September 13th - It's been a week

Well it's been a week of living up in Seattle essentially by myself. I really really like it here. The apartment is really nice and I couldn't ask for a better location. I can walk from here to campus, here to Trader Joes, restaurants, you name it. This week I went with Inness to the ACLU birthday celebration down in Capitol Hill which is a very nice "hip" neighborhood near Seattle. They had free cupcakes! And the speaker was Constance McMillan if any of you know who she is. She was the girl in Mississippi who wasn't allowed to go to prom because she was a lesbian.

That was my first taste of buses by myself here. A homeless man sat next to me and wouldn't stop talking about apples and pies and fruit trees, so I ended up getting off 2 stops from my own because I was uncomfortable.

Still don't have my wireless router so I'm tethered about 3 feet from the wall where there isn't a comfortable place to sit. It should come in today and make keeping up with everything much easier.

I discovered my favorite coffee place so far. It's called The Ugly Mug. It's down on 42nd and 15th ave. It reminded me a lot of SLO. Excellent coffee and service and really nice and interesting clientèle.

Saturday was farmers market here and wow was that amazing. They had fresh wild mushrooms, fresh seafood, all sorts of vegetables I've never seen, and then there were cheeses and breads, truffles and all sorts of stuff. I got almost of a 1/2 pound of chanterelle mushrooms for $3 when at home they would be $10 or so.

I've been going to the gym alot because I have plenty of free time for the moment. The gym here is very nice. Four floors, with an indoor track, archery room, indoor swimming pool and any weights or machine that you can possibly imagine. There's even a cafe inside the gym.

Cooking has been going well, the tiny kitchen isn't too bad to deal with. Except last night I forgot to put away the sour cream, chicken stock, butter, and pack of raw chicken that I had bought. Not sure if any of it is ok to use.

My orientation stuff starts Wednesday, the times are sporadic as are the titles of the seminars I have to attend. I'm taking "how to grade short answer questions", "how to use a fire extinguisher", "engineering ethics" and so on.

ARCHIE!!!