Here's a short clip from northwest Texas, which had the flattest land on our trip.
We drove through land like this for several hours. I think it's pretty in a way and personally liked it a lot more than our drive through California. Anyway, this is just a short clip because most people don't find this terrain as neat as I do. At the end of this clip I just zoom in on some random abandoned house thing that looked interesting.

Troy and I decided to volunteer for the Green Festival this year in Seattle. Green Festival is hosted by two nonprofit organizations that are concerned with sustainable living and preserving the environment. Here's a brief description of what it is from their website: "For two days, Green Festival attendees will explore the latest in clean technology, green building, socially responsible investing, eco-fashion, renewable energy, green careers and green collar jobs, natural foods, groundbreaking films, eco-tourism, and more."

This is the first time that Green Festival has come to Seattle, so it's cool that we'll be a part of it. The other cities include Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco. We volunteered for the food court area this Saturday from 1 to 5:30, so we'll be cleaning tables and throwing trash away I suppose.

We've been here a little more than six weeks and have eaten 44 lunches here and 44 dinners. Unfortunately, while most of those meals have been pretty good, we still haven't found a favorite restaurant. Some food we've eaten out has been disappointing and some has been pretty good, but none of it has been good enough or a good enough value for us to strongly want to go back. There was a sushi place that we liked, but with all the sushi places around, I'd probably like to try somewhere else next time we have sushi.

We're already looking forward to people visiting in a few months and we want to be able to take them somewhere that we think they'll really like, but there's nowhere yet that we really like. I think part of the problem is that to save money we've been eating at home the vast majority of the time so we haven't been able to try that many different places. Still, though, the places we've been to have been places that have been recommended to us or highly reviewed. Maybe we're just too critical when it comes to food and regular-priced restaurants don't cut it anymore. Or, maybe we have this memory of food tasting better in Texas than it actually did and nothing here can match that. I really don't know what the deal is, but I think we're going to have to eat out some more over the next several weeks until we can find a favorite restaurant.

On Saturday we went to Green Lake, which is just a few miles from where we live. The perimeter of the lake is only 3.2 miles so we were able to walk the whole way around. It was really busy when we went and most people were going the opposite direction so we had to dodge people the whole time. Anyway, here are some pictures in the album below:

Here's a video that was taken a few days before the movers came to take our stuff. We had over 55 boxes of stuff, which is still way less than what most people have. It took a long time and a lot of work to pack everything and the apartment was a big mess for a month. Anyway, enjoy the video of our old apartment, it was a good first apartment.

We've been sort of wondering why not many people comment on our blog but then we realized that a lot of people out there might not be familiar with how to comment. To start with, anyone is allowed to comment on our blog without registering or signing up for anything and the whole process requires just three clicks. To comment, just click on the Post a Comment link at the bottom of each post. Next, type your comment in the box. Then, click on the circle for Name/URL and type your name (no URL required). After that, click on Publish Your Comment and your comment will appear on the blog.

We appreciate comments from anyone, they're almost as exciting to us as getting an email. If you're hesitant to comment, don't be afraid to leave a quick note. Everyone that we know who reads this is either a family member of close personal friend. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't bother commenting, but otherwise we'd love to hear from you.

I know I just posted about how we can't make food, but we actually made something pretty good tonight - broccoli cheese soup. The recipe called for a double broiler, which we don't have, so we had to improvise and put one of our smaller pots into our huge pot. It's better to boil water around the smaller pot in order to melt cheese because otherwise it really sticks to the bottom of the pot. So, we followed the recipe (actually, Troy's grandmother's recipe) and it turned out really good. I now have leftovers to take to work too and it wasn't that expensive to make.

Several times since Troy and I have been married, we've wished we knew more about how to cook. I've wished I could make desserts from scratch like apple pie, pumpkin pie, cobbler, and other pastries. I wish I knew how to cook and season things properly. For instance, I've tried several times to cook zucchini and squash in a frying pan with butter and other seasonings, but it always turns out either way too buttery, too seasoned, or not seasoned enough. I just can't seem to get it right. I wish I could come up with more delicious meals to make and not have trouble following recipes. We have several cook books that have step by step recipes, but the food never turns out how the picture shows and it's not that great.

So, I came up with the idea to take a cooking class and mentioned it to Troy. I was surprised and glad when he seemed very interested in the idea and wanted to do it with me. I'm sure there are series' of cooking classes we could take or even individual classes like how to make your own sushi. Hopefully soon we can figure out what exactly we want to learn the most and what class would fit us best. I've always wanted to cook really good meals, but was never that good at it, so it would be fun for us to take a cooking class together.

Here's our next video. This is me packing our computer at our old apartment. I had to cut some Styrofoam with a saw to get it to fit snugly into the box and it was quite a mess. We had several large, fragile items to put in boxes, and fortunately Lesley's parents gave us some boxes to use, so then I had to figure out how to fit everything and how to put the Styrofoam around it. The saw that my dad gave me came in handy, but it made a big mess and the Styrofoam particles stuck to everything. Also, Lesley thought you should know that the quiet music in the background is from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Here's a video of Lesley cleaning our old apartment. Look at how fast she cleans!

We took a lot of video a few weeks ago when we were physically moving here. I think we mentioned that we were planning to make a cohesive video about the whole moving experience. Unfortunately, our computer is inadequate for that and it won't be long before these videos are too old for most people to care about. So, we're just going to post some of our favorite clips from the trip on this blog. They won't be combined in a single video to tell a story or have a point, but I think they can be enjoyed as four dimensional snapshots of our journey.

You can click this link to see what we see out of our window at any time. Well, it's not exactly from our window, but it practically is. We live fairly close to the Seattle Times and this is the view from their roof. I was reading the news one day and saw this live picture on the main page and said, "Hey, that looks familiar." It's pretty cool that this view is online, and it looks like it's updated every few minutes, so now you can see what we see out of our window.

Even though it's still fairly cool outside most of the time, our apartment gets pretty warm, I guess because we face the afternoon sun and are on the 5th floor. However, I've really come to enjoy having the window open. I know I've mentioned it before, but we open the window at least for a little while almost every day and I just really enjoy it. Even when it's almost freezing outside we have the window open just a little bit to bring in fresh, cool air. I enjoyed having the window open at our previous apartment, too, but our apartment was too cold in winter to have the window open to the even colder outside air and of course it was way too hot in the summer to bring in warm stagnant air. It's nice that it works out that our apartment stays warm even in the winter. I just like how having the window open makes us feel a little less isolated from the outside world and keeps the air in our apartment from becoming stagnant. I'd much rather have cool air come in from outside than have to run the air conditioner. I hope that when it gets warmer here in the summer that we're still able to open our window.

Today we used our car for the first time in almost a week. It hasn't really seemed that strange, but when I think about it, it is kind of weird that now we only have one car and we use it only a couple times per week. Just a couple months ago, we each had our own car and used both of them almost every day and it was very rare that we wouldn't use either one of our cars for a day. We've driven an average of about 60 miles per week here, which is about how much we normally drove in just two days back in Texas. So far I've enjoyed the freedom of not having to drive everywhere and the relief from fighting traffic and traffic lights. Our life of getting around by foot and by bus means that we get a lot more exercise, more outdoor air, and are more connected with our surroundings. I'm actually wondering if we could get by without a car at all sometime in the not-too-distant future and just rent a Zipcar by the hour whenever we need a car to get somewhere. Today, we drove to Green Lake and would've had a harder time getting there without a car. Sometimes, we drive to the store, too, so that we don't have to carry our groceries very far. It's also kind of interesting that almost every time we drive here, we've been in the car together, which means that if we had a second car, it would never get used, and it also means that we get to take the HOV lanes on the freeway, which can save us time. So far, living in an urban environment with only one car has worked out quite well.

Today we finally applied for our Washington driver's licenses. We were waiting until we had an electricity bill in order to prove residency in the state. The problem with it was that only Troy's name is on the bill, so I wasn't sure they would accept it for me. Anyway, we brought as much documentation as we could down to the licensing office. I just took my hour long lunch break early around 10 so we could avoid the lunch crowd and the crowd after work. They close at 4:30, and I had been checking the wait times all week and they were terrible at the end of the day, about an hour. I don't know why, but they didn't ask me for a utility bill when I applied. They asked what else I had to prove I live here and I had my WA car title that has our new address on it and our car insurance policy. They took that along with my old TX driver's license and my social security card. I was surprised that worked, but glad they didn't hassle me about it.

So, I'm really glad that's over with. I wish I could have kept my old picture though, I don't like the new one at all. Now I just need to apply for a passport...

