We decided to do a night in tonight, so I went to the Blockbuster at the bottom of the hill for the first time. This in and of itself wasn’t so amazing. What was amazing was:

1. I had my old membership card, originally gotten in the late 1980s in Newport News, VA, in my wallet, and subsequently added to membership databases in Charlottesville and Fairfax;
2. The clerk was able to use the global Blockbuster customer database to import me into the store’s local customer database with a single scan of that card, despite the fact that I hadn’t used the card since sometime in 1995.

Now that is Customer Relationship Management.

Yesterday was kind of fun, in an all-American “burn lots of gas for the holidays” kind of way. We wanted to take my oenophile in-laws to one of the local wineries. Unfortunately Chateau Ste Michelle was a victim of the morning’s high winds and was on emergency power.

We took a quick vote and decided that if the winds were still this high, it was time to go have lunch in downtown Seattle somewhere where we could see high water in Elliott Bay. After realizing the 520 floating bridge was clogged, we made the long pilgrimage around to I-90, which was experiencing some high water on the eastbound lanes, and made our way down to Anthony’s Pier 66. I had to drop them off, park the car, then walk down to a Starbucks (thank God for Starbucks) to get change for the meter. Anthony’s was good—decent shrimp gumbo (though more soup than stew) with an Orchard Street Jingle Ale on draft.

It’s nice not to have a ton of stuff to worry about today. I’ll be running to the store to get a chicken for roasting for dinner, then to the airport to pick up my folks. The sun is actually shining today for them in welcome. Should be fun.

I went to get Thai takeout tonight. After a series of errands and a long day at work, I was tired. There was a Dancing Santa doll on the front table at the Thai restaurant. With the music and chatter, I could only hear the bridge of “Jingle Bell Rock” and mistook it for an eastern Asian hymn. I stared at the Dancing Santa until I was enlightened: Dancing Santa is a Bodhisattva. It has foregone enlightenment so that I may have it.

The hostess brought me a glass of ice water. I drank deep.

My inlaws arrived this evening to start the holiday season. My parents arrive tomorrow. Blogging will be scant.

I like the way other people write about their weekends. Take Esta, for instance: I feel as though I were there.

There is a lot I could write about the concert yesterday, my Liquid Lounge debut Saturday, our dinner with Arvind and Kim afterward, even the experience of programming the remote. At the moment, though, I have to pull some things together for a 10 am meeting. And since I’m on vacation starting Wednesday, there is a lot I need to do in the next few days. Maybe later this afternoon I can do a proper update. In the meantime go read Justin’s adventures in Tokyo, and send him a note every time he says “lively.” Happy 28, Justin; I keep forgetting you’re younger than me.

All kinds of seasonal observations going on today. George points to online Advent devotionals hosted by his church. (I believe this is the first church website I’ve ever seen that has message boards.) The December 1st devotional has particularly sage advice: “Perhaps this Christmas, rather than following the cultural rules of yuletide—shopping, decoration, cards, parties, busyness, you might mark the birth of the Lord of the sabbath by acts of mercy and compassion upon those who have need.”

I could have used that advice last night as I struggled to finish decorating our tree (the one I abandoned from exhaustion on Sunday night). It took forever. Apparently new Christmas light strings are deliberately shipped as twisted masses of wire. Three hundred untwisted lights later, we started hanging ornaments. How is it that, despite only having done one Christmas tree prior to this, we had something like eight boxes of ornamental glass balls? That’s a lot of glass for one tree. Lisa likes the end result, but I’m still trying to get used to the result. I grew up with plain white lights and these are colored, which contributes to the cognitive dissonance I experience when I look at the tree (ceci n’est pas un Christmas tree, or, as David Byrne would say, “This is not my beautiful tree!”). But I think it’s growing on me.

Back to Advent devotionals. Mom sent a finding from her church’s devotional booklet: a reprint of Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather.” Mom is nothing if not au courant with happenings here in the Northwest, as our ten day long sunshine spell just broke today. It seems ironic to think about Plath in any sort of Christmas context, but this poem grabs both the catch of breath on finding the sublime in nature and the waiting through fatigue for miracles to come.

