THE LUCKIEST DAY OF MY LIFE

One year ago. Exactly one year ago, on January 30th 2007, Tina and I met in Hawaii. That was definitely the luckiest day of my life. And this is a picture of that day. Cristie, the common friend who introduced to each other, took this picture that night. This is exactly that type of day that you think will never happen. You meet a person and you fall in love immediately and you are in Hawaii and everything is like a dream. And you realize that you just found your soul mate. And she lives in the same city where you live. And you spend the rest of your life together! Yes it did happen exactly like this ... :D

SUNSET in PINE Street

A piece at a time we are discovering Seattle. Most of the time we walk, we just take off from our apartment and we go to discover a new area of the city. But sometimes we drive. This is a nice sunset through the Seattle buildings in Pine Street ...... Pine is one of our favorite streets. It runs from West to East and from Capitol Hill, where we live, it goes downhill straight to downtown, the Pike market and the Seattle waterfront.

GET RID OF THE BOXES

Even if we packed everything by our self just few weeks ago, every box that we open has a small surprise in it. That book that I forgot I bought. That CD that I really wanted to listed. And that T-Shirt that I couldn't find anymore. And one of the nicest thing is to get rid of all these boxes that kept all our life in the last month. A lot of boxes. At a certain point we collected so many in the corridor that we were not able anymore to leave our apartment. But one of the good things of Seattle is that we need to separate the garbage because they recycle it. Finally someone who cares about the environment ... :D

SEATTLE NITE TRAFFIC

I really like this picture, especially the yellow spot created by the taxi backing up. So I decided to put it in the blog. Fortunately for us, Seattle traffic is not that bad. And there is no night traffic at all. This traffic was for an expectational event. Such a blessing compared with LA. But still there is not better title for this picture, I guess. So this is the Seattle nite traffic ...

SEATTLE NITE LITES

This is the Seattle Center (not downtown), with the Space Needle, in a night picture from Capitol Hill ... really a stunning view, especially during the night, when all the lights are on ...... and little by little we are discovering that we can basically walk everywhere in Seattle from our place. Nothing is really far, and with all these hills are keeping us in a good shape ... :D

CELEBRATING

We have moved to our new place. And we love it. And we already call it home. So we have decided to celebrate. Nothing crazy. But a little bit of fresh (very fresh) air and a good hot coffee in the middle of the night with Supito is what we need. And here are some pictures of our happy faces in the middle of a chilly Seattle night ... it was really cold, but we didn't really feel it ... the magic of happiness ...

NOTHING CAN BEAT FRIENDS

We are not a moving company yet, but we are getting stronger and bigger. For this last part of this new move we have also four extra arms to help us. Although NeNe and I loaded all the truck by our self, our friends Arjang and Supito will help us to unloaded it and carry all the stuff to our new apartment. The hard working day started with a breakfast in a coffee shop just down the street ...... it continue with some hard work moving all our stuff upstairs to our apartment. This is Supito at the entrance of our new building ...Arjang took it really seriously. This is him carrying up the kitchen table. It is not really the heaviest table ever, but it is not even that light. Anyways thanks to them we did finish everything in less than 3 hours. And these are NeNe, Supito and Arjang cheering in the back of the empty Penske truck. Very tired, but very very very happy because we are done, everything is in our new home ...And of course we had to celebrate. We went all together to a Thai restaurant, just one block from where we live. Even the hardest things look so simple do accomplish when you have friends helping you ...

WE ARE MOVING AGAIN

We have to do it again. We have to rent again a PENSKE truck, load it and move to a new place. It is just 12 miles away, but it is a lot of difference from the sleeping Redmond to the exciting and lively Capitol Hill, probably the neighbor that we like the most in Seattle ...Hopefully this one will be our last move for a while. And this is the truck all loaded ...... it didn't take much. We are becoming professional movers. And with all this box moving we are getting stronger, and we are saving a lot of money in gym subscription. But we would like also to settle down ... let's how long we will stay in our new apartment in Capitol Hill will ... :D

BRIDGES CAN FLOAT!

The first time that I read about it, I thought it was a joke. But it is actually true. There are floating bridges. And Seattle has two of them. Actually Seattle has been one of the first places that had built them. They are both over the Lake Washington. One is over the I-90 and an other is over the 520. This is the one that I take everyday to go to work. It is over the 520. Here a couple of pictures, that I took in the last days, of the 520 floating bridge ... one is from the sky and the other from the road ...... amazing, isn't is!? Yes! I love Seattle, also for this small amazing things!