I'm not a big baseball fan, but both of us have been looking forward to the start of baseball season. We purchased two tickets to the first evening game of the season, which happened to be against our former home town team, the Rangers. We wanted to eat somewhere near the stadium before the game, so we headed down there early. We walked to downtown and then took a bus through the underground bus tunnel, which was part of the ride free zone. There's not a whole lot nearby, but the Pyramid Alehouse just across the street was recommended as a hotspot on game nights. As the only place around, it was quite busy, but a lot of people were just there for the beer and could sit in a special section. Still, there was about a 30 minute wait to eat. Our food hit the spot, my burger was pretty good, though the habañero BBQ sauce must not have made it this far north because it wasn't really spicy at all. After that, we headed across the street to the game and got to our seats in time for some of the pre-game ceremonies. It was armed forces night, which meant that all branches of the armed forces were present and recognized throughout the evening.

We knew it was going to be cold, so we dressed warmly and brought a blanket with us. Still, we were both a little cold as soon as we sat down, as there was a light breeze and it took a while to figure out the best way to cover up with the blanket. I eventually got used to the cold and enjoyed the game. There weren't a lot of runs scored for a while and both teams had fairly sloppy fielding. The game was still tied at 1 going into the 8th inning, when the Rangers scored two runs. Then, the Mariners came back with three runs to take the lead. However, the Rangers got another two runs in the 9th and the Mariners couldn't come back. So, the Rangers beat the Mariners. It was a good game, I'm glad we went, I'm looking forward to going to more games.

The local basketball team, the Seattle SuperSonics, might be relocating to Oklahoma City after the current season, so we wanted to be sure and see them while they were still here. Tickets for the games were pretty cheap, I think we paid like $20 total for both of us to attend the game. The Sonics play at Key Arena, which is probably about a mile away from where we live, so we decided to walk there. The walk was enjoyable and we got to the game in time. I think we sat close to our assigned seats, but there were plenty of empty seats, too. The arena was slightly more than half full (attendance was about 11,000 out of 17,000), which was somewhat impressive considering how bad the Sonics are. If the Sonics move to Oklahoma City, which is a metropolitan area less than half the size of Seattle, I'm not sure how they'll sell enough tickets.

Anyway, I'm not a huge basketball fan, but the game was pretty competitive for most of the time. However, in the fourth quarter the Sacramento Kings got ahead and stayed ahead, so there wasn't the exciting ending that there could have been. Still, I'm glad we went, it was pretty fun and I'm glad we got to do it.

I subscribe to a monthly email from the Snow Leopard Trust, and this month they had an article in it about some of the snow leopards at Woodland Park Zoo. The Trust is located in Seattle, so it's pretty cool that WPZ has some snow leopards so close by. They conducted an interview with one of the snow leopard trainers and I thought it was really interesting reading about his experiences as a trainer. Click here for the full story, or read an excerpt below:

Standing at the glass of the snow leopard exhibit at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) you might see Nadia, the zoo’s female snow leopard, tossing a big round cantaloupe in the air, rolling it, batting it, rubbing on it, and finally—the grand finale – eating it all up! What a treat—for cat and visitor. What you most likely won’t see is the man behind all that excitement, WPZ’s snow leopard keeper James Scott. To find out more about the lives of snow leopards in zoos, and the humans who care for these beautiful cats, Trust Conservation Program Coordinator Jennifer Snell Rullman recently interviewed James about his work.

...

Q. What are some of the fun, unique things you have had a chance to observe about snow leopards and their behavior?

A. They are great jumpers of course. The coolest thing I have seen is when they leap into the air and “helicopter.” I’ve seen this when we give them a particular fun scent for enrichment and they get excited and jump into the air and do a circle like a helicopter blade!

Q. You said you give them a scent for enrichment, can you tell us more about what that means?

A. Well, as keepers we are of course concerned with making sure the cats’ physical needs are met. But we are also doing more and more to make sure their behavioral needs are met—mental and emotional needs, providing more stimulation. So, we do different things for them. When the elk at the zoo shed their antlers, we collect the velvet from them and give it to the cats. They rub all over it, toss it around, and get really spacey and playful just like a cat with catnip. Eventually they eat the velvet. And yes, they like catnip too, and react just like your average house cat, but bigger. We also give them other spices like nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and coffee—they love them. One of Nadia’s favorite things is when I give her a whole cantaloupe. And of course, now she is very “enriched” by Tom, the new arrival.

Q. Do you have any great memories or stories about snow leopards that you can share with us?

A. Well, there are many, but it is hard to beat the memory of being there when the three baby snow leopards were born to Nadia. We let her raise them, but it is our policy here to socialize the cubs a lot to the presence of humans so we can monitor them more easily. They were so small, fitting into the palm of my hand—and Nadia let us easily take them out to hold them, weigh them, check them all over. Once they were about 6 months old I remember this day when we were still going in with them and one of the babies started stalking me. I could see her, but she thought she was invisible, and stalked me until she was under a bush and when I came near she pounced! So cute. Another thing I remember that was so amazing to watch was when they would be playing on the rocks and they would fall off—falling down the rocks! But instead of tumbling or bouncing down the rocks, they would go limp and then flow like water. It was so amazing….and I really wish I had taken the time to videotape it.

We decided to go to the zoo this weekend for a lot of reasons. I likes zoos, we hadn't been to a zoo in a while, the zoo here has a snow leopard exhibit, and we wanted to go to the zoo before tourist season when we figured it would be crowded. We could've driven to the zoo, probably, but we moved here so that we wouldn't have to drive everywhere. It was a nice day but we got to the zoo with only a couple hours left before closing. We walked around and saw the various animals that included a bald eagle, rare birds and insects, elephants, zebras, kangaroos, lions, otters, and a snow leopard.

I really wanted to see the snow leopard, but both times we went to see him, he was hiding in the back behind a hill and some bushes, so we couldn't see him hardly at all. I've started becoming more interested in the conservation of endangered species ever since watching the tv series Planet Earth. Troy even contributed to the Snow Leopard Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving snow leopards, as a Christmas present for me. Click here to go to their website if you're interested in learning more about them. I just think it's a terrible shame that so many species are critically endangered. One type of leopard, the Amur Leopard, is so endangered that it is close to extinction. Only about 30 exist in the wild. Zoos can only do so much when it comes to breeding and re-introducing animals into the wild.

At one point in the tropical rainforest exhibit, we were in this big caged area that had several different kinds of birds in it and we got to see some of the trainers feeding them. They had these boxes with bugs in them and would take one out and the birds would come and eat them right out of your hand. It was pretty cool.

I was a little disappointed with how rushed we were, but I figure we'll go back again sometime since it's not that expensive at all. As we were leaving we saw a beautiful peacock roaming around the front area of the zoo. Everyone else seemed oblivious to it, but we got several pictures of it and it was one of the highlights of our visit.

After church on Sunday, someone who was at the party the night before invited us to go with them to Vegfest 2008, which is a big vegan/vegeterian event that was going on nearby. We didn't have much else to do and it sounded like a good way to get to know people and do something new, so we decided to go ahead and attend. There were four of us in our group and none of us were vegetarians. The event cost $5/person but there were a ton of free samples of food everywhere. None of the food had meat in it, but some of the food was imitation-meat, some of it was stuff that wouldn't normally have meat anyway but was made without any hormones or chemicals. Some of the food was actually pretty good, mostly the stuff that didn't have to be altered much from its conventional versions, like tea, juice, and chocolate, but I had a breaded chicken-like nugget that was pretty good. Other stuff probably wouldn't appeal to most people, especially when the conventional versions taste a lot better. Powdery tasting chocolate pudding, bland peanut butter, and watered-down tasting soda are a few things that will probably only appeal to vegans. But, overall it was a fun experience, it was something I wouldn't see in Texas and I'm glad I went.

Thoughts from the trip

I've been back in Seattle for a little less than a week and even though I had only been gone from Texas for about a month, I noticed a few things that I hadn't really noticed before. Here are a few thoughts from my trip:

• One big thing that I was looking forward to was the food in Texas. I don't think I'll ever get Tex-Mex or barbeque in Seattle with the expectation that it will be any good. Plus, Texas has good burgers and fried chicken. I wanted to eat it all, considering that I won't get to have it as often anymore. The first night I stopped at Chicken Express for dinner, not wanting to go to a restaurant or have something that's a nationwide standard. The food was quite good, with tasty chicken, potatoes, and a biscuit, but the goodness was almost surpassed by how disgusting it was, with grase exuding from everything soaking my fingers and the box. The okra glistened with grease and had to be dabbed like a wet sponge before I would eat it. And it didn't stop that night, the next few days I had a meatball sub sandwich, a good attempt at Texas barbeque, steak, Tex-Mex, pizza, and then some great barbeque. None of those things are very healthy. I didn't quite eat that badly when I lived in D/FW but I'm glad that I won't be eating stuff like that again regularly for a while, it's a lot easier to eat badly in Texas, but it was worth it on the trip.


• Now that I live somewhere else, I really notice how far apart everything is in Texas. Sure, my job and my family were in totally different parts of the Metroplex, but everything is spread so far apart, it takes forever to get anywhere. And, there's so much nothing in between, sure there are restaurants and stuff, but there's just a lot of wasted and underused space. The roads are so much wider and parking lots are larger, which just makes getting from place to place require a lot of driving. While I was there, I did plenty of driving and used up a full tank of gas.


