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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides decorating our place, we've also been wanting to find some new furniture for the dining area and living room.

• Dining room chairs - We only had two chairs for our dining table, so we knew we had to buy at least two more to have enough seating since our families are coming to visit us in a few months. We weren't really crazy about our current chairs. I wanted to get a whole new set, but so far we hadn't found anything that we like much at all. We eventually decided to go back to IKEA to get some chairs that would match with our table. They're a little bigger and heavier than our other two and they go fairly well together. It will have to be a temporary solution until we find a full set that we like. We probably won't be looking again for a while though.


• Wine rack/pantry - I also would like a wine rack/pantry so that we would have a place to store our wine and put extra food. Currently our cabinets are really full of food and we don't have much room to store everything. It would also be nice if it had a shelf we could put our microwave on so it doesn't have to take up space on the kitchen counter. I haven't had any luck finding something that could satisfy all three requirements though.


• Clock - We want a new clock for the living room. We have a small blue one that I've had forever, but we want a bigger, nicer one. We found a cool one at Kasala that Troy liked a lot. It was a little expensive though and required two D batteries to operate. We haven't found anything else we like as much as that one.


• Entertainment center - We also want a new entertainment center for the TV, DVD collection, and gaming systems. We are still using my old small cabinet that doesn't have much space in it for anything. The bottom drawer is actually a file drawer, so we haven't been able to put much of anything but files in there. We haven't seriously looked into our options yet.


• End table - I would like a new end table to put next to the couch. The one we have is really small and low to the ground. It would be nice to get a matching coffee table and two end tables, but I'm not sure when we'll find something we like.


• Patio furniture - Eventually we'll be getting patio furniture for our deck so we can sit outside in the summer.

Much lower on the list is a new comforter set for our bed, a better couch with more support and foot rests, and even new bedroom furniture. I'm sure a lot of that will have to wait a while.

One of the features that helped convince me to move into our old apartment building was that it was a LEED certified building. Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification verifies that a building is constructed in a way that achieves "energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts."

One benefit of this is that LEED certified buildings are healthier to be in, use less energy, and cost less to operate. The benefit to us at our old apartment was that we hardly ever used our heater and that our appliances cost less to use.

Our current apartment building was constructed a couple decades earlier, so it's not as efficient. Our unit is also larger, so there's more air that needs to be kept warm in the winter. And we face east, so we don't get the afternoon sun to keep us warm. All that means that we are using our heater a lot more than at our old place. At our old place, we needed to turn our heater on for about one week out of the entire year. At our current place, we're running the heater pretty much every day.

Also, the washer and drier at our current apartment are about half the size or 2/3 the size of our old ones, so we're having to run them a lot more often. We do have a deck, so we may look at drying some things outside in the summer.

Anyway, we've now gotten our first electric bill here and our energy use per day is about 75% more than what we used at our old place - we're using about 14 kWh per day instead of the 8 kWH we used at our old place. Fortunately, we'll be using our heater less in the coming months so our energy use should decrease. Also, our energy only costs about 4.6 cents per kWh, so electricity still isn't going to be much more than $30 per month.

For as long as I can remember (at least the last 5 years), I've gotten the common cold 2 times every winter. This has been eerily consistent, despite all the protective measures I've put in place (washing my hands regularly, using hand sanitizer, trying to avoid sick people) - on top of all my regular healthy habits (drinking plenty of fluid, taking vitamins, getting enough sleep).

So, it's rather surprising that suddenly this year I went the entire winter without coming down with a cold. I suppose it could just be luck, though I think this is the first year I've been taking a vitamin D supplement every day. I've also been getting less exercise than I had the past couple years (because I've been walking outside less). I know they say that there are thousands of strains of the common cold, but maybe they miscounted and I've actually gotten and become immune to all of them.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the Noah's we went to all the time is temporarily closed while the building is redone. Last weekend we decided to try Eltana based on a few recommendations. It was actually pouring down rain, which would normally be abnormal for Seattle if we hadn't been having torrential rain the past few weeks. Anyway, we walked there in about 15 minutes. It was insanely crowded with tons of people and a lot of families, which was surprising. Of course we didn't get there until after 10 and there was also an article recently published in the Seattle Times about it, which might have drawn even more people than normal. Along with Noah's being closed, everyone who wanted bagels was going to try Eltana.

So, we waited in line for 10 minutes and ordered 4 bagels to go. We got sesame, salt, everything, and wheat and carried them home in the rain since there was no way we were going to eat them in that crowded place. We could have ordered cream cheese to go with it, but the cream cheese there is twice as expensive as Noah's, so we passed.

First impressions were average at best. The bagels were smaller than Noah's, which is why we got 4. They were also a little bland, especially the wheat and sesame ones. The salt and everything tasted a little better, but couldn't hold a candle to Noah's asiago cheese or super onion.

