These are things that I’ve heard over and over again during the past couple of months:

• “It doesn’t snow in Seattle.”
• “Eh, it may snow for like, 3 minutes, but by morning everything will melt.”
• “It NEVER snows here in [insert current month here].”

Obviously, people are in denial.  Or they are just liars.    Just look outside our office window:

I was awoken at 5:00 am by thunder and lightning.  Huh?  Is that even possible in conjunction with snow?  My boss emailed everybody on my team telling them to work from home today due to this outbreak of “thundersnow.”

This weather phenomenon is just confirming my belief that Mike and I do, indeed, have some sort of magnetic attraction for all things strange and random.  Seattle, I apologize for the deep freeze, but I think we brought it.

I am pleased to report that Operation Don’t Suck was a huge success!  As I’ve alluded to, Mike has a very uneven past with celebrating birthdays.  But last night even he said “I did way better than usual this year, huh?”  Yay!  Well, considering there were no styrofoam containers of food or Dora the Explorer decorations (I mock, but my party last year was really fun.  But he did decorate with those stupid streamers and will forever suffer for it)

So yeah, Mike earned a lot of good husband points yesterday.  First, he actually gave me a present on my acutal birthday!  This is a major achievement.  Bonus points for the cute packaging details:

(The first Etch-a-Sketch said “Happy,” but I immediately dropped it while trying to take a picture.  Just imagine it’s still there.  Mike had to hold the box with the Etch-a-Sketches in place the entire drive home to keep the message there too.)

Then he whisked me off to our mystery dinner.  But not before he properly outfitted our chariot:

(And so begins a series of crappy iPhone pictures.  I forgot my camera, and Mike didn’t tell me that where we were going would be a really really good place to bring a camera.  Oh well, everything else was good).

We drove down the hill to the Space Needle, where we were going to eat at the restaurant on top, Sky City.  Yay!

Now, people who live in Seattle talk a lot of trash about Sky City.  And I understand why- it’s tourist-tastic.  It’s a restaurant on top of the most iconic building in Seattle, so how can it not be?  And your meal will be expensive, which is hard to justify in a city where there is seriously amazing food everywhere you turn, and a lot of it is 1/4 of what you pay to eat up here.  In fact, I’d always heard rather bad things about the food itself, which actually turned out to be a good thing, because I think low expectations generally result in a better experience.

But even though it’s touristy and expensive, it’s beautiful to look out at everything while you eat.  And it’s something that I feel like you have to do once, and what better excuse than a first birthday in Seattle?  Again, bonus points to Mike for finding a clever way to knock the super touristy Space Needle experience off our list of to-dos in the least cheesy way possible.

And in case you don’t believe me on the touristy factor, look here- you check in for your reservations in a freaking gift shop.

So while you wait for the elevator to come pick you up, you get to look around at all kinds of fabulous t-shirts and choctchkies, including random assortments of golf balls in non-Seattle sports team colors (I think.  I could be wrong about this since I know nothing about sports.  But I saw this, and I thought Lakers.  And then I thought of my two most crazy Lakers fanatic friends, Helaine and Kris.

Random.

We went up the elevator and sat down at our table, which was right by the giant window.  It really is crazy to look at everything.

I had to take a picture of the Specials Menu because it said December 9.  Yay December 9!

Freaking awesome.  (I had the lobster risotto, which was really really good.  Of course, it’s pretty hard to screw up something that combines lobster, vanilla, butternut squash and leeks.  MMMMMM.)

They brought out the requisite Happy Birthday free dessert, which while it wasn’t amazing to eat, their use of dry ice to make a smoke effect was pretty awesome.

After dinner we went out on the observation deck.  All I wanted was to take a picture of us with the skyline in the back.  Unfortunately, I was only able to take one picture before Mike’s fear of heights ended that little dream.  And, since I am the worst photographer in the world and only had my phone, it looked like this:

What do you think- should this be our Christmas Card picture?

All in all, we had good food, good wine and a ridiculously pretty view.  And most of all, my freaking amazing husband actually planned something, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Yay birthdays.  Yay Mike.  Yay birthday dinners!

