Seattle Pride was this weekend. We managed to get to the parade in time despite the previous nights bar hopping (the route passes about 4 blocks from the temp housing). Like monkeymodulator, several of the family groups made me all teary. PFLAG got a huge round of applause. My favorite part of the parade was probably the woman marching with her Catholic church members with a sign that read "My gay son is a gift from God".. and behind her? Her son with a sign reading "The best mother a gay man could ever ask for".

It was great to see how involved a HUGE number of the people in the Seattle community were - people of all stripes. It made me even happier to see just how many CHURCHES marched in the parade or were involved in the festival. Catholic, Methodist, Pagans, Jews, First Church of Christ, Unitarians, Athiests... I honestly think the church groups might have out numbered any other category. The flying spaghetti monster float even made an appearance.

( Also.. The Seattle Goths had their own float with a giant bat on the front =) )

The Seattle Center festivities were PACKED with people including lots and lots of families. We actually took off pretty early. It was wall to wall people and we were both sunburnt.

I'm kicking myself about the burn. I should know better. I am currently aloe'd and bought sunblock to wear daily from now on.

The cloudy thing you hear about Seattle? It doesn't happen in the summer. It just fools people with jobs. It's often overcast in the morning till around 9am when everyone has to go inside to work... and then it's gorgeous and 70 out all day until around 6.

Actually, it's still gorgeous today. Not a cloud in sight.

In other news, I'm feeling really happy to have been able to have been a part of the Lansing community even if I didn't get to know everyone as well as I should have. I really should 'friend' more of them here on LJ but I always worry I'm intruding... but I digress...

In the last week a friend of ours went missing and people came out of the woodwork to help make sure she was safe and help her family. (She's home and safe now btw). Then this morning I woke to the sad news that a Lansing friend's kitty had passed away. She was about 20 years old and quite the force of feline personality. I knew her for about ten years, and she felt like another member of the community. She was well loved and will be missed.

During the day I've again watched the Lansing community reach out to help and support one of their own who need it. I feel lucky to have been able to get to know such great, caring people who are willing to reach out to others.

Suddenly find myself giggling all over again about the sight from the other night. Two INCREDIBLY drunk rock'a'billy girls (there's lots of them here) on the sidewalks of Belltown. One had fallen out of her shoe. Between the two of them, and a lot of shrieking, they still couldn't remedy the shoe situation.

It's awesome but it made me very weepy. At several points.

We ventured down to the Fremont Solstice Parade today.

( YOU GAVE THEM A PERMIT?! )

In other news: WE HAVE CHOSEN AN APARTMENT!

( Read more... )

Today was spent reworking my resume and some other job hunt things. Little to no progress on the housing front, but I'm going to go scout a place out tomorrow, and possibly go talk to the place we were interested in before once monkeymodulator gets out of work.

Tonight we headed out to Seattle Net Tuesday for 'Non Profit Extreme Makeover' - basically geeks in a room giving tech advice/help to local non profits. Pretty awesome. This city appears chocked full of very smart, progressive people.

I got some great job hints from a few people tonight which was nice. I think I'll keep up with the group.

I haven't a clue about the bus system yet really so I walked which was nice because I got to see the better chunks of the neighborhood and people-watch the tourists.

On the way home we stopped at Serious Pie. It's fabulously tasty. This is not your greasy bar night pizza. It's ... well it's awesome and the crust is possibly even the best part.

Headed to bed as soon as the critter can take her 2nd med. Soo sleepy. Cleaning people might be here tomorrow which means I'll need to find a coffee house or something because I don't think I can just sit at my computer while someone dusts around me. It's weird.

(CNN) -- The preliminary hearing of anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder was delayed until June 30 after his attorney requested a continuance in a Kansas court Tuesday, CNN affiliate KSNW reported.

Dear CNN -

I'm pretty sure the moment you (allegedly although from his statements it sounds like he totally admits it) SHOOT AND KILL someone over your belief, I think you stop being an "activist" and make that jump to being a "TERRORIST".

If a bunch of radical hippies that torch property, but don't cause any deaths are "domestic terrorists" I'm pretty sure the psycho who opens fire in a church should count as one as well.

Even if you're from the other side of this debate, I don't know that you call that "activism" exactly...

Ok. Back to updating the resume.

Today is the first day I've been in Seattle where we actually got "seattle" weather. Overcast and cool although actually it's quite nice to walk around in - especially with the hills. Looking forward to getting in better shape.

Went wandering about yesterday and found out why I see so many utilikilt wearing men in the city - Utilikilt has a storefront here. Even some of the tour guides wear 'em.

Breakfast was at CJ's Eatery - tomato, spinach and havarti omelet. Nomnomnom. Busy, but I've waited long in Ann Arbor before.

