Until now, throughout my life I've done practically all of my driving in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. There have been a couple trips out of town, but otherwise I've had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the way roads are arranged in Texas. Now that I'm in a totally different city in another part of the country, it means that I have to not only learn all the specific roads and routes to take, but I also have to learn how roads are laid out differently here and re-learn how to get around.

Overall, in my limited driving experience here, I'd say the differences between roads in Texas and in Seattle are relatively minimal. One thing I immediately noticed, though, was that the freeways here aren't as smooth as in Texas. Since Texas' economy depends tremendously on commercial trucking and most people there depend on the freeways to get to work and get around the state needs to put a lot of money into building flat, straight, smooth and quiet roads. Here, the geography prevents the roads from being too flat or straight but for some reason the roads just aren't very smooth or quiet either. I'm not sure if they use a special pavement here that can handle snow and ice better or if they just haven't repaved the roads in a long time, but most of the freeways here are very loud - louder than any others we drove on throughout our entire road trip up here. They're not really uneven or bumpy, they just have a loud pavement.

Another aspect of the freeways here that isn't as common in Texas is the use of express lanes. I-5 north of Seattle is 4 lanes wide, both ways. In addition to that, there is a separate 4-lane set of express lanes that anyone can use to bypass a lot of the exits near downtown. The closest thing to this that I can think of in D/FW is the new managed HOV lane on I-30, which seemed kind of strange to me when it first opened.

Most of the freeways here (I think there are only 8, compared to 16 or so in the Metroplex) have HOV lanes. And, strangely, some of these HOV lanes have their own set of exits, so whereas on 635 in Dallas, you have to exit the HOV lane to get to the right exit, here, from some of the HOV lanes you can stay in your lane and take your exit which is entirely separate from the exit that everyone else has to take. This seems like a much more expensive way to build exits, but I think it's because the HOV lanes here are often separate from the freeway, whereas in Dallas they're mostly just made by narrowing the rest of the lanes and adding an extra lane.

There does seem to be a lot more left exits here. Now that the Fort Worth mixmaster is long gone, there are only a few interchanges in D/FW that I can think of that have a left exit. However, here, a few of the regular street exits are left exits, especially near downtown. Also, as you might expect, most of the exits and on-ramps here, have shorter deceleration/acceleration lanes. And, since there are no access roads, you have to turn at least 90 degrees after you exit to intersect with the nearest street, and you have to stop, you can't keep going 60 miles per hour after you exit like everyone does in Texas.

The lack of access roads is probably the biggest overall difference between the freeways here and in Texas. Without access roads, it's a little harder to find alternate routes. Whereas in Texas I might stay on the access road and turn on the next street, here I have to cross over the freeway and hope that I find another major street and that it parallels the freeway. However, the lack of access roads here doesn't make as significant of a difference as you might expect, the difference in road layout has caused each metropolitan area to develop a lot differently (I'll talk about this in more detail in another post).

Another thing I've noticed is that people get around much more leisurely here. When I'm driving in Texas, it's pretty common for quite a few people to be going 70 mph or more. However, here when I've gone 65 it seems like I've been passing everyone.

The differences in surface streets likewise aren't that significant. One thing that I've noticed is that the major arterial streets here aren't that wide. The most major street in our area has only two lanes in each direction with no center turn lane. It does get quite busy during rush hour and it does back up, but there are no wider streets anywhere nearby. In fact, I can't think of any streets that have three lanes in each direction. I'm sure my perspective is somewhat skewed because I haven't spent as much time in the suburbs here as I have spent in the suburbs in Texas. Still, in Texas most arterial streets have three lanes in each direction, plus a median with turn lanes, and sometimes even turn ins for slowing down to turn right. The roads here are much smaller in comparison.

Also, people here are more conscious of pedestrians. In Dallas, I was always looking over my shoulder when crossing a street, but here (while I still often look over my shoulder), there are other pedestrians and drivers expect there to be pedestrians before they turn. Also, the streets aren't as wide and fast, so walking alongside the streets isn't as intimidating.

Overall the differences in roads aren't very significant, but I think they're interesting and reflective of the culture of each area, and they do make a slight difference in how I get around.

At our apartment in Irving we paid like $60/month for electricity and then another $40/month or so for gas to heat our water. However, here we don't use natural gas and we pay way less for electricity. Our last bill (for two months of service) was only $23.12. That's it. Only $23.12 for electricity.