The last is probably the hardest bit. But I’m coming to realize that we all have to “[trek] stubborn through the season of fatigue” and “patch together a content of sorts.” Or as Anne Sexton writes in The Awful Rowing Towards God, “The story ends with me still rowing.” Or as Dave likes to say in a different context, “Dig we must.” After all, what’s the alternative? Whatever it is, I think waiting for the miracle beats worrying about the rough beast around the corner.

We started our holiday decorating process last Wednesday with our first trip (but not our last) to Molbak’s for poinsettias (there are 39 different varieties of the plant there right now). Saturday I spent mostly cleaning up our garage, unboxing a few things that were still in boxes, and getting our second TV in the Sun Room set up.

This afternoon Lisa and I went back to Ikea (we were there yesterday as well to get some holiday decorations and a small chair for the Sun Room) to get some shelves. On the way back we stopped at Home Depot and got a six foot “Noble Fir” Christmas tree. We bought it on faith—it was still strapped tight—but we assumed (correctly) that it was in pretty good shape. And with the straps on, I was able to take down the right half of the Passat’s back seat, lay out one of our much abused painter’s cloths, and slide the tree right in.

Getting the tree into the house was a slightly different story. I ran out of upper body strength and patience half way through sawing the bottom 1/2 inch off the tree out in our garage. Fortunately a hammer and chisel helped get the last bit off. After a lot of swearing, vacuuming and sweeping, the tree was in the stand and the needles were out of the garage.

At this point we stopped for dinner, which was a mistake in retrospect. We ran out of steam. I got one string of lights partway on the tree and then stopped. Lisa went to bed and I will follow her once I finish writing.

This is the first Christmas tree we’ve had for at least three years, since the last (or next-to-last) year we were in McLean, Virginia. I think that once we finish setting it up we’ll have succeeded in claiming another piece of this house as our home. Unfortunately that’ll have to wait until Tuesday; I have practice tomorrow night.

I’m quite tired after four days of “rest and relaxation.” I suppose this is what aging does to you. (I’ll be thirty tomorrow.)

... because the weather here is fine. Cold, maybe, but clear. For the third day in a row. Is this really Seattle in the wintertime?

I feel good this morning. I feel like I could really get some things done today. Unfortunately that makes me want to work on things around the house rather than at work. But I’ll persevere. To quote myself quoting Beck:

I’m a driver, I’m a winner. Things are gonna change, I can feel it.

Driving into work this morning, someone had airbrushed the landscape away. A diffuse glow hung over the creek bordering the park. Seattle doesn’t like to be really cold during the fall, I think. It’s happier chilly and shrouded.

I vacuumed, cursed and picked up wet leaves with my hands last night in the dark. Patches of bare mud showing through our much abused lawn. The cherry tree conspires with the maple next door to rob the grass of light. Fall has its revenge though and both huddle naked now plotting their cloaks for spring.

When I was little, the first thing I ever heard about Seattle was a Bill Cosby routine (on I Started Out as a Child) that claimed that Seattleites liked the rainy weather--that we would stay out and get rain tans, that sort of thing, and that when the sun came out we would ask, “What have we done?”

This morning I’m awfully glad to see it. The cherry tree leaves might dry out enough today to be blowable and gatherable by the time I get home. Nothing like bagging leaves in the dark (the sun is pretty much setting by 4:30 pm these days).

...that would be a good reason to not have posted for three days. As it is, I can point to our mostly-finished front bedroom, which is finally losing its green and maroon color scheme, as justification for not having written.

I started a new job at the same company yesterday. I spent the day in training, so it’s hard to tell how it went. But I will have a meeting this morning to talk about my goals, and then things will get running. I feel in some ways like this fresh start is like coming home to a skill set that I thought I’d never get to use again. In other ways, of course, I feel like I’ve given up on the other job, and that’s something I’m going to have to continue to work through.

