We were walking through the mall this weekend for the first time in a while. I saw a stand with bus route information in the middle of the mall, which I thought seemed a little strange for a suburban mall. I wouldn't expect to see that kind of thing in Texas.

The neat Troy Laundry building across the street has been emptied out of all the newspaper holders. I assume the building has been sold and will be redeveloped somehow. It's historically protected, though, so at least the facade will remain. When I walked by recently I could see inside and took a few pictures:

We had our first earthquake this morning around 5:25AM. It was 4.6 magnitude and about 22 miles to the Northeast of us. I didn't feel anything though and there's no reported damage.

We've added star ratings to all of our posts. This lets you rate each post we write on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, 5 being the best. Just below each post and above the comments link, there are five stars shown. Click on the appropriate star to indicate your rating for each post.

Also, whenever you hover your mouse over the stars, a round icon appears to the right. Click this icon to see which posts you have voted on, the top rated posts, the hottest posts, and info on the rating for the post you are looking at.

Rating a post is anonymous, free, fun, and easy. It takes less than a second and will give us feedback on what people like. Everyone is encouraged to rate posts. Let us know if you have any questions.

Troy met me downtown after work today and we went to Pike Place Market just for fun. It was really sunny today and not as cold as it has been recently. It was really nice being able to look out at the beautiful Bay and see the sun setting. The market wasn't busy at all either. In fact, today was probably the least busy I've ever seen it. We didn't bump shoulders with anyone or get run over by kids. We were a little hungry, so we got a salmon pâté piroshky from Piroshky Piroshky. The market is one of my favorite places in Seattle, it's just such a neat place.

Since Seattle is close to salt water (though technically about 100 miles from the ocean), there is a lot of good seafood here. However, the one type of food that dominates the landscape isn't seafood, but Thai food. There are more Thai restaurants here than any other type of food.

I didn't discover Thai food until a couple years ago, but in that time it has become one of my favorite kinds of food. Pad Thai is the dish I started on and it's pretty safe if you like noodles, vegetables, a little bit of sweetness, and a little bit of spice. Since then, I've had a variety of Thai dishes, most of which have seemed somewhat healthy, with a good mix of vegetables and the option to not include meat. I like Thai food and am glad that there are so many different Thai places in the city.

Troy & I have been hanging out with friends from church about once a month for a while. We've gone to a wine tasting, a hike, a pumpkin carving, and several other things. We have a fairly big group of 20 and 30 year olds at the church and it's so big (probably around 25 people or so) they need leaders to help plan and organize things. So we volunteered this year to come up with fun activities for the group to do every month.

So, for February, we're going to be hosting a Super Bowl Party for our church group to attend. We rented out the community room downstairs, which has a big HDTV, three couches, a pool table, a dining table and chairs, and almost a full kitchen. I'm pretty excited about the Super Bowl itself too, but since we're hosting, it may be a little bit harder to actually pay attention to the game. I'm not sure what food we'll have, we haven't quite figured that out yet, but hopefully everyone will bring something, either a drink or food item. Troy mentioned making cheese dip, so we'll probably do that. I'm looking forward to it, it'll be the first time we've hosted such a big party.

I had gotten pretty used to it being dark outside after work, and used to walking home from the bus in the dark, and walking around the neighborhood in the dark. However the sun has been setting noticeably later than it was just a month ago. It's really nice to have more daylight in the evenings and it means that spring is coming sometime not too long from now.

I guess the economy has been bad everywhere lately. The local economy has generally been pretty strong, with unemployment rates trailing the rest of the country for the past 5 years. However with firings by Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks, along with Washington Mutual failing, the local unemployment rate has risen precipitously.

Sometimes I have to go to job sites at work, but normally I can anticipate this. Last week, however, I unexpectedly had to go to a job site by myself, and I had taken the bus to work that day, so I didn't have a car. The company has a fleet of vehicles, so I asked to borrow one, but apparently they had to do some kind of driving background check first. With that option eliminated, a co-worker let me borrow his Prius, which I was thankful for.

The next day, I had to go somewhere again, but drove to work so I'd be prepared. Getting reimbursed $.55/mile was kind of nice, but I can't plan on driving my car to work every time I might need to go somewhere.

This week, I had to drive somewhere again, and since I submitted my papers for the background check earlier, I was able to borrow one of the company's Toyota Priuses. I don't know if anyone had driven this car after it was picked up from the dealership because it only had 623 miles on it. It was cool to drive the nice, clean, new company vehicle, though the "How's my driving" sticker made me drive extra-conservatively. I think it's funny that I've now driven three different Toyota Priuses in the past year, when I've only driven one of any other model of car. It's a nice car and I'm glad to have been able to drive it when I needed to.

Taking the bus to work has had its moments of inconvenience, and having to borrow a co-worker's car last week was one of them, but now that I can borrow the company's vehicles, it makes it easy to keep taking the bus to work.

The night before we left to fly out to Fort Worth for Christmas, we ran into someone we know from church at the airport. Then, last weekend, we had to make a late night run to the store and we saw another person that we know from church. Less than a year ago, we didn't really know anyone in this city, so it's kind of neat that we've been running into people lately.

