We went to our second Sounders game of the season today. The first one we went to was the Sounders second home game, when they were playing great. Over the last few games they've had quite a few ties and needed to get a win. Fortunately, we were there to see it today as part of a record crowd of 32,526. The Sounders didn't play that well in the first half, but got a goal and then got a couple more in the second. It was nice to see a 3-0 victory. And, the weather at the game was nice, though a little breezy and cool in the shade, but at least we didn't burn. We're not planning to go to another Sounders game this season, but are hoping to see them get a lot more wins on TV.

We usually go hike somewhere every weekend, so this morning we hiked Little Si, like we did last year. We went at the end of April last year, so there was still snow on Mount Si, but this time all the snow was gone. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I remembered, probably because we've done a lot of hiking since then and gotten used to harder hikes. We got started early and were done by about noon. The weather was nice and cool on the way up, but it was starting to get warm by the time we finished coming back down.

The main reason we did Little Si today was so that we could make sure we could handle hiking Mount Si next Friday, since we have the day off for the 4th of July. We also wanted to try out our new hiking poles we bought last week. They weren't much help on the way up, but on the way down they helped keep us more steady, especially while navigating rocky areas.

So, we plan on hiking Mount Si next Friday. It'll be a tough hike, with an elevation climb of like 3,500 feet. But I've heard at the top there are great views of Seattle and Mount Rainier, so hopefully it will be worth all the work.

Capitol Hill is the neighborhood to the east of us and is one of Seattle's densest, most vibrant neighborhoods and is a center of liberal ideals and hipster counterculture. It's a diverse neighborhood, though, and is livable for everyone, with a movie theater, grocery stores, a couple great parks, lots of coffee shops and restaurants, architecture that spans the past hundred years, and a light rail station (opening in 2016).

We spent time there last Saturday, starting with brunch of french toast and eggs benedict at Table 219, across from our favorite bagel place. We walked around the neighborhood and were impressed by all of the old church buildings that we discovered dotting the neighborhood. We stopped and picked up some tea at Remedy Teas, which has 150 types of organic tea. Then we walked along Broadway, the main thoroughfare, and ran into a couple friends from church on our way to Volunteer Park. Though the day started off cool and breezy, the sun had come out and Lesley and I enjoyed relaxing in the shade. After that, we walked through Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce Lee is buried. Then we headed back south and walked along Millionaire's Row, which is lined with large homes from the early 20th century. We stopped briefly at Cal Anderson park, which was full of people. Then, we got some crepes at Saley and headed home.

Capitol Hill is close to downtown, very walkable, and always interesting. It's my favorite neighborhood in the city and I would love to live there.

Quick Capitol Hill facts:

• Population: 30,409


• Population density per square mile: 18,121


• 2008 Median Home Price: $352,000


• 2008 Median Condo Sales Price: $315,000


• Cars per capita: 0.4


• 12th most walkable neighborhood in Seattle (the parts of Capitol Hill that we visit are some of the most walkable in the city, but it's a large neighborhood with a lot of area that is just residential)

Sources:
1. Seattle Metropolitan Real Estate
2. Walk Score: Seattle's Most Walkable Neighborhoods

Two new snow leopard cubs were born at the Woodland Park Zoo right here in Seattle! Here's an article from the PI and a post on the Zoo's blog about them. The last time we went to the zoo, we went specifically to see the adult snow leopards and were disappointed when they didn't show up. I'm not sure when the cubs will be publicly displayed. We probably won't be going back to the zoo for a while though, since it's sort of expensive, like $16 a person or something.

Today was the longest day of the year. The sun rose at 5:11 AM and set at 9:10 PM, making the day almost a full 16 hours long. The sun will set at 9:10 for the rest of the month before gradually setting earlier.

Yesterday, I had sort of a scare with Sassy, my cat I grew up with since like 1996. I called mom around lunchtime yesterday since she had called me earlier in the morning (but I didn't answer), and she told me that her and dad were taking Sassy to the vet because she's been licking this rather grotesque bulge on her right arm and it's turned pretty red recently and looked like it might bleed soon.

Anyway, she wasn't sure what was wrong with her and she hasn't been eating as much lately either. She said they might have to put her down if it was going to be too expensive to do surgery.

