Mike has officially arrived!

He flew in yesterday, and I met him at the airport! He looked like some kind of troubadour from the olden times because he was in a scuffed up leather coat and had a ukulele slung over his shoulder as he came off the escalator. 🙂

So anyway, he has officially arrived! We took the train back from the airport and had dinner at a nice, cozy seafood restaurant where all the tables and interior were made of dark, stained wood. It was very warm, and we sat up at the bar so we could watch the chefs tossing stir fries around in their old, warped and blackened pans. It wasn’t raining last night, but it was chilly once the sun went down, so the restaurant was a perfect place to take the chill off with giant flames roaring up from the gas burners from time to time.

Today was an extremely busy day! We went to the Pike’s Place Market and got coffee at the very first Starbucks. There was a woman there with a very serious looking Canon camera who was taking pictures of the store and the baristas. I think it’s a tourist attraction for all the Starbucks lovers out there. 🙂

Then we went to the Pacific Place Mall. Not for any particular reason. I’m kind of in the market for these greyish/brownish tall boots that all the women here seem to be wearing. They don’t have heels (which all my boots do), and with all the hills in the city, I think the flat boots are a lot more practical for walking! 🙂 We didn’t find any good boots, but we did get to visit some stores and window shop in places like Tiffany’s, Gucci, and Louis Vitton. We also went into Nordstroms looking for boots, but the coolest-looking boots were $317. NOT exactly the price range I was looking for! 🙂 So we mostly window-shopped. Mike was kind of bummed because he spilled some coffee on the sleeve of his new white sweatshirt, but we soaked it for awhile, and I’m convinced that with some work we can get the stain out! (If anyone has any ideas on how to get coffee out of white cotton, comment on this post and let me know!) I also took Mike to Whole Foods (my new most favorite grocery store in the world), and we had dinner there at their cafe/grill. Mike had beef brisket that he said was really flavorful. Mike also got steamed mixed veggies, and he liked them all except the eggplant. I can’t blame him… it took me awhile to get on speaking terms with eggplant!

Then Mike really felt in the mood to play some ukulele, but all of his ukulele books are still in transit from Michigan so we found a Guitar Center location about two blocks from Amazon and walked there. Mike picked out one instructional book and one Beatles for Ukulele book. Then we walked home. It was starting to get dark even at 6pm, but the city still seemed very alive… lots of cars and pedestrians. Some of the pedestrians were all dressed up for Halloween, which gave kind of an interesting feel to the walk home. Now it’s about 7:30pm, and we’re both just relaxing. We’ve done lots of walking today… one of the benefits of urban living with no car is all the unintended exercise gotten just through day-to-day walking! 🙂

Waiting for a Jet Plane…

Well, I’m not at the airport, so maybe technically I can’t be waiting for a jet plane yet. But pretty much my whole day has been planned around a jet plane. Mike’s flying in today! I talked to him briefly before he flew out of Grand Rapids, and then I talked to him briefly again during his layover (it was very, very brief… they were starting to board his plane one minute after he called). So I haven’t heard much from him and now I’m waiting patiently until it’s reasonably close to his flight time so I can go to the airport.

I woke up this morning, and it was sunny and beautiful and I went for a run along Elliot Bay (the part of the Puget Sound that’s just west of Seattle). During my run it got cloudier and cloudier. It was still beautiful, but cloudy. I got back from my run, showered, and then walked to the mall and the grocery store to get a few things for Mike’s arrival. As I was walking to the mall, it started to rain. Darn. Maybe it will stop before Mike gets here, although weather.com says differently. Oh well. At least it’s not cold!

I had a good time at the mall, and found a few good deals at Old Navy (I think of Tamara every time I go there!). I got Mike a hat, as I feel that’s the most necessary essential for Seattle “winter” (i.e. rainy, windy weather) and I got myself a pair of sunshiney yellow flip flops for use at the yoga studio.

I also wrote out detailed directions for myself on how to get to the Link Light Rail (although it was pretty unnecessary since I just did this Thursday night to return the rental car!). I also got a load of laundry in the dryer, so I feel like I’ve had a productive day.

