I haven’t had great email access since I’ve arrived in Seattle. Where I’m currently staying, only my friend’s computer can access the internet, so while I can read and reply to emails, I can’t easily blog or post photos.
But today I’m at a very cool cafe,
Cloud City Coffee (is that not the best name?),
that has wifi, so I’m able to use my own computer. There's a picture of the cafe below.
Things have been going okay. I miss Mike a lot (a lot a lot!), but life here is pretty busy. I’ve been nannying for two different families that each have six month-old boys. The work isn’t all that intellectually stimulating, but it’s nice to take the babies on walks, to the park, etc. I even took one to
Pike Place Market last week! I just about had a migraine from the stress of it all, but we survived just fine.
In two weeks, I’ll drop down to just one family and then start my new part-time job. This job is the same job I’ll be doing once school starts – it’s just on an hourly basis during the summer. I’m not going to say any more than that (or the nanny jobs) here because I don’t want to be
dooced (although it might be worth it if I could write like
that). But, suffice it to say, I’m very, very happy about said new job.
In part, I’m happy about the job because it allows us to get our own place. While I’d dreamed of staying in Fremont, the market has just gone crazy (funny what an organic grocery store and a spate of condo conversions will do to your neighborhood). Our money went much further elsewhere. So, after living in Fremont since 2000 (excepting the obvious, of course), I’ll be leaving.
Our place is big and light and airy. There’s secure parking, an elevator, and a washer and dryer on every floor. The kitchen is nice, too. There’s a direct bus to campus and another to downtown that run just a few blocks from our place.
Here’s a picture of the new building:
Although we will no longer have seventeen Thai restaurants within a ten minute walk, the new area is quite nice, if more sedate: more single family homes, fewer young hipsters. There’s a ginormous Safeway not far away, and very cool coffeeshop (with free wifi and yummy food) just a few blocks from our apartment. Here’s a picture of the coffeeshop:
So I’ll be moving in early August, hopefully with the help of my wonderful, amazing, beautiful, and very talented friends. I’m trying not to dread the move and rather just focus on how nice it will be to be settled back with all of our familiar belongings. It’s been pretty hot in Seattle these last two days (yesterday it was 98 degrees [just like the boy band!]), so I am fervently hoping that the moving day will be cooler.
I’m headed down to San Diego August 8th-14th for a little visit. I haven’t seen my grandparents in a year, so I am looking forward to the trip. My brother will also be in town then, so hopefully we can hit the beach together!
Also, blueberries are quite labor-intensive to pick. Now I really understand why they cost so much in the store. But it was really fun to pick them. Best, the organic farm had several different varieties growing, so I felt like I had a really interesting mix of blueberries.
What to do with all those berries except make a pie, of course? So I did, with the help of SYL.
We used the lemony-blueberry pie recipe from this book, and it was delicious. Cooking Light magazine also had a big feature on blueberries in the July 2004 issue (funny how I have almost no memory of that issue!) with recipes like blueberry gingerbread cake, spiced blueberry muffins, and blueberry pumpkin coffeecake. I didn’t have enough blueberries leftover (see first sentence in paragraph above) to make any of these things, but they also seem very tasty.
There are still flowers, however.
Every time I look at them, they make me really want to smile! I’m not sure, however, that they are appropriate for wearing to high school teaching. Luckily (?), it, uh, rains on the weekends here, too.