I'd probably go back since we don't plan on driving to another Noah's location every weekend, but it's just not going to be the same...

We've been trying to figure out how to decorate our new apartment since we moved in. Decorating isn't really mine or Troy's strong suit, so it's been time consuming trying to figure out what we like and where to find it. The walls were generally blank until last weekend.

One big difference between this apartment and our old one is that we have a long white wall behind the couch that extends into the dining area. It's at least 20 feet long. We were thinking of buying some art or a mirror or something to take up some of the space. Then we realized that it would take a long time to find exactly what we want, so we figured we should put up something in the meantime. We hung some of our pictures we've taken from our vacations including Australia and Hawaii. The other two pictures are of Hurricane Ridge and Mount Rainier. We still have a big wall space behind the couch to fill though. We might go back to a place we've looked before called Kasala to buy a mirror for behind the couch.

We painted the other main wall in the living room a light green color, which is nice because all the other walls are white. We hung up our framed Hawaiian hale drawing and we also bought a set of 24 leaves we could position on the wall in whatever way we wanted. The leaves are a brown color, which looks good against the green wall. We hung them on top and to the left of our door out to the deck in a way that it looks like they're being blown down from the top of the door.

Hopefully we can find more things to put on the walls as decoration soon. Maybe we'll buy some new 8x10 pictures from our trip to the Oregon coast to replace Hurricane Ridge and Mount Rainier. So far I think we've made a lot of progress, especially for having moved in barely 3 weeks ago.

I don't think I had Indian food until we moved to Seattle. I didn't realize what I was missing out on. Granted I've only had maybe two types of Indian dishes, but I'd have to say it's one of my favorite types of food. I really like chicken tikka masala and usually get that whenever we go to an Indian restaurant. I've had tikka masala from Taste of India, Laadla, and Chutney's. They've all been very good. Naan is also excellent when it's hot and fresh. We've gotten it plain and also with something in it, like potato or cheese. Maybe we can find an Indian restaurant that's close to our new apartment.

We had a microwave already installed above the stove in our old apartment, but our current apartment doesn't have one. We asked if we could install our own above the stove, but the manager said it would be a lot of work and we realized how expensive they are. Then they said they would let us borrow a microwave, so we said sure.

The one they lent to us was old, dirty, and pretty small. We used it a few times and made a few bags on popcorn in it. It left several more kernels un-popped than the microwave at our old apartment, which was annoying. So, I decided to buy our own and we went looking a few weeks ago.

We found one at Best Buy that we really liked and got good reviews, but they only had a black version in the store. I wanted white so it would match the rest of our appliances. So we had to order it special delivery online. I ordered it Feb 26th and it arrived this last Wednesday. I had to meet the delivery guy at the apartment, which was a little annoying, but I'm glad we have a new microwave now. We popped our first bag of popcorn in it the night we got it and it turned out great.

We couldn't use the heaters at our old apartment because we blocked them with furniture. Our bed area was so small that the bed covered up the vent and our bookcase was in the way of the heater in the living area. We only needed to run them maybe a week or so out of the whole year anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

But now at our new place, we are able to keep the heaters free since we have more room. It's been cold lately too, so we've had to use them quite a bit. Our new building doesn't seem as well insulated as old our apartment building either, so I'm curious to see how much our electric bill will go up. We've been running the heat daily. They generate some pretty hot air, which is nice to sit in front of if I'm cold. Hopefully it will get a little warmer soon so we don't have to run it as much.

It's been six months since my last haircut, so I figured it was time to get it cut. It had gotten really thick and heavy at the bottom and too long. I had to find a new place to go to since we've moved away from South Lake Union. I used to go to a lady right on the lake, but that's too far for me to walk now.

I searched online and quickly found a salon that was highly rated just a few blocks from our new apartment. It was very convenient and the lady spent an hour and a half on my hair. I decided to have her cut it above my shoulder, layer it, and thin it out quite a bit. She was also a lot cheaper than the other lady I was using, $30 instead of $50. Overall it was a great experience and I'll probably use them from now on. It's great that we can walk to places like the hair salon and save money at the same time.

One of the things that most excited me about our new neighborhood is that we would be less than 10 minutes away from an everyday grocery store. Since we've been here, we've been able to walk to the store a couple times and haven't had to make any special driving trips to a grocery store.

There are a lot of people that live in this area, so it's common to see other people walking to and from the grocery store. So far we haven't wanted to purchase a lot of heavy things, so we've been able to evenly distribute our groceries across the bags we carry to make it pretty easy to carry them for the 7 minutes back to our apartment.

One nice thing is that there are no traffic lights or major roads that separate us from the grocery store. In our old neighborhood we were fairly close to a Whole Foods, but it just felt farther away because of the busy streets, hills, and the environment of the walk.