I played Stick-Mouse with Piper today, and I think it’s a great sign that she’s playful again. However, she was doing her usual Piper thing where she’ll play for about a minute and a half and then she completely loses interest, so I go back to doing my own thing… and then she brings the Stick-Mouse to me and wants to play again. She actually fell off of the couch once in her wild efforts to catch the Stick-Mouse and then she quickly regained her composure and walked away… it’s as if she feels embarrassed and hopes no one saw her fall!

It’s very foggy and drizzly over Elliot Bay today. I can see the few buildings between Elliot Bay and the apartment window clearly, but there’s a thick fog hanging over the harbor. So if you sit and watch for ships coming in, they seem to appear all of a sudden out of the mist, almost like some ghost ship from Lord of the Rings. Except that ghost ships from Lord of the Rings probably didn’t look like giant, many-windowed cruise ships. 🙂 The other side of the bay is just barely visible. It’s actually very relaxing, and if I weren’t going out to pick up Mike in another hour or so it would be a great day to just relax and enjoy the grey weather. I could actually finally start reading my Princes of Ireland book. I might end up doing that this evening anyway, since I’m sure Mike will be exhausted after this past week and he’ll still be on Eastern Time, so he’ll probably go to bed really early. I’ll probably end up going to the airport early and just bringing my book. That’s not a terrible way to spend a few hours… reading in an airport, drinking Starbucks, and looking out at the rain waiting for Mike’s plane. It’s starting to sound appealing. At least I don’t have to wonder whether or not I’ll be able to find a Starbucks at the airport. 😉

Very tired… but in a good way!

It’s been such a crammed week! I really feel like almost every evening has been taken up with yoga, running, or stopping at a grocery store for necessary items. Tonight I had that power yoga class again (they offer it Mon/Wed/Fri). It was awesome, and it didn’t seem to kick my butt as much this time, so I think I’m adapting. 🙂

It’s hard to believe that it was only a week ago that I flew out here, completely exhausted and tried to find a grocery store where I could walk to get Piper a litter box ASAP. So crazy. It already feels like I’ve been living here for at least a month. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been at Amazon for a month… that still feels new. But Seattle itself is really starting to feel home-y. I don’t know it very well yet, obviously, but I’m getting there. And I’m loving what I see. I’m excited to get to the point where Mike’s out here, our stuff is out here, and we both have our apartments leased and we’re all settled. Living in temp housing out of two suitcases really isn’t very “settled”. Piper doesn’t feel like we’re settled either. I think she misses her kitty condo. And she’ll be glad to get to an apartment that’s a lot closer to the ground so that she can look outside and see people going by on the street below. Right now, being on the 14th floor, she can’t see much moving when she looks out, and I think it’s really the movement that she likes watching.

Today was a beautiful day. High 50’s temps, hardly any wind, and sunny. Just gorgeous! Tomorrow I think it’s supposed to be overcast and maybe rain. I was hoping that Mike would get greeted by Seattle sunshine (to prove that it actually exists!), but at least it will be warm.

I’m very tired even though it’s only 10pm on a Friday night. I think it was the yoga! 🙂 I pretty much came home from that, showered, ate far more raisin bran than I would want to admit to, and now Piper and I are just hanging out in the living room enjoying life and enjoying knowing that Mike will be here tomorrow.

I was thinking about running tomorrow morning, but we’ll see whether or not I’m sore from the yoga. 🙂 I also want to go to the mall and get some inexpensive work clothes for next week until the rest of my clothes come from Michigan. Too bad Tamara isn’t here to go to the mall with! There’s an Old Navy here that we could hit together! Maybe one day. 🙂

And I’ve been very good about avoiding coffee this week (That takes discipline when there’s literally a Starbucks on every corner!), so tomorrow at the mall I’ll treat myself to a Starbucks coffee and enjoy every drop!

I think I’ll be up for a little while reading, but I’m shutting down the computer for tonight and enjoying my temp apartment, the view, and my black cat! 🙂

My first Seattle train ride!

