[3.1] 10 Things I Love About Seattle

We're going to start a running feature on the blog. At the bottom of the column to the right of your screen, You will see a list entitled "Things We've Learned About Seattle:Good, Bad, & Pointless". Some of these will be more entertaining than informative, some the reverse. Some will be pretty obvious and every once in a while, we'll try to slip one by you and make something up. This is to help all of you better understand what it means to live in Seattle and to help us fill the space on this blog.

From time to time we'll post explanations, but we're more likely just to post one-liners that you'll have to interpret for yourselves until our explanatory column, if necessary, comes. For the first entries, we'll give a little background.

1. Seattle has a lot of coffee shops: When we were visiting Seattle for Lisa's job interview and trying to decide if we liked it, we walked about six blocks from our hotel down to Pike Place Market, and then walked back up, one avenue over. We counted 11 Starbucks (including the first Starbucks store). This does not include the Peets and Seattle's Best Coffee shops and others that dotted the walk as well. We have three coffee shops within three blocks of our home. It reminds me of an old Onion article. By the way, neither Lisa nor I drink coffee regularly.

2. There are also a lot of cyclists: This makes Lisa very happy. There's more lycra spandex around here than at a world gymnastics meet. And it's not all "good" spandex if you know what I mean. How some of these people ride regularly and retain their "shape" is beyond me. But from what we understand, there are more than a few people that commute via bike year round. Let that sink in.

3. Cars stop for pedestrians (especially those like Spandex guy to the right) and jaywalking laws are enforced: A two for one list item, and no, we did not find the latter out through firsthand experience. Both learning to stop for pedestrians and learning to cross with the light or at crosswalks have taken some adjustment for Dave.

Well, this has just been a tease. We've got more, so watch this space.

[3.0] The Center of the Universe

As mentioned in a previous post, we're pretty confident that we have moved into a neighborhood that we'll love. We now live in the Seattle section known as Fremont, which is widely know around the area as "The Center of the Universe". Modesty is a common trait among those of us here in Fremont. In the interest of brevity, I'll spare you a full description here, but if you want to learn more about it, the Wikipedia entry does a good job of briefly capturing the eclectic essence of the neighborhood. I suggest giving it a read to learn a little about the Troll (as seen here sporting a Murphy), the Solstice Parade, and the infiltration by Google. It seems to be every bit as colorful as my former Hoboken home.

The neighborhood is a mix of older houses (circa 1920), small apartment buildings (1970s maybe), and relatively new townhouses. While our neighborhood is primarily residential, we live about seven blocks from the commercial center of Fremont. There are a number of cool shops, great restaurants, and a pretty hopping nightlife in this area. The good news is that it is an easily walkable seven blocks to this area; the bad news is that the walk home is uphill all the way. This is how we're going to put our houseguests to the test, take them out to the area we've affectionately termed "downhill".

Now, the walk downhill (and back up) is not bad at all, but I'm imagining it will be a different story once the rain comes. Luckily, there is a great little market close by and there are a number of food options that are a much closer walk such as Persimmon and Fremont Classic. However, the crown jewel of these is Paseo. While we were house hunting in the area, we passed by this small nondescript storefront, partially obscured by trees, and bearing no sign. It was only noticeable due to the large crowd of people standing outside on the sidewalk. We later learned why. Part of the reason is that there's just not a whole lot of space in the restaurant, basically just the kitchen, a counter, and two tables. But the crowds come for the caribbean food. My current favorite is the Cuban Roast sandwich, which has just about the best pork I've ever tasted.

The nightlife is not as prevalent uphill where we live, with the only real option being the Buckaroo Tavern. I don't really know how to describe the Buckaroo, mainly because I'm intimidated to go in there. I'm intimidated not so much by the row of Harleys out front, not by the leather-clad bikers that hang out there starting around 1PM each day, but rather by the women that hang out there. They scare me. But I imagine we'll have to check it out since they have a couple of pool tables and it's been a filming location for several movies.