...until I got the new site set up. But I’ll be in training today and won’t have a chance to finish the setup, so a quick update.

I’m touched by the support I’ve gotten since posting Monday about the Black Dog. I wanted to assure all of you that this is nothing sudden or intensely scary. I’m reaching the realization that there are some things that it’s better to discuss and write down than not. And I’m discovering some things about myself that I never acknowledged before. I’m going to come out of this stronger and better and that’s the important thing.

And in the meantime it’s not raining here (yet) today, and I’m going to take that as the good sign that it is and get on with this day.

Regarding what I wrote last night: I think I need to stop blogging before bed. Not that I regret what I wrote, but it honestly sounds bleaker than I meant it to. It’s honestly raining today, and somehow that makes me feel better (though it also made me get up later).

I think some small portion of this is just loneliness. Knowing that others are dealing with similar issues does make it easier to sort through it.

I should run to work now. I’ve been promised comp leave, but I have a class tomorrow so I need to do my best to clear my plate today. Then maybe Thursday or Friday I can just lay about.

Oh, my new site is almost up and running. There are a few things left to sort out, but when all is done I’ll post here with the new address. I’m so excited. The new site looks like it will actually stay running in the middle of the day....

The Cascadian Singers did a guest spot at a Saturday night Mass at St. James Cathedral in Seattle tonight. This was mostly interesting because it was only two weeks since our last show and we hadn’t had much time to to learn new music. So we did the show on one and a half rehearsals through about seven pieces. It was, I thought, overall a good show, though there were a few places where things were a little rough. But pulling off the Duruflé “Ubi Caritas“ made it a lot more worthwhile.

I know it’s been quiet here at the JH North for the last week or two. I assure you it’s been in good cause.

As I alluded last night, I’ve been a bit busy with work. The bigger picture is that I’m working on this enormous project in between switching jobs. My first position at the company was a combination of online strategy and media campaign execution. I have no experience at the latter, and learned that I’m not too good at the former when the area in question has no connection to our group’s current business and I’m working on the analysis in a vacuum. So between that, the enormous psychic upheaval of our move and my graduation, and past history, I was about due for a massive attack of the black dog. This one put me in a funk so deep that it was affecting my job performance.

I’m taking steps to correct it. I found a new position in a sister team doing media analysis, which is a combination of hardcore quant, web metrics, and product planning--much more up my alley. And I’m talking about what I’m going through. Esta, Greg, and Anil were right. It doesn’t get any better otherwise.

Today I stopped at the gas station on my way in to work. The VW Microbus (there are quite a few still on the road around here in Seattle) ahead of me had his rear engine door open and jumper cables strewn about. Ah, I thought, wet weather and old Volkswagens. Sure enough, he asked me for a jump. It took me a few minutes to find the battery under the hood of my car (give me a break, I don’t have 5,000 miles on it yet!), but we hooked it up. On the second turn of the key, his van roared back to life. I drove off to work in search of coffee. It’s not such a bad day.

A hard couple of days here. Seven hours of work yesterday at the office, about 11 today. Hopefully all for a good cause. I’m a little sore and very tired.

...just fighting a nasty cold that came on suddenly this afternoon, and buried under a pile of work. I’m also trying to minimize the amount of stuff I post to my blog in preparation for the move, but I will try to ping it daily to reassure you that I’m still alive. If you don’t see the blog updated, send out the search dogs. I’ll be the one buried alive in cold germ by-products.

Lisa comes home tonight. It’s been a really crazy week and I can’t wait to see her. I’ve been practicing all week for the first real concert that I’ll sing with the Cascadian Chorale: selected choral dances from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, with the Ballet Bellevue. It’s really different singing for the ballet. As our director points out, he’s got to remember 29 different tempi—if he’s off on the tempo, the dancer will be thrown.

I have to go straight from my performance to pick her up at SeaTac, so I guess I’ll be the only tuxedoed guy by baggage claim. Now if I can just find some roses it’ll be perfect.