A life full of ‘first’s’! Today I had to return the rental car that I got last Friday when I first landed in Seattle. At the airport they told me that I had to return the rental car by 5pm on Friday. At least I’m almost sure that’s what they said. I was really mentally and physically exhausted by that point. However, when I got my paperwork together tonight to take it with me to drop the car off, I realized that the paperwork said the car was due back on October 28… which is today (Thursday) at 5pm. Hmm. Great. So I headed out to the airport prepared to argue my way out of paying for an extra day. I dropped off the car, and wanted to know if I was being charged for an extra day because it wasn’t back by 5pm. The woman said that I wasn’t, because I had picked it up at 6:49pm and dropped it off at 6:45pm. So apparently I was 4 minutes from a late fee. I commented on that, and she said they actually had a 30 minute grace period. Ok, so 34 minutes from a late fee. God certainly protects children and fools, and I’m definitely not young enough to be considered part of the former category anymore. 🙂

Then I found myself at the airport, surprisingly relieved to be rid of the rental car but with no means of transportation back except for public transportation. Time to figure out the bus system! 🙂 I asked an employee at the airport if there was a bus I could take back to downtown Seattle, and she recommended the Light Link Train and said it went all the way to Westlake. Westlake! I knew Westlake! I go past that station every day on the way to work! She pointed me in the direction of the train station, so I started off at a brisk pace. As I was nearing the train station, I could see the train coming into the station. Worried I might miss it and have to wait for the next one, I took off at a run, bolting past people and running up two flights of steps to the train platform and got in. The train didn’t leave for another 7 minutes. How anticlimatic! The train was elevated, so I got a nice view of Seattle riding back from the airport, and now I know how that whole train line works for picking Mike up from the airport on Saturday. So now that I’m taking trains I’m one step closer to being a real native. 🙂

I didn’t get to take any yoga classes this evening because of dropping off the rental car. Bummer! But it might be just as well because I’m actually still kind of sore from the yoga last night. I’m planning on taking it tomorrow night, though, if I get off of work in time. The yoga studio is right on my way home from work, so it’s actually incredibly convenient!

It is so interesting walking in downtown Seattle. You see so many interesting people. Just tonight I saw a host of different types of people. I saw many beaming couples with maps, probably visiting for the first time. I saw one woman in a wheelchair parked under a streetlight so that she could read her book. Does she have a home? I don’t know. I passed an art gallery, and there was a big, fancy event inside. Bright lights, tiny appetizers, bottles of champagne, and a live Latin band. The windows were open, and the light, the laughter, the vibrancy, and the music just spilled out into the darkened streets. I saw a hard-core girl who was carrying a huge wilderness pack on her back and had a backpack strapped across her chest. Was she carrying everything she owned? With two bags as big as those, I feel like she could have been!

Well, it’s late, and I’m tired. Time to brush my teeth and head to bed. I got the rental car returned, and that was my big goal for the day! 🙂

It’s amazing how you get used to things… I was so awed by the view out of my apartment window when I first moved in, and now it’s commonplace. Still gorgeous, but commonplace. I did turn off all the lights last night and just looked out at the bay and enjoyed the lights of the ships down below and the lights of the shore across the bay. It was very beautiful. Now that work has started, though, I feel like I don’t have as much time to appreciate beauty. Part of it is my own fault though. I typically haven’t been getting back to my apartment until 6:30pm or so because I usually stop at a couple stores on my way home, and I also have to walk home so that takes half an hour or so. I actually really like the walk home though… very relaxing. Also, there are so many other people walking home that it seems like you’re part of the community if you’re walking home too. I’m still enough of a newcomer to the area where I value feeling like “part of the community”. 🙂

I took my first yoga class at “Be Luminous Yoga” (the studio where I won the month long pass to). OH MY GOSH!!!!! It was so intense! It was hot yoga, so the room was heated to about 85 degrees during the practice. I was literally dripping sweat all over the mat (and the surrounding floor) by the time class was only halfway over… it was THAT intense! I like to think I’m in pretty good shape, but I’m already really feeling sore from the class, so I have no idea what I’ll feel like tomorrow morning. I would like to take another class tomorrow morning (after all, it’s free unlimited yoga for a month… so I should take as many classes as I can, right?). 🙂 But at the same time, I would have to get up at 5am to be able to make it to class in time. And as much as I sweated in this class, I’m not sure I’d be able to stop sweating by the time I got to work and I don’t have much desire to sit and sweat all over my desk. 🙂 So we’ll see about tomorrow morning! 🙂

Piper’s curled up on the sofa as I write this. I think she’s finally adapting (too bad, since I’ll be moving to my new apartment soon).

