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When I lived in Seattle before, I lived in Fremont. Fremont is the self-proclaimed “Center of the Universe.” It is very left, hippy-dippy, artsy-fartsy–interesting. It is the home of the Summer Solstice Parade and Festival, and Robert had to go and experience it at least once, so why not our first week here? =)
Usually the parade has been filled with Bush-bashing, so I was curious as to what they were going to do this year. I wasn’t surprised that it was focused more on the environment this year but there was an ode to Hooverville in the middle of the parade, along with a jibe at the pope, a kickball club, complete with a huge show kicking a ball down the street, some incredible gowns made of paper for some ice princess thing supporting some cause, and of course the Hari Krishnas- LOL . There was a huge ball they were rolling down the road, which Robert got out and run over by, and I got 3 hugs from the Super Huggers! LOL
At the beginning of the parade, for the last 7 years (i think its been 7) the parade has been led off by naked bicyclist. They are usually painted in some guise. There was a silver surfer, policemen, bride & groom – I even saw Captain Kirk. LOL Its funny, some people ride sans paint, and the people sitting next to us were yelling “more paint!” I had to agree!
There was one disturbing point for me this year though. There was this one old guy, think Jerry Garcia, crazy gray hair flowing all around like crazy, walking down the street wearing nothing but chaps. Meaning he was free flowing in the back AND front. Now the bicyclist for the most part choose this as a way to show their artistic freedom – and exhibitionist tendencies— but this guy was just disturbing. He was walking back and forth shaking himself in front of the crowd – it was all just look at me and my 65 year+-old penus. I would have preferred that they took him off the street, but I think the feeling was if they banned him, who else would be banned. Oh well.
Robert and I wandered around through the festival booths after the parade and finally headed home. And what a long walk was that. We have to park 10 blocks away—and it was all uphill all the way home. We had to take a couple of breaks on the way back. One kid was smart and was selling lemonade for 50¢ but he was giving jokes away for free—and he was more excited about giving away the jokes than selling the lemonade – LOL
I’m beginning to think that I must always have boxes surrounding me, or I won’t feel at home. Will I be getting ready to move again 6 weeks after I open the last box again?? Man I hope not.
I never really want to have to move again. One of the biggest luxury items out there is paying to have the movers pack your stuff for you before you move. I have decided to start saving now for my next move, so I don’t have to pack up everything ever again. Maybe I can get them to unpack for me too. THAT would be fabulous!
Or maybe I’ll just sell everything next time and buy all new stuff. I like that idea as well. LOL
So this past week was my first week back at Wunderman Impact in Seattle. Funny, felt like I had never left. I’m a little behind on what’s going on, and it’ll take some time to get back up to speed—but really it felt like I had never left.
Was I just on vacation for 8 months?? I remember being in DC and working with some great people, but was I really there? I kind of feel like my life was the dream sequence from Dallas…. LOL
Next week I’ll find out exactly what I’ll be doing for Impact, whether its the same as it was or different. Chris, who is now my boss, was out this past week, and I’m waiting for him to fill me in on everything that is going on in his head. Should be an interesting week ahead!
Here we are in Seattle—in our super-cool, new apartment and no furniture or stuff. Robert’s was supposed to be here today, but now they are saying another week – UGH! Mine probably won’t arrive until Thursday. C’est la vie.
Last Friday was our first whole day in Seattle and we decided we needed to do a little stocking up. So we went to Ikea and spent a whopping $30 on plastic plates, cheap silverware, and a couple of pots & pans. Ikea can be great for those things! We also bought some new wine glasses since I had broken most of mine, and Robert sold his, for all the wine we purchased – LOL. Then we stopped at Walmart for a dust broom for the floors and some other sundries, and finally to QFC, a grocery store, for some food.
For dinner Robert made stirfry with shrimp and lobster tails (which had been on sale for $5 at QFC!) YUMMY! And then we crashed. For breakfast it was shrimp and grits—man I love having someone around who loves to cook! I think I might have to keep him. =)
Saturday morning we got up early so we could hit Pike’s Market when it opened to try and avoid some of the rush. (Who am I kidding, on a weekend its always busy – lol.) We bought flowers for the livingroom (aka Kitchen at the moment) and a $3 bouquet of Sweet Peas that smell wonderful in the bathroom! Then on to fresh veggies—new sweet peas in the shell, asparagus, some okra, a champagne mango, and fresh basil. We also picked up 2 dungeoness crabs to celebrate getting here, and then some really fabulous handmade orzo pasta.
