Birthday Round Two

Last Sunday as you know was Chuck's birthday. On Monday, I was sitting around the apartment, Chuck was in Phoenix, and it hit me. I didn't get Chuck a birthday cake! This was my first birthday in charge of the cake for him and I totally dropped the ball. And on Sunday, he never mentioned it, which made me feel even worse! This bothered me all week, so Friday I went out in search of a cake for him to surprise him with when he got home Saturday. Once I was at the grocery, I decided to do birthday brownies instead, because Chuck isn't a HUGE fan of cake anyway. I got the supplies and some little candy letters to spell something out on the brownies.

It just so happened, on Friday, Chuck asked me if we could have 5 more hours of his birthday on Saturday since he had to leave at 7 pm on his real birthday. It was perfect, because I already had his brownie cake planned!

When he got home from the airport Saturday, I surprised him with this!

I even lit candles and sang.



He even had a couple of birthday cards to open that came in the mail while he was in Phoenix! It was all perfect... until we tried to eat the brownies. They were disgusting and almost impossible to get out of the pan. I must have overcooked them even though I followed the exact directions on the box.

So, it still ended up as kind of a birthday fail, but... I guess it's fine. There's always next year!

After Chuckie's birthday re-do celebration, we met up with some friends from Louisville for dinner. A friend I grew up with in my church moved to Seattle with her new husband just a few months ago. She's an actress and was performing in a play in a theater here in Seattle, so her older sister flew in from Montana to see it. We all met up for dinner at a place called Elliot's Oyster House and then went to the show! It was great to see familiar faces from home and to catch up with them! And the play was hysterical! We realized on the way home from the play that we didn't get a picture of all of us together. Another fail.

Today we are taking it easy and getting some things done around the apartment. We're also going to look at a new apartment we're thinking about moving to that is in a cool part of downtown and closer to Amazon. Tonight I'm going to force Chuckie to watch the Oscars with me and feel sad that I'm not in Boston watching it with my girl friends who are getting together to watch it tonight. Moving to Seattle has been the worst move yet because now not only do we miss our friends and family in Louisville, but our friends in Boston too!

A Week of Celebrations

This past week we've been busy celebrating.

Last Tuesday (the last time I wrote), Chuck's car arrived in Seattle! We had it shipped across the country from Louisville. After being without a car for 8 months in Boston, we were beyond excited to have a car again! We took it to get washed, took it to the grocery the next day, and have taken it all over Seattle this past week. It's amazing to have the freedom a car gives you again. I don't think Chuck is ever going to want to part with his car again after this, so we may end up bringing it back with us to Boston. You just never know!

Thursday was Valentine's Day. We've never really been big Valentine's Day celebrators, so this year we celebrated in our typical fashion. I cooked dinner for us after Chuckie got home from work, he brought me some flowers and chocolate, and then we watched a UofL basketball game. Simple, low key, and very much US. :)

P.S. check out that meal I prepared. I'm getting good!

Friday night we finally met up with the other two LGO students, Gold and Orion, who are in Seattle for off-cycle internships. We went out to a restaurant recommended by the one and only Anthony Bourdain, and then walked down the street for some late night bowling at a really cool bowling alley/pool bar/regular bar place. It was great to see some familiar faces and is exciting to think several more of Chuck's classmates will be out here in June for their internships!

On Saturday, Chuck and I made a drive to IKEA to get some storage things we needed for our closet. Around lunchtime we met up with Gold and Orion again at the Pike Place Market, a popular tourist attraction in downtown Seattle. You've probably seen it on TV before, especially the popular Pike Place Fish Co.- you know, the guys who throw the fish around and yell things in unison?

We spent a couple of hours just wandering through the market, taking it all in, ate lunch at a little deli, stood in a long line for delicious and fresh donuts, took samples from the fish guys, the cheese lady, the jam and preserves people... I swear you could spend all day at the Market and just eat samples for every meal.  We didn't even get to explore the whole thing yet, including the original Starbucks, so if any of you come to visit, expect to make a trip to Pike Place Market with us.

Sunday we celebrated Chuckie's brithday! He turned 26! He's soooooo old. (I like to pretend he's way older than me for the 20 something days between our birthdays.) Earlier in the week I had investigated a good brunch place for us to try for his birthday meal. I found a place called Portage Bay Cafe in Ballard, the neighborhood to the west of Fremont, that was voted the number one brunch place in Seattle in 2012.

It definitely delivered. One place we've really missed in Louisville is Wild Eggs- our favorite breakfast/brunch spot. In Boston we never found anything that compared, but now in Seattle I think we've found something close. You guys- they have a toppings bar for french toast and pancakes! Strawberries soaked in sugar, raspberries, blueberries, nuts, whipped cream, syrup... It was so good.

