A fast paced week

Sheesh, seems like we've been in Seattle longer than five days.

Amy has spent three days looking for houses. That is not going well at all. While we were ready for high prices (having spent 12 years in the Chicago area), what we weren't expecting is what you DON'T get for all that money. Seems that all the nice views of mountains and water comes with a price: turns out that DIRT is damn valuable here. People talk of lots in terms of feet by feet (as in "90 ft by 80 ft"), rather than in acres. Good news is that Seattle is pretty small geography wise (meaning you can get anywhere really quickly), and there's not much traffic to speak of, at least relative to Chicago.

So we've resigned ourselves to owning a piece of propery that can be mowed with a pair of scissors. Good news is that there are a lot of good areas to live; in fact, there are few, if any, bad areas outside of the city of Seattle itself. And even within Seattle there are a number of attractive areas. Amy's doing a great job of understanding the area. In fact, as she told me... "do you REALLY want to take care of a big yard when it rains every day?" Good point.

Spencer has been loading up on Star Wars legos. I must say, he has some cool stuff (I particularly like the Darth Vader Transformation. He has adjusted very well; has not asked to "go home" once, and refers to our apartment as home.

Looks like the closing date on our house will be June 7th. Not as early as we would have liked, but we're thrilled to have gotten it sold as quickly as we did.

Work is great already. Love the job (as overwhelming as it is being a new guy and trying to come up to speed on the complexity that is Amazon.com... that they tame all that complexity and keep it from the public is amazing!), and the people I'm interacting with are a great help. Really looking forward to the day that I feel like I understand what I'm up against.

My office (next to Qwest and Safeco Fields) is about a mile from our apartment, and I've been walking it every day. Even with the short commute I have only made it home once at a decent hour this week.

I did get broadband up and running last night; but I stupidly failed to pack my access point, so I have to swap the Ethernet cable back and forth between my personal laptop (when Amy's using it) and my work laptop. And the XBox is sitting on a moving van, so no Friday night XBox Live for me =(

Garrett is growing up very fast! We got him a "stand-up play thingy" (basically a walker that doesn't move) and he loves it. He is starting to grab things, and will push buttons to make noise. He even rolled over for the first time our first night in Seattle, and has done so almost every night. And thankfully he still sleeps through the night. Saturday he will be four months already.

Haven't done much sightseeing yet. Saturday we plan to head to the Pike Street Market and spend a good deal of time there, both as tourists and as shoppers. It's only three blocks from where we live.

My car is here already (BOO YA!), but Amy's is still stuck in Illinois. Go figure. I'll tell you this: there are some STEEP hills in Seattle, and I am not looking forward trying to get my car up Madison street in a 6-speed!

Will try to post some pictures tonight...