Shel has been trying to tell me about Archie McPhee for a while now. Today Boing Boing pointed to them in reference to the Jesus Action Figure, so I followed their link. Now that I look at their website, I see why Shel was so insistent.

I especially dig the barista action figure (comes with multiple heads, a Tall and Grande coffee cup, and a barista apron!!). Fuzz, an action figure of a real 21-year-old McPhee employee whose general demeanor should be instantly recognizable to anyone from the Northwest, is also pretty cool.

Lisa’s off to visit her parents. I returned from dropping her off at the airport two hours ago and am skillfully procrastinating. While I batch this week, I have the joyful duty of finishing the final wallpaper cleanup myself today.

I also found another bug in iTunes2Manila, one that inexplicably failed to surface in my last round of testing. Apparently the workaround to get plaintext from a Unicode string doesn’t always work, and sometimes it gives an error instead. I hope I can get to fixing that today. Finally, though I have no feedback from my lone tester of Manila Envelope, I need to release 1.0.3b so I can get on with incorporating some new features. I’ll be spending today figuring out the revised mechanisms for drag and drop in Jaguar so that I can hopefully support Brent’s RSS clipboard format.

It’s been a pretty busy morning today. I’m still glowing from last night’s meal: grilled salmon on a bed of pureed fava beans with a lemon and chive citron-oil sauce. From the Babbo cookbook. I have to confess that I winced a bit at the price when we bought it (the day we met Mario), but so far it’s been worth every penny. Er, dollar.

After a productive day getting Manila Envelope 1.0.3a out yesterday, I haven’t done much blogging at all today because of a full workload. I am still alive though. There’s a lot to write about and only a little time in which to do it.

Dan Shafer at Eclecticity calls it “racing the aggregator.” Do you stop to write about something you see in the aggregator, knowing that you’ll fall behind as you do so and that there will be lots more things that pop up to write about?

Brent: NW OS X Dinners. “I was thinking of starting an informal thing, not a users group or anything, but semi-regular dinners with other people here in the Northwest who are OS X developers. I mean ‘developers’ in the broad sense--not just people writing desktop apps but webloggers, scripters, designers, writers, system admins, power users, and so on.” Right on!

Anita Rowland got married on Saturday! Congrats to Anita and Jack. I hope that your marriage is the best thing that ever happened to you, as Lisa has been to me.

We got Larry safely off yesterday after wandering the Public Market for a while. (In case you were wondering, the Athenian Inn is long on atmosphere and view, short on staff and food.) We decided to go to see Mario on Sunday and napped and gardened yesterday prior to going to dinner at Arvind and Kim’s. Excellent company and Indian food.

It’s raining today so it’s a good chore day. Brining a chicken for roasting later, organizing the files, laundry, transferring prescriptions from Massachusetts. Ah, domesticity.

Mario Batali will be at the Festa Italiana Seattle this weekend. I will be there to make sure Lisa doesn’t throw herself at him :). Too bad I’m bad at bocce.

Returned home late last night from Maine. This morning I was awakened (Lisa had already gone to the office) by a rapping on the wall more or less behind my head. I threw on khakis and a t-shirt and went out through the garage to see what was going on. As I opened the outside door, a squirrel ran away.

Sighing, I went back through the garage and tried to open the door, only to realize it was locked. No keys in my pocket. Thankfully we had left a window unlocked on our back porch, or I'd still be out there freezing. More trip details later.

I almost forgot until I saw Anita's post about the festivities last night. As we introduced ourselves, we talked a bit about ego surfing (Anita is the third Anita, Brent the second or third hit, Jerry the #4). I mentioned that I would always be the second Jarrett, at least as long as NASCAR remained popular and kept Dale's site highly ranked.

