We are settling in. So far, I think our experiences can be summarized thusly:

Yay: Our neighborhood is awesome and I really like being able to walk places.
Boo: Mike’s commute was not so nice today. Stupid bridges. Stupid Aubrey for not letting him live in the suburbs.

Yay: The food in Seattle is scary good. I can’t wait until people start visiting so that we can share new favorite foods with everybody!
Boo: We are both ready to not have to eat out every night. Hopefully our stuff gets here soon!

Yay: I’m super excited about going to the farmer’s market tomorrow!
Boo: I can only buy things that don’t involve actual preparation because I don’t know when we will have cooking utensils again.

Yay: We have internet connectivity at long last (120 hours!)
Boo: Our neighbors think we’re crazy because I broke down and asked to “borrow” their wifi on Monday. (Not everybody is as blasé as we are when it comes to giving out passwords. Weird.)

Yay: I’ve read three books since we arrived here! Not being able to knit = I actually read books again.
Boo: It was the Twilight series. I <3 forbidden teenage vampire love.

Yay: Since I’m jobless for the time being, I’ve actually had time to work out every day for the first time since who knows when.
Boo: I have a terrible sense of direction and get lost during every run at some point.

Yay: Derrick (My Derrick) is in Seattle this week because his sister just had the cutest baby ever!
Boo: I have to let him hang out with his new niece before I kidnap him and make him occupy my time.

Yay: I get my robot arm taken off next Thursday!
Boo: Ummmm… nothing really. I’m really sick of this thing.

There are some things I don’t miss about SoCal. When 10 people im-ed me today while i was sitting in a coffee shop getting my internet fix to tell me that there had just been an earthquake, I was a bit relieved that earthquakes are FAR less common up here.

I’m happy that everybody we know seems to be ok though!

Don’t think I’m totally over missing things though- far from it. This made me a little sentimental when I opened our closet this morning:

Also, today was our first rainy day in Seattle. Not so bad. But definitely different than home.

On Saturday we headed Downtown to get some new work clothes for Mike. Unfortunately, once we got there we found out that SeaFair was in full swing and had taken over most of Downtown, making the stores even more crowded than we expected. We were still able to pick up a few key items, but we were both way to overwhelmed by crowds to even think about waiting for the Twilight Parade to begin. SeaFair continues next weekend though, so we are hoping that we can check it out a bit when we have some actual free time (assuming we’ll have free time this weekend).

Because of the crowds, shopping took way longer than we thought and by the time we got back home we were starving. We decided to give up the chain restaurant love (so far in Seattle we’ve already managed to eat at Maccaroni Grill and Cheesecake Factory- it must be a sign that we miss OC) and ordered some take-out from a little Italian place near our house- Vincenzo’s.

OMG the pizza was sooooo good! This was totally unexpected, because we literally walked into the first place we saw- no bickering about what we felt like, no meticulous consulting of yelp.com or UrbanSpoon (I get a little obsessive reading reviews of new places). Pure hunger led us there and we will definitely be back. Plus, they have free delivery. Yay for laziness and good food!

We brought the pizza and salad back to our house and picnicked in the still-barren living room.

The meal was awesome, and it was nice to have a quiet meal together, but life without Internet and TV is hard. When we went to bed on Saturday, it had been 36 hours since we had high speed internet. This is some sort of record for Mike and I- even our one year anniversary trip to El Capitan Canyon (fancy camping!) had free wifi in every tent. NgBerry, I don’t know how you did it for a month. We are counting the minutes until Comcast comes on Wednesday! Thank god for our iPhones.

Our first day in Seattle was busy, tiring and a bit expensive, but most importantly it reminded us that our lives always have been and always will be marked by strange timing. (Don’t worry, it’s a good thing. Usually).

We left John Wayne Airport at 10:00 am, accompanied by my parents and the one and only An Pham. Thank you Mom, Dad and An for spending our last minutes as Orange County residents with us!

We spent the plane ride reading, napping and making plans for the actual moving in activities. We felt like we had a plan. When the plane landed, we both instinctively grabbed our phones to check our email, text messages and voicemail.

Mike got one email during the flight. It was a recruiter from Google asking him to schedule a phone interview with them.

When he showed me, we both erupted in laughter. The timing was just too much. The mere thought of moving again makes me want to crawl in a hole and start crying. Google is an amazing company, and it is a huge compliment that they are reaching out to Mike, but he is starting his new job with Microsoft on Monday. It does definitely affirm the fact that my husband is a nerd rockstar.

The afternoon was spent picking up our new keys (yay!), dropping luggage off at the apartment, spending way too much money at target, and realizing that we had let the movers pack up all of our sheets and blankets. So in order to cushion the floor a bit, we decided to drive to Ikea to get some blankets.