We're waiting to finish up the critter medications and then going to maybe head over to Capitol Hill to browse the neighborhood again.

I'm really liking our temp apartment, although the balcony scares the crap out of me, but I think Belltown is not for us. Has lots of restaurants, etc but I think it's missing some of the neighborhood daily living perks. It's tough. I go back and forth constantly.

Starting to get slightly back to normal for sleep. Woke up at 9am again, still tired but I feel a little better than yesterdays super sleepieness. Shawboy was nice enough to invite us out last night but I was uber tired so we made cheap dinner and watched a movie.

Slumdog Millionaire is awesome btw.

We made it! We're settling into Seattle. The drive was long but it's done! Driving through the mountains was cool. Also - Washington state has a huge chunk of desert!? How did I not know this!? It was pretty cool. monkeymodulator saw a coyote in a watering hole but sadly I missed it.


We've gotten checked into our temp housing. It's almost too nice - it looks like real adults live here minus the ferret goodies all over.


We had dinner at this funky little bar called Rendevouz that's been operating since the 20's - it has an attached theater and used to be very busy with film industry people apparently. Took a walk down to Olympic sculpture park and the water front and then up to Queen Anne to rent a video and pick up some very basic groceries before walking back. Spent a long time in Safeway trying to figure out if the woman talking to herself was using a blue tooth headset or was really nuts. Still not sure.

All I've managed to accomplish since we got back was browse the internet and let Maxine out in the apartment for the first time. Miss ferret is currently asleep in her sleep sack in the corner. I'm happy to discover the door to our (dangerous for a ferret) patio can be tipped in, like a window, allowing in air without allowing the ferret out. I only took one step out there myself. 8 floors up is scary.


monkeymodulator is finding cool happenings right now... which is awesome and exhausting at the same time. Lots going on in the town but I'd like to take a nap first. Have to manage to stay awake for 3 more hours (ferret meds).

We have Slumdog Millionaire rented. Wonder if I can stay awake to watch it.

Third time Maxine has demanded to be let out. At least it's light out now. ( Read more... )

I have returned to civilization!

Day 3 we made it up to Hardin MT. Not great progress but we made some stops.

Because the signs made us do it, we stopped at Wall Drug. I will post the photos - quite amusing. Also - amazingly good fresh maple donut. OMG. It's huge. It's wacky. It must be experienced.

The badlands & black hills are indeed cool looking. We drove under cloud cover all day but it actually turned out to be kind of a cool effect.

We did a side jaunt to go see Mt. Rushmore as well. As it turned out, it was drizzling and SUPER FOGGY up there so I only saw a little of Washington when the wind picked up and ended up feeling cold the rest of the day. I also learned that driving up to Mt. Rushmore leaves me a little queasy. On the plus side, watching mist come pouring out of the mountain as you drive through the twisty roads? Awesome.

No drive through wilderness park this time. We were already behind schedule.

We stopped short of our goal of Billings MT but we got a good deal on a suite so that worked out.

Day 4 was much more productive as far as driving goes. Lots of great Montana scenery and some fun/scary driving through the mountains. I took some photos but since they're from the car, I'm sure they won't be stellar.


At a rest stop near the MT border Miss Maxine managed to knock out her other front top fang. =( She was rattling her bars and it popped out and she coughed it up onto her ramp in her cage. It doesn't seem to be bothering her too much. She's eating/drinking so I expect like the other one I'll just need to watch for infection. We need to go get a new vet ASAP when we get to Seattle so I can have it looked at then. Sigh. Poor girl. She's getting pretty tired of her cage. She woke me up this morning in the hotel an hr before the alarm went off having a major throwing stuff and cage rattling tantrum. I attempted to ignore her but she just kept getting worse. She'll be happy tomorrow when this is done.

She settled in well tonight. Did two quick surveys of the whole hotel room, stuffed her little (fangless) face, got a huge drink and then asked for a boost into her hammock and immediately fell asleep. She's very happy to be out of the car.

Dinner rocked. We stopped in Missoula (a college town) and monkeymodulator spotted THAI FOOD. They even had a VEGAN MENU. I lvoe college towns.

We stopped in Spokane WA tonight, which it turns out has a water fall. We took a stroll down to the river front park to check it out. It's nice although weirdly like disney world.

Also - Sonic makes a pretty good banana shake. Dinner of champions.

Tomorrow is the last stretch of the drive. Note to anyone who tried to contact me. Cell service for AT&T goes out around Wall Drug and returns somewhere around Spokane.

Sleep. Tomorrow is another exciting day of the car!

Actually I am excited to finally see some more of my new state.

