Transition to Seattle Trip #1

Before I get into this past weekend and going to Seattle . . . Can we take a moment and talk about the 2009 Academy Awards, please? Wow. What an elegant, classy, and amazing event it was. Not boring at all--No, seriously!

I could probably gush for pages about Hugh Jackman being the host and dancing and singing and being drop-dead-gorgeous and the perfect human . . . But I won't. Instead I want to take a moment and acknowledge the five (FIVE!) moments in the Oscars this year that made me tear up and cry a little. They were, in order:

1) Penelope Cruz's acceptance speech--Minority empowerment go on with your bad self!
2) Dustin Lance Black (the adorkable kid who wrote the screenplay for "Milk")'s acceptance speech--WOW!
3)Heath Ledger's family does his acceptance speech--Those damned Aussies made me get all choked up!
4)The "death montage" of people in the industry that passed away--I miss you, Sydney Pollack and Paul Newman!
5)Sean Penn's acceptance speech--HELL YEAH!

So there they were; the moments that made me weep like a nine-year-old girl. Of course there were a ton of awesome moments, too. Most of them involved Hugh Jackman being fantastic and doing songs, including a song that was a tribute to musicals(!) with Beyonce. Also declaring his awesome by shouting "I AM WOLVERINE!" at the end of his opening number. I mean wow. Then there was the way that the Big 4 actors/actresses categories were done: Five previous winners from each category, all amazing men and women, complimenting every single one of the individuals nominated in speeches that they wrote themselves, and then the announcement of the winner. Said winner then got to go on stage and be embraced by their colleagues and by this tribunal, really, of amazing talent.

It was rad.

On Friday we left at about noon to head out to Seattle and stay with our friend Amy in Bothell. We made great time thanks to the fantastic weather (it was great all weekend, actually) and to my new car's awesome gas mileage in general. Got into Seattle/Bothell at about 6pm and had dinner at this fun little diner-type restaurant and we walked around the Alderwood Mall, then headed home and crashed.

The next day we woke up, got ready, embraced a breakfast of Starbucks and headed out to start apartment hunting! Our list started out with 7 locations that we narrowed down to 3 and 1/2 (we actually couldn't find the one in Fremont but we LOVED the neighborhood, so we gave Kim the mission of trying to find it next time/looking at other places in the area), and they were all great little apartments that were totally in our price range and in clean, good neighborhoods only like 20 minutes out of the city.

The big one that all of us are hoping for is the Wedgwood Estates. I'm not going to post a link because I want to keep it on the DL lest lurkers try to steal the opportunity to rent from them, but to sum it up it's an amazing series of cottage-style apartments in a residential neighborhood that's just above Fremont/Wallingford and about 15 mins. from the Woodland Park Zoo (I know right?) and another 10 minutes from the UW campus in case any or all of us decide to go back to school to get our graduate degrees or a second undergrad. They allow pets, have off-street parking, and they're just freaking adorable little red brick houses in general. Fingers crossed that this all works out!

We're heading back to the area in 2 weeks to conduct the second search. In the mean time we'll be looking for more properties and selling some furniture online to make this all happen. If anyone knows of 2 bedroom places for under $1,000 in the Seattle area (we're not picky about the town or neighborhood, honestly, we just don't want ot live in south Seattle if possible) PLEASE comment or drop me a line! I'd really appreciate it.


"Lipstick on my brain,
Thunder in the sky,
The shades are drawn
But don't ask me why.
And with the ghost riders on the go, I think you know . . .
. . . It goes something like this:"