've heard are really cool. There's also a little miniature mountain village with trains on display at one of the Macy's windows. Even Pike Place Market has its own Christmas tree and light displays in the shapes of fruits.

The tree lighting started at 5 and thousands of people gathered around the Westlake Center. There were live choir performances of Christmas songs and the mayor gave a short speech about the LED lights on the Christmas tree that save a lot of energy compared to regular lights. It was almost time to light the tree when the microphones and sound system stopped working. Eventually the host figured out a way to get the crowd to start counting down to light up the tree. It was really neat watching it light up and then watching the huge Macy's star light up. There were supposed to be fireworks also, but they were called off due to high winds. It sucked that they had technical problems, but at least the tree and star still worked.

Click here for photos:

We get an electricity bill every two months. I don't know why it's not every month, I guess because energy is so cheap ($0.0376 / kWh), Seattle City Light (the same energy provider everyone has) doesn't bother making us pay every month.

When we received our first bill, we were using about 9.73 kWh per day. We weren't using any climate control, so I guess a lot of that was for the refrigerator, lighting, cooking, and laundry.

Since then, we've been trying to conserve energy by turning up the fridge temperature, turning the lights off when they're not being used, and turning off the surge protector for the computer and TV at night.

And, our efforts have paid off, so to speak, though with our bimonthly energy bill dropping from about $24 to about $21, there's not much of a literal payoff. Still, our use has dropped about 33% from what it was when we first moved here to about 6.53 kWh per day.

When we were back in Texas and using climate control almost daily, we were spending a lot more money, with energy prices being much higher. And we were consuming more energy as well, but not as much as I expected. With the heavy use of the air conditioner in the summer, we were using up to 18 kWh daily. The good thing was that we were able to get clean, renewable wind energy. However, over the whole year, we averaged only about 9.5 kWh per day, which is a little less than what we used when we moved in here. Here we're using the washer and dryer inside the apartment and since we used the community laundry room in Irving and since dryers use a lot of electricity, we actually used more energy than our electricity bill indicated. We also had gas heating for our hot water.

I haven't been able to find specific details on the energy sources used, but Washington uses a lot of clean, renewable hydroelectric electricity. That, combined with the fact that energy here is ridiculously cheap, means that there's not a huge incentive to cut energy consumption.

Still, we're continuing to find easy, effective ways of wasting less energy and we hope the habits we develop will help others to find ways to save energy and serve us well in the future.

We've posted before about how we've been driving less, but we finally figured out how much less we've been driving. We buy gas for our car once every three weeks. Since we arrived here in February, we've driven only about 3,300 miles and are on pace for 4,500 miles for the 12 month period after arriving here.

When we lived in Texas, we each had our own car and totalled around 17,000 miles over the previous year. That means we're driving about 1/4 as many miles as we used to. Even if you factor in our drive up here from Texas, that's only about 7,000 miles on our car for a full year.

Excluding our drive up here, our reduction in driving has prevented roughly 9,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the air. The amount of CO₂ emissions we saved is equivalent to the amount produced by an average home's electricity use in over half a year. It's nice to do our part to help the environment.

We're planning to share some videos soon from Thanksgiving, Portland, and a couple other things. The videos would have been posted already, but Jumpcut, the free service we use to edit and publish our videos, has not been working for us. We used YouTube for our Kerry Park video because we had just a single clip to post. Normally, though, we like to upload several clips of video and use Jumpcut to shorten and combine them with music and captions. When Jumpcut is working, it's easy to use and very helpful. We contacted their support people and hope to hear back this week, otherwise we'll have to figure out another way to share our videos.

We've been talking about taking a day trip to Portland or Vancouver, Canada for months. We kept deciding to save the gas money and do something else closer. With the long Thanksgiving weekend and with gas below $2 per gallon we decided to drive to Portland this weekend.

We left pretty early and after almost 3 hours we arrived in Oregon. Our first stop was Multnomah Falls, about a half hour outside of the city. The falls were awesome and the area was beautifully green and misty. After that, we drove into the city and stopped at Escape from New York Pizza, where we ate possibly the best pizza we've ever had.

We had found a free parking spot in the area so decided to just leave the car there and take the convenient streetcar and light rail to Washington Park, where we went to the Oregon Zoo for the first time. Lesley likes zoos and really wanted to see the critically endangered Amur Leopard, however in the three times we stopped by the exhibit, it never appeared.

After the zoo, we took light rail back downtown and walked through the Portland Saturday Market, which had some neat crafts and stuff. After a brief walk along the waterfront, we walked back downtown and had dinner at Thai Peacock. It was very nice to be able to sit, drink, and eat.

We then walked through Portland's Pearl District, which, despite being one of the more walkable areas in the city, was pretty deserted for a Saturday night. We got some hot, black tea with honey and sugar and then walked back to the Northwest District, where our car was parked. After a short stroll, we got in the car and drove over to Hawthorne Street to check it out.

Since Oregon doesn't have sales tax, we wanted to pick up a couple things before we left. We bought a tree and a few decorations and the money we saved by not paying tax made up for about half the money we spent on gas. Speaking of gas, we had to refill on our way back, so we exited when we saw a sign and the gas station was like two miles from the freeway. Then, the signage said to keep going the same way on the street to get back to the freeway (as if the street looped back to the freeway) and it did, but it was literally 5 miles to get back to the freeway.

