One Giant Leap…

I’ve been meaning to write about my trip for a week, but there’s not a whole lot you can say about a three day mad dash across the country, believe it or not. Really, you hop in a car and put the foot to the floor and go from point A to B to C. I will mention a few highlights though.

We only took one detour from our planned route, although in all honesty the route wasn’t that detailed. While we were approaching Amarillo I remembered hearing about the Cadillac Ranch and I wanted to see it. Very disappointing. I was totally expecting a Stonehenge made out of cars – Carhenge, if you will. Sadly it was just 5 Caddys planted facedown in the dirt. There wasn’t anything to it worth talking about really.

I wasn’t all that impressed with Colorado. Mountains are cool, but the mountains in CO didn’t really look like I was expecting. Maybe we weren’t in the skiing mountain part or something. Wyoming may be the worst state ever to drive across. I swear it was like 400 miles of watching paint dry. Or maybe it was only 200 miles. Either way it just wasn’t interesting. Now Utah… Utah had cool scenery. The Great Salt Lake just looked like a big lake, but it had some good rocky mountain areas. Idaho was another snooze-fest. You can’t pump your own gas in Oregon; it’s all full-service gas stations. Washington has cool mountains. Our drive took us past several ski areas. I can’t wait to try those out.

The cats were amazing, btw. The first day we forced them to ride mostly in their cages, but Lisa let Jack out and it turned out to be a good idea. I don’t think he actually swallowed the kitty Prozac I gave him that morning, so he was pretty restless in his cage. Restless Jack = annoying meowing Jack. After that first day we just waited until we were actually on the road to let them out. Merlin would find himself a place on the floorboard in the backseat to curl up and sink into a drug-induced stupor. Jack just made us clear the console in between the front seats for him. He laid there and watched the world go by. I’m amazed that it went as easily as it did.

We’ve been in Seattle for a little over a week now. I’ve never seen so many Starbucks per square mile. We were down in the area called the Retail Core earlier and there was a Starbucks across the street from a Seattle’s Best, which is owned by Starbucks.
I really have been walking everywhere. It’s not too bad. Our temporary housing, which is pretty damn nice, is about a mile from the real downtown area. However, I have walked that distance multiple times per day on some days. I’m wearing out my shoes, legs and back, but I think it’s worth it.

Now, about that temporary housing… We’re in an area called Belltown. It rides right along the side of Elliot Bay, which is very visible from our 25th story apartment. I can spend my day watching the ships go in and out and just generally admire the water. I love living near the water. It’s a one bedroom place that would actually be perfect for all of our stuff if it just had another room tacked on somewhere. We’ve done some apartment hunting, including this building. A decent size apartment for a decent price does not exist here. In Dallas you can usually expect to pay about $1 per square foot. Here it’s more like $2 or maybe a little more. We finally found a place that we like. It’s going to be about 5 blocks from each of our offices – I’ll get to my office situation in a moment – and it’s really a great looking place. It’s tiny though – 900+ square feet but it’s costing us the same as our 2200 sq ft house in Irving.

I think I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been offered and accepted a job with Nordstrom’s Internal Audit department. I think I made the best choice possible in this town as far as both the work and the department itself goes. I arrived in town on Friday 4/13 and I had a job on the following Tuesday. That’s 4 days after I arrived! Who manages to do that? I had a phone interview with Starbucks and was invited in for an in person interview, but although the job sounds pretty interesting I declined the in person interview. I’ve heard a few things about some of the other audit shops around town that make me think that I’ve picked the right group. They sealed the deal on Thursday though. The Nordstrom group does some team building events every once in a while, and it just so happened that they had a trip to see the Seattle Mariners play on Thursday and they invited me to go to it. So after initially declining the invite I came to my senses and joined them. It was lots of fun and, per department policy, they bought me a Mariners hat. And beer. Very nice of them. I’m sure some of my friends would be horrified by the fact that I actually wore it, but the sun was bright and I’m not really a baseball fan anyway so it doesn’t matter.

All in all I have to say I’m pretty satisfied with the choice I’ve made. I miss some things about Texas, mostly people, but this whole Seattle thing is looking like it’s going to be a good experience for me.