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.

I've been consistently taking the bus at least four times per week. After finding out about MyBus.org, I've been missing the bus a lot less. I missed the bus in the morning once last week, so that was the day I decided to drive. However, I really like taking the bus, mostly because I get to read along the way, but also because I don't wear out the car. It takes a little longer to take the bus, but I've really enjoyed it. I'm still thinking about getting a bike to ride to work, but for now the bus is just fine.

We're planning on going to the 2010 Winter Olympic games, which will be held in Vancouver, BC, only 140 miles from us. Tickets will be available to request this Friday, October 3. Thankfully the tickets are not first-come-first-served, it's more like a lottery system. I'm interested in seeing the opening ceremonies, figure skating, speed skating, and hockey. Medal events cost more too, so it will be difficult to decide which events are most important to us. And I guess it depends on which tickets we are able to reserve depending on demand. But anyway, I'm looking forward to hopefully going to a few events and spending time in Vancouver.

We went to a Washington Huskies football game on Saturday. It was exciting to go to the game. The Cascade Mountains and Olympic Mountains were both visible from the stadium, as was Mount Rainier and Lake Washington. We went to our seats in the end zone and could see a few boats parked in the water.

The Huskies were 0-3 entering the game against the Stanford Cardinal (singular) with the second worst defense in the league (the worst was my alma mater). Anyway, it was an exciting atmosphere with the fans in our section barking loudly before the game started. I'm just glad they didn't play "Who Let the Dogs Out." The opposite side of the stadium yelled "Go" and our side yelled "Huskies".

It was a high-scoring game and it was pretty close for a while. Unfortunately the Husky defense couldn't stop Stanford and Washington's quarterback broke his thumb. With a couple big plays in the second half, Stanford pulled away and won the game.

After the game, there were like 50 buses waiting outside the stadium. We found the one for downtown and it stopped right by our apartment. And it was free. Our bus ride to the stadium was free, too, with our tickets. I've never been to a sporting event where transportation was free.

Anyway, we had fun going to the game, even though the Huskies lost. Maybe someday we'll see the home team win one of these sporting events that we go to.