I'd suspect that a lot of this is because we haven't used a heater or air conditioner since we've been here. But, it also looks like the price is a lot cheaper, it's only 3.76 cents/KWH, which seems a lot less than what we used to pay. There are a lot of things here that are more expensive than in Texas, but electricity isn't one of them.

I've been at my job almost three months now and I like my company pretty well. It's a fairly small company (about 30 employees), but not too small to be really stressful with too wide a range of responsibilities like one of my previous jobs. It's not as big as my job at First Southwest either, where, at least outside of my immediate co-workers, it felt like I was just one of the hundreds that worked in that big corporate environment.

We get free tea every day and free food once a month for birthdays. Just being in downtown Seattle on the 28th floor is cool. The view is one of the coolest things about my job. I've never had this great of a view at work and few people I know have. I can see so much water, tons of ships, mountains, and other downtown buildings.

My job is a little slow right now and not the most interesting, but I like my co-workers a lot. They're very friendly and talkative and a lot of them are around my age, which is nice. In fact, a group of us is going to a Mariners game in mid-July, which will be fun.

I also like the laid-back culture, which includes casual Fridays, and the fact that I don't have wear a suit or work any overtime at all. I also get a good amount of vacation and personal days, which I can start using after I've worked there for three months. So far, I don't really have any complaints at all. I'm really glad I was able to find my company and I like my job.

Blogger allows us to add labels to our posts to categorize what type of post it is. We hadn't really used this feature before, but I thought it might be helpful, so we've labeled pretty much all of our posts. For example, this post has a "blog" label, so if you click on it, you can view all posts we've written about this blog. There are others, so if you want, you can view all posts with pictures, or all posts that talk about the differences between here and Texas. Anyway, I'm not sure if it will be that useful, but I just thought I'd let everyone know.

It's kind of strange that we only have to dial 7 digits to reach anyone in Seattle from our apartment. Back in D/FW, 10 digit dialing had been in effect for a while, so I'd gotten pretty used to dialing 10 digits to reach anyone. There are multiple area codes here, but, smartly, they're divided by area. So, whereas a 214, 469, or 972 number could reach someone anywhere in Dallas county, here 206 is only for Seattle, 425 is only for the Eastside, and 253 is only for south of the city. Since we only have to dial 7 digits, it almost feels like we're living in a small town or that we're stepping back in time. It's one of the smaller differences I've noticed, but it's kind of nice.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to live in Seattle was because of how the city is laid out and how land is used here. Seattle is not the only scenic city with good weather, but it's one of the ones that is developed well, meaning that there's more city than suburbs and you don't have to use a car to get everywhere. Seattle isn't as car-friendly as Dallas, but that's part of what makes it into such a great place to live.

Transportation is strongly related to how a city develops - not how quickly or profitably - but what type of development there is and in what direction the momentum is - out or up. The way Dallas and Seattle are built is very different, with development in Texas being very spaced out and spread out. The way the cities' transportation systems have developed complements how the cities themselves have developed. Seattle is rather dense so public transportation is common and the choice of 18% of the city's commuters. By contrast D/FW is very spread out, so getting around by car is vastly the common choice, and only 5.5% of people in Dallas and 1.5% in Fort Worth use mass transit for their daily commute.

You could say that D/FW just has bad public transportation, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Seattle's public transportation system is so effective because the city is denser. Buses can carry a lot more people when more people live closer together and close to a stop. People in Fort Worth would have to walk farther to a bus stop or the buses would have to stop a lot more often to carry the same amount of people. Also, while Seattle's mass transit system is good, it doesn't even include light rail, yet still carries more than three times (proportionally) the commuters of DART buses and light rail.

While density contributes to the success of public transportation, roads contribute to the failure of density. In Texas, whenever traffic is bad, common knowledge says that the roads just need to be expanded, that if the freeway were a little wider, or if they just build more roads, that it would solve the problem. However, that's almost never the case, as expanded roads normally fill up with more traffic and in fact encourage traffic and low density development. Freeways in the Metroplex are quite wide, but they still get busy. Contrast Austin with D/FW. Austin has bad traffic and there haven't been many roads built in a while. If Austin suddenly doubled their road capacity, then there wouldn't be that disincentive against building a house with a big yard way in the suburbs. In that case, traffic in Austin would still likely be just as bad in several years. Adding more roads is a temporary fix and results in a constant battle with traffic. In Seattle, the public transportation is so good partly because the roads haven't been expanded as much, so more people live in the city to avoid traffic. However, that doesn't mean that the city suffers, in fact, quite the opposite, while Seattle does get bad traffic, the average commute time - at 25 minutes - is still less than in both Dallas and Fort Worth.

