warm washington weather

On Tuesday, I dropped of my Kiwi friends at Seattle's underground tour and took off across the lake to an interview. For lunch I was able to spend some time with my youngest sister, Sara, in Renton for Indian food. She and her boyfriend recently moved across country from Michigan to relocate in their "home" state. It will be great to have a sister around here and I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch date with her. After spending so much time with Laura in Denver, I am glad I also had some time to catch up with Sara again, too!

I headed back to Seattle in the late afternoon and the five of us had a lovely Greek supper out together before calling it an evening and heading to bed.

Wednesday brought another glorious day of sunshine and warm temperatures to Washington. The Olympic Mountain Range was out and the Cascades and the Emerald City shone brilliantly! For starters, Dave and I ran off to Cafe Racer for some morning coffee and then Kirrin, Jeremy, and I took off for a canoe ride at the University of Washington. I forget the school rents out boats for a decent price and the ride through the Arboretum is beautiful on a nice day!

We saw quite a bit of wildlife as well; ducks, dragonflies, a couple fish, turtles, and a heron. The lily pads were in bloom and the waters were quite calm as we paddled along. The water ways for canoes become tangled in the pylons for the 520 floating bridge where we were and we ducked in and out of the cement structures for part of our ride. It was somewhere along this ride that I received a call about another two jobs I am interested in. I'm sure the lovely HR woman wrote down "canoe woman" next to my name on her short list. Hopefully that makes me a memorable candidate!

We paddled for an hour, or so and cleaned up a bit at the house before catching the bus downtown for a Mariner's game. Kirrin and Jeremy wanted to take in some real American baseball, and although the Mariner's lost, we had a nice (albeit, hot) time in watching the game, eating stadium food, and such. This was my first time at Safeco field. Not all that surprising, was my iced latte from one of the vendors.

After a long and very hot bus ride back to Dave and Chelsea's house, we had a small bite to eat and settled in for the evening. At 4:30am this morning we were at SeaTac Airport and I was wishing them well on their next step of the journey; they are off to Denver and New Mexico this week. I had a fantastic time showing these two around the Pacific Northwest and will miss having them around. We'll see each other again someday. I will likely travel back to New Zealand at some point in life!

I stopped back at Sara's place for breakfast after my airport run. We chatted for a bit and I was on my way back to Bellingham. I decided to get Starbucks off my old exit at Canyon Park on the way home, and ran into my Jr. High volleyball coach, Patrice. We had a great time chatting for a few minutes while we got our coffee. It's a small world after all!

(Thanks Jeremy & Kirrin for the two pictures with all three of us in it)!