At this the other lady at the table (a large table in the middle of the room with a few random onlookers still seated) stirred. Putting down her drink, she said, "I'm a big NASCAR fan. My number one is Mark Martin." I said, "That's great. I guess I have to root for Cousin Dale." She asked whether I meant "Junior"; I hastened to clarify "Dale Jarrett." At this she launched into a several minute discussion of how NASCAR wasn't just popular, it was "grown from hard work"; how Martin was deserving because he had a family and young children; how old she was and how long she had been watching NASCAR; and other details. All at a fairly slow pace, not slurred, but relentless. Being less bold than Coleridge's Wedding-Guest, I couldn't stop her with a "Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eventually I figured out that nodding and smiling silently while maintaining eye contact was the best way to stop the conversation. She moved off and we got on with our meetup.

Am I a sadder and a wiser man? No, but I am still subtly troubled by the conversation. Was she desperately lonely? mentally ill? or just drunk?

Just got back from the Seattle blog meetup at the Sit 'n' Spin. Decent turnout--at the peak we had seven folks, six of whom blogged. Attendees besides me: Brent, Anita, Nat, Jerry, and C. (whose name I truncate not for privacy's sake, but because I never quite caught it across the table. Sigh. The hearing is the second thing to go, and I forget the first.) plus C.'s friend "Rusty" who was there for the poetry reading in the back room.

Interesting night. Fun discussion. After some initial effort, we kept from talking about the RSS wars, though it was hard--I don't think anyone had met a former Userland employee before. But poor C.--the rest of us spent most of the time talking about different weblog packages and programming languages. There is a difference between techbloggers and other bloggers, and I am starting to suspect that for me, at least, it's the same difference that got me beat up in elementary school. C. was the only one who had the presence of mind to write down everyone's URL; I'm sure that I've gotten at least one of the links above wrong.

Other note: I'm sure glad that Anita posted her picture on her blog; I don't know how we would have figured out how to find each other otherwise.

Between a day-and-a-half long class at work, a long rehearsal last night, and taking Lisa to the airport (she's going to Maine for Kelley's wedding), I didn't update yesterday. Did anyone miss me?

Blogging will likely be light on Friday through Sunday--I'm flying out Thursday night to follow Lisa.

Looks like we got our extra biomass cleared out just in time. It was raining this morning--for the first time in weeks--but stopped by lunchtime. Got to love Seattle. Yesterday when we were watching the Mariners game, it started raining in about the second or third inning. I learned two things: (a) the roof on Safeco Field takes about four or five batters, depending, to move over the entire field; (b) Labor Day really does mark the end of summer, in a very real way, in Seattle. They're calling for intermittent showers all the rest of this week...

Had a great dinner last night at Wasabi Bistro with a crowd of fellow MBA new hires at my company, including one who lives down the hill from us and used to work at Jack Straw Productions. Also met some folks who are working at Amazon. I tried geoduck sushi--which was sadly somewhat tasteless and a little tough. But I thought the sashimi, particularly the sockeye salmon, was excellent.

It's been a fairly turbulent seven days. I worked hard for about two months on a strategy project only to have it taken away, and am pretty much starting from scratch trying to learn about a new market, product suite, and set of job skills. I have regained a little balance over the past few days, which is critical because I have to be executing pretty hard now.

The strategy project is probably in better hands now. While I had been looking forward to going onto the next phase, we had reached a point where all the decisions needed to be made at a higher organizational level. I'm looking forward to the challenge of redefining what I can deliver and doing some execution. It's been a while.

The Seattle International Beer Festival was a good time but smaller than I expected. The main focus is international beers, meaning that the biggest representation is from importers rather than local brewers working in international styles (although there were some good examples). Brewery reps weren't on hand either. But I did meet the ops manager from RealBeer.com (and signed up for a club subscription!). Standout beers included Lindeman's Frambozenbier, a Polish porter from Ziewicz, and Harvieston's Bitter & Twisted, along with the usual excellent Belgian brews.

Lisa weeded this morning and ripped up a dead tree while I cleaned the house and cleaned up the garage. Nice having a space where you can just pound a nail into the wall or screw in a hook, hang something up, and you’re done.

We’re going to head into town to pick up some Fiano di Avellino at the Pike and Western, then stop by the Seattle International Beerfest. Looking forward to seeing if it's as good as it’s hyped, but given the number of Belgian brews it should be worth the price of admission.