Other than brunch, Chuckie's birthday was pretty uneventful because he had to fly out Sunday night to Phoenix where he'll be working in an Amazon fulfillment center for a week. If we were made of money I totally would have flown down with him for the week (it's in the high 70s and sunny there all this week) but unfortunately we're not, so, I'm here in Seattle by myself!

Lastly- right when I thought the week of celebrations was coming to a close, I got a text from my kindergarten best friend Lauren yesterday, who you may remember from THIS post, that said "WE'RE ENGAGED!" followed by this picture.

 

She was in Chicago this weekend visiting a friend and her boyfriend flew there to surprise her! You can tell from the picture she had absolutely no idea. I love it! (And in case you're wondering, I got her permission to post this picture on my blog.) There's definitely nothing like the rush of happiness you get when something amazing happens to someone you love so much! I couldn't stop smiling for so long after I found out. I'm so happy for them and the exciting times they have to look forward to! Congratulations, Lauren and Brenden!

 

 

So as far as I know, we're done with celebrating things for now, at least until I land a job I'm happy with, which will hopefully be soon.  In the mean time, I'm taking care of this and that, exploring the area some more, trying to drive the speed limit and not a bit faster (because EVERYONE DOES- it's the weirdest thing!) and trying to get over my anger about the whole "charging us for paper bags" thing at the grocery, Target, and anywhere else you buy something that needs to go in a bag.





First Impressions

Things I've learned about Seattle since Friday:
- Plastic grocery bags are banned here. That's fine with us and everything, but if you don't bring your own reusable grocery bags, they force you to pay $0.05 per paper bag you use.
- Seattle has QFC grocery stores which are owned by the same company as Kroger so it's pretty much JUST like Kroger. This is my dream come true as I've been missing Kroger so much since we left Louisville.
- Dave Matthews lives in the next neighborhood over from here and shops at the same QFC as us.
- I have nothing else to say about QFC at this time but if you can't tell by my first 3 bullet points, I'm really excited about this grocery.
- Dogs can go anywhere. Stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and even work. Chuckie said there were dogs everywhere at Amazon. I personally love this because I love dogs but have to admit it's a little strange to sit in a restaurant and see a huge dog at the table next to us.
- It really does rain a lot, but it's not rain like you're imagining. It's more like a mist.


Our neighborhood, Fremont, has a troll. It's pretty weird but also pretty cool.

While exploring on Saturday, we at one point got caught in the middle of a Valentine's "Undie Run." Welcome to Seattle, Chuck and Rachel! Here's 300 people in their underwear! 

Sunday we ventured into downtown Seattle to find Amazon so Chuck would know where to go on Monday when he started work. We ate lunch at a cool Tavern and then explored the Seattle Center. This is a huge area of downtown that has tons of museums, theaters, an amphitheatre, a fountain or two, a skate park, restaurants and a ton of other stuff. The biggest attraction there is probably the famous Space Needle.

We didn't go up in the Needle yet- saving that for a sunny day. I imagine we'll spend a lot of time at the Seattle Center when the weather gets nice.

As for our apartment, we live in a neighborhood in Fremont, north of Downtown Seattle. Our apartment is nice, cozy and clean. I like that it's in a neighborhood setting and not on a busy street, but that we are still close enough to walk to restaurants and shops. I don't like that the apartment is in the basement of a house, that our TV is from the year 2002, and that the only way to get cell phone service in the apartment is to sit on the kitchen counter. And that doesn't even work most of the time.

 

Chuckie started work yesterday and thinks he is really going to enjoy it. Next week they are sending him to Phoenix to work on the floor in an Amazon distribution center so he can learn the ins and outs of the processes there. He's pretty excited about that but not excited to leave me alone in Seattle. I'm not too excited for that either but, it's not really his choice so, oh well!

 

 

I'm looking for jobs here and have a couple interviews this week. I already snagged a contract marketing job for a small theater here and will be doing some marketing for them a few hours a week for the next several weeks.

 

 

So, that's about it for now. Today I am applying for some more jobs, trying to figure out why our coffee maker won't work when it worked perfectly fine on Sunday, and waiting for Chuckie's car to be dropped off at our house! We shipped it from Louisville and it's scheduled to arrive sometime in the next hour or so. We are verrrrrry excited to have a car again. I can already tell we are going to need it here much more than in Boston. Boston is easy without a car, but I don't think Seattle would be quite as easy. Tonight we might get crazy and drive to the QFC! 