After walking back home to drop everything off, we headed back out to the AT&T store to get phone numbers changed, and then we headed over to Macy’s to wander around and look at furnishings & linens and things. We will probably need to get a few more things for the apartment furniture-wise, and I was trying to gauge what kind of styles Robert likes. You know how I like my colors, and I have never had to make sure someone else liked what I bought, because it was always for me. So this decorating with someone else thing is new for me and I have a feeling it will be a little challenging. I’ll have to keep ya’ll posted on future purchases. LOL
One thing we did get this weekend was a new bed. We are sleeping on my 6-year old blowup mattress and I think I have finally gotten the last out of the $100 I spent on it. It has a slow leak and has become the most uncomfortable thing to sleep on. So I had mentioned that maybe we would want to look at buying a bed, because I wasn’t going to make it til Thursday waiting for a good nights sleep. So after pricing mattresses at Macy’s, Robert wheeled and dealed us a fabulous discount on a new mattress, to be delivered on Monday. So then we went back out to Ikea and bought a $500 platform bed that Robert had the fun of putting together all day on Sunday.
That was the weekend – we walked our butts off and got some supplies stocked up. Now back to work on Monday!
We were up early and ready to go Thursday morning. We were only about 4 hours away and I just wanted to get to Seattle and call this trip done. Of course it took us a little longer than 4 hours—we WERE driving through Washington wine country…LOL
Snoqualmie Winery
I asked that we just drive on into Seattle, and that we would come back and do a wine tour some other day, because we literally passed 20+ wineries & vineyards off of I-82. But after driving by acres of vineyards Robert said, “Why don’t we stop at just one.” So we stopped at just one, Snoqualmie Winery, and bought more bottles to stock in our wine cabinet. If any of you are Port drinkers, Whidbey Port is REALLY good—REALLY.
After passing all the vineyards we were driving through the Cascades, and I was watching the mileage signs and counting down the miles. We stopped in Renton, just outside of Seattle, to hit a bathroom & fill-up the car. They also had a little carwash, so we thought it might be a good idea to wash off some of the 3300 miles while we were at it. It helped a little.
Finally you could see the Seattle skyline and then suddenly we were pulling into our new home.
After some minor paperwork, we had the keys and were in the apartment. They gave us a welcome gift and we had to laugh because part of it was a bottle of wine from the Snoqualmie Winery, at least we knew we liked it already! After the walk-through with Damon, our maintenance guy—who is great, we borrowed a dolly and brought everything up from the car.
We blew up the mattress, went to Whole Foods across the street to pick up a little something for dinner, ate dinner, had a shower, and then went to bed. We were ready not to have to go anywhere for tomorrow.
I’d love to catch y’all up with what’s going on since I got here to Seattle, but I seem to be without an Internet connection at the moment. They are coming to hook us up on Sunday, so I will be updating then.
Sorry for the delay 
We left Salt Lake City without seeing the lake or the huge Mormon church. It was pouring rain and we just wanted to get on the road. There are, however, a TON of small churches all over the place. It looked like there was a little church every 10 blocks, seems a little excessive, but whatever floats your boat.
So basically it poured on us most of the way through Utah. It finally started to clear up in Idaho. We have been lucky with the weather, it has been beautiful for most of the drive, and even if it was gray in the morning, by afternoon the sun was shining. Which it was today when we ended the trip in Oregon.
Idaho was interesting. A little bit of mountains, hills, and plains. We stopped in Wendell, ID for lunch—apparently its the Hub of Magic Valley, whatever that may be. We had lunch at the Farmhouse restaurant and it was pretty tasty, especially the Marion berry pie for desert. We also had a quick stop in Mountain Home, ID for gas—now that place felt a little like Deliverance country. LOL
We were tallying up the number of animals we have seen on our trip today too:
- 50+ dead deer
- a couple of live deer
- multitudes of cows, horses, sheep, & goats and their babies
- 1 dead coyote
- pheasants
- hawks – or possibly falcons – I couldn’t tell the difference
- elk ranch
- llama farms – or they might be alpaca – again, I wouldn’t know the difference
- 1 dead elk – it was huge
- seagulls in Idaho & Oregon – who knows why…
I have also scared Robert to death a few times on this trip. For those of you who have ridden with me, you know I have a tendency to get excited and say “OOH!” and point, and its jarring and can freak you out. I know David hates it when I do that. But he’ll just have to get used to it, cuz I can’t change at this point. LOL
This morning we are just heading straight into Seattle. Should be there around 2-3 in the afternoon. I’m excited that I don’t have to get in the car Friday to go anywhere! LOL
Today we awoke in Denver, CO and it was FOGGY. I kept asking where were the mountains because I couldn’t see them. But once we got on the road, we were in them.