One bad thing about the new apartment is that I won’t have an excuse to walk over here to the Pike’s Place area any more. Oh well… I’ll just have to make it a priority to come here anyway! It’s so beautiful and there are so many amazing stores and restaurants!

Work continues to get better as I learn a little more each day. I’m working with a girl around my own age who’s also pretty new to Amazon (although not quite as new as me). She seems really nice, and I think we’ll have a lot of fun working together. 🙂

I’m really tired tonight. I came home from yoga dripping sweat, drank three glasses of water, ate pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down, and took a hot shower. Now my head’s wrapped up in a towel and I’m completely exhausted. I’m really only still up because I’m waiting for my laundry to be done in the washer and ready to move to the dryer. (I’m not kidding… those yoga clothes were dripping sweat… pretty disgusting!). As Tom put it… And you like this sweaty, painful yoga stuff, WHY? I don’t know. I just do. 🙂 I feel sore in a really good way. So good that I’m contemplating another yoga class tomorrow even though I’d have to get up super early. Choices, choices.

Today was an absolutely beautiful day! Probably about 60 degrees outside, sunny, and gorgeous! I probably should have gone running after work, but after yoga there was no way my body would have allowed me to. Plus I already ran this morning before work.

I know I’m going to fall sound asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow (if not before). That’s been really typical ever since I moved to Seattle. I have slept 100% deeply straight through the night every night I’ve been here. Tomorrow will have to include a trip to Whole Foods because I’m running low on a few things and am officially out of hair shampoo and conditioner. And almost out of soap. And I could also use one of their amazing deli salads! Sometimes they also have specialty ethnic salads so maybe I’ll get one of those. They also have an amazing and yummy array of soups, so maybe I’ll get one of those. Or I might (and probably will) decide to just save money and eat my canned butternut squash soup that I already have at my apartment.

Good night and I hope everyone sleeps as soundly as I intend to! 🙂

Windy! (But not as windy as Michigan!)

More windy, cold, rainy weather here! 🙂 But I’m not minding it… even though I have to walk to work in it!

I had a good day at work! I’ve been assigned to two projects, and I’m very excited to ramp up on them and start to contribute! I’m not going to talk much about work, though, because I have been assured by multiple co-workers including my boss how important security is and how little we are supposed to say outside of work. I’m getting to know a few people at work now… so that’s awesome! It gives me a little more of a sense of connection to Seattle.

Some people at work invited me to lunch today and asked me if I had any dietary restrictions because some of them are gluten-intolerant and vegetarian and things like that. Finally! A place where I’m not just viewed as being a picky or strange eater!!!! 🙂

There are several people who work around me who bring their dogs to work… I absolutely love it! The guy I share an office with has an Alaskan Malamute, and he said he’ll bring it in on Friday. Today someone brought in an adorable Pembroke Corgi with the softest ears! I even got to “watch” him for a little while and keep him at my desk. Very cool! 🙂

Also, I got a call today from Lululemon (the yoga clothing store that I went to this past weekend). Well, as part of their birthday bash, they had a raffle to give away prizes and I entered it (but forgot about it), but anyway I won a month’s worth of free yoga at a local studio!!! 🙂 Yea! 🙂 I had actually just picked out a yoga studio that I was going to visit tomorrow, but after this I’m going to wait to try that one and instead go to “Be Luminous Yoga Studio” for the next month! How exciting! Mike and I both agreed that’s an encouraging sign for my Seattle yoga! 🙂

Piper seems well tonight, but tired. I’m also well, but tired. Tired in mind, anyway… not super tired physically since I didn’t run today. Too wet and windy outside and I can’t motivate myself to go to the workout room tonight! The rain is supposed to taper off tonight and tomorrow’s supposed to be clear so I can run tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll just take yoga tomorrow instead! 🙂 I think tomorrow I get to go to a couple of meetings for my new projects… that will be fun and hopefully enlightening! Good night!