When we were in Fort Worth for Christmas, several people asked us when we'd be back to visit again. Well, we probably won't be back during the summer or any time soon, possibly more than a year from now. We've gone back twice in the last 5 months for one thing. For another, we have several other rather expensive trips planned over the next year, which will use up a lot of money and vacation time. Anyway, just thought I would mention that since people were wondering.

One of the small differences I've noticed here is that all the milk jugs come with a cap that screws on instead of a cap that pops on. The pop-on style cap was the common kind of lid in Texas and the kind I prefer. It seems that there are more problems with this screw-on lid, including spills when pouring, and it also seems that more milk dries around the edge and sometimes falls off. I remember as a kid having some problems with the pop-top lid, but I think it's a better design overall and I miss it.

On Sunday, we went to church and then watched both football games. I'm glad the Steelers won, hopefully they'll win their 6th Super Bowl in a few weeks. After that we went to the grocery store, made taco salad for dinner, and watched an old movie from 1966, The Battle of Algiers. It was really interesting, but not really my type of movie. I'm looking forward to getting our next Netflix rental, Season 3 - Disc 3 of Frasier.

Yesterday we rolled out of bed at 9 and went walking around Capitol Hill and downtown looking at furniture stores for a new desk. We also went to a furniture store in the Ravenna area north of the U District, but didn't find anything we liked. We ate lunch at a Thai place called Djan Dinning in Wallingford and it was really good. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was nice and cozy in a previously-owned house.

Then we went home for a while and I cleaned around the house a little bit. Then we walked to REI to try to find something for Troy to get with his giftcard my parents gave him for Christmas. They had mostly clearance stuff and not much selection, so we'll go back again in a month to look.

And that was the rest of our three day weekend. Nothing that exciting, but it was nice to eat out at some new places, walk around outside, and enjoy the nice sun.

A light rail station will be built on Capitol Hill, less than a mile from where we live. All the tenants moved out and, for some reason there was a delay before construction starts, and all the storefronts were turned into art exhibits. It's a really neat street scene to walk by and see all the different exhibits, especially at night. It's really cool that they were able to set up all this art for people to enjoy. Click the picture to see a few pictures of parts of it.

I sprained my ankle over a month ago and it's still not completely back to normal. Every now and then I'll step on it a little funny or sit on it a bad way and it'll get stretched again and start hurting. I guess I need to be more careful. I just thought it would have healed by now.

It has been pretty cloudy this past week even though the weather had been forecast to be sunny. Yesterday looked like much of the same, with low clouds/fog in the morning, but by afternoon it had burned off and it was clear and sunny! It was a very nice day and I'm glad we were able to get outside and enjoy it.

We're under an air stagnation advisory here. I don't know why. The air stagnates in Texas, but we were never advised of it when we lived there. I guess the advisory is so that people won't start any fires outside or something, and maybe the air quality is a little lower than normal, I guess.

We have a three day weekend because of MLK Day on Monday. We weren't sure what we wanted to do this weekend, but we came up with a few good ideas. Saturday morning we went to eat breakfast at a restaurant that my Dad heard was good, The Dish. It was pretty small inside, contrary to the gigantic food portions. We sat at the counter and could see into the kitchen, which was pretty cool. I got a ham, cheese, mushroom, and onion omelette that came with roasted red potatoes and a choice of an english muffin, a scone, or toast. Troy also got an omelette, but his had italian sausage, parmesan cheese, onions, and spinach. He also got potatoes and toast with his. On top of all that, he also ordered a blueberry pancake that was probably about 8" in diameter. I'm surprised we actually ate most of our food. It was all pretty good and not too expensive by Seattle's standards.

After breakfast, we went to University Village and walked around. It's been really foggy and cloudy the last several days, but it's gotten really clear and sunny today. University Village is basically an outdoor mall with all kinds of small shops, stores, and Starbucks, of course. We walked around the Crate & Barrel and I found a ton of stuff that I like, but won't be buying any time soon, unfortunately. Then we got some hot tea from Starbucks with one of my gift cards I got from work.

Then we drove to Kerry Park to see what the view was like since it's been sunny today. It was still kind of foggy in the distance though and the sun was at a bad angle, making everything silhouetted. After that we went home for a little while and cleaned up the place, then went for a long walk to the waterfront and through downtown. We were planning on seeing Slumdog Millionaire tonight at the Harvard Exit theater on Capitol Hill, but it was sold out when we got there, so we just went home. We might watch the Netflix movie we have and play some video games.

Tomorrow we'll go to church and then watch the championship football games.

I tried to make a pecan pie last night, but it didn't turn out too well. It was extremely wet inside when I took it out of the oven after cooking it for the amount of time the recipe said. We cooked it almost 40 more minutes to see if it would be any less wet and now it looks overcooked. We just ate some of it and it came out in globs and is just overall gross. I guess I won't be making a pecan pie ever again. I have no idea what I did wrong...