All cities have traffic, but being able to provide people with a variety of ways to get around - not just by car - results in a better transportation system. Here, there are multiple ways to get around, fewer drivers, less pollution caused by traffic, and a shorter average commute time and all of this is made possible by density. Even though the Seattle metro area is about half the size of D/FW, there is a lot more city here, and that's what I like about it. I like the freedom to not have to use my car to get everywhere, having a diversity of transportation options, and having the convenience of living within a short walk of commercial establishments. While this is something that few people in Texas understand and fewer still enjoy, it's something that really differentiates Seattle from my former home and one of the reasons why we wanted to live here.

It's been three months since we drove 2,600 miles and arrived in Seattle to start a new chapter in our lives. In these past several weeks, we've adjusted from being lifetime Texans to becoming familiar with and appreciative of the Pacific Northwest. It's been a big adjustment, but we've handled it well and have enjoyed doing so many new things. We've really liked Seattle so far and are glad to be here.

Thinking back to our lifestyle 4 months ago and comparing it to now makes me wonder how we were able to make such a big adjustment. Whereas we both used to work outside of the home and drive a combined 30 miles each day, now Lesley walks to work and I work from home and we walk or take the bus to get places the majority of the time, as I've mentioned before. It's also been a bit of a change to be living in the city instead of the suburbs, which is part of the reason why we can walk so many places. The weather has been great, too, so we've been able to keep our windows open. Plus, with all of the beautiful parks, we've been enjoying the outdoors and getting exercise.

Also, everything is new to us here, so there's been so much more that we've wanted to see and do on the weekends. It has almost seemed like a three-month vacation, since we've been busy doing so many different things. We've posted on this blog about almost everything that we've done, and we enjoyed pretty much all of it, so it's hard to choose highlights. While we've done a lot of cool things in Seattle, some of the most enjoyable things were outside the city. I'd say that our anniversary weekend trip to the tulip festival and Deception Pass was the best thing we've done (click for part 1, part 2, part 3, or video). Snoqualmie Falls was pretty cool, too.

As for things in Seattle, the Savor Seattle food tour was pretty cool and helped us get more acquainted with Pike Place Market. Kerry Park was awesome. The Ferry Boat ride was great, too. And, we both enjoyed Olympic Sculpture Park and the Underground Tour. Also, we've enjoyed going to sporting events (Sonics game, 1st Mariners game, 2nd Mariners game).

While the highlights have been great, there's a lot more to the city that affects our daily lives, but in that regard, too, we've both been very happy. Overall, the city is more nature-oriented, which makes sense, since the rain contributes to lush greenery and natural diversity and the temperatures are moderate enough to let you enjoy the outdoors. There is so much more natural beauty, including several bodies of water, tons of tall trees, and accordingly, there are just so many more parks. It's not just parks, though, there are just more things to do outside; Seattle is a lot less oriented to allowing people to stay inside buildings and stay in their cars, which leads to the city feeling more active, since there are so many people out and about. It's also been nice that we've met some people and attended some social events.

There are numerous other cultural differences between here and Texas that I'm still trying to fully understand, but have already widened our perspective. We're looking forward to doing more new things in the city, and visiting some of the nearby cities and beautiful natural areas. So far it's been a great experience and we're glad to be living here. It would be nice to be closer to family and friends, but this is a special experience for however long we'll live here - whether it will only be a few years or forever, we don't know, but we'll enjoy it while we're here.

There are numerous small cultural differences between here and Texas and one of the differences that we've noticed is that despite being one of the more remote cities in the US, the culture here seems less insular.

For example, when people were voicing prayer concerns in church, one person mentioned the conflict in Tibet and another person mentioned struggles in Congo. From years of going to church in Texas, I can't really remember anyone praying for anything outside of the United States, other than the war in Iraq. And, when praying for the war in Iraq in Texas, the prayer was almost always for our troops to come home safely, whereas at church here, they prayed for a peaceful end to the conflict and protection for both sides. I'm not trying to say one way is right and one way is wrong - you can make your own opinion about that - I just think it's an interesting difference.