• Still, I really enjoy driving sometimes. Even though having to drive a long way to get anywhere is a big inconvenience that I'm glad to be rid of, sometimes driving on the freeway with music on and the window down is just great and it's something that I've missed.


• Even though I left work every day at 5, I still had some traffic to deal with. Fortunately it wasn't terrible, and I realized that I sometimes enjoy fighting traffic. Stopped traffic is no fun, but heavy traffic is like a challenge to me; I try to figure out the best route to take and then the best lane to be in to get to where I'm going as quickly as possible. I'm not sure if that makes much sense to anyone, but it's kind of exciting to drive through rush hour and feel like I've made good time. Still, traffic is annoying and it's nice not having to deal with it now.


• It was a good time to be in Texas, since the trees and bushes were starting to green. The grass was still brown, but there were a few bluebonnets and it was relatively pretty. The unfortunate thing was that even though I got to drive by a lot of land and trees, there are so many buildings along the highway that seem to try to interrupt nature as much as possible. I noticed an interesting contrast once I returned to Seattle. Along I-5, which is the major highway through Seattle, there are almost no buildings right along the freeway and there are a lot of trees and hills. It makes for a very appealing visual environment. Still, Texas grass and flowers can be pretty too.


• I talked to a few people at work about how I'm living in Seattle and a couple people commented on how Seattle is beautiful and how they wish they could live here.


• I think it's funny that people in Texas ask me about gas prices in Seattle. Gas is more expensive here by like a quarter per gallon, but I've only purchased it once, it's just not as big of an issue here for me as it is for a lot of people in Texas.


• I haven't noticed any bugs since I've been in Seattle so I've kind of forgotten that they exist. So, it seemed a little strange to see a Mayfly in the shuttle at D/FW airport, until I remembered that they're all over the place in Texas and it made me glad that I don't have to be afraid to sit on the floor at our apartment anymore.


• It had been a while since I'd been in an air conditioned building, since it hasn't been warm here. So being in excessively air conditioned buildings in Texas reminded me of how annoying it is to go from a warm outdoor area to a cold indoor area, especially when you're dressed for warm weather and are stuck in the air conditioning.


• Upon returning to Seattle and walking toward the apartment, I was reminded how much I enjoy the cool, refreshing air here and how glad I am that I can be outside and enjoy it while noticing buildings and other things as I walk along the street.


• After being in the Metroplex for a few days, it felt really weird at the airport to think that I was flying home to Seattle and that D/FW was not my final destination. D/FW still feels more like home because I'm so familiar with it. Seattle is home, but upon returning it almost felt like I was just a visitor, but that will change with time.


• It was great getting to spend time in the Metroplex, I'm glad I don't live there anymore, but I wish I could visit several times per year on an ongoing basis.

I went to work for a couple hours in the morning, but was able to leave to go to the airport. After getting to the airport and breezing through security, I checked in for my flight and then was looking for some lunch. I had no idea what I wanted, and wasn't really in the mood for anything too heavy. I didn't get far from my gate, though, when I found the legendary Cousin's barbeque in the airport. I'd heard rumors for years that one existed in the airport but had never seen it or known anyone who had seen it. But, there it was! A Cousin's! The best barbeque in all of the Metroplex, and in the most convenient location. Without any contemplation I walked directly for it. Sure, I had Sonny Bryan's on Tuesday, but that's Dallas barbeque, a nice try and still pretty good, but so far short of the highest potential of barbeque greatness that Cousin's reaches. And, it was just in front of me, behind the glass. I took no time to look at the menu, knowing exactly what I wanted and immediately ordered. I got my normal sliced brisket sandwich, which is great, as is all of their meat. I was so excited I couldn't think straight, asking for French Toast instead of Texas Toast (I was already thinking ahead about getting a bowl full of perfectly fried and seasoned okra). Unfortunately, they don't offer okra at the airport, probably because it has to be made fresh every time to preserve its impeccable texture. Still, undeterred, I got the potato salad, decided not to get beans, and then paid. Being in an airport, I expected to pay more, but it was worth $10 for a sandwich, toast, potato salad, and a drink, I would've paid $20 for it (and still submitted my receipt so that I could be reimbursed by my employer).

I headed to a table - the contemporary bar table and chairs offering nowhere near the Texan ambiance in their normal establishments - and sat down, excited about eating it. And it was so good! The exceptional trimming of the meat (almost no fat along the edges whatsoever), the tasty barbeque sauce, and the perfect flavor of the brisket made me laugh at the idea that just two days before I considered Sonny Bryan's an acceptable version of Texas Barbeque. Cousin's made Sonny Bryan's look like the kind of barbeque that could only be appreciated by someone from across the country who has no clear expectation of what barbeque should look like and a childlike appreciation for the taste. Sonny Bryan's is still good, though, and much better than anywhere outside of Texas, which is what makes Cousin's extremely high quality so remarkable. Everything about the food was almost perfect, and if I had been able to get okra, it would've been too great for me to even express.

Anyway, it was a great end to the trip, my flight back was fine. I got on a bus to downtown and once I got off it took me a few minutes to realize the best way back home, but the weather was nice and it wasn't a long walk. I was quite tired and was glad to be home and to sleep in my own bed again.

For the first time since I started work, it's really foggy downtown. I can't see much out the windows because of all the fog. The sun is shining though, so I bet it will burn off pretty quickly. It reminds me of San Francisco.

We don't have cable at our apartment and don't really plan to for a while. We may get it when football season starts, but even then, I don't really know if it would be worth it. Everyone thinks we're weird because we don't have tv, but I just don't see why we need it that much. We just moved here and I think it would be a waste of time to sit inside watching tv shows when we could be out exploring Seattle. I don't care at all for reality tv shows, or anything else that's on tv right now. Plus, once you get hooked on a show, it's really hard to break the habit of having to watch it. We have no way to record anything, unless we hook up our old vcr and find a tape somewhere. Even then I don't know if it would actually record. The only thing I sort of miss is being able to watch sports on tv, but that won't be that big an issue until football season. I just think that in general, people are too obsessed with tv and waste a lot of time watching hours and hours of shows. I mean, a few are ok, but to sit at home every night in front of the tv is weird to me.

I was a lot more excited about seeing my family than I was about going back to work. It would have been a bad time for me to be away, so I'm glad that I was able to be there. My mom actually didn't know that I was going to be back in town, so I think that was a nice surprise for her. I saw my parents and spent plenty of time with them, which was good for a lot of reasons. I also spent time with my grandmother, both the white one and the black one (she's not actually my grandmother, she calls herself that, though). I shared some pictures from our website with my real grandmother, since she doesn't use the internet. I also spent some time with Lesley's parents, which was nice. And, I was able to see Adam, his dad, and Sofia. It was a very busy three days and I'm really glad that I was able to spend so much time with so many people.

It was especially cool that everyone was so excited to see me. I guess I've been the center of attention before, like at graduation, but it cool that everyone was excited to see me and we had plenty to talk about, almost like I was a celebrity. Even though I had only been gone for a month, I couldn't take closeness for granted anymore, so I wanted to make plenty of time to see people. Since I had to work a full day every day, making plenty of time to see everyone meant that I'd have to sacrifice on sleep. As much as I wanted to go to bed on time and get plenty of sleep like I normally do, I figured I could sleep back in Seattle and I didn't want to use sleep as an excuse not to see people. So, the trip was very tiring, and by Wednesday, I was exhausted. Still, it was worth it to see everyone and I enjoyed it.

We've mentioned before that there's a band that practices across the alley from us. It seems like they practice there at least every other day. I generally really like the ambient sounds of the city, I think they're part of what makes living in the city so exciting. So, I think it's really cool that we get to hear music fairly regularly at a volume that's quiet enough not to really bother us but loud enough to be good background noise. Still, it would be nice if the band weren't always playing the same songs over and over. I understand that they have to practice and that they're not there for our enjoyment, but, even at this low volume, hearing things over and over gets a little annoying.

The weather here has been pretty consistent and has been gradually warming up. I figured that we wouldn't see any more cold weather and would have to wait until next winter to possibly see some snow. However, over the past week, there has been some unseasonable snowfall. On my way back to Seattle from D/FW, I heard someone mention that it was snowing in Seattle, which seemed kind of hard for me to believe. However, it was snowing here, and it had apparently snowed a few times before I arrived and it snowed again after I got back. Most locals were surprised at the late snowfall, too. Nothing accumulated, but it fell for a while and was kind of neat to see. It was hard to get a good picture of the snow, but here's one below:

Sometimes the sunsets are very pretty from our apartment. I don't normally like photos without color, but in this case I think the lack of color helps bring out the layering of the clouds.