We stopped in Brandon SD last night around 2:30 MI time thinking it might be cheaper than the cluster of hotels just up the road in Sioux Falls. I don't think it was. We ended up at a Holiday Inn Express that's way to expensive. OMG did I sleep well on their bed though (minus waking up once to check on a squeakin' ferret). There is apparently a water slide inside the hotel which would be fabulous if 1. I had thought to bring a swimsuit and 2. I had the time to swim. I may try and grab a suit incase the next to nights have pools but I doubt we really have time.

Check in was amusing last night. We had to bring the cage in upthe stars through a door farthest from our room and sneak it through the halls. They might allow pets here but we didn't ask.

It didn't make up for the cost but free breakfast was a nice touch. Just left the cage up here and ate without worrying about leaving her in the car.

Today hopefully we can hit Mt. Rushmore on the way through, although it's pretty overcast so there might not be much to see.

Maxine is enjoying seeing new hotel rooms and really likes the pillows here. She spent the first half of the driving yesterday unable to get comfy enough to sleep. She had her butt on her cube and the front half was standing but her head and eyelids kept drooping. She finally figured it out eventually, got onto of the cube and slept pretty solidly through most of the evening drive though.

monkeymodulator took our picture out in front of a cheese shop in WI with a giant mouse statue. I should d/l some of the photos off my camera and get them up on flickr.

We have mad plans to sample "pies across america". We picked up some apple pie from a 'family restaurant' last night but forgot to bring it in so it'll have to be lunch.

Having the car less full of stuff was wonderful.

Another full day of driving. I would have mad plans to make us quit earlier today and hopefully get an earlier start from now on but Maxine's med schedule is wonky so I'd have to stay up anyways.. although I suppose eventually the 3 hr time difference will help me out there.

We got done with the house at 11:30ish last night and decided to just go ahead and start out, even though we wouldn't make it too far. The idea of sleeping on a bed instead of the floor was pretty apealing.

It's amazing what people grabbed out of the free pile we left by the dumpster. The ratty pink chair? REALLY? Yay for re-use though!

We were bad. We totally left the dresser and the desk in the house. And the stuff that should be disposed of carefully (paint etc). We didn't remember what our security deposit was so it can't be that impressive.

I managed to optimize the weasel travel cage - naturally she chooses to ride most often at the highest point in the cage where she might fall off her shelf. Sigh.

She slept most of the way last night and found the hotel room pretty interesting. Poor girl was a little nauseous last night after her meds. Didn't eat enough during the day. I'll be slipping her some more kibble this morning before we leave to try and fix that. The last thing we need is for her to go off her food now.

monkeymodulator is running to the post office right now to take some boxes to ship to us. Our massive box of "shred this" was too much for our shredder and it smoked WAY too much and took WAY too long to burn in the community BBQs so we're mailing that, my old Toshiba we forgot to recycle, and a big binder I have from Smartgirl to our temp housing. If only we'd thought of that yesterday when he was there to ship Ebay items!

We should have much more room in the car today. That freakin box was way to big for a car with one giant ferret travel cage, one ferret, two plants, and two people.

Debating this morning.. do we take 90 or 94? Hrmm.. I kind of want to take 90 since it'll swing through the Badlands, and close to Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone so if we decide we CAN afford the time we can do those a little bit.

OK. Must go wipe down the weasel cage, etc and get ready for our first full road day. Might quit early tonight. Little sleep and we want to get on a better schedule.

Huh.. my LJ client is being weird. Better copy this before I hit send.

Maxine is "helping" me pack her things by grabbing her favorite toys out of the pile "to pack" and stashing them around the room behind various other piles of "to mail out" or "to donate". Now she's napping in the box I need to put things in..

Went out with UM friends and a few imports last night and had a lot of fun. My LIS friends call their nights waaay to early though. Today we're headed to Lansing in a few minutes to have food with my dad and wendigovegan.

Our plan is now to leave tomorrow afternoon. We need to finish sweeping up, take some Ebay sales to the post office, a bit more cleaning and drop off some donations/recycling/toxic disposal stuff.

Camping out on our wood floor hasn't been great but we're getting used to it. It'll make whatever hotel we manage to find the first night seem pretty nice... hopefully.

No housing decisions as of yet. We haven't heard back from the one we're haggling with. Might go back to re-check out one I liked in Capitol Hill.

Tonight, if we get back early enough we've been invited to a friends new place to see people, and monkeymodulators brother just got into town. Hopefully we could possibly recruit him to help us move the GIANT ASS DRESSER out of here. Sadly, we don't have any tools to just dismantle it. Should've just asked the movers if they'd take it to the dumpster.

Maxine seems to find the transformed house pretty interesting. She's been very active although some of that has been neurotically re-checking on her Kong repeatedly. I had to search the couch 5 times before we donated it to find the Kong. Without a couch to hide it in she's been sticking it in Josh's laundry.