Ikea was the scene of the next weird coincidence of the day. As soon as we walked into Ikea, we heard somebody whistle and scream Mike’s name across the warehouse. That somebody was our friend Khang, aka Bee, from Troy:

Running into anybody we knew on our first day in a new city would have been weird enough, but the fact that it was Bee was even weirder—Bee was actually the first person I ever talked to at Troy (we took Oral Communications together the summer before freshman year. Poor Bee did a speech about juggling and tried to use me to demonstrate that anybody could learn how to juggle. He didn’t know how incredibly uncoordinated I am. I think I marred his GPA permanently). After we finished up at Ikea, we met Bee for dinner and spent a few hours catching up. Now we officially have one friend in Seattle!

Mike and I are both excited to move to Seattle, but definitely sad to be leaving our friends and families behind. Last week we started the sad (but surprisingly delicious) process of “last meals” with different groups of friends.

On Saturday, a group of my knitting friends (led by the fabulous Anne), squeezed ourselves into Anne’s Toyota Highland (hybrid, of course) and we set out to Din Tai Fung in Arcadia. Anne has been telling us all for more than a year that these dumplings are the most amazing pockets of food that you will ever put in your mouth. However, we don’t always trust Anne when it comes to her food recommendations. About a year ago, she introduced our little group to stinky tofu. Our friend Derek, who earned extra money in high school by eat ing bugs on the bus for change, called it the worst meal of his life. However, with the advent of my departure, we decided to give her another chance.

First, an introduction to my awesome dumpling companions:

Carolyn, drinking her favorite drink ever (water), and Anne, slurping.

Marie, Mike’s favorite knitter ever.

Chia (right), and her boyfriend Sean

Anne (again, what a ham), and my bff Mary, who doesn’t knit but was down for dumplings.

Gigi and Jeff, looking very very related.

I didn’t get a picture of Zona . Her ridiculously cute daughter kept stealing the spotlight:

Mary and I agreed that Gigi has excellent taste in shoes.

We stuffed ourselves silly on dumplings, noodle soups, and “appetizer.” It was delicious.
Be forewarned though if you ever go here, they will just start bringing food at you fast and furious, so be prepared to eat quickly. I was a little stressed out.

Thankfully, they take this into consideration and give you instructions on every pair of chopsticks:

Even better than the dumplings though was the awesome company- I cannot express how much I love these guys! Thank you Anne, Mary, Marie, Chia, Sean, Carolyn, Zona, Jeff and Gigi, as well as the ones who couldn’t make it on Saturday- Rachel, Renata, Denise and everybody else whose name I can’t think of just now. I’ll be lucky if I find a group of knitters in Seattle who are half as amazing, talented and welcoming as you guys!

On day 2 of our trip, we woke up at 8 and were looking for apartments by 9. At 10, we were discouraged. At 11, we had pretty much decided that we were going to end up settling on a place that we had seen the day before and kind of liked. At noon, we randomly checked craigslist to look up a leasing agent’s phone number and stumbled upon a listing we thought sounded too good to be true.

At 12:15 we saw OUR new house. At 1:00 pm we were signing the lease application. It was a good hour!

That afternoon, we were incredibly excited about our new home and indescribably relieved not to have to househunt anymore. We celebrated by going back to the hotel to take a nap. (We are both excellant nappers). Then we realized that we would have time to actually check out Seattle during the next day and a half.

This is what you get when Mike and Aubrey explore a new city:

We checked out the views:

We took in some culture:

We ate at the best museum cafe EVER!

It is called Taste Cafe and it is part of the Olympic Sculpture Park near Pike’s Place. I know, usually museum food is about as satisfying as the accompanying gift shop, but this place was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. No wonder, since it is run by Bon Appetit, which is hands down my favorite cooking magazine ever.

I had the most amazing panini ever- Tillamook Cheddar, apples and carmelized onions. The best part was, I was just trying to convince somebody the day before that apples + cheddar cheese = delicious. This sandwich totally vindicated me.

Mike had a turkey sandwhich and Kettle Chips. Both were good, but as usual, his facial expressions were even better:

We also had a really good dinner at Union in DownTown Seattle. I highly reccomend it! It is a small plates restaurant, but the chef makes an effort to keep prices reasonable (They have a special where you choose any 4 courses for $50. It’s an awesome way to try a bunch of different things). We both had lobster gnocchi for the appetizer (Mike claims i ate a piece of bacon but I choose not to believe him). I had Fresh Grilled Halibut with sunchokes (mmmmm, sunchokes). Mike’s main course was Tri-Tips. Both were good, but we both agreed that I had once again made the superior choice. As always, I was right.

What really made me fall in love with this restaurant was when the waiter came to pour the glass of wine I had ordered and let me taste it first. Unfortunately, my choice was a lot sweeter than what I had expected. I guess my face betrayed my disappointment, and the waiter jumped right in, laughed at me a little, and then told me that he didn’t like that one either. He came back with a really yummy dry Muscadet that I loved immediately. Nice servers make me extremely happy. Yay for generous tips!