There are a lot of little differences between here and in Texas. One of the things I've noticed is that they don't use twist ties here for bread in the store, they use little clips like the one pictured below. I think I like twist ties more because they seem easier to remove, but it doesn't really matter, I'm just curious why they don't use twist ties here.

There's a lot of moss here. I don't know if it will go away as it gets drier and warmer, but right now you can see moss all over the place. Here's a picture of some moss on a tree and of some moss on some kind of concrete barricade. There's also moss on the ground and a lot of other places.

There's this cylinder thing near our sink and I don't know what it is. We had one at our old place, too, but I figured it was just broken. Is it supposed to do something? Are we supposed to be able to connect something to it? It's just kind of in the way and doesn't make sense.

There's a young adults group at church that gets together monthly and we were invited to a wine, cheese, and chocolate tasting get-together last night. It was a lot of fun, we got to try a lot of different kinds of wine, cheese, and chocolate and meet and hang out with new people. I'm really glad we went and am looking forward to doing more fun things like that in the future.

I think it's going to get prettier here, but now is a pretty time of year. Some of the pink trees nearby are losing their flowers, but other white flowers are blooming. It's been very pretty walking around our apartments and seeing these flowers. Here's a picture a couple blocks from where we live.

Since the reason for and sponsor of my trip to town was my job, I'll talk about that briefly. The original reason for me coming back was to attend a meeting which wouldn't have been worth the trip if it were my only reason for being there. However, I had several other things coincide while I was there that kept me quite busy.

I'm working on a project to install, set up, and configure a software application that some people will be using at work, and we were having some issues with the setup that needed an expert to fix. So, we had a consultant come in for 12 hours over the first two days I was there, which kept me occupied a lot of that time. I didn't have to be there the whole time, fortunately, so I could do some other things that I needed to, but it still took up quite a bit of my time. I also had several meetings to go to and didn't have much time to meet face-to-face with my boss. Every day I was there was quite busy, though each day was a little less busy than the day before.

While I wanted to get my job done, it was probably more important to me to get to spend time with people after work. Even though I had been gone only a month, there were a lot of people who wanted to see me, and I wanted to make sure to spend plenty of time with my parents. So, I made myself leave work at 5:00 every day, even though I had enough work to keep me there for at least another hour. I got into work every day at 8:00, which is a little early for me, especially when it required waking up at 4:30 pacific time.

I barely started packing the night before leaving, but fortunately it didn't take too long. I had heard that getting through security at Sea-Tac airport (short for Seattle-Tacoma airport) took a while, so I wanted to make sure to get there with plenty of time. Unlike D/FW, Sea-Tac is incredibly easy to get in and out of, so Lesley was easily able to drop me off where I needed to be. I didn't want to check any bags because I'm impatient, so I fit everything into my carry on luggage and I was able to quickly get my boarding pass. Security did take a while, though. There were two lines, and as far as I could tell, one of them looked like it had a shorter distance to go than the other, so that's the one I picked. What I didn't realize though was that the other line had two people checking everyone's ID and boarding pass and the line I chose was staffed by only one person. So, my line took quite a while. If I'd chosen the other line it wouldn't have taken long at all. Then, when I got to the front of the line to have my ID reviewed, the guy raised questions about my boarding pass, which actually wasn't a boarding pass, it was a piece of paper that said my flight but didn't have a seat number. For a brief moment I wondered if I'd have to go back to the ticket counter, but he let me through. After partially undressing to get through security (I had to take off my coat, shoes, watch, belt, and take my phone out of my pocket), I didn't have any problems getting through with gel deoderant and toothpaste still in my bags and the struggle to put everything back on and away and get out of the security area without slowing the people down behind me wasn't too bad. I don't carry a whole lot with me that I need to put in the bins, so I don't know how other people with a lot of stuff and with kids get through security without a lot of trouble. After getting through security, I went to my gate to get a legitimate boarding pass with a seat number and I ended up with an exit row. Not the whole row, just one seat on the row.

Anyway, I had about an hour to spend in the airport, so I walked around a little. I stopped by a retail stand for a scanner system and asked a few questions. I would like to reduce the amount of paper that we have on file at home so I would be sort of interested in a scanner, but I'd have to look around some before paying $200 for something I saw at an airport. With the remaining time I had left before my flight, I called a few family members and finished reviewing upcoming Seattle events in a weekly newspaper.

Finally, boarding started and everyone swarmed the line, as if them waiting for their boarding group to be called rather than staying seated and out of the way would somehow make the whole process go faster.

I would've liked a window seat, but I got stuck in between two people. Being on an exit row, though, meant that I had plenty of leg room. However, I didn't realize it also meant no tray table, or at least that's what it looked like until the person next to me uncovered the hidden tray table in the arm rest. That was a new one to me. For the first part of the flight, I wrote this post and enjoyed the cranberry apple cocktail they brought to me. I also did some work on the computer, preparing for tomorrow.

There wasn't much turbulence on the flight. There was like an hour, though, when it seemed that everyone on the flight needed to use the restroom, including myself. As we approached D/FW, the horizon turned brown and we descended into a thick layer of haze. And, as always, it took a while to taxi at D/FW airport. Then, to get to the rental cars, I didn't know that I had to take a shuttle there (since I've never gotten a rental car at D/FW before), so it took me a while to find that. But, I got my car (a black Dodge Caliber) and headed out for some dinner. I wanted something that I couldn't have in Seattle, but it was after 9:00 so a lot of places were closed. But, thanks to Lesley's directions over the phone I found a Chicken Express that was open. It was pretty good, and also greasy and salty enough to be pretty gross at the same time. I checked into my hotel near the airport, which had free internet and free breakfast. By that time it was only 8:30 pacific time, but 10:30 central, so I went to bed.

The first day was the most leisurely and uninteresting of the trip, the rest of the time was very busy and so I haven't been able to remember all the details, which most people would probably rather hear more about than about my flight, but I'll post what I can soon.

My boss needed me to come back for a few days and I wanted to visit my family, so I was back in Dallas/Fort Worth for a few days. I hadn't mentioned this here until now because I wanted to surprise my mom. In fact, until a day or so before I left, I hadn't really given much thought to the fact that I'd be traveling back to D/FW after moving away about a month ago. It kind of sucked leaving Lesley alone at home so shortly after moving, but she dealt with it well and enjoyed doing things that I'm not that interested in (Lord of the Rings is a good movie, but I can only watch it so many times). While I hadn't been away from D/FW for that long, it was a little weird being back at the place where I spent so many years. I'll share some more details and thoughts in the next few days.

Troy had to go back to Texas for work. He left this past Sunday and comes back tomorrow afternoon. It sucks being here alone. Coming home to an empty apartment isn't very fun. I'm looking forward to him coming home tomorrow.

I finally took some pictures of the view from my new job. We're on the 28th floor and can see pretty far in most directions. It wasn't quite clear enough to see the Olympic Mountains to the west, but I'm sure some day this summer I can take some when it's clearer.

View from work:

This past Saturday turned out to be a great day to go outside. Hardly a cloud in the sky and highs close to 60. We woke up fairly early for us on a Saturday and went to eat bagels at a local place on Capital Hill. Then we drove to Snoqualmie Falls about 30 miles east of here off of I-90. I had been wanting to go see it ever since we got here. It's sort of famous because David Lynch's tv show, Twin Peaks, was filmed near Snoqualmie Falls and North Bend. Lots of shots from the show can be found around the North Bend area. After a pretty drive through a lot of forest, we finally got there and took several pictures of the falls. It was really windy close to the edge of the cliff. There was a good amount of people considering how cold it is still. I imagine it's really busy in the summer. We walked down about 1/2 a mile to the bottom of the falls and took some more video and pictures. We could have gone into the Salish Lodge at the top of the falls, but we were getting hungry and wanted to get back to Seattle.

After the falls, we drove back and stopped near the University of Washington. There are a lot of places to eat and shop near the campus. We ate at a Pho place and it was alright, pretty cheap, but not really my kind of food. Troy likes it a lot for some reason.

We walked around UW for a while, then we went to Alki Beach close to sunset so we could see all of downtown Seattle lit up. This is one of the best places for views of the city. We walked around the shoreline for a while and then drove up to the top of the hill. You never see anything like this in Texas.

Snoqualmie Falls:


Alki Beach:

It's sort of hot in the afternoon since our apartment faces west, so we have our window open so the colder air can come inside. I can hear sea gulls in the distance, which I think is so cool. I can also hear them on my way to and from work. It's really crazy that we live near an ocean now and can see and hear sea gulls all the time. It's awesome.

I don't know what's wrong with our fridge, but at various times throughout the day it suddenly makes very loud cracking noises. Normally it will make a few slight popping noises, a few seconds apart, and then it will make a really loud cracking noise, and then it will stop. The noise sounds like it's coming from somewhere in the back, in between the fridge part and the freezer part. The only thing that I can figure out is that something in the fridge is turning on to melt the ice in the drain part of the freezer and the ice cracking makes the loud noise. I don't know how fridges work, though, and why it would only be two or three times per day and why the noise would be loud enough to wake me up at night. It's a fairly new fridge, too, so it's a little confusing and annoying.

