The first thing we did Friday morning was ride the cable car, which picked us up at the end of the Powell-Hyde/Powell-Mason line, less than 2 blocks from our hotel. It was pretty full and we were stuck inside the car, so we didn't have much of a chance to look out of the car. We were trying to get to Mama's, a breakfast cafe I'd heard about located in North Beach. We accidentally took the cable car that went farther west, so we got off at the top of Nob Hill and walked down to Washington Square to the east. The Powell-Mason cable car would have taken us almost straight there.

We gradually made our way to the restaurant and the line of people out the door was almost too intimidating. We decided to stick it out and waited almost an hour in line, which seemed really long despite getting there around 9am on a weekday. While I waited in line, Troy explored the neighborhood a little bit and even went up to the steps of Coit Tower. Our friend met us there for breakfast, which turned out to be pretty good and not too expensive. I had an omlette and Troy had the french toast sampler with fruit. It was a neat little restaurant, but I can't say I'd go out of my way to eat there again.

After breakfast, we continued exploring North Beach, which is a neighborhood we didn't visit at all on our last trip. It was probably my favorite neighborhood we visited. There was so much to look at and all the cafes looked cool. Several of them had outdoor sidewalk seating. We stopped briefly at a bookstore and a couple ornate cathedrals.

The next stop was Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. We went to it on the last trip, but only at night, so we couldn't really see it that well. Troy and I walked all the way to the top and took some pictures of the nice view. It was pretty crowded with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.

We were all pretty tired after all that walking, so we decided to head back to our friend's apartment. After visiting a little, we decided to play a board game called Ticket to Ride. Basically it's a game where you try to claim different train routes displayed on a US and Canada map. Major cities are linked by anywhere from 1 to 6 car-length trains of different colors. You get extra points for the longest train and for completing routes that you receive randomly at the start of the game. For example, I got a route card for New York City to Atlanta (with stops along the way) and it took me 3 yellow cars, 2 black cars, and 2 red cars. You can only draw two train car cards per turn and you have to wait until you have enough cards of the same color car before you can turn them in and claim a route. It took me a while to figure out a strategy. Troy eventually won after playing about an hour.

We waited a while for our friend's girlfriend to get home and ordered pizza for dinner from a place nearby. We took it easy the rest of the night and went back to our hotel a little early to rest up for the next day.

Living on the West Coast means that we're able to visit other cities on the West Coast and flights cost less for us than for much of the country. We have a good friend who lives in San Francisco, so we wanted to visit him again. We last visited him more than two and a half years ago, so we thought it'd be good to go to San Francisco again.

We had been looking for airfare for several weeks and the prices kept rising after we started looking. Fortunately, a new flight was made available at a good time, so we were able to book our tickets and book a hotel near Union Square.

Since we have a limited amount of time off, we planned our trip over a weekend and flew out from work on Thursday after work. We grabbed a bite to eat at Seatac and then flew out via Virgin Airlines. The flight was quite full and departed late from the gate for some reason. Then, when we were about ready to take off, we had to turn around because a person in the exit row had taken a sleeping pill or something. I'm not really sure what the deal was, but we arrived in SF like an hour late.

Otherwise, the flight was good. Every seat had a screen for watching certain TV shows or listening to music for free. They also had movies and other entertainment you could purchase to watch. We enjoyed watching some Comedy Central, which made the flight go by much more quickly.

After we landed, we took the shuttle to the BART station and then took BART to our hotel and prepared for the next few days in the city.

I really like carrot cake, it's probably my favorite kind of cake after chocolate. I decided to make one from scratch last Saturday and used a recipe from AllRecipes.com. It said it would make two 10" round layers, and I only have 9" pans, so I modified the recipe and cut it to 12 servings instead of 16. It was quite a lot of work, especially shredding the carrots. That part alone took over an hour. My cousin said I need to invest in a food processor, which is definitely true.

After shredding the carrots, the rest was pretty easy. I beat the eggs, added sugar and oil, mixed in the flour/spice mixture and added the walnuts. I was pouring it in the pans when Troy realized I hadn't added the raisins, which would have been disastrous. Not really, but it would have been irritating to do all that work and forget an ingredient. So I mixed them in as best I could once the batter was in the pans.

I baked it for the original amount of time, not realizing that I should reduce the cook time because I reduced the recipe size. It came out a little overcooked and crusty, which was disappointing at the time.

I made my own cream cheese frosting, which was much easier than I thought. It only requires butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a little vanilla. I went ahead and iced the cake and we both had a piece. It was ok, but not as good as I was hoping for.

So I covered it and put it in the fridge. Then on Sunday we had some more of it and it was actually a lot better. I guess the icing helped soften it and keep some moisture in it. It's actually pretty good. Perhaps I'll go to all the trouble again and reduce the cook time next time. It wasn't the best carrot cake I've had, but it was comparable.

Our diet back in Texas was made up of a lot of Latin flavors, especially Tex-Mex. Here, Mexican food is a little harder to come by, but we've gotten around to a few places. Lesley's parents are visiting us soon and are interested in trying Mexican food, so we're trying to figure out where to take them. Here are the places Lesley and I have tried that serve food from Spanish-speaking countries, ordered basically from our favorite to least favorite:

• Paseo - Caribbean sandwich shop that was worth the 45 minute wait. The last time I went, I had possibly the second best sandwich in my life, having had the best one on my previous visit.


• La Carta de Oaxaca - Mexican food that was at one time my favorite restaurant in Seattle. No longer impresses me, but serves good food with the flavors of southern Mexico.


