We’ll I’m in Seattle now and I’ve been extremely busy. Yesterday and today were the first days that I had any free time to lounge around. So far I’m liking Seattle quite a bit, there’s lots to do and all of it is pretty much new to me. I’m in temporary housing at Harbor Steps, which is really cool and I have an amazing view. I started work at Amazon.com on Monday and things there have been pretty busy, lots and lots of reading, it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. I’m starting to figure out what I’m going to be doing and I’m liking what I’m seeing. I’ve also been very impressed with the processes and environment they have in place.

Misty came up the Thursday after I arrived and we hung out and drove all around creation looking at places. I had a really nice time hanging out with Misty over the weekend, which was capped off with an amazing view of Mt. Ranier. On our way to the airport I was on the phone with my real estate agent (I have a contract on my house) we rounded a corner on I-5 and there it sat in the middle of the interstate. 30 miles away, it was the first day visibility had been good enough to see that far (when I had been in a place where you could.) It dominated the horizon, 30 miles away and still enormous. Damn it was cool.

Anyway, I ended up picking a place to live near work. It’s a 2 bedroom house with lots of room and a finished basement. It will have storage etc. so that I can keep all of the house stuff that I’ve accumulated, which I wouldn’t of been able to keep in most of the places I’ve looked. I’ll put pictures of the place up as soon as I get a chance to take them. The view off of the back porch is pretty amazing. The only thing I don’t like about it is the kitchen is pretty small / cramped. I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing when I go to make pizza. Busy, busy, busy…

So things are, hopefully/finally, set. I’ll be leaving this coming wednesday, but unfortunatly my stuff won’t be leaving until the next morning. The relocation company was unable to find movers who could move me out on monday and tuesday as orignally scheduled. I hate the idea that my stuff will be packed up and loaded after i’m gone, but luckily i was able to find someone, Tasha who can be around. Hopefully the movers where be here when they’re supposed to be and that will all go well.

I found out a couple of days ago where i’d be staying until i find a place. It looks good, i was hoping to get placed in one of the locations closer to Pike Place Market but i’ll cope. Everything seems to be in order, the only things i’m worried about at this point, to amount to anything, are my pack and load and finding a place that i like once i get out there. I’ve done some searching and even contacted a few places to start the process. Hopefully that will work out.

So if you’ve never done it getting ready for a move when you’re not supposed to pack your stuff is really werid. I have piles and collection boxes of stuff all over my house. I’ve gone through and gotten rid of enormous amounts of junk i’ve collected over the past 10 or so years. I’m actually not taking that much stuff now, which i’m pretty proud of. It’s hard to go through things to get rid of junk when you kinda have to leave it where it lays.

So that’s that, I’m going to sit down now and make a todo list out for the next couple of days. There’s quite a bit of stuff that kinda has to happen at particular times. It will be some relief to get the pack and load stuff behind me, but i’m sure the apartment search will still be somewhat stressful.

So this is going to be more of an actual journal entry. I’m tired right now,
probably more so than i’ve ever been for an extended period of time. I’ve been
doing a lot of stuff lately getting the house ready to go. Getting rid of a
lot of stuff, certain href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/06_06_05_work_going_away/img_3081">people
would be proud of me, or at least won’t be able to make fun of me quite as
much anymore. Only major thing i’m waiting on is to hear from the movers. The
carpet cleaning is scheduled , the cleaning is almost set, getting a pressure
washer tomorrow, made plans to get rid of my blazer, the part that jennifer
will no longer make fun of me about.

I had a group of work people over tonight, mainly the people that go out to
lunch regularlly (and families) and a few others here and there. Everyone came
over after work around 6:00 and i grilled out hot dogs and hamburgers etc. We
also had a very nice href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/06_06_05_work_going_away/img_3077">cake
that href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/06_06_05_work_going_away/img_3079">vien
made, she’s been taking classes. After eating we headed over to the legends
ballpark to catch the better part of a game. It was a beautiful night, once
the sun went it, it was a really hot day. I had a lot of fun, hopefully
everyone else did as well. It was a great night and i enjoyed spending it with
them.