So they took her to the vet and when I got out of work at 4, she called and said that it's a tumor on her right arm and that they're going to do surgery next week to remove it! So she's going to be ok! And that nasty bulge will finally be gone. And the vet said that she's about 8 pounds, and still very healthy for a cat her age, which is probably about 15 years.

I was so relieved when they said she'd be ok. Now we get to have her for at least a couple more years.

Here's a video I took of her last time I was there:

After a record-tying 29-day dry spell at Sea-Tac airport, today began with rain. I know Seattle has a reputation for constant rain, but it's not really like that. Even though it hadn't rained in quite a while, I didn't notice that much had turned brown, the ample trees, bushes, and flowers still looked lush to me. Still, while I enjoyed the sun, I like the rain as well and was glad to see cloudy skies and drizzle today on my way to work.

When I moved out of my parents' house, I started a collection of napkins. That is to say, whenever I had napkins left over from eating fast food, I set the extra napkins in the kitchen to use later. This continued after Lesley moved in and for several months we had such a good backlog of napkins that we didn't have to use any of the napkins that we bought from the store.

It seemed that our napkin collection began to dwindle when we moved here and it ran out not too long after that. Since then, we've relied almost exclusively on our package of store-bought napkins (the first package of napkins Lesley bought after moving out of her parents' house). We've definitely eaten out less since moving here, but that's probably more due to having few fast food and even fewer fast casual restaurants nearby, than to any type of conscious decision. Not only are there fewer of those places nearby, but some of our old favorites don't even exist up here. Not having those places around isn't much of a big deal, it just means we'll have to buy some more napkins sometime soon.

A: 222 Yale Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109 (see icon below):


We live close to REI, the outdoor gear store, and on a few occasions other pedestrians have asked us where REI is. It's a big building, but it doesn't have a big sign on it. And, since the streets are in a pretty consistent grid pattern, the surroundings offer no apparent guidance to the store. It's nice to be able to offer directions to somewhere we know how to get to. I'm sure REI would benefit by placing some directional signs in the area, but until then, I'll be happy to provide directions to whoever needs it, either in person or from the map above.

Light rail is 32 days away from beginning service (I only know that because Seattle Transit Blog is doing a countdown). Last week, there were frequent test trains in the bus tunnel on my way to and from work. Though light rail doesn't really take me anywhere I need to go, I'm really looking forward to riding it for fun. It will be really nice when it starts running all the way to the airport this December.

Our friend in Texas challenged us to a license plate game. Whoever gets to see all 50 states first wins. The rules are that you cannot go out of your way and make trips simply to see new license plates. It must be seen on your normal day to day routine. Also, U-haul vehicles, semis, and anything like that don't count. So, for the past month, we've been keeping track of the date we saw each new plate, the make and model of car, the color, and where we saw it.

The first few days we were playing were insane. It only took us 3 days to see 22 different plates, including Hawaii (16th state we saw). It's now been a month and we've seen 48 states (we're on pace to win). The only ones we need are Delaware and Kentucky. We were shocked to see Rhode Island this past weekend.

I had no idea that so many people drove to visit here or move here. In downtown alone on any given day, we usually see at least 5 different states other than Washington. The most common are Oregon, California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas or Illinois. We see a lot of British Columbia plates too, probably as much as we see Oregon.

Here's a map showing when we saw a plate from each state:

Well, as I expected several months ago, a permanent crane has gone up almost directly in front of the Space Needle, partially blocking our nice view. Pretty soon a tall building will completely block our view. How disappointing. And it really sucks for my parents since they couldn't see the view before it was obstructed.

While we don't do our regular grocery shopping at Whole Foods, it is nice at times to have one nearby. It's on the way home from downtown and less than a 10 minute walk to get there from our apartment.

They have a quality selection of fruits and vegetables, and many types of international cheeses, all of which can be hard to resist. Sometimes we like to stop in and pick up fresh bread to have with dinner. Since they carry a premium selection of foods, including many natural and organic brands, it's different to shop there than shopping at a conventional grocery store. I like to see the different foods they have there and look for new things that I might want to try. Every time I stop in, it feels like a treat, especially since it's not far away.

While I still think I'd like to live closer to our regular grocery store, I'm glad to have Whole Foods nearby.

I don't think we've mentioned this on the blog, but we're making a short trip (about 2.5 days) to Fort Worth the weekend of July 11th for my sister's wedding. We'll be leaving Seattle Thursday night and staying through Sunday afternoon. We weren't planning on going back this summer, but when my sister scheduled her wedding for July, we decided to change our plans.

