Settling In

It's been a while since our last entry, but we've been pretty busy! I arrived in town last Saturday after a week at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in San Francisco. Vicki and her mom got a good head start on unpacking, but there was still plenty to do. The past week has been a whirlwind of cardboard and trips to Target as we work to make our new apartment "home." Setting out our old familiar stuff has helped a lot. We don't have as much storage space here as we did in Charlottesville, so we've had to get creative in finding places to put our extras. (If any of you come to visit, don't look under the beds, okay?)

I think it is going to be a lot of fun living downtown. Most anything we need is a short walk away. Just this afternoon I walked down to Pike Place Market (about 10 minutes) and picked up some apples. How cool is that?

Western Washington is bracing for a record heat wave this weekend. Temperatures are supposed to get into the upper 80's! Oh, no! There was even a severe weather advisory on the Weather Channel. Vicki and I laugh about this--though most people here don't have air conditioning. Fortunately our building is one of the few that does. We'll beat the heat by staying indoors and gazing at the snow-covered Olympic mountains from our balcony.....

Whidbey Island

Roby and I went to Whidbey Island yesterday. It was the perfect day for it. The temperature there was about 60 degrees. The funny thing is, I keep hearing comments about how it has warmed up and "it's really summer now!" We stopped for coffee and the barista said, "I assume you'll want something cold; a milkshake?"

























I just loved the cute little farms.













We saw several of these port-a-potties.



















The name isn't too comforting.

Window Boy

Well, it is another gorgeous day in Seattle! The high is supposed to get up to 70 today and the sky is clear as can be. The Olympic Mountains really popped out this morning with the sun hitting them.




We had a bit of excitement as they are washing the outside windows at the Metropolitan Tower today. Ropes dropped down an hour or so ago and just now a guy with big suction cup hands came down on a little swing and washed my windows. I'm guessing not everyone takes pictures of him, but he seemed to get a kick out of us. I went out on the balcony to talk to him and told him he would be on my blog. Even after he had dropped to our lower neighbors, he kept looking up and waving back at Mama. He will probably go home tonight and tell everyone about the crazy women he met.

City Lights

Here is a picture of my night light.

I wonder how long it will take for this to seem like "home." Being in a high-rise, it feels much more like a hotel. A hotel without beds. I think I'm starting to get used to living in an empty apartment though. It will probably seem crowded when I finally have furniture.

My mother is flying in today to keep me company / help unpack. They are saying now that it will be Friday before our stuff arrives, so it looks like we will have lots of time to play.

Goodbye Old Home

Today we flew out of Charlottesville. It has been wierd to live in an empty house for the past week, but leaving was even weirder. I'm glad that we have set plans to come back. If not, this would be a lot harder. We will miss you all!

Heat Wave

Like most of the east coast this week, it has been sweltering here in Charlottesville. We have had a string of days with temperatures near 100 and heat indices of 110. Yuck! I must say we are ready for a break from the heat. Weather in the northwest is looking pretty good right about now.....

So Long, Stuff

Today was moving day! The movers arrived early this morning in a HUGE full-size tractor trailer. It still amazes me that they were able to maneuver the thing down our little residential street. The crew consisted of two guys who made very quick work of emptying the house of all the nicely pre-packed boxes and the furniture.



When all was said and done, all of our stuff only filled a small fraction of the trailer. Overkill?? Apparently this truck will load up 7 households on the east coast before heading across to drop them off on the west coast.

And then there was the car. We didn't quite know how it was going to be shipped, perhaps on a flat-bed truck or a big car carrier. Nope, they drove it right into the moving truck!



So all of our stuff is now enroute and will arrive in Seattle between June 16th and 20th. In the meantime, our townhouse is completely bare--which is very weird. We have an air mattress (that packs into a carry-on bag), some things in the kitchen that will eventually get either thrown away or given to Goodwill, and bathroom toiletries that will also mostly get pitched. Anybody need some half-empty bottles of shampoo?

Buried Treasure

Part of the fun of moving is going through all your stuff and discovering things you had forgotten all about. I found my old film camera that I hadn't touched since I got the digital - somewhere back in 2003. We got the film developed and it was like a little time capsule. The picture above is from a hike Michael and I went on. (Don't ask me where.) And then there was this great one of Ripley running on the treadmill at the Molina's place in western NC. While we were at the Molina's, we also got a shot of the Ruth girls together. Fun times!

Packing Day

The packers are here today to put all our stuff in boxes. There are just three women. I was expecting more somehow. I can't imagine how long it would take me to box everything up.

We pulled everything out of the kitchen that we wanted moved so that we could make it a do not pack zone. Who knew we had so much stuff in our kitchen?



I'm writing this from inside our fort. We set aside all the stuff we are keeping here - either to fly out with us or to give away. Then we blocked it off with the air mattress. I decided that this was a great time to build a fort. I mean - how often in grown-up life do you have a legitimate reason to build a fort? And this is a super pimped out fort. As you can see from the picture- we have a lamp and obviously there have to be cushions to sit on. We also have a fan, a CD player and - of course - wireless.

We'll keep you posted as we say goodbye to Charlottesville. We've already had several farewell parties. This is a very bitter sweet time. Seattle will be great fun, but it is so hard to say goodbye to all our friends. And of course, it is a little sad to be leaving the first house we shared. I'll miss our squirrels too...