Moving slowly this morning, thinking slower. Bad sign when there's an executive review in 40 minutes. We've entered the slippery slope towards fall here in Seattle: two grey days in a row, beads of water on the cars. Paying bills, drinking coffee, waking up.

We're sending my inlaws off in style tonight (their flight is tomorrow noonish) with dinner at Etta's. Looking forward to it.

Spent the day yesterday doing a lot of not much at all. Helped my mother-in-law and Lisa in the garden; took them to Ikea with us (most targeted visit ever: 45 minutes in and out), then to Ivar’s Salmon House for dinner. You can get salmon any way you like as long as it’s alder-smoked. Not a bad way to go, all things considered.

Today Lisa’s dad and I assembled the things that were purchased at Ikea yesterday while Lisa bought more stuff at Sears. Then we all basically collapsed.

This area never fails to surprise me. The morning is cool and gray here, but light. Driving in this morning the local DJ announces a request from an Internet listener in LA. The car hums up 520, almost a shame to take the freeway for such a short hop but it brings my gas mileage up to 21.5 for the trip.

Driving down 40th Street onto the Microsoft campus, traffic stops. What's going on? A line of ducks, five ducklings following their mother, are crossing from where a drainpipe emerges from the edge of campus to the wooded apartment complex on the other side. Jeff Tweedy sings "I am trying to break your heart."

CNET reported that AT&T plans to roll out higher speed cable modem connections (3Mbps down/384k up), but at something like $82 a month I wonder if it's the best bandwidth for the buck solution. What are other people out there doing for big pipes?

Right now there is a new “Reflex Silver” Volkswagen Passat sitting in my driveway. It’s not the one I bought yesterday, though.

I had a great experience through most of the buying experience with this dealer, who shall remain nameless. The woman who followed up my request through Autobytel, M., was extremely helpful and very low pressure, but persistent, and I finally got myself around to the dealership yesterday afternoon. I decided that the standard 1.8 liter turbo four-cylinder engine would do just fine for us, and called Lisa so she could help me decide between cloth and leather seats. After deciding that the leather seats had perceptibly better upper back and neck support for Lisa, we did the paperwork, returned the Company Rental Car (the Alero is a fine vehicle, but I was ready to see the end of it), and were ready to go.

This is where we hit the snag. Sitting in the “Reflex Silver” Passat GLS that we settled on, M. walked us through the controls. Showing me the instrument cluster, she said, “And here is the windshield wiper control.” She clicked it and a blade went across the windshield. “Huh,” I said. “I didn’t know the Passat had a single wiper like the Volvo and Mercedes do.”

She said, “Oh my god! Where’s the other blade?” Somehow along the way to the lot, someone had broken off the wiper arm near the motor. Unfortunately, the dealership shop was already closed for the weekend. M. was embarrassed, apologetic. Could they give us a loaner car until Monday and pay for us to have dinner out?

We reluctantly assented—I had been looking forward to driving off the lot in my first new car since I sold my Golf in 2000. We got out of my car and looked at it. Forlornly. Then M. pulled up in another reflex silver Passat—a top of the line W8. The owner’s current show model. Would this do?

It would do nicely. We hopped in, dropped Lisa’s car at home, and headed for Etta’s. Oysters on the dealer!!! :)

…or just about everything. Lisa got a call from Delta saying they would bring her bag by later tonight. The plumbers are all but finished—just some touch up work in the bathroom they were remodeling. I may get a car this weekend. My DVD-ROM drive has been replaced in my laptop (more on that below). Feeling pretty good, if a little tired.

…I was right about the size of the cabinet I got. All my CDs fit—after I went through and culled the collection a bit. (BTW, if you know me personally and are interested in the discards, email me and I’ll put a list together; otherwise, they’ll probably go to the local record shop.)