It'll be a really busy weekend, since I'm the matron of honor and Troy is the only usher. We'll have to go to the rehearsal, the dinner, arrive early before the wedding for pictures, and then of course, the wedding, and reception, among other things. It'll be crazy! I've already gotten my dress altered and pressed and I've also bought my shoes. Troy has his suit, tie, and shoes ready to go. Hopefully our stuff won't get wrinkled on the plane. I think there are places for the flight attendants to hang clothes like that, so that should work out.

It'll be nice to be there for my sister and see the rest of the family at the wedding. I just wish it wasn't going to be a 100 degrees! Hopefully we don't melt during the short time we're there.

After hiking near the Mailbox Peak trail, we decided to do a relatively easy hike in our book on the way back to Seattle. It was a paved trail with a viewpoint of Snoqualmie Falls. The trail used to be a rail line, so it was very flat. The cool, humid weather had brought a lot of slugs out and we were constantly dodging them as we walked along the trial. At the end, we sat on a bench and had some snacks, enjoying the slightly-obstructed view and the sound of the falls. Some rain came along before I could take a picture, but the trees kept us dry and the rain stopped by the time we started heading back.

The weather yesterday was cool and overcast, great hiking weather, so we set out to do a hike in our book. Unfortunately, the road was closed (a problem we've had before), so we stopped nearby where a lot of other cars were parked. We didn't know what trail it was, but we figured we'd try it out and turn around if we didn't like it. Not too far along the way, we saw the name of the trail: Mailbox Peak. That hike was also in our book, but we decided not to do it because it's pretty difficult, as the sign at the trailhead warned us. So, not wanting to hike to the top of Mailbox Peak, we followed along another trail, which appeared to have been used by vehicles at some time. It was a quiet trail and went over some mountain streams. The surface was rather rocky, but it wasn't very steep. It was a decent trail, but nothing too exciting, so after about 30 minutes, we turned around and went back to the car.

The Space Needle was lit up orange-ish the last two nights along with a vertical beam of light. We didn't know why, but found out that Microsoft did this as part of their marketing campaign to announce their new search engine, Bing.

Well it's a scorcher today. Temperatures outside are actually above a comfortable room temperature, topping out at 86°F. That's only 14 degrees less than triple digits. Why on my way home today, I even started to break a sweat! Good thing I didn't pass out from heat exhaustion.

Sarcasm aside, the temperatures are close to record-breaking, and since a lot of people don't have air conditioning, I can see how a heat advisory might be necessary. Still, we've managed to keep our apartment around 80°F without air conditioning and the heat outside is much more comfortable than the 100°F summers I lived with for most of my life.

I thought this article from the Seattle times about a proposed weather radar station was interesting. The current radars are located in Portland and on Camano Island, but the Olympic and Oregon coast mountain ranges prevent those radar stations from seeing incoming storms. Severe weather forecasting would be much improved with an additional radar on the Washington coast, according to this excerpt:

Much of the weather service's change of heart can be traced to several major storms that battered the region over the past several years, Cliff Mass (UW meteorologist) believes. The worst hit in early December 2007, with hurricane-force winds on the coast and drenching rains and floods in Southwest Washington that killed several people and shut down Interstate 5 for days. A coastal radar could have provided some advance warning for areas hit hardest by heavy rainfall, Mass said.

The National Weather Service is finally seeing the importance of a new coastal radar and has asked for $7 million in the 2010 US budget. I'm surprised it's taken so long to gain this much support for what seems like a much-needed additional radar. I always thought it was strange that the radar images weren't that great when checking them for storms.

We used to eat Mrs. Baird's bread when we lived in Texas, but they don't have that in Seattle. So we've tried several kinds of bread here, including the generic Safeway and QFC brands, neither of which stay fresh for very long and don't taste that great. Then we decided to try a local brand, Franz. We won't be going back to any other kind of bread, because the Franz bread we've had has been so delicious! We've tried the potato bread and the milk and honey bread and both are really soft and moist and stay fresh longer. They're smaller loaves than the generic brands, but it's definitely worth the extra few cents. And lately we've found it on sale for $2 a loaf! I'd have to say that Franz bread is better than Mrs. Baird's.