I found another couple examples at the basketball game we went to. Now, I haven't been to nearly as many basketball games as I've been to church services, so maybe these examples are a little weaker. Still, I thought it was interesting, and even a little strange, that at the game I went to the anthem was sung by a group of young adults from Uganda. It seemed a little weird to have people who could only dream about enjoying the security and freedoms that we have to be singing our anthem, and I don't know how often something like that happens here, but I couldn't really see that happening in Dallas. Another example, and this one could be common at other basketball games, too, I've just never noticed it, but there was an advertising for the Nothing But Nets Campaign, a campaign to reduce the deadly and historically unstoppable grip of malaria on millions of Africans. Maybe they advertise at Mavs games, too, but it would seem a little more out of place there than it did here.

And the final example I can think of is again just my perspective, but people here made a pretty big deal about the Dalai Lama being in town and I have a hard time imagining people in Dallas/Fort Worth having the same enthusiasm.

Those are all the examples I've noticed so far. While I may not be correct in my perspective for a couple of them, both Lesley and I have noticed the overall difference in culture, however subtle and difficult to quantify. Seattlites just seem more worldly and make Texan culture seem more insular. I just think it's interesting.

There are a lot of fairs and festivals here in the summer, and the unofficial start to the festival season is marked by the University district fair, this past weekend. We didn't have a lot going on on Sunday, so we headed down to the U District and walked along the length of the fair. It was a pretty big festival, with a lot of booths. Most of the stuff there was pretty typical stuff that I don't care too much about, like crafts, clothes, and candles. Anyway, it was kind of neat to go there. I'm not sure what other festivals will be taking place this summer, but it should be interesting.

One of the neat things about Seattle is that there are so many bodies of water. We don't normally notice it, but it is kind of neat. This past weekend we decided to walk along the waterfront, which is something that we hadn't really done much of before. The area is pretty touristy, but the weather was great and the air was clear enough so that we could see the mountains in the distance. It was very scenic and a very enjoyable area to walk.

One of the most popular parks in the city is Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. We visited Volunteer Park the first time we came to Seattle, but hadn't been back until last week. It's a fairly small park compared to the numerous large parks in the city, but it's still a good place to go. A lot of the other parks are basically nature reserves, so they have unpaved trails and there has been little human interference into the types of plants growing. However, Volunteer Park has plenty of grass and not nearly as many trees as you'll find outside the city. Still, the trees, plants, and flowers are so varied that they make it a really pleasant place to walk. There also some really old and large trees there. Anyway, we really enjoyed our walk there and I look forward to returning.

A picture of the downtown Seattle Public Library that we found online.

Seattle's central public library is a relatively new building, with an unusual look that some people don't like. On Saturday, we were looking for a way to get out of the heat and decided to go to the library so I could get a library card. On the inside, the library is one of the neatest buildings I've ever been in. Behind the book return is a vertical conveyor belt that returns books to a central location. In one of the areas, the floor is a wood floor with raised text carved out of the wood. The color scheme is interesting, too, with colorful, light green escalators. Since the library's exterior is mostly glass, there is plenty of natural light inside, which makes for a comfortable environment. It's 10 stories tall, but doesn't have much of a view from the top, except for one looking all the way down at the atrium. While I definitely really liked the building itself, I also enjoyed walking around and browsing the magazine collection. I'm looking forward to going back again soon.

When we visited Seattle two years ago, we saw advertisements for the annual Seattle Cheese Festival, which was planned for sometime after our flight back to Texas. We were disappointed that we would have to miss such an event, since we both love cheese. So, when we heard of the cheese festival again this year, we were eager to attend. Since the weather was forecast to be sunny, we knew there would be a lot of people out and we wanted to get there early before it got too crowded. We weren't totally successful, though, as it was 11:45 when we got there and the place was really crowded. It was also really hot, especially under the sun. The high temperature for the day set a new record at 88 degrees, but it felt hotter than that with the heat reflecting from the concrete.

There were a lot of different kinds of cheese, both from local companies and from other countries. We were able to fight through the crowd to try a few samples of cheese, which we enjoyed. It was just too busy, though, for us to be able to stop by all the booths. We had planned to buy some cheese, but after standing in line for 5 minutes without moving, we gave up and decided to just buy some cheese at the store. Still, we had fun, though it was a little disappointing that it was so busy and the heat made it so uncomfortable. I'm looking forward to our next trip to the store so that we can buy some cheese.

