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Mary & Tori touched down ~10:47am. Long flight, but they are now tooling around the University District while I'm stuck in meetings.

It is *so* good to see them after three weeks.

Mary shipped my Giant OCR-2 road bike and it arrived yesterday!!! I managed to put it all back together and take it for a short test ride last night, but tonight I took it down to Green Lake for a decent spin. I'll post the route tomorrow, but it will be somewhat choppy since I kept adjusting the bike along the way and kinda forgot to turn the GPS on/off at various times. It also took a while to adjust to me being on the west coast (I forgot to pre-set it during the past two weeks - sigh). I'll be determining a route to work this weekend and trying my first bicycle commute on Monday or Tuesday (depending on weather). I still need to learn how to put the bike on the bus rack (in the event I need to do the bus instead) and also need to get a small cycling wallet that's waterproof and can hold my essential cards and cash along with the Belkin F8Z170-KG Sports Armband for iPhone and Shure MPA-3C Music Phone Adapter for iPhone.

If the hills here don't help me shed 30 more pounds, I don't know what will.

It's been an interesting 2.5 weeks. I really love this part of the northwest now and am looking forward to my first hike (hopefully with my family!!!!!). Work is plentiful and I am really liking the challenges I'm facing. The forthcoming office move will be somewhat sad, though, since I'm very fond of the University District. The new work digs are close to the Pike street market, so that will definitely be nice, and I'm interested to see what Seattle does during Christmas (there is so much potential).

I know where the troll is (more on that with pictures when I get there) now and will definitely be visiting there soon.

A week from tomorrow, Tori & Mary arrive and I am looking *so* forward to that. I think I'll be taking a break from house hunting this weekend until I see more momentum on our existing house. It's also kinda depressing seeing houses we like on a weekend, then see them sell four days later. We're now expanding our search up as far as Shoreline, putting our potential new residence just on the outer boundaries of cycling to work, but still well within the bus time range. Prices continue to fall, so the real challenge will be getting in when things are leveling off.

I'm seriously missing the old routines at various times and I'd be insane by now if it weren't for iChat video. I suspect things may get better once I'm in the new apartment, tho.

So, look for the GPS route tomorrow and drop me a note in the comments if you're interested in anything else about Seattle since I may have some time to explore this weekend.