Anyway, it was a fun trip. Portland is a pretty neat place. Here are some photos; we'll post the video soon hopefully.

December is the darkest and rainiest month here on average. The average rainfall for this month is around 5.5" and on the shortest day, the sun rises at 7:54 am and sets at 4:20 pm. I have training at work this week except for Friday, so I'll be staying here until 5 every day and will be lucky to see the sun at all.

It was really clear outside a week ago this past Sunday, so we went up to Kerry Park close to sunset to take some video and pictures. Enjoy! Click the image below and be sure to scroll down on the page after it loads.

It's been very foggy all day today. We've barely, if at all, been able to see the Space Needle from our window. We went for a walk down to the waterfront and weren't able to see far. I think fog is neat.

I posted a few times about how excited I was about Thanksgiving this year and it turned out really well. On Thursday I made the pumpkin pie and the dressing. Unfortunately, I was following a recipe I found online for the pumpkin pie and the recipe failed to specify when to add the cinnamon and I completely forgot about it! It tasted basically the same though, so it wasn't too bad. The dressing was pretty easy to make.

Then on Thanksgiving day, we woke up and watched some of the Macy's Parade and then started making the rest of the food (well, I did, Troy didn't do any cooking, except for stirring the sweet potatoes for a whole 3 minutes, big whoop). I put the 3 pound turkey breast in the oven and started to make the sweet potatoes and green bean casserole. Cutting the cranberry sauce was actually easier than I thought it would be. Overall, all the food turned out really well. Next year I'll probably put less sugar in the sweet potatoes and less milk in the green bean casserole. And I'll also have chicken broth handy for adding to the dressing. The little turkey breast we got didn't make much drippings, so I had to use water and gravy flavoring that came with the turkey. The dressing was pretty moist, so that was great. We also bought some Chardonnay that was on sale for $18 instead of $35, so that was a nice touch.

It was nice staying home most of the day and a lot less stressful. After watching the football game, we went for a stroll through a deserted downtown. We also watched Pirates of the Caribbean. We hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving! We're going to Portland tomorrow, so we'll post Thanksgiving video and pictures/video from today and tomorrow starting Sunday, hopefully.

One problem with our neighborhood is that it's surrounded by major streets that make walking less desirable. To the north, between us and the lake is Mercer St, which is four lanes of heavy and fast-moving traffic. Plus Valley St, which also has several lanes of heavy traffic. To the south, between us and downtown, is Denny Way, which is always busy with traffic and which requires us pressing a button to cross.
To the west is Aurora / Hwy 99, which is only crossable along Denny and Mercer. To the east is I-5 which we cross by walking along Denny Way (up a big hill). None of these obstacles are that bad, but they're all slight disincentives to walking.

Fortunately, there's a proposed project which would make Mercer a little more friendly by widening the sidewalks and adding trees. The project is a little pricey ($200 million), so I don't know if it would be worth it. They're also asking for federal funds and if I lived in any other city in the nation, I wouldn't want my taxes to pay for it. And it might not even matter to me by the time it gets funded and constructed. But, I think it's a great idea. While this project might slightly decrease travel time for the many cars that travel on it each day, I think a councilman said it well:

Councilman Richard Conlin said he's not particularly concerned about criticisms that the Mercer plan will leave drivers stuck in traffic. South Lake Union is evolving into part of downtown, so Mercer should function as a downtown street, not an I-5 ramp, he said.

"Free flow of vehicles is sort of an oxymoron there," he said. "We're making a commitment to make this a neighborhood. Neighborhoods don't have freeways running through them."

And that's exactly the right way to think about it. Refusing to focus on car commute times will encourage people to consider moving closer to work or taking public transportation and take more cars off the road. It may inconvenience the people that are passing through on their way back home in the suburbs, but the city as a whole gains from more walkable streets and it makes the city a more enjoyable place to be.

We've never really shared pictures of Pike Place Market before, so I figured it was time to post a few of the pictures we've accumulated since we moved here. I just love going to the market and seeing all the fruit, fish, and desserts you can buy. It's one of my favorite places in Seattle.

Unfortunately next February the Metro bus here is going to increase their fares 25 cents and then another 25 cents up to $2.00 in January 2010. It kind of sucks because it's nice to ride the bus for cheap, but the more they increase the fees, the more likely I'll be to avoid paying $2.00 and take my car instead. I guess it's nice to have a decent bus system, and I'd rather them increase fares than cut routes, but still, I wish they weren't going to increase it so much.

I've been at my current job for almost three months now, so I've gotten more involved and have a much better understanding of things.

I work for a company that designs, builds, operates, and maintains building facility systems, like HVAC, electrical, and lighting. My department works for customers on projects to integrate and apply technology toward their building control systems. So, for example, a customer might have multiple buildings and we provide them with a single web interface that shows the status of and gives them control to all of systems. I'm still learning and we're still defining what we do.