First day at Amazon!

I feel like my life these days is a series of “first’s”… I love it! 🙂

I had my first day at Amazon today. I loved the culture and everyone I met there. You’re allowed to bring your dogs to work there! My dad told me about that several months ago, but I figured there were a whole bunch of criteria to be able to do that, but there’s not. It just has to be house-broken. Surprise, surprise. 🙂

The first half of the day was orientation (i.e. benefits and everything). The second half of the day I read documents that I was given, but of course I don’t know enough to be in the least useful yet. Oh well. That will come! One thing that’s encouraging is that there are a lot of other new hires, so I’m not going to be the “newbie” for very long. There are a lot of people in their twenties and thirties, so it will be a different experience as well working with people more my own age. I’m not going to write about any details of work, for fear of writing something that’s company confidential, so I’ll keep things at an overview-level. Everyone there was so nice, though… I’m looking forward to getting to know them all better! 🙂 And I’m looking forward to knowing more about my job and learning about the project(s) I’ll be on… in a way it’s fun starting a new job, but in a way I just hate that inevitable period of inefficiency when you don’t really know anything yet!

Piper seemed glad to see me when I got home. That’s nice. 🙂 She really likes sleeping on the kitchen chairs because they’re tucked under the table so she gets the feeling of being protected while she sleeps. I don’t know what she’ll do when we move to my little studio apartment and I don’t have any dining room table. Poor kitten! Every time she starts to get used to something, I make her start all over! At least this next move will be the last one for at least a year! 🙂

It’s very, very windy out today. It was rainy earlier, but not anymore. Now it’s just windy… great big gusts that tear up the streets and almost pull your scarf off of your head! I’m kind of tired, but I’m thinking about going for a short run. Piper is tired and asleep and doesn’t seem to want to play, and I feel like a run will perk me up. If I can motivate myself to go out in the wind, here is how I see my evening shaping up:
* Run
* Take a long, hot shower
* Read the Bible
* Blow-dry my hair

It’s not a very exciting night… you would think I could come up with something more exciting! Even though it’s so windy and pretty cold outside, I saw a bunch of people (like 50 or so) waiting outside a movie theater for tickets… maybe I should be out doing that. 🙂

Proud leaser of a new apartment!

Mike encouraged me to have a relaxing day today. He said that I’d need a break from my busyness. I had every intention of following that advice, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. The good news is that now, at 4:42pm, I am officially “done” for the day. No more work. No more errands. Only relaxation. 🙂