It's about time to head out. Hopefully I can update along the road.

Movers have come and gone. They were amazing. I never want to move without them again.

Waking up on a blanket on the floor in an empty house is kind of melancholy though.

If we weren't getting a full pack service.. we just wouldn't make it. Even this before-pack stuff isn't going to all get done before they show up.. in like.. 4-5 hrs. Ugh

Friday - Stuff gets packaged for shipping & loaded. Sleep on floor
Saturday - J's parents come to town to get w/d. Try and see Ann Arbor Friends. Sleep on floor
Sunday - Brunch with my family. Sleep on floor
Monday - Start driving to WA bright and early.

The good news, is that Maxine doesn't notice at all when I use a little lancet on her trying to test her blood sugar. She just keeps licking ferretone off her belly. (I tried it on myself before I did it to her. Can't feel a thing either.)

The bad news is she doesn't bleed enough to actually get a sample.

There's another monitor on the market that uses less blood but we have the one my vet uses and said was accurate. This probably means I have to do the cut the toenail back too short method. Ugh. =( THAT she will notice.

Maybe I should ask about this other one.

She's quite happy with the afternoon. Lots of ferretone for some unknown reason to her.

We've returned and mostly recovered from the red eye flight home. urban_exotic brough Miss Maxine home from Lansing for me so I got to get a couple hours of sleep.

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We made it after a massive delay to Seattle.

We were supposed to leave at 9:30 am on Weds. Plane was a little slow to leave and GRR they did NOT have assigned seats for us so we almost got bumped!? Got crap seats nowhere near eachother and in the tail (bounce bounce barf). Pushed back from the gate aaaand... proceeded to sit on the runway for an hour and a half due to a parking break problem. Waited for a part.. did't fix it... got deplaned.

Luckily, a few people on our VERY full flight got on a different airline in order to make aconnection to Tokyo on time so when we asked, a very nice gate agent found us some seats in the same row, on either side of the aisle, 4 seats behind 1st class, IN AN EXIT ROW.

Holy crap the whole exit row thing rocks. I heart it a lot. Space for my legs and nearly no clausterphobia!

The flight was ok. Sitting in the first plane FOREVER was the best exposure therapy ever. I was so impatient to leave and bored the flight didn't freak me out very bad at all. Mostly I got really bored because I finished Golden Compass with about 2 hrs left to go, and the second book was stowed over my head and I didn't want to open the bin and clock somebody with falling luggage. (One downside to exit row - no seat in front of you for stuff storage).

I spent an hour of the trip singing the Buffy musical songs, in my head, in order just to pass the time.

When we got in finally got in our luggage wasn't there. Josh had watched them loading it from the first plane to the other and somewhere along the way a manager had come out, told them to stop and just get the plane going. Sigh. The line to file a claim took longer than loading the rest of the bags would've. All told we spent about 12 hrs in planes/airports and got in at 9pmish MI time. Bags showed up the next AM.

Our hotel is AWESOME. We're up on the 19th floor overlooking Eliott Bay and the mountains. My ears pop whenever we go down the elevator . We're right downtown. I try not to look down.

We made it in time to our first two apartment appointments. Sadly no major luck on that front yet. We're going to have some serious motivation to purge things when we get back because so far they've all been much smaller then the two living floors of our place.

I think we're definately going to focus on Capitol Hill now, althoughshawboy Ballard isnt' ruled out. Both have lot of "It's Ann Arbor.. but BIGGER" features I like. =)


shawboy gave us a whirlwind tour our first night. Saw all the great lookouts around the city. Also ate at a great italian place in Ballard. Somewhere on the way back to the hotel I actually fell asleep in the rental car. I was exhausted apparently.. and it was like..3am MI time.

Yesterday was some more apartment hunting, along with Pike Place Market with a great grilled cheese, AND we went to the Seattle Independent Film Festival to see 'The Garden' - a documentary about the South Central LA community farm and it's drama. It was really good and it felt great to sit.

I now know why Seattle is one of the fittest cities in the US. Holy crap the hills. HUGE hills. I'm not sure it isn't hillier than San Francisco. When you visit, bring sneakers, bus money and be warned.

I actually can kind of see why they freak out about an inch of snow now.

Oh.. it's true btw. DOGS EVERYWHERE. Seattle <3's itself some dogs. Lots of apartments have dog runs up on the roof including one we liked best so far (for other reasons) with a whole "off leash area" up there.

Oh dinner last night was vegetarian restaurant #1.. 'Bamboo Garden'. ALL VEG CHINESE FOOD! the menu is huge and it's REALLY good.

Need to get moving today. Rental car has to be back. Need to find HOUSING! Must hunt out more tasty food.