So far, I've mostly been helping out with the web interface for a particular project. But, I've also been working on a few things to help us work together better as a group and to refine how we should be doing things. I expect that as I get more comfortable and find more ways to contribute that my job responsibilities will evolve.

I've had to adjust to this job. I work with engineers now instead of businesspeople. Rather than sitting far enough from the main walkway in a quiet hall with a view from my window, now I sit in a big room with my back to a busy walkway. I went from an environment where I took ownership of projects and systems to now being assigned individual tasks. That's definitely the most frustrating thing, but I expect to gain more responsibilities.

I've been a little frustrated about a few things, but I still am very positive about this job because I see a lot of opportunity. My position was created for me, so I'm getting to define what I do somewhat. I've been doing web development as a hobby for more than 10 years, so it's kind of cool to get to do it at work. I don't expect to be doing web development for my job long-term, but I expect to continue to be involved in the web aspect of our department. I'm excited about how things will go with our department and the types of things that I might be involved with.

We've recently been spending a lot of time planning our schedule for our Christmas trip to Texas. It's been really difficult figuring out how to fit in time for everyone. But we've tried to make it as fair as possible and fit in as much time with everyone as we can. We'll start to share specific details over the next week.

Last week, I had barbeque in Seattle for the first time. I had been reluctant to take the initiative of going to a barbeque place to pay for something that wouldn't be nearly as good as what I had in Texas. But, I was also curious, wondering if it would be as bad as I imagined.

So, last week, a co-worker suggested going out to Pig Iron Bar-BQ and I curiously, but cautiously, agreed. It was a small place with decent ambiance, though the entry way reminded me of a 50s diner than a barbeque joint. The prices were a little high. On the lunch menu, a barbeque sandwich was $10 and a barbeque platter was like around $16. I found it interesting that the brisket sandwich was buried halfway down the sandwich menu and instead took a co-worker's recommendation to have a pork sandwich. It came with potato salad, cole slaw, or beans. I opted for the potato salad, feeling it would be the best way to judge the place. I didn't bother looking for fried okra, my favorite side, wanting to play things relatively safe.

A kind of nice thing was that there were three kinds of sauces: a regular barbeque sauce, a sweet mustardy kind of sauce, and a chipotle sauce. My plate came out with pork on a large bun and a smallish scoop of potato salad. There were also some grilled onions and pickles on the side. The sandwich was pretty good. The amount of bread was a little excessive and the pork was a little dry and flavorless by itself, but the flavor of the sauce saved it a little bit. The potato salad was not as chunky as I expended, and it had a little of the mustardy sauce drizzled on top. It tasted okay.

I think my large Texas appetite must have shrunk some because a sandwich and a side without any bread or additional sides doesn't seem like much, but it was plenty of food. Overall, I was satisfied and maybe a little surprised that I couldn't find much to complain about. I would consider going back.

Troy and I have never actually been members of a church. We considered joining the church where we got married, but we figured we wouldn't be there long enough to warrant doing that. But now that we're in Seattle and we've been going to the same church since we got here, we figure we should become members. So, this Sunday at the end of the service we'll join the church.

We were taking the bus to the park on Saturday when all the traffic stopped. Apparently there was a march going on for gay marriage. We had to transfer buses anyway, so we got out and walked up to the march. We stood for a few minutes as hundreds of people walked by with signs, chanting. There were a lot of signs protesting California's Proposition 8, which overturned gay marriage there, as well as signs protesting religion and the Mormon Church, which paid millions of dollars to help pass Proposition 8. I was amazed at how many people there were and I'm sure there were hundreds more than had already passed. According to the newspaper, thousands of people participated. We recorded some video below.

The weather was great last Saturday, clear and in the upper 50s, so rather than going for a hike outside the city, we decided to go for a long walk through several parks in the city. We took the bus to Washington Park Arboretum and walked through there. I'm sure it would've been prettier a week or two ago if all the leaves were still on the trees, but it was still nice. Then we walked up a hill to Interlaken Park, which has a wide, winding path surrounded by lots of trees. There were also some decent views. Then we headed up a hill along a leaf-covered, muddy trail. It was worth it, though because then we got a great view of the U-District, lake, and mountains to the Northeast. We then walked on to Volunteer Park and Lesley talked me into walking up to the top of the observation tower, which offered some amazing views. After all that, we walked through a nice residential area to get back home. It was almost a 5 mile walk in total and it was one of the most enjoyable walks we've done in the city. Click below for a few pictures.

Amur leopards are the rarest large cat in the world and only about 30 still exist. So it made me sad to see that the Oregon Zoo had to euthanize one of their two amur leopards yesterday. He was 17 years old and had terminal cancer. They gave him treatment the last few months with little success. The zoo still has one other amur leopard, so maybe whenever we visit Portland, we can go to the zoo and see her.

Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, I can't believe it's almost here. I've been gradually buying food at the store to prepare for all the food I'm making. I'm really excited about making all the food for ourselves and seeing how it turns out. This past Saturday we got a 3 pound turkey breast and the marshmallows for the sweet potatoes. The only things remaining that we need to buy are the corn meal, celery, an onion, eggs, and rolls. I've been trying to find the small corn meal packages my Mom uses, either Aunt Jemima or Martha White, and I can't find either one. We have one more grocery store to try and if they don't have it, I guess we'll have to settle for some huge box of off brand corn meal.

