I don't really know what to say about my job. It's been going well, I guess. Lately, things have been a little slow, and I've run out of things to read and learn for the moment. However, I've slowly been getting more responsibilities and have been contributing some with one of our projects. We have projects where we integrate HVAC controllers so that building managers can see the current temperatures (and air flow and other things) in all of the rooms of a building and also make changes from a web console. I've been doing a lot of web development so far.

The department I work in is relatively new, so I'm helping out with some of the organization of our files on the network. I'm also helping with our weekly meeting and figuring out how to update and display a list of our current projects. (Wow, all of that seemed so much more exciting until I just typed it out.)

I'd like to get a better understanding of what exactly we do and the phases of our projects so that I can help us get things done more efficiently. Anyway, it's still early and not too exciting yet, but so far I like my job.

Ticket prices dropped significantly today on some of the flights we were monitoring, so we booked our tickets today. Prices had been hovering around $515 per person, but we were able to get these non-stop tickets for $434 with taxes and bag fee. We'll be arriving the evening of Sunday the 21st and flying back here the morning of the following Sunday.

We wanted to arrive back here on Saturday so that we'd have a day to rest before going back to work, but we also wanted to have at least 6 days there. I also kind of wanted to be able to go to our old church. But, we had to compromise a little bit to get the good price. So, we'll be coming back here a day later than we wanted to and we won't be able to go to church, but we'll still get to be there for a full 6 days.

Over the next few days we're getting warmer than normal weather for this time of year. The highs the next three days will be in the mid to upper 70s with sunny skies. After that though it gets to be more like normal with highs in the 50s and 60s and some rain.

I've been wanting to decorate our apartment recently and we finally made some progress last weekend. Troy hung up a shear light green curtain to separate our bed from the hallway. Now whenever we have guests over, they won't be able to see directly into our bedroom. It also helps keep light out at night when we're going to sleep.

We also bought a set of three black sparkly flower pots to put in the windowsill. We're going to have jade plants re-potted in them this week.

Here's a few pictures of our recent additions. I'm looking forward to buying a new desk and a dining table.

We've seen a commercial here during NFL games for a new DVD, History of the Dallas Cowboys. The commercial shows some highlights and says where you can buy it. It looks like an updated version of the The Complete History of America's Team, 1960-2003 (which I already own).

Anyway, the interesting thing is that the commercial doesn't mention any other teams, it's just for the Dallas Cowboys. This would be totally normal if we were in Dallas, but I'm a little surprised that this is playing in Seattle (and I guess nationwide). I didn't realize how popular the Cowboys are.

We're going to a Washington Huskies football game this weekend and I was trying to figure out how to get there. So, I was looking at their page of how to get there. They tell you which buses you can take, and where the park and rides are, and all the normal stuff. Then, at the bottom, they have "Arrive by boat." Apparently, that's not an uncommon thing to do here, since the stadium is close to water. Still, I've never in my life thought about taking a boat to get to a football game, so the idea still sounds strange to me.

The Wall Street Journal has published the results of a study on personality traits across the nation. The article discusses the results and includes an interactive map (may not work in all browsers). Each state is ranked on five factors - (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness). Since the results are aggregated by state, it fails to account for differences between city-dwellers and country-folk.

Anyway, the most interesting part of this is comparing the state of Washington to our old home state of Texas. Texas ranked close to the median for pretty much everything, while Washington was ranked as the 4th most introverted state, 5th least neurotic, and also ranked very high in openness to new ideas along with the rest of the west coast. So, for what it's worth, I guess we live in a more introverted, emotionally-stable, and open-minded state than before.

The state of Washington has voted Democrat in every presidential election since Reagan beat Mondale in 1984. However, the election for governor of Washington is projected to be the closest in the country. Four years ago, the same candidates ran and the margin of victory was 122 votes. So, I'm going to be especially careful in deciding who to vote for. Unfortunately, I missed the debate that took place on Friday, but I'm looking forward to voting for the first time in the state of Washington.

On Sunday, the church we go to broke ground for their new building (link to Seattle Post-Intelligencer Article). We've been attending ever since we moved here and like it more than any church we've ever been to. We arrived right when the church was moving out of its majestic downtown location and have been going to services at Seattle Children's Theatre at Seattle Center.