About two years ago we visited Seattle for the first time. We had already started talking about wanting to live in another city someday and we thought that we might like to live in either Seattle or Portland. I wrote a few posts about our trip on my old blog. You can click here to read about what we did in Seattle the first time we visited. Anyway, it's kind of interesting that back then we were talking about moving and that I wanted to move to Portland and Lesley wanted to move to Seattle. In this post, I talked about what we were looking for in a city, including the same things we like about Seattle now:

We’d like to live in a large city milder weather than we have in Texas. I’d like to live somewhere where I don’t have to take a car to get everywhere and where I can spend more time outdoors. We thought Seattle and Portland might be two cities that would fit our interests, so we wanted to visit to get a better feel for the cities and evaluate the things that statistics don’t indicate. After visiting, I can say that both Seattle and Portland seem to do a better job of having what we want than do Dallas or Fort Worth.

So far, I don't have any regrets over living here instead of Portland, though I do wonder what it would have been like. It's interesting to look back on our thought processes on moving and the steps we took toward moving here. It's kind of neat that we both kind of knew what we wanted and were able to move here.

We went to another Mariners game on Friday night. We went to the second home game of the season also when it was still pretty cold outside. Fortunately, the weather Friday night was much nicer. This time we went with a few people from church. The game itself started badly for the M's, with 4 runs given up in the first inning. However, they came back and kept it close, but couldn't get any runs to get ahead of the Padres and ended up losing the game. Still, it was a fun game and the weather was great.

Last time we went to a game, we took a special bus after the game that went downtown, but this time we wanted to take a bus that would take us closer to our apartment. Unfortunately, the stop we were supposed to wait at was closed because of the game, so we kept walking, but never found another stop. Then, we saw a bus we needed, but missed it, twice. I think Lesley was upset about it, but I was glad because the weather was great and I really enjoyed walking through downtown.

It's been sunny and warm all day and should be for most of the evening, however there's a flood watch in effect. At first, this really confused me, but then I read that it's because of melting snow. Anyway, that's kind of interesting. It's a totally different weather world up here.

Despite living in a dense city, we can see plenty of sky from our window. Since we face west, sometimes we see some pretty sunsets. Hope you enjoy the pictures in this gallery:

We tried to make reservations to eat at the Space Needle last night because it was really clear yesterday afternoon and we still haven't gone up in it. They had an opening at 6:30, so we were going to go ahead and eat at that time even though the sun doesn't set until around 8:45 and we'd have to wait quite a while to see Seattle at night. Unfortunately, they said there was a private party going on and that the observation deck would be closed. So we decided not to go and wait until we have another clear afternoon/evening when the observation deck is open. I'm getting a little anxious and hope we can go eat there soon.

We're having an unusual heat wave today and tomorrow, with highs around 85 or higher. Record high temperatures are likely to be broken. It's so nice and clear outside right now and I can see all the mountains in the distance. It's really cool. I wish I could take the rest of the day off and go outside.

The weekend before last we decided to finally ride the Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge Island. We'd ridden it once before when we came here on vacation in May of 2006 and thought it was awesome, but we hadn't done it since we moved here. We walked all the way from our apartment down to the ferry dock and barely missed the one leaving at 3:00, so we had to wait until 3:45 to ride the next one. In the meantime, we went back down by the piers and got a cone of strawberry ice cream that was really good. I wanted mint chocolate chip, but Troy doesn't like that flavor for some reason, so I compromised and got strawberry. It was cool to watch as the cars came off the next ferry before we boarded. It was sunny and nice outside, so we could see the city and surrounding area pretty clearly.

We didn't have to wait too long before boarding the ferry. You can sit out on the deck and some people even feed the seagulls that follow the ship across the Sound. We sat outside and enjoyed the view of the city and the sound. It only took about 45 minutes to get to Bainbridge Island. Once we were there, we walked around the small town square. A lot of the shops were closed because it was Sunday, but we didn't really see anything that interested us anyway. We took the next ferry back to Seattle and went home. It was pretty fun to go out on the water like that and I'm sure we'll do it again some day.