However, on the up side, I got a lot done today. 🙂

I got to bed early (not quite 8:00pm, but definitely by 9pm), so I was up and ready to go at 6am. I had decided that I wanted to go for a run through the neighborhoods of the apartments before it got light out so I could get a feel for what the neighborhoods were really like. I left my apartment at 6:30am and ran about 4.25 miles, taking a route that went past the apartments I viewed. Even on a Sunday morning at 6:30am (which should have been a completely DEAD time), there still seemed to be people around, and I noticed that there was a coffee shop right next to the apartment that I had liked the best which was already open and had several people in it. That looked encouraging. 🙂 It was extremely windy, and a little misty rainy, so I ran back to the apartment and then ran another 3.75 miles on the treadmill in the workout room. I had thought about going to yoga this morning at Lululemon (the same place I took yoga yesterday), but it would have been a little rushed, and I wanted time to shower. So instead I took a long relaxing shower, blow-dried my hair, and read a chapter of the Bible. My only goal for the day had been to maybe get a new sweater or something to wear to Amazon on my first day at work tomorrow. However, you know how you sometimes just get an idea stuck in your head? Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about that apartment downtown that I had liked the best. Yesterday I really wasn’t sure which apartment to get and somehow before I quite realized it, I was thinking a lot about that one specific apartment that I had looked at yesterday. I looked at the brochere that the guy at the apartment gave me, and I saw that they were open on Sundays. Perfect! I tried calling to see if that studio was still available, but there was no answer. Bummer. But then I thought maybe I could go to the Pacifica Place Mall (which is the home of both Lululemon and Express) to look for some work clothes, and then continue on to the apartment. Maybe someone would be there by the time I got there. I put on my little charcoal grey hat that I got yesterday to protect against the heavy winds and I put on my wool coat in case it started to rain again. I got to Pacifica Place around 10:42am and discovered that, although the mall doors were open, the individual stores didn’t open until 11am. I walked around and looked in windows and talked to Mike. We both were starting to feel like both he and I should just get apartments downtown and forget about bringing his car to Seattle. We made a final decision on it, and then I felt in even more of a rush to try to secure the studio apartment since I now had to find two studio apartments in Seattle (and with most apartments down here running at about 90% occupancy, it’s not easy to find vacant apartments and they don’t stay vacant long). So rather than waiting for the stores in Pacifica Place to open, I tried calling the apartment again. Still no answer. Hmm. I started off walking towards the apartment. I got there, and I recognized the same leasing agent there that I had met with the previous day. I went in, re-introduced myself, and inquired about the studio apartment. It was still available even though they had done several showings of it the previous day! I felt strongly that it was the apartment for me, so… I leased it! He said he could run a credit check on me for the application process, but that I’d need to give him two checks: one for the security deposit to hold the apartment and one for the application fee. I had brought my checkbook, but it only had one check left in it. Fortunately, I had brought all of the rest of my checks with me, so I had them back at the temporary apartment. I told him I’d pay the application fee and come back with a check for the security deposit. The apartment will be available the weekend of the 6th, so I’ll be staying in the temporary housing for the next two weeks. That’s just about perfect timing!

I went back, stopping by Whole Foods on the way to pick up a couple more grocery things. I love that store! 🙂

I went back later with a whole book of new checks, and then stopped at Pacifica Place on the way back and got a sweater for work tomorrow.

I feel like so many aspects of my personality lend themselves to living in Seattle that didn’t make sense when I was in Michigan. In Michigan people made fun of my big scarves. Here I wear one, and see many other women (and even some men!) in them. A scarf is a good medium between carrying an umbrella and having nothing on your head at all. If it rains, the scarf keeps most of the water off without the nuisance of carrying an umbrella incessantly. Also, I always stop at the grocery store every couple days and just get a small basket of groceries each time. People gave me a hard time about that too, but it works out perfectly in Seattle. I would never be able to carry a whole cart load of groceries home, so it works out that I’m already used to making a lot of small grocery trips. Also, when I stopped by Lululemon to look at yoga clothes and when I stopped at REI to look at walking shoes, women I didn’t know started talking to me out of the blue. That’s the kind of thing I would do in Grand Rapids, but no one else seems to do. So anyway, I feel right at home in Seattle amid all the focus on “being green” and “eating organic” and all of that stuff.

Oh, and I have found an Ashtanga Yoga studio that I want to try! I’m very excited about it… they also offer a teacher training program there, so this might be the one I focus on for my training! No one was there this weekend because all the teachers were attending a yoga retreat, but I’m going to try to take a class one night this week to see how it goes. I’m excited. 🙂

This has been a good, productive, but also tiring day. I’m relaxing at the apartment now with Piper curled up in a chair next to me. Yes, she seems to require her own chair. 🙂

The weather has been very, very windy and off and on rainy. I saw on the weather report that the headline said “First Big Storm Hits Washington and Oregon”. There wasn’t any thunder or lightening, but I was woken up this morning by the wind shrilly whistling around my apartment windows. It’s different than the wind in Michigan. In Michigan the wind tends to be consistent… here it’s very gusty. You can feel no wind at all, and then all of a sudden feel a gust of wind that almost lifts you off your feet. It’s kind of exciting… you never know when the next gust will hit. 🙂

The layout of the city of Seattle (the downtown portion of it anyway) reminds me of Washington D.C. Rather than having streets going north/south or east/west, most of the streets go at a 45 degree angle so that the whole downtown area is kind of diamond-shaped and the streets go southwest/northeast and southeast/northwest. Also, Pike’s Place (right next to the Sound) is on 1st street, and the streets just go up in number every block from there, so it’s hard to get lost. If you’re on 6th street and don’t know which way to go, you just start walking. Then if you hit 7th street, you know you’re going east, and if you hit 5th street you know you’re going west. Very convenient for those of us who are directionally challenged. 🙂