We finally put together a video from our trip to San Francisco. Troy did most of the work on this one, which is probably a good thing, because I would have tried to include too much and it would have ended up being a 30 minute video. Enjoy!

I've had some frustration about taking the bus to work, since it's not very consistent. However, I found this great website, MyBus.org, which displays how far behind (or ahead of) schedule the buses are. It's not as good as what San Francisco has, but it offers some guidance to me so that I know when I need to leave my desk to catch the bus. So, now that I have that resource, I really enjoy riding the bus to work 4+ times per week.

Q102 used to be a popular rock station in D/FW. Q102 ended in 1998. So, it was very odd for me to see an old Mazda Truck with a bumper sticker that said, "Q102: Texas' Best Rock." It had a Washington license plate. I wonder if they know that Q102 hasn't existed for 10 years.

We decided to go visit one of the nearby national parks last weekend so that we could see it while the weather was still good. It takes almost three hours to get to the park from Seattle, so we left at 8:15 (which is very early for us on the weekend). There are a lot of trails there, so our first stop was the trailhead for Cascade Pass, which is away from the rest of the park, but it's the hike that we had read the most good things about.

To get there, we had to drive an hour on a narrow, unmarked road, and halfway along the road, the pavement ran out and turned to gravel. The parking lot was pretty full and it was surrounded by mountains and glaciers. Anyway, we started walking up the trail, which was surrounded by tall trees like most of the other hikes we've done. After about an hour, the trees started getting noticeably shorter and we started seeing more streams of water dripping down the mountain. After a little while, the trees basically disappeared and we were amidst a colorful meadow on the mountainside. After walking a little further, over some rocks, we made it to Cascade Pass. We stopped to enjoy the beautiful view, the cool, fresh air, the bright, warm sunshine, and the crunchy peanut butter sandwiches we brought with us. It took us almost 2 hours to get there and was probably the most difficult hike we had done. On the way back down, we had to stay focused do that we didn't lose our footing. At one point while we were walking, we heard an avalanche (from another nearby mountain - there was no snow on ours).

Anyway, after an hour and a half walking down, we got back to our car, then drove to another hour to get back to the main highway. We drove for another thirty minutes before we entered the main area of the park. We drove along the blue-green Skagit River and then past several dams on our way through the park. We stopped at several lookout points to observe Diablo Lake below, the trees ahead, and the mountains above. There were more trails available, but we didn't do any. Whereas many other national parks have a major point of interest that's not available outside of the park, this park contains just a sample of the beauty throughout the Pacific Northwest. Even without an entrance fee, 40-year-old North Cascades National Park wasn't as busy as Mount Rainier National Park, which we went to earlier in the summer. We had a great time there. Check out our pictures and video below.

Every year my company hosts an annual conference for all of our representatives. The kick-off reception was last night, which offers a chance for us employees to meet representatives and their assistants. Anyway, a full bar and food was provided and I thought it was interesting that potstickers with teriyaki sauce and egg rolls were a few of the things that were served. I don't think you'd ever see that kind of food on the menu for meetings like this in Texas. They were really good. I started to get a headache though because it was really hot in there with all those people and the band was really loud too, so I ended up leaving early. A few people had already left, so I didn't feel too bad. I'm sort of glad that that's over.

Unfortunately we've come to the end of our posts about our trip to San Francisco, after more than a week. It took a while to figure out how we wanted to organize our thoughts for posts since there was so much we wanted to say. We ended up posting about things in a random order rather than chronologically. So, here is a brief list of things we did day by day:

Wednesday

• Chinatown
• Alamo Square
• Divisadero Street
• Giants game

Thursday

• Oakland Bay Bridge
• Yerba-Buena/Treasure Island
• Twin Peaks
• Sausalito
• Muir Woods
• Marin Headlands
• Fort Point
• Ocean Beach
• Twin Peaks at night
• Golden Gate Bridge at night
• Drove down Lombard Street

Friday

• Cable Car
• Fisherman's Wharf
• Pier 39
• Ghirardelli Square
• Fort Mason
• Walked halfway across Golden Gate Bridge in fog
• Walked around Clement Street
• Walked to Rossi park and USF in fog

Saturday

• Golden Gate Park
• Japanese Tea Garden
• Haight/Ashbury
• Walked around Clement Street
• Walked to USF in clear daylight

Sunday

• Yerba Buena Gardens and Martin Luther King Memorial
• Ferry Building
• de Young Art Museum
• Arboretum in Golden Gate Park
• Walked on 9th Avenue
• Buena Vista Park at dusk

Monday

• Civic Center
• Rode Streetcar

We had a lot of fun on the trip and look forward to going back some day. We hope you enjoyed the pictures and look forward to sharing video soon.