And I also gave up on the idea of making a ham, which Troy seemed ok with surprisingly. We'd just have too much food leftover if I made both a turkey and a ham.

I also decided to try to make a pecan pie with the other pie crust I'll have after making pumpkin pie (I got a pack of two pie crusts). I won't make it until after Thanksgiving though since we'll already have a lot to eat. I'm not that fond of pecan pie, but it sounds easier to make than apple.

I'm looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with Troy and having a long weekend to ourselves.

When we hiked at Cougar Mountain recently, we kept passing piles of white powder on the ground. Someone had moved the leaves out of the way and poured some powder on the ground. The first time we saw it, it was in the shape of an X. Then we saw a small pile. We also saw three parallel lines. And an arrow. And a couple times at trail intersections we saw a circle. We saw these piles more than 10 times on our way back to the car and the whole time I was totally baffled. I was really confused as to why someone would purposefully do this and what the powder was and what the shapes represented. I mean, I guess they could have just been using the powder so that they could find their way back, but, why the shapes? And why that much powder? And why was it even necessary, it's not that easy to get lost? I wanted to run and try to track down the person that did it, but I didn't know which direction they were going. I mean, seriously, what was going on?

I never did figure it out...I guess I'll just call them the crop circles of the Northwest.

We hiked last weekend at Cougar Mountain, which is one of our favorite places to hike because there are so many trails and it is so close. We walked by a cold stream by an old coal mining area. We've walked by several old coal mining areas in our hikes here, but this one had a display with old photos and an old coal wagon. On the ground were lots of leaves and some of them were really, really big. I thought everything was bigger in Texas, but the leaves here are definitely bigger.

The first people we became friends with in Seattle, the couple we met at church, are now pregnant. She's due in May and we offered to help them with whatever they need, including baby sitting. Neither of us has any baby sitting experience at all, but I guess there's a first time for everyone.

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting because Troy told me after we first met them that he was afraid they'd be having kids soon since they're older than us (28) and now they are. I'm excited for them though.

When I started my previous job, I tried not to think about work when I wasn't at work, feeling that they were only paying me for the hours I put in at the office and that my only obligation to them was during the working hours. And I wasn't very career oriented, either, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my career and work was just a job to me. I was fine with my boss and where I was in the company and what I was doing, so I didn't really have a long-term vision. It was a corporate-oriented environment and my co-workers there were very career-minded, however.

During the time with that company, I changed in a lot of ways, and most of the changes were positive. One interesting change is how the career-mindedness of all my co-workers there influenced me. One of the last pieces of advice my boss gave me was that nobody is going to watch out for my career and that I should take charge of my career and where I'm going.

After starting this new job, I've been spending a lot of energy focusing on my career. I think part of it is that I now have work experience at a full-time job, so I've been comparing this current job to my previous one. There are some things that I don't have in my current position that I had at my previous employer. For example, I don't have the same level of responsibility or involvement in projects. So, I've been trying to figure out what I need to do to get back those things I used to have and to get more things that I want. I've been thinking of what kinds of things I want to do and who I want to work with and things like that.

The interesting thing is that I never really wanted a conventional career. I just wanted to work for a while until I figured out what I really wanted to do. But now I'm thinking and acting as if my career is very important to me. When I got my first job after college, someone said that I could start "climbing the corporate ladder" and that really turned me off. I didn't want a job like everyone else. But, now, here I am, in a regular job, focusing on my career, even though I still don't see myself following this career path for the next 40 years. I guess we'll see if I start climbing that corporate ladder, or maybe I'll someday figure out what I've wanted to do all along.

Our car had accumulated a lot of dirt, dust, and pieces of leaves inside over the last several months, so we finally decided it needed to be vacuumed. We had to walk around our garage and find an outlet to plug our vacuum in. There aren't that many outlets and most of the parking spots next to them were taken. We did find one that was open, so we had to move our car there and drag our vacuum down from our apartment and down some stairs to the car. It didn't take that long to vacuum the whole car and it looks a lot better now.

On my first day of work, I got a new cell phone. It's just so that people can contact me if I'm at a job site during the day. As I expected, I've barely used it. I left it in my drawer for the first month.

However, one co-worker insists on calling me on my cell phone. So, now I kind of feel obligated to keep the phone on my desk. That also means that I need to make sure it has power. So, now I have to remember to check it occasionally to make sure that it's charged.

It was not charged this morning, so I had to plug it in. However, there aren't any available outlets at my desk. My boss and I share a power strip, so I had to unplug something of his so that I could charge my phone.

Anyway, the whole thing is annoying. I don't want or need a cell phone for work.

I don't want to pay for a new bicycle and I don't want to do the work required to find a good used bicycle. But, I think it'd be nice to have a bicycle. If Lesley got one, we could ride places on the weekend or during the week. There are a lot of places to ride in the city and it could be a lot of fun to ride recreationally. Having a bike could also make it a lot easier to get places that are too far away to walk conveniently. I don't know much about buying a bicycle and don't really want to learn. I just want a cheap bicycle that will work for riding in the city and not cost too much.

