Well, after securing one of IBM's infamous golden parachutes this summer and enjoying the heck out of doing nothing but mess around on cars, work on my house, and help my dad on the farm, I finally moved myself out to an apartment in downtown Seattle a couple of weeks ago (after finding employment, of course). The trip wasn't too bad, but I took my quarter-million-mile Lebaron instead of my Reliant, as it's much heavier and handles the load of a 5'x9' enclosed trailer better. Good thing, too, as there was a 30-40 mph headwind all 800 miles across Nebraska and Wyoming. I also discovered tumbleweeds will occasionally carry along small pieces of fencing material and can hole your gas tank if you hit them too hard.
Seattle is a great deal different than Durham. For one, there are no deer in Seattle--just bums. They usually wear clothes so they don't make as much of a mess when you hit them, but the males lack antlers and all have thick hind legs and are therefore more difficult to drag off the road afterward.
Also notable is the sheer number of old cars around here. People don't drive as much, the weather is mild, and they last a lot longer. I've seen more VW Ghias and Ford Falcons in a 3 block radius of my apartment than are probably in the entire city of Durham. It's also impossible to tear up your car by being a leadfoot. In fact, I walk home from work for about a mile an arterial that leads to I5 and I usually travel that mile faster than do the cars I'm walking beside. They don't call it the "Mercer mess" for nothing.
The people up here are extraordinarily polite, too. They're almost Canadian. If people swear loudly on the bus, the bus drivers will admonish them not to swear. The downside of this is the politeness is enforced with an iron fist. You can't smoke in any public establishment, or within 25' of the doors or windows of any such establishment. Good luck lighting any form of combustible tobacco outdoors, though.
Quote:
A curious fellow died one day and found himself in limbo waiting in a long, long line for judgment. As he stood there, he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the gates of heaven. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss him or her to one side.
After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over and tapped Old Nick on the shoulder.
"Excuse me, there, Your Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, and I couldn't help wondering why you are tossing some people aside instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?"
"Ah," Satan said with a grin. "Those are from Seattle. They're too wet to burn."
The food is amazing. There are more ethnic food places than you can shake a stick at. People make jokes about there being too many Starbucks, but the real plague species in the area is Thai restaurants. There are stretches of road where there are three Thai places to a block. If you were to turn Seattle into a homogenous grid, every block would have two Thai restaurants, two coffee shops, a frame shop, a software company, a tattoo parlor and condos on top of them all.
The only real complaint is that I've got nowhere to wrench on my car at the moment. There is a chain of places called 'Activspace' that has garages that they rent monthly to the public for hobbies, but they specifically ban three things: arc welding, auto maintenance, and raising fighting chickens. That's too bad, because I'd been planning to weld a gamecock to my front bumper.
Anyway, I'm at a small company called Visto with a thoroughly nifty bunch of people, most of whom are every bit as sane as I am. Finding a job took only two weeks, and the job market is quite hot. If any of y'all are ever out this way, give me a holler. I've even got the space for guests.
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