Our Place

Well, how silly of me.  Here I am, talking about the cool things going on around the neighborhood and espousing the virtues of Ikea, and I haven't even talked about one of the more important aspects of our move:  our apartment!

I had a few people ask me to put up pictures of the place when we first moved in, but I did my best to stall.  Mostly because it looked a bit like this:

In other words, it was a total mess!  But that's to be expected, I suppose.  With all of the moving and boxes and mess and all...  The real problem, though, was our complete lack of furniture.  No desks (the card table definitely wasn't going to accommodate both of us), no bed, no ... anything!

That all changed a couple of days later after we went to Ikea (which I promise I won't mention again unless I get some sort of sponsorship) and started to get unpacked and settled in.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we bought a couple of desks and a mattress, and the place started to look a little better.  Until we get more furniture, this is what the place looks like now:

The computer room.

The bedroom and closet.

Last but not least, the kitchen!

I did mention that the place was pretty small, didn't I?  If you'll notice, I made sure at least part of the bed was in every shot just to give some sense of scale.  And I guess I didn't get any pictures of the corner that has the door and the refrigerator, but ... you get the idea.

You may also notice that I didn't mention the bathroom.  That's mostly because there isn't one.  Not in the traditional "my apartment comes with its very own bathroom" sort of way.  You see, three of the other apartments on our floor are also tiny-ass studios with no bathroom, so we share one!  Or, more accurately, one bathroom and two individual shower rooms.  It's really not as bad as it sounds (unless you wake up in the middle of the night with a very sudden urge to pee).  They get cleaned fairly regularly, and not by me.  That's right ... I don't have to clean a bathroom ever.  And since we only share it with three or four other people, it's rarely occupied when you need it.  Yeah, it does get a little gross every now and then, but I've certainly suffered much worse.  And did I mention that I never have to clean it?

There are a couple of other neat things about our place.  First and foremost is the location.  Moving up here from so far away, we really didn't know a whole lot about the neighborhoods themselves.  As it turns out, Queen Anne is a pretty cool place!  We're close to Seattle Center, which is kind of touristy, but there are always cool things going on.  We can walk to three different grocery stores, tons of restaurants, and if we want to go downtown, we can either walk (if we're feeling spunky ... it's about a mile and a half) or take the Seattle Center Monorail.

Neither one of us have really utilized the other neat thing about our place yet.  Our building has a back yard!  Complete with a deck that has a BBQ grill, a smoker, and a picnic table!  Not to mention a couple of shady little corners for reading or getting cozy with your portable gaming device of choice, I suppose.  I don't have any pictures of the back yard yet, but I'll take a few once I actually go check it out.  Which I'll probably do sometime over the next couple of days...  It gets a little warm in here sometimes!

Come to think of it, I don't have any pictures of the outside of our place either, but I do have this Google street view thing I can share.  It's been painted since the last time the Google car has been by.  It's now a nice shade of blue with off-white trim.  Very classy.  Our apartment is the second floor place on the right, in case you feel like coming by and throwing stuff through our windows.  Hehehe...

While you're at it, take a little Google tour around the neighborhood.  Who knows?  You might decide you want to come on up and be our neighbor, too!

Seafair!

From Olympus, the gaze of Neptune, King of the Sea, turns to the western margin of the oceans — just north of the forty-seventh degree of latitude — the eyes of Neptune trace the course of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

In the days of summer, Neptune approached Jupiter to request: “Brother and Chief, I beseech you to grant me liberty to hold a carnival for those who love the sea in the seaport of my choice — Seattle, where dwell on seven hills a salty citizenry who pledge their allegiance as Loyal Subjects of King Neptune. Here, in this Port of Pleasure, I will bid welcome all the mortals of the Seven Seas.”

Neptune, King of the Seas then declared: “Each year during the seventh month, shall begin a grand and glorious summer festival for the purpose of celebrating the bountiful wealth and beauty which has been bestowed upon the port city of Seattle: the emerald in the crown of my beloved Pacific Northwest. This festival shall be called Seafair.”

Presiding over Seafair as his representative on earth, was designated a man and woman of honor and accomplishment, King Neptune Rex and Queen Alcyone. They protected the city from Captain Kidd and his rowdy band of Pirates. The Seafair Pirates, Captain Kidd and Davy Jones annually storm Alki Beach and battle King Neptune and his Royal Court in a theatrical display of swashbuckling sword play for control of the Seafair Festival.

Captain Kidd, Davy Jones and the boisterous buccaneers’ attempts to capture the Seafair Festival are successful. However, in a summertime gesture of goodwill on Torchlight Parade Night, Davy Jones and Captain Kidd reach an accord with King Neptune and agree to be Royal Protectors of the Seafair Festival and dubbed Seafair Guests of Honor.

To personify the goodness and pageantry of the celebration, a Miss Seafair was selected from among the most talented and charitable young women of Seattle’s surrounding communities. And from these communities rose a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and flavors — Seafair!

To appeal to the diverse nature and interests of the salty citizenry, the festivities included games of sport and skill, pomp and ceremony, and celebrations of heritage and culture. To inspire laughter, there were the court jesters — Seafair Clowns. There was jubilation, music, dancing, art and parades with flourish of trumpet, with beat of drums, with flying colors, a glittering toast to their lives so enriched by the sea.

