This is the place where a normal person would post a picture of themselves in costume.  Or, at least something Halloween-y- a pumpkin, a big bowl of candy or a skeleton- something that really says “boo!”  Well, we didn’t technically dress up this year.  Sadly, we missed the ONE FREAKING YEAR that a asian-guy-white-girl couple are hot topics in popular culture.  (I’m obviously referring to Jon and Kate Gosselin, which I had really wanted to dress up as this year because it’s so freakin’ easy.  But SOMEBODY wouldn’t fork out the money for a douchey Ed Hardy shirt and ruined all of my dreams and aspirations.)  So instead of me wearing a reverse mullet wig and carrying around a bunch of Asian babies, we spent the day dressing up our living room instead- we got a dining table!  Woop!

Yeah, we’ve lived in Seattle for 15 months and today is the first day we’ve had an actual dining table.  It’s a big event.  Historically, we just kind of suck at committing to dining tables.  In 6 years of cohabitation, we’ve only had a dining table for a sum total of 19 months.  What can I say?  We’re slow to commit.

But today, all that changed.  Today, Mike woke up and was possessed by a strange urge to go out and get a dining table.  This may or may not have something to do with the fact that we are having two of his friends over tomorrow for dinner and he he doesn’t want them to have to sit on the floor and eat at our coffee table (I like to refer to this as “Moroccan style”) like all of our previous guests.  But whatever.  I don’t really care.  I am ECSTATIC that we have a dining table.  A dining table means that people can stop by your house any time at all and you have a place to give them food.  A dining table means that you don’t eat dinner in front of the television every day, but you take 15 minutes to stop and talk about what happened during the day.  A dining table means home.  And while I have no idea how long this place will be our home, I like the illusion that we have a home in the meantime.  It makes me happy.

Plus, it was kind of entertaining watching Mike spend 3 hours putting the table together.

soup break!

Hehehe.  Don’t worry, I did more than just take pictures of him cursing all non-Ikea furniture.  I spent the evening brining and marinating 2 racks of ribs and an entire chicken for dinner tomorrow.  Because I’m a good wife who strives to impress his co-workers and friends.  And because I was really freaking excited to put that table to use tomorrow.

I’ll share pictures of our dinner party, but not until after I tell you about my incredibly awesome visit from my very best friends in the world last weekend.  Dear god, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Tomorrow I have to go to work (yay!), which means today was my last real day to be an unemployed bum.  I didn’t get much bumming around done though- instead, I made a nice, late breakfast and cleaned the house like a mofo.

Oatmeal Brulee- Regular boring old oatmeal jazzed up with fruit on top (I have a ton of persimmons from my CSA that I needed to use before they got too soft, and they ended up being perfect in this application!) and some brown sugar, then broiled in their cup to get a crispy crust.  This was so good that I made some extras and froze them for weekday breakfasts on the run.

Mike eating the breakfast burrito I made for him.  Of everything I’ve ever made, this is probably his absolute favorite thing- I think it’s because I put bacon AND sausage in it, so he doesn’t have to choose between the two.  Mike is not a huge fan of making decisions.  I know you can’t tell this from the look on his face, but the burrito makes him happy.  Having his picture taken and then put on the blog does not, but I like to torture him.

Now we’re full, our house is clean, and I’m just waiting for my pants to finish in the dryer so that I can go grocery shopping.  Wish me luck tomorrow!

Yeah, I got totally pwned today.  It was me vs. our garbage disposal.  And the garbage disposal not only managed to win, but it also publicly humiliated me.

Our garbage disposal went on the fritz Tuesday night, while I was peeling carrots to make carrot fries.  I am usually pretty anal about what goes down a garbage disposal– I developed a bit of a complex after Mike broke one in our first apartment together by putting sand and coins down the drain and then telling the plumber it must have been his “dumb girlfriend who never listens”– but it is possible that a few peelings slipped down the drain and clogged everything up.  I was frustrated, but I left a message with our property manager and figured it would be fixed pretty quickly.

Well, after several long conversations with our property manager, a visit from our aspiring-screenwriter handyman, and two bottles of Drain-O, the garbage disposal still wasn’t working and there was now a cesspool of toxic liquid in half of my sink.  So this morning, a plumber finally showed up with a brand new garbage disposal in hand, and asked me to show him what was happening when I turned the garbage disposal on.  I delivered a long and slightly dramatic monologue on the horrors that I had faced over the last three days, and with a flourish, reached over to turn on the garbage disposal.

At which point it decided to quickly, quietly and efficiently start to work properly.

