I don't have much to say, but it's been hot here. We both have air conditioning at work, but outside and the bus and the apartment are all warm. I guess it's good that Lesley's parents have been in town because we've been riding in an air-conditioned vehicle and eating at air-conditioned restaurants with them. It's supposed to be hot again tomorrow before cooling off to the mid-80s over the weekend. Then after that it'll probably be in the 70s for several weeks, as the summers normally are.

The Post-Intelligencer tracked the temperature throughout the day as people tried to buy fans, hung out at the beach, and ate ice cream to deal with the heat. Only 13% of residents have air conditioning here, so people here aren't very well prepared for this abnormal weather. But, with the highest 14 annual average worldwide temperatures in the last 125 years all occuring since 1990, at least partially due to global climate change, I'd expect more Seattlites to invest in air conditioners over the next few years.

We got back in Seattle last night after being basically gone the last four days with my parents and grandmother. We drove to Mount Rainier on Saturday, Deception Pass and Whidbey Island on Sunday, and then Olympic National Park on Monday and Tuesday, for a total of probably around 700 miles. I don't really have time to write a long post about it all right now, but I just wanted to let everyone know we're still alive. We have probably taken almost 1,000 pictures the last few days, so it'll take a while to pick out the best ones and post them.

Unfortunately it's especially hot here right now and the high today is supposed to be in the upper 90s. Needless to say, my parents are disappointed that they couldn't get away from the heat as much as they would have liked to. Oh well, at least they're here. I have another half day off work tomorrow and we're just planning to go to a few parks and go up in the Space Needle again. We're eating at Icon Grill tomorrow night for my birthday, so that should be really good. More to come later...

My parents and grandma arrived in Seattle around noon yesterday. They rented the car and checked into the bed and breakfast on Capitol Hill where they’re staying through Sunday. I got off work at 4 and went out the front doors as usual, but then I saw someone I don’t normally see, Mom! She wanted to walk home with me the way I always do every day after work. So we walked to the apartment and met up with my Dad and grandma. I showed them the apartment and they were actually impressed with the size and said it looked bigger than they expected. I guess Troy and I have done a good job of setting expectations as to how small it is. They really liked the view we have and how new the place seems. We also showed them my car, which they haven’t seen since I got Washington plates for it.

After that, we drove to Dad’s favorite restaurant in the whole world – Palisade. Troy & I have been there once, when we visited Seattle three years ago, so it was nice to go back and try it again. Our table was right by the glass window facing the bay with the Seattle skyline in the distance – what a great view. There was also a birthday card from Palisade on the table that Dad had made for me since my birthday is next week.

They have an early dinner special for $30, you get a drink, salad/soup, entrée, and dessert. At first I got their tea, but I had forgotten I didn’t like it much when I had it before, so I changed my drink to their signature drink called the POG: pineapple, orange, guava drink with a little coconut milk. It was delicious! The salad was also very good. It was fresh greens with some type of vinaigrette dressing, topped with thinly sliced onion, radish slices, small nuts, and little orange squares. For my entrée, I got prawns with Yukon Gold potatoes and grilled veggies that included squash, zucchini, carrots, asparagus, and onions. Troy got the crab cakes and everyone else got macadamia nut chicken. Then for dessert, I got the burnt cream. It was all so good and I was so full! I made an apple pie for them on Wednesday night, but I guess we’ll have to wait to eat it since dessert was included with the meal.

After the awesome dinner, we drove back downtown to catch the ferry ride to Bainbridge Island and back. The top of Mount Rainier was visible, but unfortunately we couldn’t see all of it. It’s supposed to clear up and actually be pretty hot over the weekend, so I’m sure they’ll have other chances to see it. The sunset was really beautiful with all the water around us and mountains and trees everywhere. The last thing was did was go to Kerry Park at night. It’s definitely one of my favorite places to go with the great view of the Space Needle, downtown, and Mount Rainier during the day.

It was a great first day of their visit! It’s kind of weird that they are on vacation, but it doesn’t feel like a vacation to me since we live here. I'm looking forward to the rest of their trip.

I haven't posted about work lately for a number of reasons. One of them might be because I've been getting more fulfillment through the things I've been involved with at church lately. I've particularly enjoyed my involvement with our 20-30 something age group people at church.