We have a piano in the reception area of our office and I figured it was just for show or looks. To my surprise, it actually gets used - and during work hours too! The President of the company plays the piano about once a week for a few minutes each time. It's nice when he plays it because it's so quiet at work except for hearing everyone type or talk on the phone or whatever. I think it's pretty cool that he plays during business hours, I only wish he would play more.

My current employment situation is pretty good; I have a good-paying job that I like pretty well, my daily commute is like 20 feet, and being located remotely means that I can still do most of my job responsibilities but that I don't get sucked into urgent issues that would have me working late. But, it is only a temporary arrangement, as my company will be finding someone to replace me who can be located on-site. So, that means that I need to be looking for a job here. I'd probably be content to drag things out and take advantage of the position I'm in, but I don't want to be replaced at work and have no new job to go to, and Lesley has made it her highest priority for me to get a job.

The problem is that while I can be a very self-motivated person, I've been very unmotivated to look for a job. I'm quite satisfied with my current situation, and I'm sure I could find another job that I like, but I know that I don't want to work in this field long-term; I just don't know what I want to be doing instead. I just don't want to go through a bunch of trouble to find another job which isn't what I want to be doing either; it's a lot of effort without much immediate benefit.

I've been struggling to figure out what I want to be doing for several years, but, like many people do, I've been able to ignore that deeper desire to figure out my purpose. Still, I can't help but feel that I'm getting close to realizing what I want to do with my life and that I just haven't realized it or found it quite yet. This leaves me wanting to delay looking for a job with the naive hope that within the next couple months I'll suddenly know what I want to do and will be able to start doing it. I just need to realize that I'm living in the real world and set my frame of mind to start really focusing on job searching and hope that someday things will be a little clearer.

So, about a year ago, I decided to try to make meatloaf. Well, this required us to buy a can of Quaker oatmeal. I haven't made meatloaf ever since for whatever reason and so we've had this big can of oatmeal for a while. I finally decided to try to make oatmeal cookies with it since there is a recipe for them on the other side of the lid to the can. It seemed fairly easy and we had most of the stuff to make them.

Anyway, I made them last night and it took about an hour. I halved the recipe, but it still made a lot of cookies. They're pretty good actually. I may have to make some more for my mom when she comes to visit this summer, since I think they're one of her favorite kinds of cookie. She likes peanut butter cookies too, but those sound harder to make!

Oatmeal cookies:

Ever since we got here I've been looking forward to checking the mail, not just because I actually like checking the mail and going through it, but because I've been looking forward to getting cards and things from my family in Texas. I got a package yesterday from my sister! It was in a long rectangular box and I had no idea what it could be. She sent me a really nice big umbrella and some makeup she got from her work! The umbrella should work really well when I walk to and from work. I like it a lot and it seems to open and close good, unlike the older, cheaper umbrellas we have. It's always nice to get free makeup too. So that was pretty cool to get all that stuff in the mail.

Click here for some pictures of it:

There are a ton of trees that are starting to bloom all over the city. A lot of them have all these pink blooms on them and are very pretty. I dunno if they're cherry trees or what.

Pink tree:

Everybody knows that I got pretty sick of the hot weather in Texas. I knew the weather here would be more mild and I was looking forward to cold winters, seriously. There's a lot of things to like about cold weather, but I just don't think it's been cold enough here. I guess at times it has been fairly cold and windy outside, but now the weather's already warming up into the 50s, which means I don't get to wear my sweaters, scarf, or beanie as much. And, even worse, we have never had to use our heater here. In fact, almost every day we've had to open the window to keep it from getting too hot! I guess we shouldn't be too surprised since we face west and receive afternoon sunlight, but I was hoping that it would get chilly in here and give me a reason to cover up with a blanket and drink hot tea. Instead, I've been wearing a t-shirt all day and have had to open the window to keep the temperature reasonable. I guess I shouldn't really be disappointed, I don't want a bunch of snow or anything, and compared to 90 degree afternoons in March and torrential downpours, the weather has been great. Still, a little part of my wishes it would be just a slight bit colder...and wonders what we're going to do with no air conditioning in the summer.

The weather this afternoon was great, in the low 50s with plenty of sunshine. Even though Lesley had just walked home from work, somehow I talked her into going for another walk. We had yet to walk to South Lake Union Park, so we took the 10 minute walk to get there. The park was rather small, but it offered some nice scenery and was a worthwhile walk from our apartment. Click the image below for pictures.

I guess this is our 3rd weekend here, but I'm sure we'll lose count soon. After working my first full week, I was ready for the weekend and was looking forward to being able to sleep in again. Friday night we went to eat with the couple we met at church and that was really fun. After dinner, Troy and I drove around for a while and drove on the floating bridges to Mercer Island and Bellevue. We were able to use our webcam to talk to some friends and then went to bed. It was really nice sleeping in until like 9:30 Saturday morning. We didn't really have a plan for the day, so we had to spend a lot of time figuring out what to do before we could leave. We finally went to Noah's to eat bagels (the same bagel place we went to last weekend) and then we drove to Discovery Park. It's a pretty big park that has a ton of places to sit on benches and see the great views from the cliffs. We walked probably over 3 miles throughout the park. It was pretty with all the pine trees everywhere and I bet it's even prettier in the spring and summer when the other trees are green. At one point, we went to the western most point of the park and were able to walk right on the beach. There was a lighthouse there too and tons of rocks and sea shells. We also saw a Hanjin barge which was kind of cool. The first time we went to Seattle, we saw a ton of the Hanjin cargo containers near the docks and so I started to associate them with Seattle. Every time I saw one in Texas, which wasn't very often, I thought about Seattle.

Anyway, we spent a few hours in Discovery Park and after that we were pretty hungry, so we stopped to eat somewhere in an area of the city called the Ballard District. We went to see the Ballard Locks, which is a set of locks between Lake Union and Puget Sound. Since Lake Union and Puget Sound are at different heights and one is fresh water and the other is salt water, the city needed a system to move big boats between the two bodies of water so as not to disturb the marine life in each. After that we went back to the apartment, left the car there, and then walked downtown to see what was going on. We went to a couple of stores looking for furniture that we're interested in buying and some picture frames. I also looked for a new purse, which I'm having a lot of trouble finding. We ate at a sports grill attached to a GameWorks and then ate ice cream from Coldstone. While we were out, we bought a book of bus tickets so we don't have to have exact change anymore if we take the bus around the city.

Then today we went to church in the morning and then went to IKEA to try to find a small dining room table and chairs, a new desk, a bookshelf, and a tv stand. We saw a few things we liked, but weren't too crazy about anything. We ate at Panera and then went home. We didn't have time to take a ride on the ferry boat, but maybe we can do that next weekend.

Click here for pictures:

The first weekend we were here we went to a church nearby. We wanted to find to find a church to attend to aid our spiritual growth and we also hoped to meet people. On our first visit, I was surprised to see the beautiful, historic sanctuary less than half full, and I didn't see many young people. It made me better understand what people mean when they call Texas part of the Bible-belt. But anyway, it just so happens that there's a couple that attends the church that graduated from SMU a few years ago, kind of unexpected to meet people from Texas so far away. Anyway, they invited us out to dinner, so we went out last night to a sort of hip noodle place. It was a nice dinner, we had a lot in common, we came to Seattle for a lot of the same reasons, and we had a lot to talk about; they've only been living in Seattle for a few months longer than us but they gave us some suggestions on restaurants and things to do. Anyway, it's kind of cool to have met people so soon after arriving, I'm looking forward to meeting more people and having more social events.

They have casual Friday's here and I wasn't told about it. We can wear jeans and tennis shoes if we want! I've never had a job that had casual Friday every single Friday of the year. That's so awesome. I can't wait to wear jeans to work next Friday.

The two cameras we ordered showed up yesterday, along with two other boxes for the previous tenant.

Here's a picture of the webcam taken by the point-and-shoot camera:

Here's a picture of the point-and-shoot camera taken by the webcam:

I was a little surprised that the point-and-shoot uses a battery pack rather than AA batteries. I forgot to even consider this when I bought the camera, but as long as I remember to plug in the camera to charge, I guess it's no big deal that it doesn't use AA batteries. Also, the camera didn't come with a wrist strap and it's not the easiest to grip, so I'll have to figure out something to do about that. I haven't gotten to use either of the cameras much, but am looking forward to using them.

I started my new job working for a broker-dealer this past Monday and I've been working for 3 days now. Here's a few pictures of my building from the outside:





It's been a little hard getting up at 6:15 in order to leave for work at 6:45, but it's nice to get off work at 4 and still have tons of daylight. So far I've just been sitting with various people, watching what they do and how they fit into the company. It's been fairly boring at times and the people are like, "well, I don't know what your boss wanted me to show you exactly, but um... you can watch me do what I normally do." A few people have run out of things to explain to me.

