I got a job!!

Yes! It's true, despite not quite being done with school, and my ever annoying thesis, I am now officially a transportation planner. I have been hired by the City of Seattle as an Associate Transportation Planner on the Transit Team. I am part of the Policy and Plan Implementation Team, which means I get to help with fun projects like Metro's bus rapid transit Rapid Ride, and connecting Seattle neighborhoods with more transit.

I will also be doing what's called transportation demand management (TDM), which basically means fun marketing campaigns to persuade people that they don't need to drive their cars, especially alone, especially to work.

This picture is the building I will work in, the Seattle Municipal Tower. It is the fourth tallest building in Seattle at 722 ft. (the black building next to it is the Columbia Tower Alicia recently wrote about. My cube will be on the 38th floor. Thanks to everyone who's helped me and given me support on this crazy adventure!

Well, now back to the thesis. I will start writing something this week. Wish me luck. Brian

Lost

For the past few weeks, we've gone over to a friend's house to watch "Lost." It's true, we're fans. We started watching on DVD a few years ago and have gotten sucked in. If you've never seen it, it's about survivors from a plane crash on a tropical island with mysterious creatures, supernatural happenings and other inhabitants (the "others"). If you've seen it, why did Sayid reveal Micheal to the boat captain as a traitor? Doesn't Sayid later become a traitor and work for Ben too?

It's a quiet weekend here. Brian is really bearing down for the last few months of his thesis. He alternates between being stressed and super-stressed about it. Graduation day is June 14. Phew!

Hello

I'm a lame, slow blogger again. Sorry.

We did the Big Climb on Sunday. Seattle's tallest building is the Columbia Tower (79 stories more or less). It's the big black building in the photo (on the right). Every year, they open up the stairwells and let crazy folks walk/run up. It's a benefit for Leukemia research. I've been doing the Howe/Blaine Street stairs for a while now and really like it. So we decided to jump right in.

The fastest folks do it in 6-7 minutes. They let one person up the stairs every few seconds. Brian was ahead of me. We both finished in about 14 minutes. Not bad for trying to pace ourselves (1st woman- 7 min, 2nd woman- 10 min). It was waaay easier than I thought it would be. Turns out that floors are smaller than I imagined.

Tons o'fun and not sore the next day.

SPAM

It's bad enough that I get viagra and hot Britney pics messages at work. Now I'm getting SPAM'ed comments on the blog. If you see something that doesn't make sense in the comments ("nice too see you have blog. click here!"), don't click on it. I may have to set up the comments so I approve them before they're officially posted. I don't want to- Freedom!- but may have to.

While Brian was away this weekend, I took the time to replant my "garden." Last summer, I had planted basil, parsley, oregano and chives. Aphids attacked and I was left with oregano and chives. The chives were in rough shape though- most of it dried up and Brian started referring to it as my clumps of grass.

Here's my new garden! I couldn't find any starter herbs so I did one tray of lettuce, some tulips and some hyacinths.


Oh, and we're being run out of our apartment by spider plants. Good grief.

Brian and I went on separate snowshoe adventures this weekend. He went up to Mount Baker with some friends (that's Christian in the photo).

I went to Snoqualmie to lead a group of women for work. We did a moderate trip up to Hyak Lake and had lunch at a warming hut on the ridge. It snowed the whole time! Even with our recent warm weather, there's still over 10 feet of snow there.

Let's hope we can get at least one more snowshoe adventure together before the season ends!