Neptune further proclaimed: “Seattle shall open her arms to visitors during Seafair time. My festivals shall be a display of warmth and community spirit. All worldly cares shall be put away and smiles and celebration shall reign.”

Thus spoke Neptune, and so began the annual tradition of Seafair, premier festival in the Northwest for all people to enjoy.

The Legend of Seafair...  Before we went to the parade that was getting ready to happen down the street, I found this on the official Seafair website.  Legends like this always make fairs seem more fun.  It adds a bit of imagination and "history" to the celebrations.

And so we walked down the street (about three blocks) to the staging area of the parade.  Several of the floats representing the huge international community in Seattle were here waiting for the call to be given for the parade to officially begin.

We continued on our way down the street to find a good spot to watch the parade, finding a place in the shadow of the Space Needle.  Before too long, the parade started.  The various floats celebrated the cultural diversity of the city itself and displayed the festival royalty of the surrounding communities.  There was also a prominent showing of the festival clowns and pirates and, of course, marching bands!

But, instead of just trying to describe the parade itself ... some pictures!

Marching band from Calgary

One of my favorite parts of the parade: a marching band made up entirely of old people!

Firefighters with bagpipes?  Yes, please!

Mexican dancing horses.

Seafair clowns!

The China Town Dragon Team, another one of my favorite parts of the parade.

Overall, the parade was ... well, it was a parade!  It was a lot of fun, and I think I learned a thing or two about Seattle and the surrounding areas.  One thing is for sure, I'm definitely looking forward to next year's Seafair!

The First Days

Hm.  It seems I've been a little lazy about blogging this week.  I should probably try to remedy that problem.  The adventures keep piling up, and I haven't even written about our first days in town yet!  I suppose I should get on it...

The first day, we got into town a little too early to get the keys to our place.  We drove around the neighborhood a bit before we decided to head to Ikea.  We knew we were going to need some furniture for our new abode eventually, and we had a few hours to kill.  Why not check out this nearly mythical store of awesome everyone keeps talking about?

So, with the car still heaped full of our stuff and the help of our trusty Tom Tom, we pulled into the Ikea parking lot.  At first, the store was a bit overwhelming and terribly confusing.  What the hell were all of these "bin number" tags on everything, and why did every piece of furniture come in eight separate pieces?!  Once we made it through the lab rat maze that was the showroom floor, though, it was pretty easy to figure out.  We found ourselves in the self-service warehouse, where all of the aisle/bin numbers actually represented something.  And why did everything come in eight separate pieces...?  Because of the modular nature of their furniture, the same legs or shelf pieces or what have you can be used for several different models.  Ingenious! Or at least I thought so.  I'm very easily impressed...

We didn't have any room in the car to buy anything at the time, so we did some pricing and a bit of aimless wandering.  By the time we were done acting like stupid Ikea tourists, it was almost 4.  We figured it was about time to head back toward the apartment.  We thought we might get back early, but if we did, it would give us time to do some more wandering around the neighborhood.

I'd heard that traffic in Seattle was pretty bad, but that the worst of it was along the east-west corridors.  Coming into the city from the south along I-5 pre-rush hour, I figured we would be okay.  And this is where I was very, very wrong.  The roughly 19 mile trip from the Ikea store back to our apartment took around an hour and a half, most of that time being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic just a few miles out of downtown proper.  And this was only the first time.

So ... for those of you planning on coming to visit us?  Plan on doing a lot of walking, maybe a bit of bus riding.  I don't think I've moved my car for a week.  As bad as the traffic is, the parking situation is worse...

The next day, after much car unloading and a trip to Target, we went back to Ikea.  For a mattress and a couple of desks mostly but also ... for lunch!  That's right.  No trip to Ikea is complete without eating some Swedish meatballs in their restaurant.  For less than five dollars, you get a pile of meatballs, mashed potatoes, and a dab of lingonberry preserves.  There are other things,too ... fish and chips, pizza, salads, desserts, but ... those meatballs are damn good!

Annnnd there I go, going on about food again.  I do love a good meal!

After getting stuck in traffic again, we spent the rest of the night and most of the next day in and around the apartment.  We slept on our Ikea mattress, which (even though at this point it's only a mattress on the floor) is one of the most comfortable beds I've ever had the pleasure of sleeping in.  We unpacked and settled in a bit.  And we discovered how little room we have for stuff in our tiny little apartment, pictures of which are coming soon, I promise!

Saturday afternoon, we started hearing a bunch of weird noise coming from the direction of the Seattle Center, which is just a couple of blocks south of us.  Mostly odd bursts of what sounded like Middle-Eastern or Indian music.  There was an innumerable amount of cars circling the neighborhood looking for places to park.  Something was either going on or about to happen!

We scoured the internet and found out about Seafair, a summer-long festival in Seattle and the surrounding communities celebrating he diversity and bounty of the sea and the Puget Sound area.  There would be car shows, Thunderboat races, cultural festivals, air shows, U.S. Navy ships, and ... parades!

And that was what was getting ready to happen just down the street.  The 62nd Annual Torchlight Parade!

In my next entry, I'll post pictures of the parade and talk about our first big voyage outside of our neighborhood on foot: over Queen Anne hill and into Fremont!