There are only about 30 employees total and there are about 350 registered representatives spread mostly over the Pacific Northwest that use us as a broker-dealer. It's been hard learning everyone's names and where they sit. Since I've worked for a rep in the past and a clearing firm, I have a very good idea of how the business works and what the rules and regulations are, and think I'll fit in pretty well. After just three days I have a good idea of what everyone does. One guy I sat with for a while gave me several restaurant recommendations, which was really cool. Everyone seems really nice and they're very friendly. There are a lot of people my age and then a lot between the 25-40 age range. My boss is actually one of the people who's worked there the longest and she's reducing her hours this summer to transition into retirement.

Most of us have little cubicle areas in groups of 4. Unfortunately, my computer monitor faces out into the open room and so anyone walking by can easily see what I'm doing. I've been using my hour-long lunch break to check my email and stuff on the internet, but otherwise I probably shouldn't play around too much, at least not this soon after starting work. I work on the 28th floor and can see for miles and miles. I can see Puget Sound and Alki Beach from my work, which is pretty awesome. They also have a kitchen with a dishwasher, microwave, refrigerator, and coffee makers of course. They also have free kinds of tea available, like green and white tea.

Overall it seems like a fairly laid back office with a great atmosphere. I think I'll like working there.

When we started this blog several months ago, it was mainly a way for us to keep a recorded journal of how things were going. But along the way, we realized that in additon to just being a journal, it could be a good way for us to let our parents know what's going on. So, it's kind of surprising and cool that now we have quite a few friends and people in our extended families who read this regularly. You'd think that moving 2,500 miles away would put us farther apart from everyone, but now we get emails from friends and family that we didn't talk to much before and it's brought us closer.

While a lot of the excitement has passed now that we're here and moved in, I expect to continue posting regularly so that we can not only keep in contact with everyone, but also provide entertainment to everyone who reads this. Anyway, we're happy that so many people read this and hope that you'll keep coming back.

Since I'm working remotely and most of the rest of my coworkers are in central time, I've been scheduling my day around central time, making sure to start working by 9:00 central time so that I'd be available when most of my coworkers are. Since my work computer still uses central time, throughout the entire day I feel like it's central time. So, I get off of work after a full day of work feeling like it's 5:30 when in fact it's 3:30 pacific time, so there's still plenty of daylight left in the day. It feels like I get to stay up late, too, because I don't go to bed until almost midnight central time, and even though I have to get up at 6:45 pacific, it still feels like I get to sleep in because I don't get to work until 9:00 central. Anyway, working from home has its shortcomings, but I do like the schedule so far.

Supposedly gas around here is up to $3.48 per gallon. I say supposedly because I've barely noticed gas stations since I've been here and we haven't even gotten gas since we've been here and still have almost a half tank left. Back in Texas, the cost of purchasing gas made up a good chunk of our monthly expenses, and even though the high price of gas encouraged us not to drive as much, there was no way to avoid it when we had to drive to and from work every day and drove from Irving to Fort Worth a couple times per month.

Since we've been here, though, we haven't driven much. I telecommute every day so I don't burn any gas, and now that Lesley's working, she just walks to work. In the evenings or on the weekends, we've been able to walk or take a bus to most places we've wanted to go. We've used the car a couple times to do groceries, to go places that are somewhat inconvenient to take a bus to, and for just driving around. While I enjoy driving around from time-to-time, it's nice to not have to deal with traffic and to not have to worry about gas prices.

Since we've been here, we've purchased a few things, such as a bath mat, shower caddy, camera, and a few other things. However, there's still a lot of other things that we sort of want to buy sometime soon. There are some things we own that are kind of old and not very nice or, in the case of our desk, are falling apart. Shopping for stuff can be sort of fun, but I don't especially like acquiring things for several reasons, but basically I just don't like getting stuff that I'll eventually have to get rid of, and buying stuff usually isn't worth the money and natural resources that it takes. Plus it just takes so much time to make big purchases; if I'm going to buy a desk, I don't want to just buy one, I want to find the best one that's going to be the best one to use, look the best, last the longest, and be the cheapest, and finding the right desk takes time. Right now, here's the list of things that we kind of want to buy in the next few weeks:

• desk - The desk we have is falling apart. It holds everything okay, but we want to get something that will last longer.


• TV stand - Lesley's TV stand holds the TV okay, but it doesn't hold any of our electronics, game systems, or movies very well. I guess it works okay for now, but it would be nice to have an actual place for our stereo receiver rather than just putting it on the floor.


• clock - Lesley has an old blue clock that works fine and I have a nice Dallas Cowboys clock that's even better (at least by my standards), but we kind of want to get a new clock that looks nicer and that we can keep for several years. We spent a bunch of time looking for a clock online but haven't really found anything that we like much.


• bathroom clock - Lesley would sort of like to get a clock for the bathroom so that she knows what time it is when she's getting ready in the morning. This is just something cheap we'll need to find somewhere but we haven't gotten to it yet.


• curtains - Since a lot of light comes in through the windows and since the place would look a lot nicer with some curtains, we probably should get some curtains sometime, but it seems so complicated. I think we've basically figured out what we want to do, but we have to find the right curtains and then buy all the stuff and put it up, which seems like a lot of work.


• dining table & chairs - I've suggested getting TV trays instead because when we had them, we ate on them most of the time anyway at our old apartment, so I don't know if it'd be worth it to get a table and then have to find room for it, but we might eventually have to get this, if for nothing else than just to be able to pull another chair up to the computer.


• knife sharpener - our kitchen knives haven't been sharpened since we've had them. Every time I've looked for a knife sharpener at the store, they've only had these huge knife sharpeners that sharpen three kinds of knives and take up a bunch of space. I'd like to find a little handheld knife sharpener.


• step stool - It'd be nice to have something to stand on for reaching our high cabinets above the fridge. I don't really want to buy a step stool, though, so maybe we can get a chair and just use that.

If my option is to spend a day of my weekend buying something or doing something else, I'm going to choose doing something else. There can be some satisfaction with buying and owning stuff, but having to get all of this stuff is more of a hassle and not worth all of the attention it requires. But, I guess we'll have to find the time to get some of this stuff sooner or later.

Lesley started work today, unfortunately the day after daylight savings time. Since she works for a financial services company and the stock markets open at 6:30 pacific time, most people start their days early. Since it was going to be dark outside, I offered to walk her to work. It was a little tough for both of us waking up at 6:15 (which felt like 5:15) and it was still dark outside. It was lightly raining the whole way there and it was still dark when we got there. Still, it wasn't too uncomfortable and it took about 15 minutes to get there. Then, I had to walk back and the rain was slightly heavier, but my beanie kept my head dry. Once the sun rises earlier and it's not as rainy, walking to work in the morning wouldn't be too bad at all.

We were too busy during the week this week to figure out what we wanted to do this weekend, so when we woke up late Saturday morning, we didn't know what we were going to do. We decided to start the day by reviving our old Saturday tradition of getting bagels. Whereas we used to be able to get bagels less than half of a mile from our apartment, the nearest bagel place to us now is about a mile away and up a steep hill. It's not very easy to find parking in that area of town, either, so we decided to take the bus. It was a short walk to the bus stop, and once the bus arrived (a few minutes late), we got on and purchased a day pass so that we could conveniently get to the other locations we had started to plan on. It was a fairly short ride to the bagel place, and the line wasn't too long. We used to pick up three bagels and take them home to put cream cheese on, but since we weren't taking them home this time, we just requested three bagels with cream cheese. We realized once we got our bagels that they were larger than the bagels we used to get and that they had a lot more cream cheese on them than what we would normally apply. After wiping off some excess cream cheese (the first time I realized that there is such a thing as too much cheese), the bagels were quite tasty, and while a little different than the ones we normally got, still very good.

After bagels, we headed the opposite direction on the same bus line toward newly-opened Olympic Sculpture Park. I had found out about this from a Seattle magazine that one of our neighbors was geting rid of and wanted to go as soon as we could. We found our way there without much trouble. Olympic Sculpture Park opened in January, and is basically a park/garden with a bunch of sculptures, as the name implies. It immediately reminded me of Dallas' Nasher Sculpture Center since the're both park-like areas with sculptures. However, unlike the Nasher, which is a secluded retreat in the middle of downtown, Olympic Sculpture park bridges the dense surrounding urbanity, the outdoor greenery and running trains, and the open expanse of Puget Sound. Olympic Sculpture Park offered a quick and peaceful escape from the city while still being connected with it and I enjoyed our stroll through the park, observing and interacting with the interesting sculpures along the way. The main reason I went, though, might excite a few other native Fort Worthians aside from myself. When I was young, I didn't go to downtown Fort Worth very often, but I remember a large red sculpture in front of the Bank One Tower (pre-tornado). This sculpture hasn't been in downtown Fort Worth for a decade, but for some reason I still remember it. That's why I was so excited to read that Alexander Calder's "Eagle" is the centerpiece of Olympic Sculpture Park, it felt like what it must be like to run into a former teacher who you didn't appreciate at the time but now are happy to see again. I was able to take a few pictures before my batteries ran out. If you're interested, here's an article about how Calder's "Eagle" got in Seattle.

