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.