Robert let me be shutterbug today and drove all day – bless him. I’m so toast at the moment. But I was like a person at a tennis match – looking right, then left, then right, then left, then up, then down, and all around. I had 3 cameras sitting in my lap – LOL. My iPhone, to upload a couple of pics to facebook, and then my digital to post here, and I even had my trusty 25 year old 35mm out so when the batteries went dead in the digital camera I was clicking away with that too.
It was really interesting driving through the Rockies, I had no idea that they changed so much as you went along. First it was green and a lot of granite, then on to more red rock, and finally a more arid area on the western side. We even had a few snow flurries on us when we were in the higher elevations.
In to Utah, it was arid and some of the landscape looked like something from the moon – LOL As you got further in though, the mountain reappeared.
We are in Salt Lake City for the night, and tomorrow we get into Oregon for our last night on the road before heading in to Seattle to our new home. =)
I have to say, that I think more people should do some drives like this – hopefully not at the break neck speed that I have been doing it, because there really is some beautiful country out there—and some great little towns to pull in to and check out, have lunch, chat with a few locals. This is really a remarkable country.
Here are some pics from the road – they really don’t do it justice.
Today was another really long drive from St. Louis, MO to Denver, CO. I cannot begin to tell you how numb my butt is!
They had severe thunderstorms during the night while we totally slept through it in St. Louis. When we got up in the morning it was still raining a little, but by the time we left around 10am it had stopped and looked like it was going to clear up along our drive.
We thought we were going to see Sabrina Gray in Kansas City when we stopped for a quick lunch, but she ended up not working from home that day, so we missed her. Damn those Monday meetings!
Also, don’t laugh, but we didn’t eat BBQ in Kansas City. We were both jonesing for Chick-fil-a, and there was one in KC. So that’s where we stopped for lunch—and it was great! LOL
So not much else happened in MO, then we headed into KS. You hear A LOT of flack about how boring a drive is through KS, so we weren’t really looking forward to it. But at first we were really thinking that Kansas gets a bad wrap.
On I-70 out of MO you go into rolling hills, everything is really green, because its spring, lots to look at and see. We went to OZ and bought some wine. Believe it or not but MO and KS have wineries – who knew. So we decided to stop and bought 7 bottles to start our collection – LOL A Merlot/Zinfandel blend called “Run Toto Run” and a port called “Lion’s Courage” and a couple of others that didn’t have fun names. Then right after that we hit a wind farm. Its freaking incredible how HUGE those windmills are. There were some power lines running beside them and they didn’t even go up a 1/4 of the way of the base. The blades were just massive. This picture just doesn’t give you the perspective, but they were cool.
Then we hit the flat. OMG! Is Kansas wide and flat. I wish we could have turned it around and started with the flat and ended with the rolling hills. I was so happy to hit Colorado, I was counting down the last 5 miles. Unfortunately the first part of Colorado was just as flat as the last of Kansas. Linda, you will be happy to know at this point Robert pulled out Password—he says he needs to talk to you. I’ll leave it at that.
It was dark when we got into Colorado, so I can’t see much of anything. Robert swears there are mountains out there, but I haven’t seen them. The hotel room even says mountain views, so we’ll see in the morning.
We are heading to Salt Lake City, UT tomorrow, and at a slower pace. I’m hoping to get some great pictures of the Rockies, but right now the forecast isn’t looking so great, so cross your fingers for me.
We made in through 8 states yesterday. VA, MD, WV, PA, WV (yes, we were supposed to go through it twice – LOL), OH, IN, IL, and finally to St. Louis, MO. One thing that I like about the East is that there are smaller states, so you really feel like you are getting somewhere as you tick of the states as you pass through. Today we are only going through 2 more states, 3 if you include MO again. Kansas is gonna be a long flat drive. FUN.
I really didn’t take any pictures on our first leg. Everything was really green, and we must have passed like 50 dead deer on the side of the road. Very strange. A few fields and windmills, some smelly chicken farms – seriously how can you live near one – YUCK! One cool thing was when it got dark when we were driving through IL there were tons of fireflies out and zooming down the highway we looked like we were jumping into warp drive with the fireflies as our special effects.
Overall the trip was pretty uneventful. We drove 14 hours and went through 2 sets of conversation starter cards—gourmet & couples editions. Linda, I did finally find Password to torture Robert with, I’m just waiting for the right time to hit him with it.
It was beautiful weather yesterday for the drive, and today we woke up to severe thunderstorms in St. Louis. After just checking the weather though, it looks like it will have gone past by the time we head out the door. Clear skies through to Denver—at least that’s what it looks like now.
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