Sigh...
I'm still unemployed. I've been job searching and interviewing. But it's between holidays and no one is posting or interviewing. grrrr...
But I can go to the climbing gym whenever I want. Morning, noon and night. And thanks to the internet, I can job search in my PJs.

And my parents visited Seattle for the first time last week! The weather fully cooperated so we got to do all of the tourist things plus some. We did the Space Needle, took a ferry to Bainbridge, toured Pike Place Market, ate salmon, saw the Ballard Locks, did some Christmas shopping, and drank lots of coffee and beer. They loved our neighborhood

Memorable moments:
- Mom, "your neighborhood isn't as sketchy as I thought it'd be!"
- Dad's ability to eat Top Pot donuts immediately after a full breakfast
- Watching the sun set over the city and Mt. Rainier on the ferry ride back home from Bainbridge
- Dad sitting on our couch before dinner, "I can watch the traffic patterns from your apartment!"
- Brian loving the cheese we got at Pike Place
- Going to a sports bar to watch the Seahawks-Broncos game and Mom making a game out of figuring out the NFL flags around the bar "Arizona what? Chicago who?"
- Dad presenting Brian with a Stella glass as "something any good son-in-law should have"
- Pretending to have been spying on Brian studying in the apartment from the Space Needle

Anyone else want to visit Seattle? Maybe in the spring?

Whew! So many visits! Justin came to Seattle last week for some work meetings. We had a great time. Sushi dinner, snowball fight, and a tour of Capitol Hill.

Then, my parents came to visit over the weekend. Lots more stories from that.

It's snowing!

As most of you probably saw on Monday Night Football, it's snowing in Seattle. We got about an inch of snow and a layer of ice. Trouble for hilly Seattle. And Seattlites are almost as bad as Washingtonians in the snow. The buses were particularly troubled by the snow so they all have snow chains on them now. Pretty cool, I'd never seen that before.

We're supposed to get another inch or two tonight and then it'll rain again tomorrow. Seems like we're on track to beat the rainiest month *ever* in Seattle record. I'm rooting for us.

The space needle has a Christmas tree on it!

Brian thinks it's the coolest thing ever.

The weather changes here all the time. It's been a fine fall day; chilly, windy, a bit gray with some snow showers. Beautiful at sunrise and sunset. Now the clouds roll in.

These two pictures are taken at the same time from two different windows in our apartment. One is looking south towards the beautiful sunset and downtown (where the Seahawks will beat the Packers tonight). The other looks north across Queen Anne hill where the storm clouds are coming in.

We're supposed to get a dusting to 2" tonight. It snowed a bit last night too. It stuck to everything for a while and melted away this morning. It's so pretty and silent. Everyone was out; throwing snowballs and making snowmen.

Restores my faith in radio.

Artists heard over the past 24 hours on KEXP:

The Sex Pistols
PJ Harvey
Wu-Tang Clan
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
L7
TV on the Radio
Air
Bob Dylan
Nine Inch Nails
The Roots
Jane's Addiction
The Flaming Lips

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Love,
Alicia and Brian

What's better than delicious double cream gouda cheese? Well, free double cream gouda cheese. On a wild Sat. night Alicia and I went to the grocery store after dinner. Upon returning home we opened a plastic grocery bag to discover it did not contain our groceries. Whose food was it? We'll never know, but there was English blue cheese, the gouda, a pound of chicken breast, eggs and margarine--what could we do? It was a moral dilemma, but we finally realized there was little hope of these tasty goods being claimed or returned to the shelf, so we considered it good karma. Brian

I'm missing Alicia and all my friends celebrating the elections in DC.

But here's some thoughts about rainy Seattle. I do like the rain as I'm getting used to it. In some ways it reminds me of snow when it's not coming down too hard. Plus, its nice to have some seasonally cold weather vs. DC 65+ in Nov.

Another fun thing about Seattle is all the cool old cars, which I've been meaning to blog. Here's one.

Finally, I'd like to say how Seattle has me rediscovering music. Make KEXP play on your computer, you won't be sorry, especially for blues on Sun. morning.

http://www.kexp.org

take care, Brian

I'm coming to DC!

I'm still figuring out the details. MoveOn.org and GCI are having the post-election debrief in DC.

I'll probably be there Fri 11/10 to Mon or Tuesday. Meet me at the Tune Inn....