Anyway, after this, we walked along the waterfront, past Pike Place Market, and to Pioneer Square, where we had wanted to learn a little about the history of Seattle by taking the Underground Tour, which is kind of a tourist attraction, but we thought it would be a fun way to get better acquainted with the city. Before the tour started we toured a small museum about the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1800s, which brought a lot of people and properity to Seattle. The tour started with a brief and amusing introduction into the early days of Seattle, which weren't portrayed glamorously. Where downtown Seattle sits now used to be a lot flatter and the hills to the east were a lot steeper, but this caused a lot of problems such as floods and difficulty ascending the hills, so the city decided to gradually raise the ground level. However, all of the buildings were at the old ground level and all the city could do was raise the roads, so a lot of the storefronts were about one story below the roads. Eventually the city paved sidewalks at street level and buildings raised their entrances by a level, and now the underground tour is done at the old entrance-level under the current sidewalks. Kind of weird but kind of neat. Apparently there were at one time 32 underground blocks which were no longer used, and we got to tour about three blocks. Still, it was an entertaining lesson about the city and I found it neat to be underground.

After that, we rode another bus over to some dinner on Broadway and then headed home and called it a night. While it wasn't an overly exciting day, it was an enjoyable day around town.

I'm looking forward to getting my new driver's license and a passport. I would have gotten them within the past two weeks, but in order to get a new driver's license, you have to prove you're a resident of Washington. Well, in order to do that, we need some sort of electric or water bill, neither of which we have yet. Therefore, I have to wait until we get one and then I'll have to take time off of work to go get my license.

I also wanted to get a passport, but you can't do that without a valid driver's license. Well, you might be able to, but you have to jump through several hoops and bring additional documents that I just don't have.

Oh well, I guess I'll get them sometime soon.

Since I start work on Monday, I figured I should try to get errands done this week. I tried to schedule a dentist appointment, but they didn't have any availability until two weeks from now. I may be able to reschedule that for Good Friday. I also wanted to use my massage gift certificate now and I needed to get an eye exam because I'm almost out of contacts.

So, yesterday I scheduled an eye exam for today at a place 3/4 of a mile away. I walked there this morning and it took maybe 15-20 minutes to get there. It wasn't that bad of a walk at all. There were plenty of people walking around and I felt pretty safe. I also had a chance to stop at a Wells Fargo ATM right across the street from the eye doctor to get some cash. Anyway, I got my eye exam and a prescription for contacts. They ordered them for me and will be shipped to the apartment next week sometime. It only cost me $46 for everything thanks to Troy's vision insurance through his job.

It's so ridiculous that eye prescriptions only last for a year. I hate going to the eye doctor every single year just for them to tell me my eyes are the same. Hopefully within the next 5 years I can have Lasik so I don't have to deal with glasses or contacts again any time soon.

I have a holiday after only 10 days of working. They get Good Friday off at my new job. The next one is Memorial Day. It'll be nice getting a day off so soon. I may go to the dentist that day since I haven't gone in like a year.

At our old apartment, we had the cheapest DSL available and it worked fine. That's what we thought we would do here, too. However, Qwest's cheapest internet (256k) is slower than what we had before, and after living with it for a couple weeks, we've realized that it's way too slow. So, we've upgraded to 1.5 Mbps, which is already a great improvement.

For Valentine's Day, Troy gave me a gift certificate for a massage at a place called Massage Envy. Since we were pretty busy packing and getting ready for our move, I didn't have a chance to use the certificate until we got here. There are Massage Envy places all over the country, and so I went to get my massage today at Northgate Mall, which is 6 miles north of our apartment. I'd never had a massage before, so it was sort of cool to experience it the first time. The lady did a full body massage and there was nice music playing and a heated bed to lay on. My mid and lower back were really tight and are a little sore now.

Overall I can't say I was that impressed. Maybe the lady just wasn't that good, who knows. But it was still a nice gift.

While I was out, I also stopped by Target across the street from the mall and picked up some rather boring, household items, such as Windex and toilet paper. It was cool driving up and down I-5 and getting to see the snowcapped mountains to the east and west. I drove on a bridge across Lake Union and could also see Lake Washington to the east.

I went ahead and bought a webcam online. It comes with a microphone so I will be able to use it for conference calls for work, if I choose not to use our land line. I hope to use it a couple times per month to chat with my parents. I may not use the web cam a whole lot, but I think it'll be useful on occasion.

The area we're living in used to be kind of industrial but now there's a lot of development. From our apartment window, we can see 12 different cranes (click for pictures). From living in Dallas, I'm used to seeing a lot of cranes, but the cranes here appear to be mostly for condos rather than for office buildings.

We have DSL through Qwest and they give us the option of whether we want a land line. We weren't sure how good our cell phone reception would be and sometimes it's nice to have a backup so we agreed to pay the extra $7/month for a land line. Since I'm working from home, I had been forwarding my desk phone to my cell phone and we hadn't even bothered setting up our home phone yet. But, my cell phone minutes added up quickly so I decided to connect the home phone and start forwarding my desk phone to our home phone. However, one thing I forgot about is that home phones are junk call magnets. And, since we don't have caller ID, whenever the phone rings, I just assume it's from work. Yesterday, though, there was a call from the newspaper and today was a call from the state troopers' union. There are a lot of annoying things about junk calls, but not being able to ignore them is a big annoyance. I would really like to cancel our land line since our cell phones work for everything else, but we don't have enough minutes for all of my work calls and conference calls. So, I guess I'll just have to put up with the junk calls until we can figure out a better solution.

We put my new Washington license plates on my car the other day. I'm no longer the "Southwest High Nerd" (the last three characters on my old plate were "SHN") as my parents used to say. I kept the old plates though. I don't know what to do with them, put them out on display in the apartment I guess. I like how the new plates look.

Looks like today will be another clear day. I can see the mountains to the west and the entire city pretty well. If only Troy didn't have to work, then we could go to a park or something and take advantage of this great weather.

It's been really nice having the past 3 weeks off of work. A week of that was taken up by our 6-day road trip and now we've been here a week and a half. There's work to be done around the apartment, but I just feel like doing whatever I want with the rest of my free time before I start work again on Monday. Unfortunately, since we're 3 hours behind New York, financial companies on the west coast normally have earlier hours than what I'm used to. My boss wants me at work at 7:00am on Monday. That's bad enough, but on top of that is Daylight Savings Time which is this coming Sunday. It will be a little hard to adjust to getting up so early, but it helps that Troy also gets up pretty early. I'm not sure what my normal hours will be, probably 7 to 4 or 7 to 3:30 depending on how long a lunch I take.

One nice thing about my job is that it will have a great view. I'll be on the 28th floor of a big building right in downtown. It has a view of the bay and the rest of the city, which will be really nice. I'll be getting paid again, so that's always nice. But I'm not looking forward to giving up my free time again.

We have a pretty nice video camera and a pretty nice still camera and we've been using those to take pictures. However, both of them are pretty bulky to carry with us, so I ordered a small point and shoot camera online and it should arrive in a week or so. We should be able to take the camera with us every time we go out and it will make it a lot easier for us to snap pictures around town. So far we haven't been able to share much from our neighborhood and the city, so I'm looking forward to that changing.

In choosing a camera, I wanted to limit myself to only buying cameras that can use xD memory because I still have quite a bit left over from my last point and shoot camera and didn't want have to repurchase all my memory. I found a pretty highly-reviewed Fujifilm camera, the Fujifilm FinePix F20, that was available for fairly cheap online.

When we arrived at our new apartment, I wasn't sure how we would arrange all our furniture. We had a ton of bedroom furniture and I knew that all the pieces wouldn't fit in the space we have for the bed. Thankfully we found enough room to fit everything and nothing is really in the way too much.

We still have a few messes to deal with and we still have to put pictures and stuff on the walls, but we made a lot of progress the past 5 days.

We posted pictures of our apartment with furniture arranged here.

Today we walked to a Kinko's (which is close to the Seattle Center) to print a few things and while we were out, we stopped by Key Arena. We bought tickets to see the Sonics play the Sacramento Kings on March 30th. The Sonics are probably moving to Oklahoma City after this year, so this is one of the last chances we'll get to see them play. I don't care much about basketball, but it'll be fun to see another arena and another team play besides the Mavericks.

While we were there, we also got tickets to opening night for the Mariners. Oddly enough, the opening series is against the Rangers. We're going to see the first night game of the season on April 1. It would have been nice to go opening day, but I have to work until at least 4 every day, so I wouldn't be able to make it in time for the start of the game.