• La Isla - Puerto Rican food. Like most places to eat in Seattle, it's not a bargain. Still it has good food.


• Cactus - Northwest-inspired Tex-Mex style food, with dishes like butternut squash enchiladas. I wasn't particularly impressed, but the food was pretty good and I would try it again.


• Mexico - Lesley has been here and says it's "decent, but kind of overpriced, and the service is kind of slow." That describes pretty much every other place on the list, but Mexico's claim to fame is that they give you free chips and salsa. In Texas, that's normal. In Seattle, that's remarkable.


• El Mestizo - We walked here a few weeks ago. We weren't thrilled with Lesley's mole enchiladas, but that's probably because neither of us is a big fan of mole. The service was slow, but I thought the food had pretty good flavor and would probably give it another try.


• Taqueria El Rinconsito - Outside the city limits where more people of Mexican and Central American origin live. An inexpensive fast-food style place that serves dishes covered with cheese and, unlike everything else on this list, accompanied them with fried rice and refried pinto beans on the side, something that is the standard of Tex-Mex. I liked it and would go back.


• Dos Amigos - Lesley went there once and doesn't remember being impressed. It's similar to Rosa's Cafe in DFW, so fairly inexpensive and nothing too special.


• Agua Verde - One of the first Mexican places I tried in Seattle on the lake near UW. Perhaps I went in with unfair expectations, but their margaritas were too lime-flavored and the food was mediocre. Next time I'll skip the food and just rent a kayak, which is what they're better known for.

Anyway, we hope to try a few more places over the next few weeks, but aren't expecting any of them to blow us away. Still, it's nice that we've found at least a few places we like.

This past week we have been busy planning a few upcoming trips. First, we are planning to visit our friend in San Francisco. We had a good visit with him a couple years ago and enjoyed the city immensely, so we've wanted to go back. While driving to San Francisco would take like 13 hours, it's not too long or expensive of a flight, so I'm glad we'll be able to go again to spend more time with our friend and experience more of the city. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do this trip, as airfare prices had risen by almost $100 since we started looking. Fortunately, we caught a break, and seem to have gotten a good deal on a hotel. We'll be going within a month from now.

We're also planning a big national park road trip this summer. We'll be driving to three national parks: Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons. We really enjoyed our road trip up here from Texas and haven't gone on another one since then. This drive will be about as long of a drive as that road trip and hopefully it will be as good. Hotels in the national parks had already started selling out, so we had to book this one quickly to be able to go. There aren't very many hotels in the parks and the ones that are there are often rather dated and due to the high demand prices aren't as cheap as we'd hoped. We're really hoping to be able to do this trip with some friends as well, but regardless it should be fun.

Each of our parents will be visiting us in the next few months, too, so we've been planning some activities around that as well. It seems like we'll have more opportunities this year to spend time with family and some of our good friends from Texas than we have the past couple years, so I'm excited about that and about these trips coming up.

So we've been in our new apartment for a over a month now. Our boxes have all been out of the way for a few weeks and while there is some furniture and other decorations that we're interested in, we're completely settled in now.

I'd say that living in a new place has been a nice change with some minor advantages and drawbacks. The larger size of the unit was one reason we moved, and while the layout is not as ideal as at our older, smaller apartment, the bigger living area and separate bedroom is nice. The way we have things arranged makes it so that we eat at our dining table a lot more than we did at our old place, so that's kind of nice.

I did like getting the afternoon sun at our old place, and we haven't gotten as much sunlight in our unit here, but that's more due to the weather. When the sun is out, we get enough light in here. Our view isn't as great as from our old place, and there are other apartments across the alley so we do keep our blinds closed more often.

The office staff and maintenance here have been good and things have been taken care of quickly.

While I'd rather not have to use our heater, standing in front of the heater is a nice way to warm up.

The bathroom is small, but we've found a pretty good way to organize everything and Lesley has gotten used to the size. The washer and dryer are smaller than at our old place, so she has been doing laundry a lot more often here.

We do like our new neighborhood. I really like the historic residential area immediately around us. Also, I've enjoyed being able to walk to the grocery store and we haven't had any problems with that. The main commercial streets nearby aren't particularly clean, but there are lots of places to eat along them and we've barely tried any so far. The nicer weather that will be coming up will hopefully give us more of a chance to explore our neighborhood, so I'm looking forward to that.

Our commutes to work aren't substantially different. Lesley's walk is a little longer, but my overall commute time is a little shorter. Most of our walk is through downtown, so that makes it more interesting, though more difficult to jaywalk. The walk home from the bus for me has been a little annoying because the signals aren't synced particularly well.

Overall, there's nothing too different about living here versus at our old place, and it's just kind of fun living somewhere different.

Every weekend morning, we have the privilege of sleeping in later than we do during the week. Unfortunately, our new place has crows outside the window, so their obnoxious calls are the first thing we hear as we are woken up. There aren't any trees directly in front of our window, but there are some trees in the area, so there must be some crows nests nearby. These birds are probably more annoying than the recording studio was outside of our old place, because at least the recording studio didn't interrupt our sleep.

Anyway, I suppose the birds were here before I was, but their calls are really quite annoying, so it would be nice if there were something legal and ethical I could do about it. I've heard of using lasers to drive away birds, but I don't know exactly where the birds are to shine the lasers at, so I'm not sure that would work (or be legal). I also think a hawk could be effective at chasing the crows off, but I don't exactly have any birds of prey of my own. And shotgun blasts or other loud noises are probably out of the question, as they would annoy the neighbors.

So, I don't know if we have to resign ourselves to getting earplugs or just dealing with it, but I'm not sure what else we can do about it.