I’ve kinda been getting an overwhelmed feeling every now and then. I’ve have
to keep making lists of what i have left to do to show myself that it’s not
that much. The problem is that every time i make a list i think of a few more
things that need doing. The lists still look reasonable, so that’s not bad i
guess and i’d definitely rather think of these things now when i have time to
deal with them rather than later when time is running out. Well i’m starting
to wind down and i’ve got a couple things to take care of before bed. More to
come later.

So i get back to Lexington and settle back in catch up on a little a bit of sleep. I was looking forward to hearing from them, but was able to go about my business. I get a call the following monday afternoon with the news that they’re putting together an offer. We went over the details, i asked about a million and one questions and finally told her i’d get back to her. I mulled it over for a while got back to her and continuned that process and finally accepted the offer on May 18th. The offer was very good, better than i was expecting, especially taking in to account all of the extras.

We discussed a few more details and i’ve set a tenative start date of June 20th. My stuff (and truck) should be getting packed up and heading out around the 13th and I should be flying out on the 15th. I get put in a furnished apartment and have a while to find a place. I plan on looking for an apartment since i have no clue about where i’d want to buy a house or anything like that. I’m hoping to get a place withing short walking distance of amazon.com’s building, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m pretty excited. It’s obviously a big change for me having never lived outside of kentucky. I’m looking forward to the opertunity job and personal wise.

I had asked for an extra day to look around the town. I woke up at my normal
time (EST, unfortunatly) and hung out in the hotel for a while watching tv and
waiting for morning PST to come around. Once it did i got ready and started
out walking towards the .
(queue simpson’s monorail musical number, while i’m on the subject of the
simpsons href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_pike_place_market/img_2608">here’s
a sorta reference to something in the show.) After walking for a while in the
general direction of the monorail i realized i’d passed up the start of it
when i looked over to my right and saw the track. I decided that i might as
well walk the rest of the way rather than turning back, for all i knew i was
over halfway through its route. It turned out to be a good thing that i did
since it wasn’t running that day.

I got to the space needle and bought my ticket and headed up to the top where
i took quite a few href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_seattle_center">pictures. I
walked around the rest of the seattle center and then headed back towards pike
place market wandering around downtown on the way. Most of my href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_pike_place_market">Pike Place
Market pictures are actually from the second day. After that i headed down
to the IMax movie near the aquarium and watched both features. I spent the
rest of the day walking around and sightseeing and made it back to the hotel
around dark. I went up to the room and hung out for a bit and then headed down
to the lobbie to sit, read, and people watch for a while.

The next moring i managed to sleep in a bit, walking all over down town wore
me out, and got up and packed my things and headed down to catch a cab to the
airport. The highlight of the flight back was coming up out of the clouds and
looking over and seeing a mountain towering up still higher. This concludes
the trip to seattle portion of the blog, heh.

(Stay tuned…)

I walked out of the href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_w_hotel">Hotel and started
walking random distances and making random turns. Well i guess i shouldn’t say
that exactly, i first started climbing the hill downtown was on to go to the
top to get href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_buildings/img_2313">this
picture, after that the randomness begun. That’s amazon.com’s building the
distance. I then encountered seattle’s (in)famous href="http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=branch_central&branchID=1">public
library. I took quite a few href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_public_library">pictures of the
building, inside and out. After being inside the building for a few minutes i
got slightly queasy, and kinda had a fear of heights, even when i was on level
ground, which i don’t normally have a problem with.

After the library i started heading downhill walking around looking for
somewhere to grab dinner. I happened across an area that looked really
familiar, it turned out to be href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_pioneer_square">Pioneer Square.
After that i made my way down to the shoreline and looked around at the things
i encountered there. My end goal was to happen across href="http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/">Pike Place Market, but i had no
clue where it was. After walking around the shore for a while longer and
talking on the phone for a while i decided it was time to head back to the
hotel. As i walked i saw href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_pike_place_market/img_2392">this
and it looked really familiar. I looked around for a minute and found out that
i was in fact at the bottom of the market. My pictures can be found href="http://www.neces.com/gallery/seattle_pike_place_market">here. I
walked around the market for a while, most things were closed at this point
and then headed back towards the hotel to call it a night…

(to be continued…)