When Lesley and I moved here, we didn't know anybody. Well, I guess technically Lesley "knew" the people she interviewed with and has gotten to know her coworkers. But, with me working at home in a new city, I didn't have a lot of people to interact with. At least at first.

One of the things we wanted to establish that we hadn't been able to establish while we lived in Irving was a regular habit of going to church. And that's all either of us had ever done - just gone to church for Sunday worship - it hadn't ever been a big part of our lives.

So, after we moved here, we found a nearby church and went. We liked the service, the pastor, and the building. And we met some fellow Texans and other people our age who were involved with the church. We continued to attend and, despite changes in the pastor and the building, decided to join. We got more involved with this church, attending a weekly small group and participating in a lot of activities with people in our age group.

Eventually, I decided to help coordinate more activities for people in our age group and have enjoyed it. The number of people in our age group at church has grown quite a bit since we first started attending and it's been fun to be a part of it. Participating with this group and helping to plan activities and guide our growth has actually been rather fulfilling. I continue to find myself in roles like this and wonder if it will lead to anything more. For now, I guess, it's just something to occupy myself with outside of work.

I've mentioned in the past how I really like being able to walk so many places here. However, South Lake Union is surrounded by highways and busy streets that make it discouraging to walk outside the neighborhood. Though there are some good walking areas very nearby, it's often necessary to walk a few blocks around a highway or cross a busy street. We can still walk pretty easily to a lot of things that are relatively nearby, but it's just not the ideal walkable area that I'd like to live in. For an idea of what I'm talking about, look at the map below:


The green are streets that are enjoyable to walk along.
The orange are streets that are busy and not the most fun to walk along
The red are streets that really suck to walk near
The black are roadways that we physically can't cross.

On the bright side, we are a 15 minute walk from the downtown retail district, closer to Capitol Hill and Lake Union, and from our place on the east side of South Lake Union, we can walk to Seattle Center, Lower Queen Anne, Belltown, or Pike Place Market in less that 30 minutes. So, overall we're in a pretty good location for walking, but the neighborhood just needs to be more seamlessly integrated with its surroundings.

This weekend Seattle became the 20th city in the US to have a light rail system when the city's first light rail line opened from downtown to Tukwila. It was free this weekend as part of the grand opening festivities, which also included musicians at some of the stations. About 51,000 people boarded the train Saturday, the first day of service, and this article does a great job of capturing the event.

We were among the 41,000 people who rode it Sunday. We didn't have anywhere in particular to go, we (particularly me) just wanted to ride it. We got on at the first station and were fortunate to find a seat. I really enjoyed the ride, which was very smooth, though parts of it were a little rougher than I expected. Sometime, we'll visit some of the areas surrounding the stations and will be able to take it to the airport after the line is extended this December. This morning, the train was mostly empty as I rode it toward work, though I had to get off and transfer to my regular bus.

For now, it's not useful to us on a regular basis. Still, I no longer have to be embarrassed that Seattle, with its environmentalist culture, doesn't lag behind so many other cities in the country anymore. In building this line of light rail, Seattle has started what will grow into a transportation network that befits the grown-up, worldly city that Seattle wants to be.

I've been asking my co-worker to go hike with us for a while, but one of us has been busy or out of town for the last month. I know he likes to hike and I learned a lot from him just from talking to him at work about where to hike and which trails are good to start with.

We were finally able to go hike yesterday with him, so we went to Rattlesnake Ledge. He brought along his 5 month old puppy, Charle. We got started pretty early and left Seattle before 8. We went to Rattlesnake Lake and started out just hiking to Rattlesnake Ledge, about 2 miles up. We stopped there and had great views of Rattlesnake Lake, Mount Si, and North Bend. It only took about an hour and a half to get this far, so we decided to make it a longer hike and go all the way to the east peak, another 2.5 miles from the Ledge.

Rattlesnake Mountain wasn't as steep as Mount Si, but it was a little longer distance wise. Round trip we hiked a total of 9 miles. Charle was fun to play with and she doesn't bark, so that was nice. A lot of people we passed on the trail would stop and pet her and say how cute she was. I don't know how many times I heard my co-worker explain that she's a 5 month old boxer-lab mix. She was so tired towards the end of the hike and fell asleep in the car.