After Barack Obama was declared the winner last night, people crowded the streets to celebrate. Obama won 72% of the vote in King County, which includes Seattle along with the more conservative east side of the metropolitan area. It would be interesting to know how well Obama did in just the city of Seattle, but a lot of people here definitely like him.

We went to an election party last night with people from church. It started at 7 and even before we got there Obama had won Ohio, so there wasn't much suspense regarding the national election.

There were a lot of local and regional elections to track, though. Our governor was up for re-election in a rematch of the 2004 election, which was very close. Also, there were a few local initiatives on the ballot. One of the biggest ones was to expand light rail throughout the region and that one passed, raising sales tax by half a percent. There were also initiatives to fund renovations to Pike Place Market and improve park land, both of which passed.

Anyway, a lot of people showed up and there was a lot of energy in the room. It was fun hanging out and watching the election results come in.

I get a cold twice a year normally, despite the fact that I wash my hands regularly and get enough sleep and take vitamins and all that stuff. So, I'm wondering, now that I'm riding the bus, am I likely to get more colds than normal? Or, will all the other germs that I'm exposed to from riding the bus cause my immune system to strengthen so that it can fend off colds better? I've already heard several people sniffling, so I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Today we can all see how far America has come. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I'm glad that this day is finally here. History has been made in that Google Street view finally includes Seattle! Now we can see street-level pictures from pretty much anywhere in the city!

We requested our tickets to a few events for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Unfortunately, the prices were so inflated for American citizens that we couldn't really afford to see the opening ceremonies (over $650 per ticket) or any figure skating event (over $200 per ticket), both of which I really really wanted to see. I was pretty disappointed about that. But I guess it will still be cool to go to a few other events, assuming we are awarded the tickets we requested:

• Speed Skating - Men's 5,000 m Individual Final - 2/13


• Short Track Speed Skating - Ladies' 500 m Qualification / Ladies' 3,000 m Relay Qualification / Men's 1,500 m Qualification and Final - 2/13


• Ice Hockey - Men's Preliminary - 2/16


• Luge - Doubles Runs 1 and 2 - 2/17

It would have been nice to go to a medal match in hockey or something like that too, but tickets for the bronze medal game are a minimum of $235 each and $454 each for the gold medal game.

The ticket process is kinda crappy. We weren't sure how many events to request tickets to. We were afraid of requesting tickets to several events and then getting all of them and spending a ton of money, in which case it would be really hard to resell them. You're not legally supposed to according to the CoSport website. But we didn't want to request too few events and then have them all be sold out and not get any tickets. So, who knows if we'll get the tickets we requested, I guess we'll find out in mid-December when they notify us. The events we wanted are spread out pretty well. It will be nice to explore Vancouver and do other things in the city too. At some point we'll have to look into hotels too.

It's really annoying having to go to a sports bar to watch Cowboys games. It'd be alright if I were going with a group of fellow Cowboys fans, but normally I'd rather watch the game at home. Today, the Seahawks were on TV instead, so the Cowboys game wasn't on local TV.

It's a pain to have to go to the restaurant and then all the food is so expensive and it's not any good. Today we got some chips and two sandwiches and it came out to $38. And the sandwiches sucked. At least the place is smoke-free, but it still sucks.

We don't usually post about our entire weekend, so I thought I would summarize what we did this weekend.

Friday after work we went to eat at a Thai place called Golden Singha. It was pretty good and not too expensive. After that we went back to the apartment, watched The Shining since it was Halloween, and ate some macadamia nut cookies.

Saturday we took the 8 bus to get some bagels at Noah's. Unfortunately they were all out of most of the flavors we like (asiago, sesame, and sourdough), so we had to try new flavors: sun-dried tomato, everything, and poppy seed. They were alright, but still not as good as the flavors we like. We might start going to a different location downtown to see if maybe they'd have the flavors we like more often.

After bagels, we drove to Kerry Park to see the nice view, despite the rain. We walked around the close by neighborhood in Queen Anne and found another viewpoint called Marshall Park. Across the street was Parsons Gardens, where there were so many colorful trees and piles of leaves on the ground everywhere. I had no idea that it would be this pretty here in the fall.

Then we drove to Georgetown near Troy's work and around south Seattle. There's not much there except some really old run down houses and a few fast food places like Arby's and Subway. We were hungry after only eating bagels, so we went to Red Mill Burgers for an early dinner. We got burgers, fries, and onion rings. It's probably the best burger I've had in Seattle.

We drove home and then walked to Pike Place Market to get some fruit and cheese. Troy only had $2 cash on him and I didn't bring my purse, so we had to go to an ATM before we could buy our fruit. After that we went back home and watched some of the UT-Texas Tech game. Then we went back out to get groceries.

Sunday we didn't do much. Troy went to church early so he could volunteer as a greeter. He accidentally took the garage fob with him instead of the regular fob, so when I went to drive to church I couldn't get out of the garage. I waited a while to see if anyone else would leave so I could get out behind them, but no one ever came, so I had to skip church. Once Troy got home, we went to Sport Restaurant and Bar to watch the Giants-Cowboys game. Needless to say, I was pretty happy when we left before the game was over. Troy on the other hand, was not.