List of Previous Posts

1. Introduction
2. Neighborhoods
3. Giants game
4. Hanging out with our Friend
5. Muir Woods & Gardens
6. Food
7. Bridges
8. USF
9. Famous Places
10. de Young Museum
11. Transportation
12. Marin Hills and Other Viewpoints
13. San Francisco Video

Probably the best place to see the Golden Gate Bridge is from the Marin Hills, just North of San Francisco. After we went to Muir Woods Thursday afternoon, we stopped at the Marin Hills on the way back. We were very lucky to have clear weather for viewing the bridge. Normally there are blankets of fog that cover the bridge every day. The Marin Hills are neat because they are so high that you can look down toward the bridge and you can see the everywhere from the Pacific coast to Oakland. We went to several viewpoints on the hills and took lots of pictures:



There are so many other viewpoints around the city: Treasure Island, Twin Peaks, Sausalito, and Buena Vista Park to name a few. The day we rented the car, the first thing we did was drive across the Oakland Bay Bridge to go to Treasure Island to see the view. Most of these pictures were taken from Treasure Island, but some were taken from Buena Vista Park, USF, and the de Young Museum observation tower.

I had been looking forward to last night's Monday Night Football game all week. The only problem was that it was showing on a network that we don't have, since we only have local TV channels. So, we met a couple friends from church at a local sports bar to watch the game.

One nice thing about that is that smoking is banned in bars here, so we could enjoy the game in relative comfort.

One other nice thing about watching Monday Night Football here is that the games start right after work for me (5:30), so there's not a lot of time to kill before the game. Of course, if I got off work later, it would be a pain to miss the beginning of the game. But, in our case since we went to a sports bar, it was happy hour so food and drinks were cheaper. And, the early start meant that we could enjoy the entire game without worrying about going to bed on time since we were home by 9.

That was the Cowboys' only Monday Night Football game this year, and it was a good one, so I'm glad I got to watch it.

Figuring out how to get where you want to go is one issue (or it can create many recurring issues) on any vacation. In San Francisco, we had a lot of options, and the numerous ways we got around made the trip more exciting.

Flight toward SF

First, we flew out from Seattle toward San Francisco. We decided to fly into Oakland instead of SFO because it was $75 cheaper per person. Fortunately, Alaska Airlines had quite a few flight options so we picked the best one for us. However, that meant flying on a Bombardier CRJ-700 (operated by Horizon Airlines), which is the smallest airplane that either of us has ever flown on. Instead of walking on a jet way to get on the plane, we walked on the ground and up some stairs to get on the plane. I really liked the plane, though, because it was very quiet inside, flew pretty smoothly, and we didn't have anyone between us and the aisle or window.

BART from airport to hotel

Once we arrived in Oakland, getting to our hotel was pretty easy. We didn't rent a car at the airport because we would be spending most of our time in the city and having a car to drive and park would just be a hassle, so we opted to take BART rail. Unfortunately we had to pay $3 each to take a bus to the rail station, but it didn't take too long and we didn't have to wait too long for the rail. The dated-looking light rail trains took us just a couple blocks away from our hotel in the middle of downtown.

Bus

Once we got in the city, we used multiple ways to get around. San Francisco is very walkable, so we were often able to get where we wanted to go on foot. However, we also took the bus quite frequently and had some negative experiences the first day. We tried to catch the bus at one stop, but all the buses that came were too full and didn't stop. The buses we were able to catch had standing room only with little room to breathe. After attending the baseball game our first night, we waited for the bus for 30 minutes before it came.