It was a little warm, but not too bad at the higher elevations. We had great views of Mount Rainier at the east peak. The terrain wasn't as monotonous as Mount Si, with patches of wildflowers, dense forest, and more flat areas. We got a little sunburned, but not that bad. Afterward, we stopped in North Bend for hamburgers at Scott's Dairy Freeze. Troy and I shared a raspberry shake that was pretty good. It was a lot of fun hiking with my co-worker. Hopefully we can go hike again sometime.

As probably most people know, Starbucks was founded in Seattle in 1971. According to Wikipedia:

Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 16,120 stores in 49 countries, including around 11,000 in the United States, followed by nearly 1,000 in Canada and more than 800 in Japan. From 1971–1976, the first Starbucks was at 2000 Western Avenue; it then was relocated to 1912 Pike Place (in the Market), where it remains to this day.

I see at least 20 different Starbucks locations in any given week. So I thought it would be interesting to see exactly how many are close to where we live.

I searched the Starbucks website and found that there are 103 Starbucks within 5 miles of where we live and only 4 within 5 miles of where my parents live in Fort Worth, which I thought was crazy.

We have 61 stores within 2 miles of where we live, but my parents have none that close, which is almost even more impressive.

We actually don't go to Starbucks that often. Lately the only reason we've been going is because I got a gift card for Christmas, which I've been using to get "Awake" tea.

My parents will finally be visiting us exactly one week from today! I can't wait to show them around Seattle and hang out in our apartment where we've lived for the past year and a half almost. My grandmother is coming with them too for the first few days, which will be nice. I'm glad she's able to visit.

We plan on doing a lot of stuff during the week they'll be here. We'll be eating at our favorite restaurants and visiting Mount Rainier, Olympic National Park, and Deception Pass to name a few places.

We'll be busy this weekend cleaning up and getting ready for their visit. I'm really looking forward to it!

We spent this weekend back in Fort Worth for Lesley's sister's wedding. We couldn't really spend much more than a weekend there, so we left here late Thursday. Lesley's parents took us out for lunch as an anniversary present on Friday and we had some very good Uncle Julio's fajitas and sopapillas. Lesley was the matron of honor so she had some stuff to do for that and I was an usher, so I helped set up tables and chairs for the reception and rehearsal dinner. After the rehearsal and dinner we hung out with Lesley's sister and fiance that night.

On Saturday, Lesley went with her mom and sister to have breakfast and get their hair and makeup done. I met with my parents and brother for breakfast. Afterward, they showed me some of the recent development in Fort Worth. It's good to see Fort Worth being more of a city. Then, we went to my parents' house and saw my mom's scrapbook for their recent cruise. After that we walked at the mall and ate lunch at Jason's Deli before they dropped me off at the church for the wedding.

I ushered for the wedding and then we had the reception. I've been going to Lesley's family events long enough to get to know some of Lesley's family and friends and I enjoyed talking to them at the reception. After the reception, I helped put some tables and chairs away and our friend picked us up. We ate at Cousin's Barbeque, the best BBQ in DFW, and hung out that night.

The next day, Lesley and I went to the church we were married at. We walked through the church's recent expansion and talked to a few of the people we knew there. The pastor was surprised that we came and was glad to see us. We had lunch with my parents and then went to visit my grandmother. My cousin, who I hadn't seen in years, also stopped by with his kids. After that, Lesley's parents took us to the airport and we had a bumpy flight home.

It was a short, busy trip, but I really enjoyed getting to spend time with so many people. While plane tickets and weddings aren't cheap, we appreciate everyone who took care of us, including both of our parents who drove us around and paid for our meals and Lesley's sister and new husband and our friend who let us stay with them overnight. We enjoyed our time there, but are glad to be sleeping in our own bed again.

The roads here in Seattle are mostly asphalt and as I've mentioned before, they're often terrible. I talked to someone about it once and he said that every few years they'll repave the road with new asphalt but it only takes a few months for snow tires and ice to create cracks and bring back the same potholes that were there before.