The plumber stared at me like an idiot.  I apologized about 34 times and swore up and down that I had NOT been lying about it being broken in the first place in some bizarre attempt to get a new garbage disposal.  He gave me a polite smile, reviewed the “on/off” switch with me one more time, and was on his way.  As soon as the door shut I heard Mike, who had quietly been working upstairs throughout the whole ordeal, start to laugh at me.  Loudly.

UGH.  At least Celebrity Rehab starts tonight!  Watching that show (usually with a glass of wine in hand), always makes me feel better about myself.

**UPDATE**: It’s 2:45 PM, I’m alone in the house, I just tried to use the garbage disposal again, and guess what?  It’s not working.  I may be going for that glass of wine earlier than I thought.

This weekend, Mike and I realized that we are going to be hosting guests soon, and therefore, we should probably finish making our house look finished.  While most of the big things were in place, we were still missing a few key items- a place to put (some) of our books, a desk for me, a coffee table, and a dining table.  (Until now, we’d been using a filing cabinet and two metal shelves as a coffee table/dining table.  Shut up.)

So on Sunday, it was time for another Ikea run.  Ugh.  I hate Ikea.  But it’s cheap.

First, in order to balance out our planned gross consumerism, we stopped by the Sustainable Ballard Fair, where we learned how to save the Earth and saw stuff like this:

An actual Bag Lady

A booth that taught you how to make “Trash Art”

And a dog wearing vegetables.

After wandering and checking out the booths, we hopped in the Mini and drove to Ikea, where we proceded to stuff the Mini with particle board goodness:

I freaking love my car.

When we got home, we started putting stuff together.  I was super excited to finally have a desk- originally I had said I would “share” the one desk we already had with Mike so that we could get a fold-out couch to put upstairs, but after 6 weeks our couch had become my desk, and that is just not comfortable.  So, sorry folks, no fold out couch for you, but we still have our regular couch downstairs and a pretty spiffy air mattress.

Once my desk and bookcases were set up, I ran down to get my camera while Mike brought up the office chair we had scored in the as-is section for half the regular price.  However, when I came back to the office, Mike was laughing at me.  “Your corner looks like an American flag,” he told me.

Ugh.  I had been so excited about the as-is chair that neither of us had noticed that I would now be sporting this look:

Ugh again.  Thankfully, Mike had a black chair, so we decided to switch:

Better.

This is very exciting.  We now have a semi-organized, though still rather bare, room.

We didn’t find a dining table though.  At least the coffee table is an upgrade from the filing cabinet.

The multiplying ghost has struck again.

As long as I have known Mike, he has sworn up and down that he is haunted by a multiplying ghost.  )A “multiplying ghost” is a mythical spirit that duplicates items of clothing.)  While neither of us has ever seen the actual ghost, we have both seen its results- at least once a year, we find two versions of the same t-shirt or sweatshirt where there previously was only one.  Tonight, when he was looking for a t-shirt, Mike found 2 Google shirts.

He swears that he only bought one (the shirt is at least 2 years old).  I’ve done his laundry for as long as we’ve lived together, and I only remember one Google shirt.  There are only two explanations: 1) somebody else had the same Google shirt and left it at our house before we moved, or 2) the multiplying ghost has struck again.

Help us solve the mystery.  If you are somebody who used to spend a lot of time at our house in Anaheim and you are missing a Google shirt, please tell me.  Otherwise, I’m a little freaked out.  :/

Slowly but surely, we are working through the boxes and trying to make our house look less like a total disaster zone.  Unwrapping and setting out Mike’s beloved super shaggy rug made such a big difference that both of us paused to comment on the improvement.

(And yes, that IS Mike being totally captivated by the awesomeness that is Olympic swimming.  Because swimming is the best sport ever, no matter how much trash he talks on it.)

The Sword of Damocles has finally fallen. Our stuff came today!

When the movers called me to tell me they were outside our house, I grabbed my camera and ran to the truck. I was positively giddy. Sleeping on an air mattress for a week will do that to you.

The movers were both really nice. They made lots of comments about Mike’s bikes (I relayed the envious compliments even though I know it gives him an even more swollen ego than normal) and I bonded with the lead guy, Matthew, over our shared experiences with external fixators (aka my robot arm). He broke his hip a year ago and had one for 3 months! It made me feel lucky.

First they moved everything out of the truck and into our garage. There was a little spillover. This is when I started to realize how much unpacking lay ahead of me.

Five hours after they arrived, I started to open the boxes. I made the most progress on the kitchen. However, all the paper that they used to protect our kitchenware quickly started to add up:

Some of the labels on the boxes confused the movers. Evidently, they weren’t familiar with Mike’s habit of storing all shoes outside one’s front door:

That made me laugh.

When Mike got home, this was the first thing he did:

Now, after unpacking the kitchen and most of the bedroom, I want to do exactly the same thing.

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.