We hiked the weekend before this last one at Cougar Mountain. We really liked it and so this past Saturday we decided to go back and hike on a different trail. Despite the name, we didn't see any predators at all. Parts of the trail we took this time were pretty steep and there wasn't much room to walk. There were a lot of fallen trees and tree roots sticking up out of the ground. Anyway, after only walking for about 10 minutes, we came across a man in his 60s coming down from the mountain. He stopped and talked to us for a little bit and mentioned some other places to go hike around Seattle. He was very friendly and towards the end of our conversation he mentioned how nice it was to see a young married couple and said "God Bless You." So, we went our separate ways, but not for long. About 30 seconds later he yelled at us to stop and so we went back down to see what he wanted. He said he wanted to buy us dinner and handed us a $50 bill! We were shocked and didn't know what to do. We said he didn't have to do that, but he said to take it. It was quite a nice surprise. That kind of thing doesn't happen very often. So we figure sometime this week we'll honor his wish and go out to a nice restaurant.

The absolute best place to go in Seattle for views of the city is Kerry Park located on Queen Anne Hill. A lot of the pictures and video clips you've seen for sporting events in Seattle are taken from Kerry Park. We've been to Kerry Park before when we visited in May of 2006, but we hadn't been there since we moved here. A few weeks ago when it was really clear outside, we went to Kerry Park close to sunset and took a bunch of video and pictures. When we left the apartment, I didn't know that it was clear enougb to see Mount Rainier in the distance, so I was really excited to see the mountain when we got there. Mount Rainier is 54 miles southeast of Seattle and it's the most prominent mountain in the contiguous 48 states with a prominence of 13,210 feet. From Kerry Park, it looks just as tall as some of the taller buildings and it really stands out behind the skyline. You can't see it that often and so it was cool to get pictures of it for the first time. After we stayed there for about 30 minutes, we decided to go home for a while and then go back when it was dark so we could take pictures of the city at night with the tripod. So, here are our pictures and video of beautiful Seattle from Kerry Park.

Since it's so hilly here, there are a several tunnels. I'm not really used to driving through tunnels, so I think they're pretty cool. Some of them are fairly long, too. Still less than a mile, but long enough to enjoy. Here's a picture:

The national stereotype of Seattle is that it rains all the time here, that it rains all day most days and when it's not raining, it's cloudy. We've been here for part of winter and spring but so far have not found that to be the case. It does rain most days, but it's more of a sprinkle than a rain and it's for only about an hour or so. It has rained heavily a few times and we might have seen a couple days where it was rainy all day. However, we've seen the sky almost every day and most days the sun has come out for several hours.

An average day starts out with some light rain in the morning, which is nothing like the heavy thunderstorms in Texas - there's no thunder, and the rain usually barely requires an umbrella. After the rain, it's cloudy for a couple more hours. Then, around lunch time the clouds start dissipating and for most of the afternoon it's fairly sunny. Actually, this pattern has seemed fairly consistent lately, which means that - just like during summer in Texas - I don't have to pay attention to the weather forecast because I know what to expect the next day, but it also means that - much unlike the summer in Texas - it stays pretty nice outside and I can enjoy the outdoors. As we get closer to summer, we're seeing less rain and more sun.

Don't tell anyone I told you all this, though, because I think the locals here like to play up the image that it rains a lot here to keep too many people from moving here. It works, I guess, because a couple people at work always ask me if it's raining and before we moved, one of Lesley's coworkers at her job in Dallas said that she couldn't live in Seattle unless she was taking anti-depressants. Still, I'd have to say that overall the level of rain has been great, enough to keep things clean and green but there's been plenty of sunshine to enjoy.

We've taken several pictures of the rain from our apartment and you can see a few below:

One of the favorite things that I can see from our apartment is the old Troy Laundry building. This has been one of my favorite parts of our neighborhood ever since I saw it when originally driving here to tour the apartment building. The building used to be a laundry building, which I guess is something that used to exist before everyone got their own washers and dryers. I think it's a neat building and the neatest thing is the old sign that says "TROY." Right now the building is just used for storage, but it would be neat if it were restored. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the building, some from our window and some from the street.