So, that was our weekend. Nothing too exciting, but it was nice to get outside for a while, especially on Saturday to see the fall leaves.

We changed our clocks this weekend like almost everyone else in the country. However, I'm pretty unhappy about it because now the sun is going to set at 4:45 in the afternoon. Since my hours are somewhat flexible at work, I'd rather just ignore the time change and go into work at the same time as always, according to the sun. If I did that, then I'd still have some daylight when I get home.

However, Lesley's and my schedule have matched pretty well, with us going to bed around the same time and me walking her to work. So, since she would rather just change her clocks, me not changing my watch would desynchronize our schedules. Still, I'm not ready to give up my evening daylight yet, at least for this week. I'll probably give in next week, which sucks, because I like seeing the sun.

Thanksgiving is coming up really soon and I'm already getting excited about it. This will be my first time making all the food myself. I've already started buying all the stuff to make everything. We plan on having turkey breast, ham, dressing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, and pumpkin pie. We'll probably watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and of course the football games. I wouldn't normally get the Friday after Thanksgiving off since I work for a financial company and the markets are open that day, so I'm using my last vacation day this year that day. We'll probably go see the Thanksgiving parade in downtown Seattle that Friday. Since I'm getting days off immediately close to both major holidays this year, I doubt I'll be able to get those days off again next year. But anyway, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving in less than 4 weeks.

Seen on our way to the grocery store:

The free bus pass that my employer provided is expiring, so I got a new one today. The old one is very plain looking with some black text and the dates it is valid for in large green text at the top. Since it looked so plain, I figured the new one would look a little better. However, the new bus pass is exactly the same except the dates have changed. No changes at all. They didn't even change the color from green to something else. How boring!

The state of Washington mostly votes by mail, so a couple weeks ago we received our ballots in the mail along with a booklet detailing all the propositions on the ballot and introducing all the candidates. We just had to fill out our ballots and either mail them in or drop them off. It was nice having plenty of time to review the information and make a decision about everything. Anyway, after filling out our ballots, we had time tonight to walk to the ballot box downtown to drop them off. In the 21st century, I don't know why every state doesn't make it this easy.

We don't go to the waterfront very often, but I always enjoy it when we go. It's mostly a tourist area, but it's kind of neat. We were there the other day and we saw a seal that had caught a fish. I'm not sure how common it is to see that, but I thought it was neat. I tried to video it but didn't do a very good job, but you might be interested in watching it below.

There's a ton of construction projects in our immediate area and close to downtown, probably easily more than 10. More were planned, but with the recent financial problems, the economy is slowing down and this has caused some projects to be delayed. Most of them are in what's called the Denny Triangle, which really does need to be revitalized. It's sort of a dumpy area right now and there's not much there. Be sure to click on the PDF related to the article to see which projects are being delayed. Overall though, the economy in Seattle is still relatively strong.

This past Saturday we went to a pumpkin carving party with a group from church. We were hesitant to go since we weren't that interested in carving pumpkins, but we went anyway to have something to do. I told people at work that I'd never carved a pumpkin, seen a pumpkin being carved, or gone to a pumpkin patch and everyone was shocked. I guess doing those things is a big deal here or something. I just don't remember any pumpkin patches in Texas. Carving a pumpkin never crossed my mind as a kid.

We ate hot dogs with homemade chili that the host made and it was pretty good. We watched our friends carve theirs first and it looked like a big mess. No wonder my parents never did this with us. Well, we finally started carving ours and it actually didn't turn out too bad. I cut the top part and pulled out most of the messy insides, which was a lot of work. Some people actually take out the pumpkin seeds and roast them to eat. Then Troy cut out the eyes, nose, and mouth. We took it home afterward and put it in our windowsill.

That will probably be the extent of what we do for Halloween. We'll probably watch The Shining on Friday, but don't expect any trick or treaters or anything.

Click here for pictures of our pumpkin:

We saw this reference to the environmentalist slogan, "Think Globally, Act Locally" on a local brew pub. It probably wouldn't work in Texas or other parts of the country, but I guess it makes for good advertising here.

The light posts around here are painted teal. Kind of an interesting color for them to be. I think they're only painted teal in our neighborhood. I wonder why.

Our current lease is up at the end of next month, so we were wondering how much our apartment complex would raise our rate. We were a little worried that they would raise it so much that it would force us to move somewhere a little cheaper. Then, sometime last week, we received a flyer that said if we renewed our lease before October 31st, that they would honor our current rental rate!

So, today we renewed our lease for 11 months. We were planning on doing a 12 month lease and pointed out the error to the lady completing our paperwork, but I don't think she knew what the heck she was doing and tried to just gloss over the error saying it was "confusing." So, whatever, we got an 11 month lease that will be up at the end of next October. I'd be pretty surprised if they let us renew at our current rate next year too, so we may have to look elsewhere next year. But for now, I'm really excited that we get to stay in our apartment at our current rate.

We've noticed a lot of cultural differences between here and Texas but haven't talked much about the many significant differences between our current church and previous churches.