OUR NEW HOME in SEATTLE

After a research of few days we have finally found our new home in Seattle! And we love it! It is just perfect for us and not top of that ... we couldn't stand anymore the "community" where we were living in Redmond, WA. Everything was just so quiet there, and you really had the feeling to be a chicken in a cage. The place that we have found is nothing like that. It is a 1 bedroom apartment wih hardwood floor and with a lot of character. It is actually in Seattle itself. The area is called Capitol Hill. And it is really super cool. Movie Theatre, Coffee Shops, Restaurants, Grocery stores are just few steps away. And you don't really need the car to go anywhere in the city. You feel like living in a small NYC. If you are curious here is where our new home in Seattle is ... it is the green arrow in the middle of the GoogleMap ...

SEATTLE SURVIVAL KIT

Yes, Seattle is definitely a rainy city. That doesn't really bother me, even if I lived my last 5 years in Southen California, where it probably rains 10 days per year. Most of the time here in Seattle the rain is just a light drizzle. You don't really need nothing but a hood in your jacket. But that is enough to make Seattle the center of the universe when people think about rain. Today while I was browsing in one of these kid's store with a lot of funny stuff, I found this interesting "Seattle Survival Kit". I loved it! Unfortunately they didn't have my size, otherwise I would have bought it ... ahahahaha ... :D

RAINY DAYS IN SEATTLE

How many rainy days a year in Seattle? Can you guess? I will help you ... almost 50% of the days are raining. Yep, something like 150 days per year! Depressing? You can think so. An other way to see it, is to think about how much water is important in our everyday life. I found this UNICEF billboard pretty interesting ...... I think they are right! We should realize how lucky we are. It is true that sometimes it is pretty boring to get all this rain. On the other side, though, what would be our life without any rain? Yes, we are lucky up here in Seattle ... :D

LANDING in SEATTLE

Landing in my home town is always exciting, I can recognize the freeways that I drive, and the main landmarks of the city. This is especially true for Seattle. We have justed moved here, so I know the city more and more every day. And these are some of the pictures that I took just before landing, while we were flying over the city. These are the Seattle airport and downtown on the waterfront of the Puget Sound...And this is the 520 freeway floating bridge over the Lake Washington looking from West to East. And in the background the Cascades mountain, Really beautiful to drive thru it and even better to look at it from the sky. OK, time to buckle up and land in the Seattle airport ... yyyeeeeeaaaaahhhhh ... Seattle is our beatiful new home town ... :D

ABOVE Mt. RAINIER

Here some other pictures from my flight Phoenix to Seattle. These pictures are of Mt. Rainier, the highest mountain in the Pacific North West. It is actually a volcano, and one of the mountains that Nene and I would like to climb. It is definitely easier to have a look at it from the warm seat of an airplane ...

PHOENIX to SEATTLE

Phoenix to Seattle by air is a new flight for me. I was used to fly back home to LA, but now my new hone is up there, in the Pacific North West. And of course the scenery from the window of the plane is very very different than the one flying to Southern California. You fly over Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington states ...I was seated in a window seat, and there were not many clouds so I took some pictures. Here they are. I hope you will enjoy them. The winter view, with all that snow down there, is pretty interesting ...... and now I am just curious, what is your favorite one? I personally really like the last one ...

SAGUARO National Park

Planning this trip to Phoenix, we thought to go visit again Grand Canyon NP. But now that we are here and we have realized that up north in Grand Canyon it is freezing temperature (don't ask me why I didn't check the weather before I left Seattle) ... we have decide to go and visit a new NP. Saguaro NP. Saguaro are these huge cactus growing all over the south part of Arizona, but in particular in the area close to Tucson, where the Saguaro NP is ...The park is pretty nice, although we didn't really have a lot of time to go around. We just visited the Visitor Center, drove around and took some pictures. Not really the way that I like to visit a park, but we didn't really have a lot of time for much more than this. So these are some pictures for your enjoyment ...So now you will wonder how big are these cactus, right? So look at that funny small guy at the bottom of the cactus. That is me! Amazing, isn't it? Yes, they are. Completely! Totally! Like most of the National Parks here in US. They are really amazing. I love love love them ... if you have some vacation ... come here to US and visit them. They will never disappoint you. Promised.

PHOENIX is COOOOLD

While we are trying to find a new apartment in our new hometown, Seattle ... my boss has decided to send me to Phoenix, AZ for few days. Tina is coming with me as well. We want to relax a little bit together and leave behind all the boxes on our new apartment. The weather in Phoenix is not as warm as I expected. It is pretty cold down here, especially in the evening after the sun sets. In a way would like that he sun would never set, but in the other way, it is really nice every time there is a sunset here in the desert. This is a picture that I took from our office window ...