Remember WAY back in July when we came for a househunting trip and I kept marvelling at how it was still light at 9:00 pm?  Let’s review.

I took this picture at 9:00 pm on July 12:

Last week I took this picture at 4:30 pm:

And it’s only getting worse.  This morning, when I went for a morning run before work, I was SHOCKED by how dark it was.

Thankfully, Winter Equinox is coming up soon and we’ll slowly be making our way back to later sunsets and longer days.  Slowly.  But surely.  Thank God.  I need me some sun- not necessarily to lay out in, but at least to look out at on whatever sunny days we get.

Today was my first day of work!  Of course, as with most first days, it involved a ton of paperwork and getting things set up.  Not super exciting, and I’m not completely clear as to what my everyday routine is going to be, but the people are really nice and everybody seems to know what they are doing.  So yay! for things looking good.

I normally would post pictures of my new work environment, but I could not find my camera anywhere in the house or car (more on that later).  iPhone camera + cubicle lighting = no bueno, so I’ll do that another day.  Let’s just say it’s very grey and boring at the moment- I definitely need some flair in there soon.

The REAL highlight of my day was the trip home- I met my friend Barrie when we both got off work, and we WALKED home.  Yeah, that’s right, we walked.  This is a major feat for this girl from Orange County who thought that her old 12 mile commute was the shortest she would ever see.  It took us 45 minutes to walk 2.4 miles (it would have been much quicker if we didn’t live on top of the Queen Anne Hill of Death, but it’s a good workout nonetheless).

Walking home from work is a total treat.  You get to see parts of the city that you never noticed before- like CounterBalance Park at night:

By day, CounterBalance Park is the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen- wood flooring, a few park benches, and not a piece of playground equipment or a hint of grass as far as the eye can see.  But at night these colored lights come on and it becomes something that is absolutely gorgeous.  I doubt I ever would have even known about it if I never got off my butt and walked.

To make the night even better, we had dinner at Barrie’s house.  Her boyfriend Dominic made us a fabulous dinner, and then we sat around and talked nerd.

Good times.  Gotta love the 1:1 person to MacBook ratio.  Makes me and my Sony Vaio feel like the uncool kids.

This is how I watched the election results come in last night:

This pic is super blurry, but you can still see how happy everybody was:

Meanwhile, on the streets of Seattle… (I didn’t make it out for this stuff, but stole the photos from people who are way cooler than me and can stay up much later than me)

Remember what I said about how I love watching people who get excited about things?  I love this guy:

I have never in my life seen people in my age group who are actually proud of their country and excited to be American.  It makes me feel much better about my interior design debacle a few weeks ago.

I don’t feel like I was a very good host last week while Tony was here.  Mike was working late every night and I have been rather consumed with some projects of my own- looking for some work, getting the Handicraft Blog up and running, and finishing up a pattern for the site.  Thankfully, Tony is much cooler than Mike or I and managed to keep himself entertained (especially at night).

I did get to take him to one Seattle landmark (of sorts) before he left though: we ate at the glory that is The Skillet.

The Skillet is a traveling eatery that operates out of an Airstream trailer and serves “gourmet street food.”  Each day of the week they set up shop at a different location (you can check the calendar on their web site to find out where they will be).  Their menu rotates weekly, they only take cash, there is usually a line, and the food is AMAZING.

You walk up to the window and they take your order.  (I have no way to confirm this, but I think this guy was on the Pacific Northwest episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, one of my favorite shows EVER.  Well, I guess I could prove it by searching out the episode and watching it again, but that’s a lot of effort.)

The menu:

Tony ordered the Kobe burger and fries.  I had the grilled cheese and tomato basil soup.  So good.  Their fries are ridonculously delicious.

The fancied up grilled cheese (Gouda and pesto on rosemary bread) was so rich that I couldn’t finish it.  I always order soup when I go there just for the delicious croutons.

Yum.  Delicious.  If you are ever in Seattle on a weekday afternoon, you have to eat at the Skillet.  Call me and I’ll join you.

Between Justin, Amy and Derek, we had 10 solid days of entertaining out of town guests.  Thankfully, Seattle has a lot of things to do to aid us in this task.  Evidently, we constructed some sort of “pop art” theme when we planned out what to do to keep Amy and Derek entertained.

