A Bird's Eye View

Now that summer vacation is here (including the word vacation is key because summer STILL isn't really here!), I have been to Seattle several more times recently. I only went in a handful of times from the time when we arrived last summer through last winter. One of the things that we were saving was going up the Space Needle. When Chris got here in February, we decided it would be nice to wait and go up all together when Holly arrived. Unfortunately, Holly arrived right as my world spun out of control at school with millions of performances and various meetings about how it wasn't looking so good for my job next year. Anyway, we finally made it to the Space Needle on July 7th and up we went. I was happily surprised to find that it didn't feel very high up and there was no need to be nervous or bothered by the height. It was a relatively clear day and I had just gotten my new camera. Oh, side note: I have a new camera. It's so fancy that I'm pretty afraid to touch it. It's a Canon DSL camera and I have two zoom lenses I switch between, which is when holding the camera becomes nerve-wracking. In any case, I'm very excited to have it and now I'm working on learning how to use it. So far, it just stays on the auto settings (which I'm so glad it has) and I will hopefully graduate to some more manuel settings as the summer progresses. Anyway, the ultimate excitement of the day was that I was finally able to take some satisfying pictures of Mount Rainier. And that I can now say I've been up the Space Needle. There is another large mountain but I don't know if it was Mount Olympus or Mount Baker. I keep meaning to try and figure it out and keep forgetting. In any case, it's one of those two so if you see it in a picture...you'll know.

These are the Olympic mountains. They are on our side of the sound but still across more water from us. We see these up close and personal any time there is a clear day. It doesn't matter how often you see them, they are always spectacular and always look different depending on sky color, cloud formations, season, etc. I love them.

That is the skyline of Seattle with Mount Rainier in the distance. when I wrote the post I forgot just how clear a day it was. Mount Rainier is magical because it often appears to be floating in the sky. I get excited every single time I see it and usually cannot stop myself from pointing and shouting "There it is!"

There it is again! This is with the 250X zoom lens. The blurriness at the bottom is from the cage of bars that surrounds the viewing deck of the space needle but I think it looks kind of magical! :o)

I don't usually find myself at eye level with a helicopter, especially not this close up (much closer in real life than in the camera lens), so I took a picture.

The ship in the lead is the Bainbridge Island ferry, the one we usually take. The middle ship is the Bremerton ferry and the ship in third has been identified by Petty Officer third class Hanks as a frigate. Hope he's right or at least that none of his RDCs (boot camp punishers) is reading this blog!

This is the Seattle skyline as we pull away in our ferry. As you get farther away the Cascade mountains appear behind it but I don't seem to have a picture of that somehow.

Here is the other mountain...whoever it is...also from the ferry but on the opposite side than the next one.

And this is my magical mountain one more time, taken from the ferry about halfway across the 35 minute section of the sound that we cross. There it is!

New Rental House

Well, I haven't updated since April but things are slowing down now and I thought I would update a little bit. Some of you know that we were in the process of buying a house when we heard that the government is going to cut the military band budget by quite a bit. We felt that our future in the Navy band wasn't stable enough to continue with that process and, since my job was a one year sub position and has run out, we decided not to buy after all. That was a hard decision. We really liked the little house we had picked out and were very excited to be first time home owners. The day after we backed out of the deal, I started searching hard for a house to rent. We came to this street and looked at two houses. One of them had a better layout, was right next to the extra parking lot at the end of the road (we're not allowed to park on the street and the one-car garage/driveway situation is sometimes hard to manage), but the yard wasn't completely fenced and the kitchen was small. The second had a fenced yard and bigger kitchen, but the layout wasn't very good. However, the yard was our top priority and so we went with 708 NE Flagstone Lane (the second one!). We are so glad we did, too. I had strong reservations about our couch even fitting into the living room. It is also painted dark red, which makes for a pretty dark space. I dreaded it until we found a way to set up the couch and realized that the paint job didn't look half as bad once the furniture was in and we had our floor lamp up. I took a few pictures of the downstairs and will post them, although I think it's still hard to get a good feel for the space, even with the pictures. The dogs' new favorite game is running up and down the stairs (thump thump thump thump thump) and they also enjoy lying in the yard eating the woodchips that surround the tree and the rose bush (really more of a rose stick, if you ask me) and occasionally the corner of the shed.

This is the end of the living room when standing up against the couch.

I turned slightly to the right to show the kitchen.

This view is of the middle of the living room from standing next to the counter in the kitchen. Ruby wanted to show off her new favorite part of the house, the rug by the sliding door where she can nap and keep an eye on the yard intruders, mostly birds but a few squirrels.

I took this shot while standing in the middle of the room and aiming at where I took the very first picture from. Just past the TV is the hallway to the front door and you can also see the railing because the stairs to upstairs are there as well. In the front hall are the half bath, the closet for the washer and dryer (which live under the stairway), and a coat closet.

There is the backyard, taken from our bedroom window, with Ruby and Otis doing what they like best. Otis: lying the in sun avoiding being bothered by his sister. Ruby: Doing various jobs including bothering Otis.

There aren't any pictures of the upstairs yet because it wasn't unpacked when I took these and then I spent my time unpacking but haven't had time for pictures! It's coming together nicely, though, and we are comfortable and enjoying living above ground again!