We've noticed this church seems to be more externally focused. Back in Texas, sermons seemed focused on how to be better Christians and church people occasionally did missionary work in far away places. At our old church, we would pray for others, especially victims of major disasters and national tragedies. However, our current church places a big emphasis on social justice and focuses more on the less fortunate, specifically the homeless, including serving breakfast to the homeless of the city. I rarely heard anything about the homeless in other churches I've been to. I'm not sure how to attribute those differences, whether to the uniqueness of our current church, to the fact that our old churches were all located amidst homogeneous suburbia, or to cultural differences between regions.

Anyway, we've mentioned before how he mindset here seems less insular and will try to post future examples of some of the interesting differences between church and life here versus in Texas.

The weather was pretty nice last weekend so we took advantage of it by going for a hike at Lime Kiln Trail at Robe Canyon Historic Park. The trail we went to wasn't very busy. It followed the path of where a railway line used to be and followed along the Stillaguamish River. After about an hour we reached a bunch of old artifacts where people used to live. Then, we found the lime kiln. We walked a little further and went down to the river where we sat on a rock and had a snack. We also used the cold river water to cool off our drinks. On the way back, I walked past a snake before Lesley noticed it, but it didn't seem to care about us. The trail was pretty flat and covered with a lot of big leaves. It was a really good hike.

Since I can't watch the Cowboys games here, I signed up for NFL Field Pass so that I could listen to the game online. Fortunately it offered a 7-day free trial. I figured I'd keep my subscription because I don't want to go to a sports bar every week to see the game.

However, I'm on hold to cancel my subscription right now for several reasons. I couldn't hear the first 30 minutes of the game, they just played music the whole time, so I spent like 20 minutes trying different browsers and different feeds so that I could hear the game and none of them worked. I think they were just asleep at the switch or something because eventually the game feed came on. It was intermittent at first, but eventually the audio started coming through fine. However, on every commercial break they muted the commercial and put on the same music, however after the commercial break I'd always miss the first few words while I waited for them to turn off the music and turn on the game audio. And each time they did that, the sound came back at a different volume, so I kept having to adjust my volume.

Anyway, maybe it works for some people, but this was such a crappy experience that I figured I'd let everyone know. And I've been on hold for 10 minutes so that I can cancel my subscription. So, for now, I guess I'll just have to go to a sports bar if I want to see a game that isn't shown here.

There are some trees with really pretty red and orange leaves that we can see from our window. There are leaves on the sidewalks everywhere and the air is so crisp and cool. Fall may be my second favorite season behind the summer.

We recently ran out of honey, so we figured we'd go buy some more. Instead of buying it at Safeway or QFC, we went to Pike Place market and bought some honey made locally at the Snoqualmie Valley Honey Farm. They gave us samples at the stand and we decided to get the wild blackberry honey. It doesn't really taste like blackberries, they just call it that because that's the type of flower the bees collect nectar from. It's nice to buy stuff at Pike Place market because it's all locally made. Every time we go there I want to buy some fresh fruit, fish, or yummy pastries. Pike Place market is awesome and we are looking forward to eating our honey, perhaps on some biscuits tonight.

There's an apartment building nearby that sometimes has a Texas flag in the window. And someone at work has a Texas flag by their desk. Texas has the best flag in the United States, so I can see why people like to display it. I haven't seen flags from any other state. It's kind of interesting that even though we're so far away, we still see the Texas flag sometimes.

We live close to the Seattle Times building. We see these neat old machines as you walk by. I've never seen them in use, I guess that happens when I'm sleeping.

One of the neatest things we can see from our window is the arches at the Pacific Science Center at night. The arches are often lit up in different colors, and it's always exciting to see what color they are lit with. They've been all purple, purple and green, all white, and a few other colors.

We don't drive often and we pay $125 per month for parking, on top of insurance and other expenses. I kind of wish we could sell our car to save money and then pay ZipCar to borrow a car when we needed it. That way we wouldn't have to pay for parking, gas, insurance, and maintenance. It would also be much more environmentally friendly as we would be more motivated to walk and use public transportation.

However, ZipCar charges by the hour and we use our car too often for ZipCar to be a practical, money-saving alternative. And, while I posted a while back about wanting to live closer to the grocery store, groceries only account for about a sixth of the time we use the car. Another sixth is shopping. About a fifth of our time with the car is church. More than a third of our time with the car has been spent on going for hikes.

So, if we were to sell our car, we would have the money we make from selling it, but the cost to rent a car for all those times, even considering the fact that we would drive less, would be higher what we currently pay per year. And, even if we moved closer to church and the grocery store, the cost for day trips is much higher if we don't own a car. Plus, if we sold our car now and had to buy another car later, we would probably have to pay more for another car than we would get for our current car. So while I was interested in selling our car as a way to save money and help the environment, it just isn't feasible right now.

I've been wanting a new dining table to eat on for a while. When we lived in Texas, we were using a borrowed table and folding chairs that didn't match. We temporarily fixed the problem when we moved here by getting tv trays from Target that weren't very sturdy and already have gashes in them. I got tired of eating on tv trays or at the computer desk all the time, since there's not much room at the computer desk for both of us to eat at comfortably.