I stayed up until later than I should have last night and got all the jazz, classical, world music, and miscellany filed, leaving the rock for this morning. I was hoping I wouldn’t get much of a chance to finish them before the cable guy came to hook us up with digital (yay!), but I’m still waiting…

Customer service this afternoon at Ikea was pretty good, though it did take about half an hour to get me the right part from the other warehouse and bring it over. Bringing it home, I proceeded to start assembly. I managed to go for about two hours during which I assembled the bulk of the cabinet proper, except the butcher block countertop piece which tops the cabinet—I started the screws but was unable to finish screwing them in owing to poor upper body strength (the holes weren’t pre-drilled). I’ll have to dig out my electric screwdriver and see if I can make any progress.

By way of contrast, Lisa and I purchased an inexpensive small buffet at Crate and Barrel yesterday. I brought it home and had it out of the box and assembled in about ten minutes. I think Crate and Barrel could do a pretty good job of eating Ikea’s lunch if it really wanted to—and if it could get the capital to ramp up to that level of production and that big a product line.

Funny article about Seattle driving “etiquette.” Lots of funny gripes about clueless drivers, including:

• When it is raining, look over to the side of the road. If you are traveling faster than pedestrians, slow down.
• If you see a giant ball of flame, that is the sun. It will not hurt you, but slow down, just to be sure.

Of course, as a recent Boston driver, I have to ask: why the fuss? After all, Seattle has broad, well marked, well maintained streets and drivers that can actually see, that yield right of way, that don’t treat running down pedestrians as a competitive sport, and who don’t knock bumpers with another car as a way to say “hi” …

I'll be trying to get some actual work done today, so don't expect too much in the way of blogging.

Ben Hammersley: Whereever I lay my URL. Ben, a writer for O’Reilly, woke up one morning and realized that geography didn’t matter in his job. So he and his wife moved to Florence and cut their cost of living in half. Bastard. :)

That’s me, someday, maybe. Then again, moving off the east coast is traumatic enough. Lisa has one of those “geography independent” jobs, but it’s not always that simple. If you’re not a totally independent producer, like a writer or independent software developer, you have to have a really high level of trust with your coworkers to make it happen. I don’t take what Lisa is doing for granted for a second, though I don’t tell her that often enough.

[Thanks for the link, Doc.]

I continue to work on our move this morning. Last night’s discovery: Geico (which does not provide homeowners’ insurance but acts as an agent) can’t provide homeowners’ insurance because of the age of our house. So begins a fun tour of insurers’ pages.

First discovery: no online quotes at Met Life. Not even a master number to call—instead an “agent finder.” Second: there are some scary looking sites out there. Example: homeowners-insurance-rates-quote.com. Looks reasonably official, but with a URL like that and no explanation of who owns the site, it’s a little sketchy looking. And yet it’s the number one hit on Google for “homeowners insurance.” Insure.com recommends Amica, who have a really slow loading page...and who crashed my browser when I tried to print our quote. Boy howdy, is this fun.

I spent the morning signing papers and looking in Sears at appliances. I hadn't realized you could spend $2000 on a fridge!!! Fortunately the one in the house looks like it'll hang in for a while.

I then went on to visit the Experience Music Project. In a freaky multicolored Frank Gehry building beside the Space Needle, the EMP is responsible for a lot of the funding of KEXP and is a huge museum of rock and roll. Cool points: including Sleater-Kinney and other more recent artists alongside Hendrix. Uncool points: didn't really want to see Britney's "Slave" costume.

Killing time in an internet cafe. My flight doesn't take off until 7 but I'm probably going to head back to the airport anyway. I'm too tired to think of doing anything else.

All in all, I think Day 2 of our househunting extravaganza went pretty well. I won’t go into details about part of the day for fear of jinxing; let’s just say I’m hopeful that we’re pretty close to a key point in the process. I can say that we found some very… interesting properties, including one gorgeous remodeled 1950s era custom house with a great roof deck view, that was unfortunately surrounded by dumps; and a 1960s era house that appeared to still be inhabited by its original owners and had the red shag carpet and the bathroom decorated in early New Orleans bordello to prove it.

Maybe some different news tomorrow.