Throughout the rest of our time there, we rode the bus a couple times almost every day and had some good experiences where we didn't have to wait long and were able to sit, but those were balanced by the less positive experiences. One benefit of a big city is that you have a lot of ways to get around, but the problem with that is that none of them are very good. Still, the bus was a fine way to get around the city.

Car Rental

However, for getting outside the city, we chose to rent a car. It was nice having a car so that we could drive over the bridges, visit Muir Woods, and go to some of the less accessible viewpoints. We also drove down Lombard street, though it was at night. The car rental place closed at 6 and said that we could return it after-hours for $30. That's a lot of money, but parking it at our hotel would have cost $38 overnight, so we dropped it off that evening after we drove pretty much everywhere we wanted to.

Cable Cars

San Francisco is known for its cable cars, so we rode the Powell-Mason cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. Unfortunately, the line to board was pretty long and there was a temporary problem with the track that slowed things down. However, eventually we got on and rode across the city.

Streetcar

On our last day, we rode a neat, old Italian streetcar along Market Street.

Returning to Seattle

When we left, we took the same way back to the airport. Amazingly, checking in and getting through security in Oakland took less than 10 minutes. We saved time because we didn't check any bags but it was incredible how quickly we got to our gate. We gave ourselves a good time cushion, though, but missed the previous flight to Seattle, so we had to wait a while at the gate for our flight. Anyway, after a 96 minute flight, it felt good to be back.

Here are some pictures we took related to transportation:

San Francisco has a few famous art museums, but the one our friend most strongly recommended was the de Young. We decided to visit on Sunday and it was incredibly busy. We waited in line for tickets for like 30 minutes. Most people were there for the special exhibit, but we just saw the regular exhibits, which were fortunately not very crowded. The exhibits we saw had some impressive works of glass and contemporary art. The building itself was also very interesting and had an observation tower. Click below for some pictures we took at the museum.

We went to see the famous play by Andrew Lloyd Webber, The Phantom of the Opera, at the Paramount Theater this past Friday, opening weekend. The Phantom of the Opera is the longest running Broadway musical in history. I saw the play before at the Bass Hall in 1995 for my 13th birthday and I remember liking it a lot, so I was excited to see it again. We left an hour early so we would have plenty of time to get there and look around the old theater. We walked just over half a mile to the theater (which is really cool by the way, no parking hassles), and I bought a program. We had purchased the cheapest seats possible in the upper level since the ones on the main floor were $70 each.

Anyway, we walked in the theater and had our tickets scanned. As we were about to go up the stairs to our seats, an usher stopped us and asked to look at our tickets. He told us to wait there and he ran off with our tickets for some reason. I was a little irritated and didn't understand why this usher would stop us. He came back with another man and said that our tickets weren't valid. At that point I was angry because I didn't know why our tickets wouldn't be valid and I really wanted to see the play that we paid to go to. The other man introduced himself as an associate for Broadway for America and said that Wells Fargo had purchased some seats to give away. Then he handed us new tickets - two front row seats in the lower level, right up to the stage. I was shocked! He also gave us some goodie bags that had a Wells Fargo coffee mug with some Ghirardelli hot chocolate and raspberry chocolate coffee, a stuffed animal Wells Fargo horse, and some book about owning a home. I felt kinda bad for being irritated initially after I realized what was happening. Two front row seats to Phantom of the Opera! Wow!

So, we went inside and sat down in our seats right up at the stage. I just couldn't get over how crazy it was that we had gotten a free seat upgrade. The theater itself looked really cool inside and had lots of ornate old sculptures on the walls and chandeliers in the foyer. A few people came up to us and asked us how we got our seats. The start of the play was exciting because a chandelier prop in the play rises up from the stage to the ceiling, which was right in front of and above us. During the intermission, the usher that had stopped us initially came by to talk to us. He said that he's been picking people for a while now and he was looking for some "down to Earth" people to give the seats to. He also said that this was the only performance during the month-long tour of Phantom of the Opera in Seattle that they would be doing this seat upgrade for and only two seats were being given away. So, we were incredibly lucky. We just happened to pick Friday night to go to and we just happened to leave at a certain time and walk past the right usher.

The play itself was awesome, just how I remember it and I had a really great time. It was awesome being able to see all the actors' faces and expressions so close. I love the Phantom of the Opera and can't wait to see it again someday, perhaps on Broadway.