Atlantic to Pacific

We did it! We actually got out of Boston on time yesterday and made it to Seattle without a single problem! It's a miracle.

Here's a glimpse of Boston-Logan airport yesterday morning. It. was. empty.

Right before we got on the plane I snapped this picture.

"Boston Mayor: State of Emergency at Noon."
 I'm not exaggerating when I say that I think we were literally the last flight to leave the airport. Our flight was scheduled for 11:50. Any later and I think we would have been out of luck.

We got to Seattle around 5pm West Coast time. We immediately found the light rail from the airport and took it to downtown where got a taxi to take us to Fremont, the neighborhood north of downtown Seattle where we'll be living.

We immediately (and accidentally) disregarded the signs on the light rail asking us to not store luggage in the spot that is for disabled and elderly people. Whoops.

On the way to our apartment, my little sis texted me and asked me to send her a picture of something "Seattle-ish." Soon after, we drove past the Space Needle and I figured that was as good as anything else to send to her. I can't wait to go back and actually visit the Space Needle.

 

 

 

We were so tired by the time we got in and got settled at our apartment that we didn't feel like doing too much, but we were hungry so we ventured out into Fremont to find some dinner. We found several restaurants just 3 blocks from our apartment so just picked one. It was Mexican cuisine and it was SO. GOOD. It was kind of like an upscale Chipotle or Qdoba. Chuckie got a (very small) margarita and drank the whole thing before our food was brought to us, so the guy (who was delivering the food to all the tables) brought him a second margarita, for free. I'm not kidding. He said "Did you open a bar tab? It looks like you need another margarita!" and Chuck said "No I didn't, but I should have I guess!" and the guy said "Yep. That's ok. I'm going to bring you another one anyway."  I think he may have been the manager and he could tell we were new and wanted to ensure we'd be back to his restaurant. Well, he did. We'll probably go back this week.

 

 

Though I'm really not happy to be outside of the eastern time zone, between the super clean rail line and stations, the small bit of downtown we saw on our taxi ride, the free margarita, and the 2 physicians who live in the apartments above us in our house (it's a house split into 4 apartments),  I think we're going to enjoy our time in Seattle for these 6 months.

 

 

And now we're off to find a grocery, explore downtown Fremont, and later find a bar where we can watch tonight's UofL basketball game!



"Hagan Luck"

So there's this thing in my family called "Hagan Luck." I'm pretty sure my grandpa had it, I KNOW my dad had/has it, and now I seem to have inherited it.  "Hagan Luck" is basically Murphy's Law.  Whatever can go wrong, WILL GO WRONG. This applies to any normal, supposed to be super easy and painless, situation. Sometimes it's the grocery- you get in the shortest line but it ends up taking 4 times as long to get through than all the others because all 3 ladies in front of you are extreme couponers. Sometimes it's traffic- you decide to take a different way to work than normal and you end up stuck behind a wreck and show up an hour late to work. For me, it seems like anything I try to do ends up becoming an event and a story. Nothing is ever just EASY. It's just like my dad, who goes to Chicago for the first time ever and while there, gets stuck in "The Worst Rain/Thunder Storm in Chicago in 30 years!!!"

Call the bank to order new checks? I'm on the phone for 45 minutes, transferred to 6 different people, and told things like "You've never ordered checks from us before," even though I'm holding my checks in my hand as I speak to them.

Go to the doctor because I think I have the flu? Wait in the lobby for 30 minutes, then get moved to a storage room that used to be a patient room because they are out of regular rooms, get forgotten about, and only remembered when I go out into the hallway after another 45 minutes of waiting.

And don't even get me started on trying to drive or fly somewhere. Like the time I blogged about before, when Chuckie and I came to visit LGO for the first time. Or like the time we tried to get home for our wedding. (Chuckie swears he never has a single issue with flights unless he is with me.)

So you won't be surprised to hear that we are flying to Seattle tomorrow to live there for 6 months, and Boston is expecting a "Historical Storm." More snow than they've seen in years. One to make the record books. Schools are already closed for tomorrow. Businesses will probably be closing. Travel will be "nearly impossible."  You guys, Boston has not had more than a couple inches of snow since we moved here. So why on earth would an all out BLIZZARD happen on the one day we are scheduled to fly to Seattle so Chuck can start his new job on Monday?!?!?!?!  I can tell you why. It's Hagan Luck.  Poor Chuckie. He's stuck with me and my unfortunate luck forever.

Here. Just read this article for the full effect.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/02/07/snowstorm-may-be-one-of-biggest-in-new-england-history/