On Friday, while Mike worked from home in the afternoon, the three of us went to check out the Great Seattle Graffiti Wall.  Amy, our resident photographer and art aficionado, had specially requested that we check this out during their trip.

Finding it was kind of a pain.  I had tried to Google it, but I kept getting different intersections, so we ended up driving around aimlessly for an extra 20 minutes.  When we finally found it (we finally noticed a graffiti-covered wall at 3rd Ave S and S Stacey Street) we were thrilled!  Derek and I were even more thrilled because it was right by a McDonalds, so I could feed my Diet Coke addiction and he could snack on some Chicken McNuggets.  (Seriously, Derek loves chain and fast food more than anybody ever in the history of the universe.  It’s comical, but it’s also comforting, because I love Derek).

After Derek’s snack, we proceded to do exactly what you are supposed to do when you see a giant wall of brightly-colored legal graffiti: we took pictures of ourselves!

Uncle Dung!

Derek giving me a boost.  I know you’re marveling at my grace.

Sister act!

I actually really like this picture.

Amy had tried to get us to take a group shot using her camera timer.  We ran away just before the camera went off.  She was irked.

Finally, a semi-successful group shot.

Amy took video to get a picture of the entire wall if you want to check it out (warning: you can hear a lot of wind in the background):

After spending an hour or so jumping up on walls that were covered in bum pee, posing like giant nerds and marvelling at the wall in general, we were cold and hungry and ready to go clean up before getting dinner at Lunchbox Laboratory in Ballard.  I was really excited to try this restaurant out- it is a build-your-own-burger place (a lot like The Counter in SoCal, only with a wider variety of meat and a decidedly less bourgoise feel).

There were definitely a LOT of choices, which Mike found a bit overwhelming.  We both said we’d like to try it again, but The Counter ekes out the win in head to head burger competition.  Mike and I split a Butterfinger Shake though, which we agreed was the best milkshake ever.

The smile is Derek’s seal of approval.

If you ever come visit me, I will spend a lot of time trying to feed you, as witnessed in my previous post chronicling the many meals that Justin, Mike and I consumed during Justin’s recent trip to Seattle.  But there are other things to do with me besides having me shove food down your throat.  Thankfully, Justin was a good sport and we actually got the chance to see quite a few things in the city.

I’ve already chronicled Friday and Saturday.  On Sunday, the boys spent the first half of the day at the Colonade riding their bikes off of giant ramps and boulders and other dangerous things.  Hopefully Mike will post some pictures of their awesomeness soon.

When they got back, we continued the generally sporty theme of the day by checking out the flagship REI store.  It’s just so…  big.  Here we marvelled at kayaks, bike racks and some very involved baby-backpacks.  Justin and I decided that we are organizing an epic camping trip as soon as the weather warms up again, and Mike kept talking about how he needs to buy the WASP knife before we go to protect us all from bears:

After REI we drove to the Capitol Hill neighborhood and climbed the Volunteer Park Water Tower. Justin used his schmancy new camera to take some pretty pictures of the cityscape, while Mike, obviously exhausted from the stair climb, did this:

On Monday, when Mike went to work Justin and I hopped on our bikes and rode to check out the Ballard Locks.  This was very exciting, because every time I had asked Justin what he wanted to see in Seattle, his only answer was “Salmon.”  So here, we saw salmon.

We also saw seals (eating the salmon) and a very big boat come through the Locks!  You can tell that Justin really is an engineer by how incredibly fascinated he was by this process:

On our ride home, the gray-but-dry weather turned into a torrential downpour.  We kept joking that this was his “iconically Seattle” experience of the week.  This is what we looked like by the time we got home:

On Tuesday the weather was much better, so we checked out Kerry Park, did the Seattle Underground Tour (we had to do something super-touristy before he left), and finished off the daylight with a hike through Discovery Park:

On Tuesday morning, we bid adieu to our awesome friend.  We were sad to see him go, but we hope he has a good time visiting Portland!  Justin, you (and your bike) were definitely the best guest(s) we’ve ever had in Seattle!