Recently, though, the city has been repaving some of the major roads around here with concrete. As they were digging up the layers of asphalt, I noticed that these layers had just been laid on top of bricks, so the roads are pretty old. They had to remove these bricks to lay concrete and had a few lanes closed while doing one side of the street. The side they did in concrete was very smooth, so I was excited to see what things would look like when they finished both sides.

However, for some reason, it appears that they continued repaving these roads with asphalt. But, wait, why? Why didn't they just continue repaving with concrete? I don't know. Maybe they'll go back later and dig up the asphalt and finish repaving with concrete? Who knows. We don't drive that much, so it's actually not a big deal as long as they keep the sidewalks open, but I wonder why they'd ever use asphalt again.

The nation's first Art Walk began in Seattle and First Thursday is still a strong local tradition. The First Thursday of every month, more than 50 art galleries in Pioneer Square stay open late to share their art with the public.

I've been to a few galleries here, but have wanted to do First Thursday ever since we moved here and just haven't been able. Finally, last week, we went to check it out.

There's a wide variety of contemporary art represented, including sculpture, blown glass, and painting. We probably visited less than a third of all the galleries but there were some neat artistic concepts that I hadn't seen before. Some of the art was strange, some was neat, some was uninteresting, and some was impressive. Some of the galleries were very busy and, being a bit small, became crowded. Some of the other people seemed to be art connoisseurs, but not the majority. I really enjoyed going and am looking forward to going back and seeing some of the galleries we missed.

Our neighborhood has developed a lot over the last few years and is continuing to grow. As part of a plan to be more of a community, the Cascade Farmer's Market was launched on June 26th, and will continue every Thursday until the end of September from 3-7pm. Most other neighborhoods already have farmer's markets in place and have been successful, so hopefully ours will too.

So, we decided to go last Thursday and see what it was like. It's on Pontius, just east of the Cascade Playground. It wasn't nearly as big as the other ones we've been do, but it was decent. We bought some freshly picked raspberries, a cherry strudel which was delicious, and a pint of blackberry ice cream from the Whidbey Island Ice Cream Company. It was all very good and I'm looking forward to going again in the future.

Every year there is a big party at Gas Works Park for Independence Day called the "WaMu (now Chase) Family Fourth." We thought about going this year and staying, since we walked around Lake Union last year and saw it, but didn't stop. However, this year the only fireworks in Seattle would be on Lake Union, which meant that it would be even busier than last year. So we ended up just staying home most of the day and went out around 8:30 to find a spot either south or east of the lake.

We went up onto the I-5 overpass that leads to Capitol Hill, but eventually police closed the bridge to both cars and pedestrians, so we couldn't stay. It was definitely one of the best views, so it was annoying that they made us leave. After that we went down to the lake and stopped somewhere along Fairview and ended up having a decent view of all the fireworks. It wasn't too crowded where we stopped, which was nice. A boat and a couple of buildings were in the way a little bit, but not that bad.

The show lasted about 20 minutes and seemed better than last year. We were also close enough to hear the music that was playing along with the fireworks, which was pretty cool. I'm kind of glad we ended up not going to Gas Works Park because of the huge crowd of about 50,000 with traffic jams from the afternoon to 1:30 in the morning.

Here are some pictures from last night:

Mount Si is possibly the best-known hike in the area, but with a 3,200 foot elevation gain plus an optional 300 foot rock climb, we had been a little intimidated to hike it. Yesterday, though, we finally decided to do it. Since the weather was going to be sort of warm (though we didn't know how warm), we set out early. When we arrived around 8:15, there were already around 75 cars in the parking lot.

The trail is well worn and has a pretty consistent 15% grade, which is probably about as steep as the hill we have to climb to get to Capitol Hill (which has already seemed really steep to me). And it goes on for 4 miles. The weather was pretty comfortable when we started, but we got warm as we went along. It was a workout, but we made it to the top in just over two hours. We didn't do the rock climb at the top, called the Haystack, but we sat and ate some food we brought and enjoyed the view. Going back down was tiring on our legs and knees, but less physically exhausting, and Lesley was pretty tired by the end of it. We had frozen some Gatorade overnight and left it in the car, so it was melted but still cold when we got to the car. The whole hike, including the stop at the top, took us a little less than 5 hours. Unfortunately, even though it was only around 80 outside, having the car air conditioning running would've felt great, but for some reason it wasn't working.