We enjoyed our nice, long, late dinner and didn’t get out of the restaurant until almost 11. Being the old fogies that we are, we were asleep before midnight.

Oh, one thing Mike had to do before he went to bed:

Shocking.

The first day of our first (and only) Seattle house hunting trip started with our waking up at 4:45 am for our 7:00 am flight. Jeannie West, who kindly agreed to drive us to the airport at that ungodly hour, was chipper and energetic as usual and spent most of the drive telling us about her friend who has a ranch in Washington state and who lectures about alien abductions for a living. My mom has awesome friends.

As soon as we arrived at the airport, we were informed that our 7 am flight had been cancelled and we were being bumped to the 8:oo am flight. We had a pretty flexible schedule that day, so it didn’t mess up our timing, but I did have a hard time getting over the fact that we could have slept a whole hour longer. ug.

After an uneventful plane ride we arrived at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, quickly unloaded our bags and began the apartment search. After looking at possibilities in the International District, Downtown, Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, we hadn’t fallen in love with any one place, but we both agreed that our favorite neighborhood was Queen Anne. The only problem was that we didn’t love any of the 4 apartments we saw there: the 1st was cramped and had no parking; the 2nd (the best of the day) was too far from the neighborhood’s main drag; the 3rd ended up being $800 more a month than we wanted to spend; and the 4th, which billed itself as “historical,” looked like it hadn’t even been painted since the mid-1960s. We were a bit disappointed, so we decided to drown our sorrows in Thai food.

Mike had pad thai, I had chicken curry with brown rice (my pictures came out blurry though. arg). The curry was better. In fact, my food was better during every meal we had in Seattle. If you have ever had the pleasure of eating out with Mike, you probably already know that he always likes other peoples’ food better than his own. Next time you go out to dinner with Mike, do him a favor and just order for him.

This is when I discovered what Mike had warned me about when he flew up last month to interview—the sun doesn’t go down here until almost 10 o’ clock! We took this picture at 9:15 pm. This will definitely take some getting used to.

Since this blog is being started to chronicle our new adventures in Seattle, I think it is only fitting that our first post is about the place where we will be spending the most time- our new home!

We will fill you in on the details of our trip and the long, laborious two days we spent apartment hunting in a future post, but right now we will leave you with some pictures and highlights. 

Basically, we found something that seems pretty perfect for us:

Fancy stainless steel kitchen appliances (this was the only place we saw that had a gas stove, score!), honed quartz countertops (never heard of that before, but they look really cool!), cork kitchen floors (so comfy for your feet!), and well-designed cabinets that totally maximize space?  CHECK!

Hardwood floors and really cool metal grating that doesn’t really serve a purpose but looks awesome?  CHECK!

An attached garage to store as many bicycles and as much yarn as we can fit?  CHECK!  (Oh, and Mike can park his car in there too!)

Tile shower/tub and an awesome suoer modern, kinda weird, post-modern sink?  CHECK!

A cute little shared yard in the back (perfect for Aubrey’s future-dog!)?  CHECK!

Next door to the Community Garden?  (Our view is the garden + the  Cascade Mountains– sooooo pretty!)  CHECK!

All in all, we are both super stoked.  It is located in the Queen Anne district of Seattle, which is about 5 minutes northwest of downtown.  We checked out some of the more truly urban neighborhoods in Seattle before (Downtown, Belltown, Capitol Hill, the International District), but as soon as we drove through Queen Anne, we were sold.  Aubrey immediately pictured herself walking to the farmer’s markets to buy artisanal cheeses and Mike loves the fact that he can pretend that he still lives in the suburbs, even if we are moments from hundreds of skyrises).  Our house is a 5 minute walk from the main drag of the neighborhood, which is filled with cute restaurants and shops.

The other thing that we took as an omen that we are meant to live here is that of the 6 units that are rented out so far (our place is part of a brand new 10 unit complex that just got listed the Friday we drove by), 4 of the tenants are newly relocating to Seattle to work for Microsoft, 2 are working for the Gates Foundation and 1 is relocating to start a new job at Google! 

Ok, off to recover from traveling and ::gulp:: start packing.  We will update with more pictures from our trip tomorrow! For more info on Queen Anne, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne%2C_Seattle%2C_Washington.

*Disclaimer*:  These pictures were not taken by us.  They come from the owner and are professionally lit, etc.  Any furniture you see is not ours.  We will post our own photos as soon as we get up there.  Sorry, aubrey + michael = lazy.

Welcome to the adventures of Aubrey and Michael. We plan on using this blog to keep our family and friends back in California amidst on our new adventure here in Seattle Washington!