He carries a really big purse.

Today was kind of eh.  I had my eyes checked and the doctor used some weird yellow eyedrops to numb my eyes, but because my eyes water like crazy, I immediately teared up and had to walk 10 blocks home with bright yellow streaks running down my face.  not so cute.  Also, the dinner I made tonight was really bad.  As in, “so bad that we were both really thankful to have leftover pizza in the fridge” bad.

Like I said, eh.

So I’m focusing on bigger and better things.  In preparation for our upcoming visitors, I recently asked some of my knitting friends for some advice on “must dos, must sees and must eats” in Seattle.  They had a ton of awesome suggestions, including things that I had no idea ever even existed here.  I realized that not only do I need to know what I want to do when guests are in town, I need find out all of the cool things that I want to do in general in and around the city.  As we learned this summer, you never know how long you are going to be in one place, so I figure we should make an effort to explore as many things as possible while we are here, however long or short that may be.  When you live somewhere, it’s easy to feel lame seeing the really touristy things, but I think it would be even lamer if I ended up living here for 4 years and never went up the Space Needle.

So, without further ado, I present to you my official “List of things I want to do while I’m in Seattle in no particular order.” Keep in mind that this is the beta “We’ve only been here for 2 months so there are probably 1000 other cool things to do that I don’t even know about yet” version.

• See the salmon splash around in the Ballard Locks.
• Check out the Seattle Graffiti Wall.
• Take the free tour of Theo Chocolates and eat free samples.
• Compare Cupcake Royale to Sprinkles and see who wins, even if cupcakes are so 2007.
• Attend one of the “underground dining experiences” that I always read about up here, though I fear my red-meataphobia may keep me banned.
• Ride the whole Burke-Gilman trail.  (Though I fear Justin may beat me to the punch on this one next week.)
• Kayak in some body of water here.  Preferably with Mike.  Extra preferably, with Mike at least pretending to not hate it or get seasick.
• Do the Underground Tour and the Ghost Tour of Pike’s Place Market.  These, I definitely need visitors for so I can project all tourist guilt on them.  (Actually, we might do the Ghost Tour when Amy and Derek are in town next weekend.  Score!)
• Eat Mac and Cheese at Beecher’s.
• Go on one of the Savor Seattle tours.  Or both.  Preferably with somebody who really loves food.  (Scott, are you there?  Come visit me!)
• Stick my toes in the sand at Alki Beach.
• Figure out why there are so many Thai restaurants in this city but not a huge Thai population (that we’ve come across).
• Spend an afternoon in an arboretum.  There seem to be about 374 in the city.
• Be able to figure out what body of water I am crossing or looking at no matter where I am in the city.
• Explore the islands around here- Orca, San Juan, Mercer, and all the other ones I can’t think of offhand.
• Visit Mt. Ranier.
• Spend a day doing all the stuff at the Seattle Center, especially because it’s only about a mile from my house and our friend Allen gave us free tickets to the EMP.
• Take funny pictures in the Sculpture Park.
• Climb to the top of the tower at Volunteer Park.
• Cook a piece of fish that was bought the same day at a seafood market.
• Drive to Olympic National Park and hike Hurricane Ridge.
• Fly a kite at Gasworks Park.
• Spend a weekend in Vancouver.
• Visit Portland.
• Sit in a natural hot spring, preferably while it’s raining.
• Learn how to make a really good seared scallop.
• Make friends with at least one of my neighbors.
• Look for Bruce Lee’s gravestone in the cemetary near Volunteer Park.
• Make friends with the Fremont Troll.
• Eat a Walla Walla onion in Walla Walla, Washington.
• Tour some Washington wineries.  Drink lots of big, juicy Syrahs.
• Hike Mt. Si.
• Eat a geoduck clam.
• Figure out if Tom Douglas is really worth all the hype.
• Learn to drive in the rain, even if other people can’t.
• Figure out this whole public transportation thing.
• Do the whole Space Needle thing.

So that is my list, at least so far.  If you don’t live here and you want to do any of these things with me, come visit!  If you do live here and you want to do any of them, call me!

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.