Anyway, today our legs are a little sore, but not too bad. I'm hoping we can do some other reasonably challenging hikes like this soon.

We're trying to decide if we want to hike tomorrow. Well, we know we want to, but we don't know if it will be too hot. We were planning to do a fairly difficult hike and the high tomorrow is forecast to be somewhere between 84 and 90. That's kind of a wide range to plan for, considering it's only a day away.

But, the weather here is complicated. Most forecasts for Seattle have the weather around 85 degrees. But, we're actually hiking just 30 miles east of here, which could be cooler or several degrees warmer than Seattle (90ºF according to one forecast). And on the coast, less than 100 miles due west of Seattle, the forecast high for Friday is only 70º. East of Seattle, past the Cascade mountain range, the forecast high for Friday is around 98º. So, over 190 miles or so, the forecast high varies by 28 degrees.

The water and mountains cause amazing weather variability in weather in other seasons as well. The coast (near an actual rainforest in Olympic National Park) gets more than 12 inches of rain per month for 5 months out of the year. It's so much rain that the Weather.com bar graph can't accurately fit the full bars.

The rain in "rainy Seattle" tops out at 6 inches on average in the month of December. But North Bend, just 30 miles east of the city and part of the Cascade foothills gets 50% more precipitation every month of the year. You could say that Seattle is the driest place around. Unless you count Sequim, just 50 miles directly northwest of Seattle but in a natural rain shadow provided by the Olympic mountains, which gets about 16 inches of rain per year compared to Seattle's 38 inches, which is still more than the 9 inches of precip that falls in Wenatchee just over the Cascade mountains. So, over the same 190 miles between Wenatchee and the coast, the precipitation varies by more than an order of magnitude (113" on the coast, 9" in Wenatchee).

In the winter, all of that precipitation is snow on the mountains. But at slightly lower elevations it might be snow or it might be rain. In December when there was that crazy snowstorm in Seattle, though the city streets had an inch or so of ice, my coworkers who lived on the Eastside had feet of snow around their homes.

I remember on the local weather in Texas, meteorologists would tell the weather nearby: "It's 90 in Denison, 91 in Fort Worth, and 89 in Dallas." And I thought that was stupid because there was never a big variation. But here, there is a big variation because the mountains and the water have a big affect on weather patterns. So, though I'd like to know if it will be cool enough to hike tomorrow, I can understand why forecasting here tends to be varied and inaccurate.

The weather has been great lately (though it's a bit warm over the next few days). Last evening after dinner I had the chance to go for a walk while talking to a friend on the phone. I walked in an area that I'd never walked before, which is surprising considering that we've been here for more than 16 months and I really like to walk.

First I took the Lakeview bridge across I-5. It's a more gradual incline than taking Denny Way and it provides a great view of Lake Union. On Tuesdays, a lot of people take their boats sailing on Lake Union. As I walked along the bridge I could see dozens of sailboats on the picturesque lake.

I had walked across the bridge before, but normally on the way up to Capitol Hill. This time I went north on Lakeview Drive along I-5. It's not the most interesting place to walk, though if I craned my neck up and looked to the right I could see some fancy houses on the hill. I also passed a mountain bike park under I-5. Most exciting however was that I spotted a car with a Delaware license plate, which was the last state we needed to see to have seen all 50 states.

Next, as I walked, I saw some public stairs. Stairs aren't uncommon considering our topography, but I don't use them because, really, I don't want to climb stairs, you know? But, I tired of Lakeview Drive and decided to go up the stairs and see where they went. I don't know how far it actually was, but it seemed like 10 flights of stairs. It could've been more because they took me all the way up to Capitol Hill.

I walked around Capitol Hill in some of the area that we didn't spend much time in last week. I was trying to keep my eye out for a place that we might like to rent when our lease ends, but didn't see much. After a while I found a small park and stopped to rest for a few minutes before heading back down the hill along Denny and then home. It was a great walk and I'm glad that I got to do it.