I have the Discovery Channel on, and it’s showing Planet Earth – Forests. I’m only half watching it, but you know…. a lot of the forests that are on there are similar to the ones I saw from the airplane flying into Seattle. I can’t wait until Mike’s here and we’re both established and we can go hiking in the Cascades and the other trails surrounding Seattle. I don’t know anyone at all here, but the environment just fits all pieces of my personality in a way that Grand Rapids never did. Even without knowing anyone, I feel right at home. 🙂

Renting apartments in Seattle

I had a beautiful first day in Seattle! I ended up going to the Lululemon store for their yoga class this morning. It was awesome! Lululemon is in a mall in downtown Seattle, and they held the class in the main mall area because it was way too many people to fit in their store! There were probably 150 yogis and yoginis there, and the class was a perfect blend of flowing vinyasa and challenging stretches and balancing poses. Very fun! Then I took advantage of the sales they were running and the gift card I had to buy some cool yoga clothes. 🙂

Because I spent extra time trying on yoga clothes, I was slightly late getting to the first apartment of the day that I was scheduled to view. I looked at four apartments in total today, and they were all really cool. I feel like I liked the second one I looked at the best, but it’s hard to say. I’m going to sleep on it for the night and decide whether or not I want it in the morning.

At the last apartment I toured, another girl about my age was there also looking for an apartment, and so the leasing agent showed both of us around together. It was fun, because we kept finding out things we had in common. We had both just moved to Seattle for new jobs, although she moved from Reno. She has actually visited Grand Rapids, because she has friends there. We both are runners who have had knee injuries. We both love yoga. We both have boyfriends not currently in Seattle. The leasing agent seemed to be having fun showing us around, so just to show us what it was like, he showed us one of their 36th floor penthouse apartments. My view of penthouses has always been, “Why is it so important to be on the top floor? What’s wrong with all of the other floors?” HOWEVER, after looking at that penthouse, all of the other apartments I had looked at were put to shame. Two full sides of the apartment were completely windows… floor to ceiling. Out of the windows on one side you could see Lake Elliot and Lake Union from one side to the other, the Space Needle, the mountains, and the entire towns of Queen Anne and Magnolia, sprawling up, up, up, away from downtown Seattle. Out of the other window you could look down at downtown, urban Seattle with all of its skyscrapers and glass-windows office buildings. The other girl, Caroline, and I were completely spell-bound. It was gorgeous… absolutely and positively gorgeous. AND it was huge… a grand two-bedroom apartment where each bedroom had a closet the size of all of the other bedrooms that I had viewed and its own spacious master bedroom. The kitchen was lovely and long, very galley-like (like most of the kitchens I’ve been seeing in apartments so far), and the tubs were very deep to allow for luxurious bubble baths. The view seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows, however, dominated the apartment… it felt as though the entire city of Seattle was something that you could reach out with your fingers and touch… it was that close to us… Seattle itself was almost an entity enticingly beckoning from just outside… inches outside. I loved it. Caroline loved it. We were almost convinced it was worth the $6,000 price tag, especially when the leasing agent jokingly pointed out that if the three of us split it and he was allowed to sleep in the pantry, it would only be $2000 a month. We were almost, but not quite, convinced. Then we looked at another apartment in the same building, but we weren’t interested. Who cared about 20th floor apartments with only a couple windows and no closet big enough to fit a twin bed? That gorgeous 36th floor penthouse had temporarily spoiled our interest in other, more commonplace, apartments.

Piper is curled up in my lap as I type this. I feel like that’s a really good sign. She’s been stand-offish to me ever since the plane trip and spent all her non-eating time under the bed. Now that she’s venturing out and is affectionate again, I feel like she’s starting to acclimate. It’s a pity that she’s just going to have to move again in another couple weeks, but at least this move won’t involve an airplane ride!!!