[2.1] The Wizard Of Foz

We have not yet decided what Fozzie's territorial limitations will be within the house when we go out. We've been experimenting. The child's gate we used in CT is not a fit in our new layout. However, we've had the luxury of having boxes lying around after the move. We have lined and stacked those in every way imaginable to keep Foz in the office area downstairs. But alas, each time we arrive home, the boxes are moved just enough for a stocky pug/bull terrier to fit through and we have visions of Foz upstairs, jumping on the couch watching Animal Planet with a beer. We'll never know for sure because he always hears us come home and greets us with his tail between his legs, ears down, head lowered, and eyes looking up apologetically. But I have not noticed any beer missing yet.

Well, last night, Lisa was not to be outsmarted by the dog and engineered a barricade that actually was successful in keeping him downstairs. You can see it below. You can also see the holes in the large box that he chewed in his attempted jailbreak. I don't think it was Lisa's barricade as much as it was Nigel's gatekeeping.

[2.0] We're Home

No longer do we have to use the word "temporary" in front of "home". For those of you unaware, we bought a townhome in the Fremont section of Seattle. Our stuff, all 12,000 pounds of it, arrived on Tuesday the 7th. We lost a desk and a few small things that were destroyed in the move. Fozzie was a bit unsettled by the whole process and hid in the bushes. Our next task, a monumental one that still has us toiling, was unpacking. Even with Lisa being "ruthless" in her keep vs. toss routine, we're still struggling to get things put away and it's two weeks later. And I hope Lisa harbors no hopes of getting her car in the garage before, say...hmmm, October, maybe.

Despite our lack of a microwave, refrigerator, and washer/dryer, we moved into the new place on 16 August. The washer/dryer came the next day, which made Lisa very happy. Unfortunately, we also learned that the refrigerator would be delayed another week, making Lisa very unhappy. We lived out of a cooler for the next week, which required my going to the corner market once per day to get a bag of ice or two. We kept the bare essentials in the cooler and used the opportunity to explore our new neighborhood, eating out most nights. We'll get to the neighborhood update in a later post, but for now suffice it to say that we are very happy with our choice of surroundings.

I spent the first week or two getting appliances and other necessities, unpacking, and moving things into place while trying to keep the garage relatively organized as our catch-all for stuff. Kudos to anyone that can figure out my organizational system from the picture. I also took a few breaks each day to explore our new neighborhood and those surrounding it. After the house was habitable and we were able to move around, I began to focus on my job search. Any networking opportunities that you as our blog readership care to pass along will be greatly appreciated. As for Lisa, she's been adapting to work--I'm going to try to get her to post an update on her job. She seems to be enjoying the newness of it and liking her co-workers and working environment. She's also become quite the adept commuter, learning the bus system here and buying what I believe is her first ever monthly bus pass. While this may be likely to end once she gets off the waiting list and has a garage space at work, at least she can claim a devout dedication to environmental matters in the interim. In the interim.

On Friday the 24th, blessed be GE, our refrigerator arrived. Lisa's life is complete. Doesn't she look happy? Either that or she's trying out for a modeling

gig on "The Price is Right". We celebrated by going out to dinner and bringing home about five forkfuls of risotto, just to put something in the fridge. The next day we nuked it in our microwave which had also arrived a day before the fridge. We are fully applianced and it feels good. We've actually also been able to settle in a bit. The pic below shows Nigel and I "settling in". If you look closely, you can notice that I've opted for the beat-poet-hipster-doofus-rebel-without-a-clue look. Nigel has chosen the "dead cat" look that's all the rage in feline circles. Gwen and Nigel are happy now that the couch is here.

[1.0] Welcome to Seattle

We are at home in Seattle... well, sort of. Lisa headed west from CT for her first day of work on 16 July. I began my cross-country drive after dropping her off at the airport and after a brief swing through NJ for some final goodbyes. After two days, I hooked up with Roadtripper (RT) in Minneapolis. For a detailed account of the journey, click here to check out RT's blog (Days 102-108). After a trip back to CT to oversee the moving process, I joined Lisa in our temporary home on 1st Ave West in the serviceable Metro on First apartment building.

Our temporary home is located--for those of you ambitious enough to look at a map--in the Queen Anne section of Seattle, which is adjacent to the Downtown/Belltown city center. The apartment building is located three blocks from the Seattle Center, which is a main tourist area that houses the Space Needle. So basically our morning goes like this: Wake up, walk outside, look up at Space Needle. Also right here is the Key Arena where the Sonics (NBA team) play, but maybe not for long as there is a battle to take the team to Oklahoma City. I don't really care if they move the Sonics, but it would be nice if they build the new arena they're requesting and then bring in a pro hockey team. I'm not excited to drive three hours to Vancouver to get my hockey fix.