We finally bought an IKEA table from someone on Craig's list this past Monday. It would have cost us about $200 brand new from IKEA, but we managed to buy this from some people in Tacoma for half that much. It actually seems pretty solid, which surprises me since most of the stuff at IKEA is cheap looking to me. Our table is 36" by 36" and has a black finish on it that matches our chairs and bookcase, both of which we also got from IKEA. It's also expandable, which will be nice when we have guests over and need more room to serve food. Although we only have two chairs now...

Anyway, it's really nice to be able to eat at a table again and not have tv trays in the way all the time.

I used to be a little uncomfortable about riding the bus because of the unique people that rode it. However, it wasn't long before I became comfortable riding the bus and unaffected by the different types of people on the bus. I've become so used to the diversity that I encounter on the bus that I don't really even notice what other types of people ride it.

Bus rides are generally pretty diverse. Nowhere else in my daily routine am I among such a diverse variety of people. The types of people at my job all share some similarities with each other, just like the people at the grocery store mostly come from the same neighborhood. However, the bus goes through many neighborhoods and takes people to and from many different types of jobs, stores, schools, and other places.

On the buses I ride to and from work, the vast majority of people seem to be regular working folk. I ride through downtown, so when I first get on, going toward downtown, most of the people are white-collar office workers who all get off as the bus goes through downtown. Then, the bus starts filling up with people who work in the industrial areas south of downtown where I work.

When Lesley and I ride the bus on the weekend or during the week, we encounter different types of people, depending on the time of day, neighborhood, and direction of the bus. When we ride toward the University District, the buses often consist of a lot of college students. When we ride to Capitol Hill, the bus has a lot of young hipsters and sometimes some possibly homeless people. Buses heading into downtown generally seem more diverse.

However, I've realized that the types of people on the bus don't really make a difference. Nobody ever bothers us and sometimes strange people can make the ride interesting. Like the guy on one bus who was listening to music intently and chanting "marijuana" every so often. Riding the bus has become a diverse, interesting, and integral part of city life for us.

Our current residence is the most urban location that I've ever lived in. We're about a mile from downtown and several other thriving neighborhoods. Pretty much anything we want or need isn't too far away. So, we've gotten in the habit of not leaving this nearby area very often.

We did some driving around the city recently and it had been months since the last time we had been to neighborhoods like Ballard, Fremont, and West Seattle. Those neighborhoods are only about 5 miles from downtown, but to me they almost seemed like distant suburbs since we go out there so rarely.

It's great having everything so close, since we don't have to go very far for what we need. However, it's easy to forget that there's a whole lot of city out there that we haven't explored. Whenever I look at a map or talk to my coworkers about where they live, I'm reminded of how expansive this metropolitan area is and how little of it I have seen.

I doubt I'll ever have a reason to visit most of the suburbs here, but I shouldn't forget that while the inner city is an exciting, vibrant, and awesome place, there is still a lot of Seattle to see.

We've had our shower curtain since we got married and it's been really wrinkled the whole time. I guess I just never really cared about it, but I was thinking yesterday that I would iron it since I had some time. It looks a ton better now. I don't know why I didn't iron it before.

Hope you enjoyed that really exciting post.

Gas Works Park is a pretty popular park in the city. There was a coal gasification plant on this site and they decided to leave a lot of the equipment for it and turn the land into a park. Anyway, it's a neat place and has a pretty good view of the city. We went there a while ago and never posted pictures from it, so here they are:

On the first day of fall, the weather felt a little cooler. Seems like the seasons are more defined here. There was a little bit of warm, summer-like weather last week, but the trees already know that it's fall. The leaves on the trees nearby are turning yellow and already beginning to fall. Today it was windy and cool and a lot of leaves fell.

We went out last weekend to take some pictures. We took pictures of downtown, the water, and other things from two different viewpoints in the city. Enjoy.

I took a few more pictures of my view from work back in July that I never posted until now. We had really clear days for most of June and July, which made it possible to see Mount Baker in the distance. A few buildings are much closer to completion now and one building is over 30 stories tall and blocks half of my old view of our apartment complex.

Vulcan owns a lot of the land in our neighborhood and has been building a lot of buildings. Consequently, property values have gone up considerably. There was a very interesting article about some of the impacts to small business owners. Here's an excerpt:

Fairman has been in business in Seattle for 31 years... When Safeco Field was built and Sodo redeveloped, he was forced from a warehouse there.

So he settled into South Lake Union, where rent was cheaper...

This was 12 years ago. "There wasn't much going on the neighborhood back then"...

"Vulcan says all of the right things, how they want to keep the neighborhood's charm and small businesses. Then they do things to drive out those same businesses."

Fairman... said it's why downtowns across the nation have begun to look the same. Developers create lease options that only major franchises can afford.

"That why you are more likely to see Niketown and Starbucks than a mom-and-pop business," he said.

I've seen this coming, unfortunately, and it's one of the reservations that I have about this area. In a decade or so, a lot of the unique characteristics will be gone and replaced with fancy new buildings with new mainstream establishments. It would be nice if the area could stay diverse and eclectic with room for everyone.