I'm really excited about getting to go to a Sonics game and a Mariners game. We'll probably go to at least a couple more baseball games this summer.

We updated our photo gallery with a better style and it looks a lot better now. You can view the pictures at Our Move to Seattle Gallery.

Soon we'll post pictures of the apartment with all our stuff in it.

Last weekend was our first full weekend in Seattle. We had just gotten our stuff delivered Friday afternoon and had a mess of over 50 boxes. We started unpacking and I worked on cleaning up the bathroom while Troy worked on the kitchen and living room. Everything fits pretty well in the bathroom. We have so many towels though that we had to use some of our chest of drawers space for extra towels.

We ordered pizza from a place called Mad Pizza which is a block away from our apartment. It was sort of expensive, but it tasted pretty good. We continued cleaning the rest of the night.

We woke up Saturday morning with a ton of empty boxes laying around that we had emptied the previous day. At one point, we couldn't even get out of our apartment because boxes were blocking the front door. The wardrobe boxes took up the most space, so thankfully we stored them in the back of the closet and got them out of the way. After cleaning a little bit, we walked around downtown looking for lunch. We ate at Kells Irish Restaurant and I had a sandwich and Troy had corned beef and cabbage. Mine had really really spicy Dijon mustard on it and I didn't like it at all, but Troy liked his corned beef. It was located in Pike Place market and we could see the water from where we sat though, which was pretty cool.

After that we walked around Pike Place market for a while and saw the flying fish and all the neat stores and fruit stands there. Then we walked to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up a few things for the apartment. It started raining/sleeting/hailing while we were in the store, but it stopped by the time we were done shopping. We walked to a nearby grocery store to get milk and butter so we could make dinner that night, which turned out to be salmon, pasta roni, and green beans. We didn't want to go to Safeway to get a ton of groceries on a Saturday afternoon because we were afraid it would be really busy. We watched our Netflix movie, Fight Club, while eating dinner.

Sunday morning we went to First United Methodist church of Seattle which is located in downtown. Then we went back home, ate lunch, and continued putting stuff away. The place is much much better now, but it's still not organized completely. Sunday afternoon we took a break from packing and went to Washington Park, which is 3 miles away. We saw tons of tall green trees on our 45 minute walk. The air was really fresh and it was about 50 degrees outside.

So, we had a busy first weekend. We did a little exploring, but not as much as we will in the coming weekends.

When we visited the pacific Northwest in January for Lesley's 8 job interviews, we also visited 10 apartments in Seattle. In the case that Lesley was offered a job, we wanted to make sure that we could also arrange for a place to live without making an additional trip or move into a hotel for a couple weeks until we could find a place to live. Unfortunately, none of the apartments were overly impressive. We knew we'd be paying a lot more than we did in Texas, but even $900/month would only get us a place 70 years old with no dishwasher, garbage disposal, or washer and dryer, and old fixtures and cabinets. Of course, all of that stuff mattered more to Lesley than it did to me, I was most interested in living conveniently to everything, but I also wanted a view from the window and hoped that we wouldn't have to spend most of our income on an apartment every month. It was hard to find something that had everything we wanted - you usually get what you pay for. By our last day, we had found a place that seemed like a good choice - pretty good location, reasonably priced compared to other options, and the apartment itself was pretty nice - we both expected that we would live there. But, we had some time left on our last day and figured we'd look around some more in case we found something even better. We found another place to look at, which was even newer, and it happened to be a LEED-certified building, which basically just means that the building was designed to be more environmentally-friendly and use fewer resources. And, there would be a unit with a view available. Lesley loved the fact that the apartments were so nice and new, with built-in washer & dryer, nice cabinets & fixtures, new appliances, and tall windows. It definitely was the nicest place we looked at and the pricing was in line with some of the other top choices. After seeing this place, Lesley didn't even want to consider anywhere else, and I was excited enough about the view that I wasn't too upset about it being in a more deserted neighborhood and farther away from a lot of restaurants and other places. So, we decided to go for it.

After our first week of living here, I'm definitely pretty happy with it. One concern we had early on was finding a place large enough. Since we were basically looking at studio apartments, many places had one large living/bedroom area without a lot of room. Our apartment has had enough room for all of our boxes and furniture, and now that we've unpacked, there seems to be plenty of room to put everything. And, it seems well-designed; the layout makes great use of the 555 square feet, with a separate sleeping area that makes it seem more like a one-bedroom than a studio, none of the rooms are too small to move around comfortably or too large with wasted space, and the closets are large and convenient. Plus, there are the design elements that led to the building being environmentally-friendly, like steel-framing (rather than wood), fewer toxic chemicals in the paint, and energy-efficient windows. Not only was it well-designed, but it also seems pretty well built; I guess the fact that it was built in 2003 means that there hasn't been much time for things to fall apart, but the construction just seems more solid - the building hasn't shifted like at our old place, the cabinets have smooth-operating and sturdy Italian-built hinges, and the carpet is stronger.

And, so far I've loved the easy-open windows that let the air from the bay and the sounds in from the neighborhood - we haven't had to use our heat yet and if we want air conditioning, we just open the windows wider. Even better is our view. The Space Needle may be cliché, but it's still a very neat looking building and a beautiful thing to look at from the kitchen at night. Furthermore, the opportunity to look out the window at any time and notice something new (other than noticing a new blade of grass or brick in wall, which is what we could see out of our old place) is great. But the best part is that there are no bugs (so far), unlike at our old place where we found roaches (living and dead) all the time. Overall, the apartment itself is better than expected, it's probably the nicest place I've lived.

The biggest drawback so far is that there isn't much in our immediate area. When looking for an apartment, one of the things that was most important to me was being able to step out of the front door and get wherever I needed to go on foot. This place is definitely better in that regard than our place in Irving was; we've walked to almost every meal that we've bought out so far, and there's a lot of places within walking distance (depending on how far we're willing to walk). Unfortunately, though, our immediate area is still rather industrial, though there are several apartments, condos, restaurants, and bars around. But, unlike other parts of the city, there are quite a few warehouses and other miscellaneous places, which means that we have to walk farther to get somewhere we might want to go, and it also means that there are fewer other people out. The area still seems pretty safe and it's not bad, but after 10 minutes of a walk on our way to a department store yesterday, we passed one of the other apartments we looked at, and I thought how nice it would be to be 10 minutes closer to everything. Still, though, I'm pretty happy with where we're living. While I may eventually tire of the noise across the alley (turns out there's a recording studio there), the dogs we run into in the elevator, and the high rent - for now it's great.

Traveling over 2,600 miles on our road trip up here, I expected to find a lot more differences along the way. I expected people to act differently from Texans, for the gas stations and stores along the road to be more different from what I was used to, and for the billboards to be more different. While we definitely traveled over a wide variety of landscapes and through a good number of towns, the thing that struck me wasn't how different everything was, but how similar it all was. Even now that we're in Seattle, while the people dress a little differently, they're still friendly and don't act much different than what I'm used to. Things may have been different 60 years ago before the media and national companies softened the cultural and linguistic differences between all the cities from coast to coast, but it's kind of crazy to me that we passed through several different states and over several thousand miles, but it's all so similar, and it's all America.

Occasionally on our road trip up here, I'd pause from reading my book and look out the window. Almost every time I just couldn't believe we were moving and were already so far from home. Even now, when I think about, it's still pretty crazy to me to think that I'm all the way in Seattle, in a totally different city, and that I live here now. I'll get used to it eventually, but it's pretty crazy that we've moved so far away.

We finally got our kitchen situated for now. As we were putting stuff away, I realized how good it was that everything was packed so well. I want to take this chance to say thanks to Mom and Dad for helping us pack. All the silverware was nice and neat when we got it out of the box to put away and it was nice that everything was so well organized. Our knives were packed really well too. Thanks also for helping us clean the kitchen before we left, that saved us a lot of time!

Our place is still a mess, but we're making progress... slowly.

I've never been more excited than I was last night about getting to sleep in a bed. Sleeping on the floor was okay, but having a bed is so much better. And, having comfortable chairs to sit in during the day is great also. We had some camping chairs that were better than the floor, but I've never before realized how great cushioned seats are. All the rest of our stuff showed up, too, the only exception being a green broom we had, which seemed to be kind of an afterthought for the movers when we moved out, so I figured we wouldn't see it again. And, not only do we have our stuff, so far nothing seems to have been damaged, except for our rickety desk, which we'll probably replace soon. I kind of expected our glasses would be broken, but they weren't, and while we still have a few boxes in the closet to open up, it's good that all of our relatively important stuff seems to be just as as good as it was in Texas. Right now our apartment is a pretty big mess, but we've already made a lot of progress since yesterday. We still need to figure out where to put everything in the kitchen, but otherwise it's just a matter of putting things where they go and finding space for our collapsed moving boxes.