While the apartment itself is nothing special--other than it being a one-bedroom for the two of us, one dog and two cats--the location is great. From our balcony on the sixth floor, we have a great view of Puget Sound, which is a few blocks walk down the hill. In the background of the photos is the Olympic mountain range. That's one of the cool things about Seattle. It's flanked by the Olympics to the west, the Cascades to the east, and Mount Rainier looms large to the South. That means mountain views in most directions. You can check out the Olympics and Puget Sound in the view from our balcony to the right. This also has led Lisa to decide that we bought the wrong home. When we were looking, we had a few criteria:

1. Proximity to the city center and Lisa's job
2. Walking distance to a commercial area (restaurants, bars, dry cleaners)
3. Enough rooms to accommodate a guest room, workout room, office and our bedroom (a room could be multifunctional if space allowed)
4. Enough space to fit the dining room furniture (that hutch almost pushed me past my breaking point)
5. A fenced-in yard that was large enough to host a BBQ
6. Garage space for at least one car

The only thing we ended up compromising was the yard. We have a yard in our new place, but it's not fenced (yet), and it's not conducive to entertaining. So we did pretty well. But now, after living in the temporary apartment, our next house has to have a view. Lucky these are not that difficult to come by in Seattle.

Across the street from our apartment, Elliot Bay Park stretches for about a mile along the sound. Lisa discovered that this is an excellent place to begin bike rides, one of which took her all the way to West Seattle, where she managed to snap a photo with her camera of the Seattle skyline. It's not NYC, but there's not much that compares anyway. The park ends down buy the waterfront area and Pike Place market.

Foz and I have enjoyed the park for our afternoon walks. I think he likes getting back to city living since I have to take him out for walks whereas, in CT, he usually just got let out in the backyard. But he loves the park down by the water, and I tend to agree with him. It has a rather great view of Mount Rainier (it doesn't photograph that well, but you can make it out if you click on the photo and look directly above the two folks sitting on the grass). But we're coming to learn that there are great views from many places given the topography of Seattle, which is much more hilly than I imagined.

We've gotten used to everything being within walking distance, something I missed in my year in CT: the store, restaurants, dry cleaners, blockbuster, etc. The nearby restaurants are all reasonably good, save for a nasty BBQ experience...let's just say that Floyd's Place is out of the rotation. Buckley's has sufficiently satisfied the role of local pub. It's within falling distance of the apartment, has solid food and ale offerings, and a regular clientele that plays Playstation soccer against the bartender (He's unbeatable, so I'm wondering how attentive he is to his customers). Buckley's is also apparently the meeting place for the lesbian community before WNBA games at Key Arena. We have not yet made it to Chopstix, which is not an Asian restaurant, but rather a dueling piano bar.

Despite our affinity for our temporary neighborhood, we're looking forward to when the moving truck shows up with our stuff so we can move into the new place. Nigel is also looking forward to that as well; he's way into boxes and packing paper. Apologies for the long post, but the first few are likely to be long ones as we'll have a lot to share.

[0.0] Emerald City Styling Primer

Hey all. Thanks for checking in. We wanted to set up a blog to keep everyone back east and other family and friends on top of all the current happenings in our fantastically exciting lives in our new Seattle habitat. It's tough to speak to everyone enough to share all of the new happenings, so we figured this is a pretty good tool.

Let me start by pointing out our request under the blog title. We do strongly encourage you to take the utmost advantage of our hospitality and let us be your guide to the greater Puget Sound area. We already have so much to share with guests. We already have one Hayes and an Allen/Palan visit in September, and Vlady-mom and dad coming in October.

A couple of points regarding the blog. Dave's posts will be in Blue and Lisa's in Black so that we can speak in first person and you'll know who is speaking...er, typing. We'll not be posting everyday as some other overly ambitious bloggers do. Quite frankly, we'd rather spend the time getting out and experiencing our new hometown. Instead, we'll likely post once or twice per week to get you up to speed on the ride of our lives. Buckle up, keep all limbs inside the car, and enjoy the ride.