Tonight there’s a misty rain over the Puget Sound which makes it difficult to see the mountains that I know are there. I feel exhausted. I think adrenaline got me through today, but now that’s wearing off and I’m just tired. Too many nights recently without enough sleep are starting to affect me. How did I get so little sleep in college? How does Tom do it now? The life of a college student! 🙂

I’m trying to motivate myself to go for a run so that I won’t fall asleep because I am pretty convinced that if I don’t work out, I’ll be asleep in the next hour. But maybe the sleep is better for me tonight and I can just do the run tomorrow morning… I prefer morning runs anyway and I want to make sure I’m well-rested before I start at Amazon on Monday. That will be the beginning of a whole other adventure… one adventure is moving and the other is the new job!

One thing that I’m honestly kind of shocked and surprised about is how I’m not freaking out or anything. I don’t know anyone at all here, but somehow I’m not feeling a lack of family and friends. Maybe it’s because I’ve already been talking to Mike and my family on the phone. Maybe it’s because I know Mike’s coming out here too. Maybe it’s just because I’m used to living alone, so most of the time at my apartment it’s just Piper and me anyway. Maybe I’ve just been too busy so far to have time to dwell on what a big life event this is. Maybe God is just giving me a peace about the whole situation.

There’s a big, lit-up cruise ship coming into the Puget Sound now. A bunch of Alaska cruise ships leave from Seattle to go north to the Aleutian Islands. The ships beautiful to see… especially at night when they’re like a sea of bright little lights in the otherwise dark Puget Sound. The cruise ship is gone from my view now, and my energy and will to stay up is leaving. Am I a big loser if I go to bed at 8pm? And, beyond that, do I care? 🙂

First morning in Seattle

I woke up this morning at 6am sharp, even though my alarm was set for 7am. Usually when I’m sleeping in a new place I wake up and have that “Where am I?” moment. Even sleeping at my parent’s house, I woke up wondering where I was. Not this morning, though. I think somehow it’s so ingrained in my subconscious that I’m now living in Seattle that I can’t forget where I am, even in that brief moment after waking up.

I wandered out to the kitchen, feeling surprisingly calm. I was expecting a “What have I done? I’m thousands of miles from anyone I know!” feeling to hit me. But it didn’t seem to. The big living room window overlooking the port by Pike Place caught my eye and I was stunned (that’s the advantage of being on the 14th floor… you get an amazing view!). It is SO beautiful! The strong wind was making the waves dance in the darkness illuminated only be the city lights, and I could see the dark silhouettes of the cranes and cargo ships in the harbor. Millions of little lights from various buildings twinkled in a friendly way, as if to reassure me that there was a whole city full of people doing things… I wasn’t alone in a strange city. Big buses zoomed by on W99; they were so long that they were made up of two separate components joined by some type of flexible coupling to allow them to make turns.

I came out to the kitchen and got breakfast for Piper and me. Piper spent all of last night under the bed. She seemed to be doing ok in the new apartment until I left to go to the grocery store last night. When I came back, I found her wedged in a small crevice above the kitchen cabinets and she was scared and didn’t know how to get down. I helpfully got on top of the kitchen counter and got her down, but she mewed pitifully and was terrified. She ran under the bed and really hasn’t come out since then except for breakfast. However, she spent the first night at my parent’s house under my bed too, so I think she’s just had a traumatic experience and needs to recover. Poor kitten! I felt just terrible that she was so scared yesterday! The only good thing is that now the plane ride is over and the only thing she’ll have to do is move from temporary housing to my permanent apartment, when I get one. I’m looking at 5 apartments today. I’ve been to their websites and they all seem expensive, but that’s the problem with living downtown! I have to get over the sticker shock! 🙂

I got an email from Lululemon – Pacific Place (a yoga clothing store in downtown Seattle… I subscribed to their email list as soon as I knew I was moving to Seattle). They have their 2nd annual birthday bash today and are celebrating by having a yoga class from 8:30am to 9:30am as well as having sales throughout the day. I’m not sure if I’ll have time for the yoga class since I’m looking at the apartments today, but I’m at least going to stop by and check out the sales since I have a gift card… courtesy of my Very Nice Boyfriend. 🙂

Today I am going to rest in God, enjoy beginning my new life in this new city, and be thankful for this gift God has given me. 🙂