TRYING TO COOK ...

Cooking is an other hard thing to do when you have just moved into a temporary apartment like we just did. There is always some ingredient missing. And we don't know where to buy stuff. And we are always late. A mess! But a nice one. And at the end what we end up cooking most of the time pasta every single day ...... but it is lovely. We love it, love it and love it!

BOXES EVERYWHERE

We though that unload the truck was the hard part. But it wasn't. The truck is finally unloaded, and now we have a bigger problem. We have our new apartment completely full of boxes. At the begin, of course, they were all closed. But of course we started looking for that special shirt or pair of pants or the plates. Where did we put the plates? And the silverware? And the insurance documents? And the waterproof shoes? In two days half of our boxes were open. A complete mess. In a way we don't really care. We knew it was going to be like this. But more the days are passing and more the mess is growing ...... but the real problem is that the apartment where we are staying is a temporary situation. It is a corporate type of apartment in a community. Although it is convenient because it is close to my office, we are looking for something with more personality. We hope to get something soon in Seattle itself ... Xing our fingers ...

THANK YOU Sir HILLARY

Edmund Hillary was the first one to conquer, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the Everest ... the highest peak in the World ...That day was May 29th 1953. Edmund was 33. Today January 11th 2008 Sir Hillary died. During my trip to Nepal and to the Everest Base Camp last year I had the chance to appreciate what Sir Hillary did. And to my surprise the summit of the Everest back in 1953 isn't to me, the highest peak of his. Yes, Sir Hillary did something much more important than that. After the 1953 expedition, he came back to Nepal and he built schools and hospitals in the Himalaya region where the Sherpa people is living. That made me think a lot. I realized that all we do in our life should have as core value the happiness of our self and of the people around us. If this is not the core value of everything we are do every single moment, we are doing something wrong. Edmund Hillary became "Sir Hillary" after the conquer of the Everest summit he could have easily forgotten the people of Nepal, but he didn't. And that made of him a special person ... a model for all of us. Bye bye Edmund. Thank you for teaching us, not how to climb a stupid mountain, but how to put the happiness of our brothers in front of every single choice we take every day ...

UNLOAD the TRUCK!

And now it comes the fun part. After the 1,100+ miles of drive from LA to Seattle ... we need to unload all this wonderful yellow PENSKE truck! It is a heavy work. Especially because I need to be in the office and the poor Nene is home alone to take care of this hard task. But it is also fun. Think that all our stuff can fit in a small yellow truck, makes us proud. We dream to continue to be this light. So we will be able to move everywhere. But again, for now let's not think about what will come after Seattle. Let's unload this truck and hopefully we will even figure out where our sweatshirts are ... we will need them soon ... it is pretty cold up here ... :D

FINALLY in SEATTLE

After a preparation of months, and a trip of 1,100+ miles we are finally in Seattle, WA. This will be our new home for years to come, hopefully. Although the weather is not as dry as in Southern California, I am sure that also my Nene will love this wonderful city. Wish us good luck, although we have a temporary place to live, we will have to figure out pretty soon where will go to live. The short list is Seattle itself, Bellevue and Kirkland ... but maybe Seattle itself is the one that i like the most ... I like to live in the city. And the city of Seattle has really a lot to offer. Anyways time to open the truck now and check if everything is still there ... :D

XING PORTLAND, OR

When we were almost seeing Seattle there just few hours in front of us ... we got stuck in the 4PM Portland, OR traffic ...... and we didn't manage to get in Seattle on time to go into our new apartment. So we had to spend the first night in Seattle in an hotel room ... :D

WELCOME to OREGON

Bye bye California. Here we come Oregon. Welcome to Oregon. This is the way we celebrated the border crossing between the two states ...But I guess we didn't expect such a dramatic change in the weather. After just 5 miles inside Oregon a thick layer of fog was waiting for us. I guess sunny California is really our past ...

VOLCANOES on the way ...

Still in California. Almost in Oregon. Our driving to Seattle is nothing but boring. Although we didn't manage to make any major stop along the way, the views from the truck are really stunning and full of surprises. These are two of the mountains that we saw along the way. Mt. Shasta and Marys peak. Mt. Shasta is the snow capped ...Both of them are volcanoes. Actually most of the Pacific North West mountains are actually volcanoes ... Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Elen, Mt. Olympus. I think we will have fun up in Seattle. Tina and I have this secret dream to start climbing. And Mt. Rainier is one of the mountains that we would like to climb ... but who knows, maybe we will come back here to California to climb also Mt. Shasta and Marys Peak ... :D