We don't yet have a good plan for what to do next time Dr Pepper is on sale because we're not equipped to carry a lot of heavy stuff. We realize that we may have to walk to the store more often since we can't carry as much at a time, but right now that doesn't seem like it'll be a problem.

We've been busy the past few weekends with moving, but we had a little more time this past weekend to go out and do things.

We had to exchange something at The Container Store in downtown Bellevue, so we did that on Friday after work. We also tried a Taiwanese restaurant there. Neither of us had ever had Taiwanese food, but this place was rated highly on yelp and sounded more appealing than the higher-profile chains in the area. When we got there after 6, the restaurant was packed, but after a bit of a wait, we got a table and ordered small plates of pork burger and sweet potato dumpling to go along with our main meal of chow mein, and pork fried rice. After dinner, we got some tea and wandered around Crate & Barrel.

On Saturday, we were blessed with a beautifully sunny day. While it was fairly cold outside, the sun was shining, which made for a big contrast from previous cloudy and wet weekends. After our bagel adventure, we took a nice walk through downtown to the Cinerama, which had been remodeled a few months ago. Despite having won Best Picture just a week before, there were plenty of seats inside the huge Cinerama theater. The picture and sound at the theater was quite good, and we both enjoyed the movie. We could really feel how stuttering impacted this man's life and the nerves of people around him.

After the movie, we took a bus down to a furniture outlet store in SODO. We didn't see any particular furniture that we wanted to get, but we did buy some decorative leaves to put on our green wall. While SODO has been a rather industrial area, there are also some furniture and design stores in the area. We also stopped at a Starbucks for tea and then went to Krispy Kreme to have a few donuts to tide us over until dinner. We then made the bus that would take us back home.

It was definitely nice to be able to get out and do things this weekend.

We've had a tradition the last several years of going to eat bagels almost every Saturday. Usually we get three bagels and split them. Depending on what looks good we get a combination of asiago, sesame, and super onion. We've been going to the Noah's Bagels on Capitol Hill, which was pretty convenient by the #8 bus or just walking up the hill from our old South Lake Union apartment.

Since we moved a few weeks ago, we've been too busy to go get bagels on the weekend. But yesterday we finally made it a point to walk slightly less than a mile to Noah's from our new apartment.

When we got there, we saw a big sign on the door that said that location was closed. I was pretty disappointed. We knew it would be closing for a little while at some point because the building it was in is being torn down and rebuilt with condos on the upper floors.

We weren't sure what to do yesterday. We were really hungry and I still wanted bagels. We ended up going to the Mercer Island location and it was after 10:30 by the time we got there. It was packed with people and we had to wait in line for 15 minutes. There were no two-person tables available, so we had to sit at a big, awkward table with other customers. At least they were some of the freshest bagels we've had in a while. The Mercer Island location is pretty far away, but most of the drive is on the freeway.

The only other locations we could go to are ones in Queen Anne and the U-District. I don't care for the Queen Anne location because it's hard to get to from where we live now and it's always swamped with tons of people, including families with screaming kids. Parking there is also a hassle.

The U-District location would probably be the best one to go to since it's not too far away. Unfortunately there aren't any convenient buses that would take us there, so we would have to drive every Saturday morning just to get bagels. We've tried a few other bagel places in the city, but have not really cared much for any of them. I guess we'll have to figure out something for a year or two until the Capitol Hill location is open again.

I'm still battling my plantar fasciitis. It's been a few months since I went to the doctor. It seems to have gotten better wearing my gel inserts and tennis shoes all the time, but the problem is still there. It had been a while since I got new tennis shoes, so we went to REI and looked for some walking shoes. I bought a pair from them and tried them for a few days. They rubbed my feet raw in a few places, so I had to return them. They definitely had more padding and support though.

Then last night we tried a place called Roadrunner Sports, which a coworker recommended. They did all the same type of tests on my feet and said I have high arches, which I already knew. I told them I walk a mile to and from work every day and then some around town on the weekends, and they called me an athelete, which was kind of cool.

Despite the fact that I told them I already have inserts and orthotics, they molded some for me. I ended up buying the inserts and new Saucony tennis shoes and they felt much better on my feet. They have a lot of padding and support in the heel, so hopefully that will help with my plantar fasciitis.

The customer service was great. I had someone helping me the whole time and they seemed to know what they were talking about. I might end up returning the inserts though since they weren't cheap. But I guess if they feel better than my other inserts, maybe I'll keep them.

The frustrating thing about this whole deal is that I just don't know who to listen to or who's right. I heard different stories from my podiatrist and my orthopedic surgeon. They each recommended something different. It's the same with buying shoes. One store says one thing and another says something else. It's been a lot of trial and error, trying to see what works and what helps my feet. Hopefully these new tennis shoes will be a big improvement.