We'd been planning to sell my car for a while before we moved here. We wanted to get by with just one car and mine was the older one. I tried to talk Lesley into selling hers, saying that we'd get more money for it than we would for mine, but I knew that my car was a gonner. I really liked my car, it was a pretty good car, and I enjoyed a lot of nice drives in it (as well as enduring a lot of frustrating traffic hassles). I've been without it for a few months now and sometimes I miss it when I think about it. It's kind of silly because it's just a car, but I still kind of wish that we had it and had sold Lesley's car. Of course I also wouldn't mind still having my old Lumina, either.

I'm a huge fan of the Indiana Jones trilogy and can't wait to see the new movie, Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Only about 2 weeks to go! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, because I know this movie is likely to be very different from the original movies and that it probably won't be as good either. I'm going to see it with the idea that this is another chance to see one of the best characters every created in movie history and a chance to see my favorite actor in a new movie. Harrison Ford doesn't make very many movies these days, and not many good ones at that. It'll be exciting to hear the famous music by John Williams one more time. If you go into the movie expecting greatness, you'll probably be disappointed. I'm just going to try to enjoy it for what it will be, another adventure for our favorite hero, Indiana Jones.

Coffee is a big deal in Seattle. There's either a Starbucks, Seattle's Best, or Tully's coffee shop on almost every corner in downtown. Unfortunately I still just can't stand the taste of coffee, even after tasting it several times. We don't have a coffee maker at home, and I just don't want to go spend $4 on a cup of coffee from Starbucks just for the sake of drinking coffee because I'm in Seattle or because everyone else drinks it.

So, instead of coffee, I've started drinking hot tea, English Breakfast tea, to be specific. It's a blend of black teas, similar to Lipton tea. People at my office drink both coffee and tea all the time and we have all we want for free in the office. I still have to use some kind of sweetener to take away the bitterness, since I'm used to my Mom's iced Lipton tea. I'll have to be careful to not drink it too often though because it has caffeine in it. One day last week I had two cups of this English Breakfast tea, along with a Dr Pepper and by mid-afternoon I had a headache, probably from all the caffeine. But, having a cup in the morning a few times a week is nice. Drinking water all the time gets boring. And as for coffee, I doubt I'll ever develop a taste for it.

I've talked before about how I really like our apartment, but that we aren't crazy about the neighborhood. After living here for a while, I'm still pretty underwhelmed by the neighborhood, outside of the few pockets of apartments, the neighborhood on the whole seems rather unpopulated and industrial. But it's not that bad, at least not in our immediate vicinity. It doesn't seem unsafe at all, and there are a few restaurants and other things around. There are sidewalks everywhere and it's quite pedestrian friendly. We're also close to other areas, like downtown and Capitol Hill, that do have more people out and more things to do. Overall it's a relatively convenient location that's still re-developing. Click on the image below for some pictures that we've taken while walking around.

We didn't really have much planned for this weekend, but we decided to go hike yesterday. It was cloudy and the weather was in the low 50s, which is great hiking weather in my opinion. We went to a mountain nearby and it wasn't very busy, I guess other people stayed indoors. This hike was a little easier than last week's because we didn't have to climb as high, but it was still a nice long hike. Toward the end it started to sprinkle a little bit, which was pretty refreshing. I got some better hiking shoes yesterday (after our hike) and can't wait to go back to that park and to others to hike more.

Bad ozone season started this week in the DFW area and is expected to be worse than in 2007.

For most of the next six months, pollution from cars and trucks, construction equipment and industry will bake in the sunlight and heat to create the ozone pollution blamed for everything from asthma attacks in children to nasal problems in healthy adults.

It's hard to believe that I've been working from home almost every day for the past two months. Before I started working from home, I didn't really know what to expect but it was never really that big of an adjustment. The biggest difference is that I have missed going into work and chatting with my coworkers. I also haven't been as involved or as effective at work since the lack of presence makes it a little more difficult to keep up with what's going on and help out. I've still been able to do my job, but I've been underused and haven't really been accomplishing as much. But, on the other hand, I have enjoyed the slower pace and the extra time saved by not having to commute anywhere. Still, I am tired of the projects that I am working on. They're all things that I never wanted to work on to begin with and most of them have been going on much longer than they should have. There are things that I do that I kind of like, but working remotely was set up as a temporary arrangement and I am looking forward to the end. I'm looking forward to finding a job that fits me better and that I enjoy more and I'm looking forward to meeting more people in Seattle and getting more in touch with the local area. But, working from home has been a good experience and I'll try to enjoy the remaining weeks.