Arriving's Tough

Well, the Seattle Surfer is now actually blogging from Seattle.

Gina and I arrived here on Monday evening after a (luckily) pretty uneventful flight. We lost a couple of bags along the way but that was a fairly insignificant hiccup given the worries we had about Gina flying long-haul while pregnant. British Airways doled out the compensation cash straight away which also helped.

We're holed up right in the middle of the Microsoft campus, staying in a friends apartment in Redmond, while they are back in Ireland. While this area is very convenient to the major tech employers it has absolutely no soul and neither Gina or myself could imagine spending a minute of our free time here. We've spent the last couple of days hanging out around our old neighbourhood of Fremont and looking for an apartment/house in that general vicinity.

The weather has been cold but dry, clear and sunny, perfect NorthWest Winter days. The Cascades have had some trouble with snow lately, a warm December melted away alot of the base pack, but all resorts are open and Mt. Baker has been an anomaly with a 62 inch base. No snowboarding yet, our snowboard bag was one of the bags lost, but to be honest we need to get the basics sorted first.

In that regard we have procurred social security numbers, a bank account and a mobile phone. Our next priority is accomodation, then transport. We have looked at a very nice apartment in Fremont (big money) and we are looking at a beautiful house in Wallingford tomorrow. We're driving around in a rented Chrysler PT Cruiser (yuk!) and haven't seen anything for sale privately yet. Hope we don't have to go to the dealers, not even sure what we want yet.

OK, that's everyone up to date with what we're up to in Seattle, please leave some comments as to what you're up to in Belfast/Anywhere.

b.