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.