The Weatherman

(more…)

A little movie where Zach waves hi to his fans. He is playing with Grandma and showing off to the camera. Grandma joined us for the weekend since Steph had class and Paul is oncall. So we needed to make sure Zach had some company.

This last week saw some very high temperatures in the Bay Area. Now we are (finally) heating up in Seattle. Today the temp should be around 80 and getting closer to 90 on Sunday and Monday. Not too shabby after the cloudy weather we’ve had. Actually, the days have been pretty clear up here over the last week. While the temps are on the coolish side (high 60s/low 70s)…we don’t get the wind like in the Bay Area - and that I do NOT miss.

We took a drive up to Snoqualmie Pass on Sunday…30 minutes from Issaquah (where we live now) and about 60 minutes from West Seattle (where we are moving to). That’s important, since that means I’ll only be 1 hour from the closest skiing.

In California I got used to the fact that mountains with snow (especially in June) had to be about 8 to 10 thousand feet high. Not so up here.

I’m at about 3000 feet where I took the picture. And yes, among the trees there was still some snow.

We saw some nice waterfalls.

I wanted to get some up…here are two I liked.

It would have been a good day had not been sick. I spent the morning at urgent care so I could get meds for my sinus infection. This infection is painful…my upper teeth on the left side ache and there is nothing that seems to help. I’m on antibiotics, a prescription decongestant, tylenol for the pain, and Afrin to open up my sinuses.

Even with all that, we still got away yesterday and today. Yesterday we went to our new home and walked through (they still held the open house). And then we had lunch at the Elliott Bay Brewing Company. Today we took a drive up to Snoqualmie Pass - 30 minutes to snow skiing - not too bad.

I also did a quick movie of Zach crawling around. If you can’t play it, then download and install Quicktime. You should probably install this anyway since I’ll probably do additional movies of Zach. I don’t have any recent pictures of Zach…I took a few shots of the mountains today (I still need to download them), but I’m not expecting much since the lighting was poor.

I have my first oncall week coming up…so I’m not too thrilled…but it comes with the territory.

First, a little bit about escrow. As home sellers, we obviously need to wait for someone to approach us with an offer to buy our house. This has happened on multiple occasions. The basic points in an offer are the offer price (what is the buyer willing to spend), the numbers of days to inspect the house (this is called the home inspection contingency), other contigencies (maybe for financing), and the day escrow will close (this is when money and keys change hands).

Our first potential buyers jumped ship before they removed their home inspection contingency…therefore, escrow never completed and the deal was cancelled. A week later we accepted an offer from another set of buyers. At this point, the house is off the market and put into a ‘Sale Pending’ state. The buyers had 8 days to perform their home inspections and get their financing in order. At this point, the house is in escrow and we have entered a contract with the buyers. Fortunately, this time around, the buyers were happy and removed all contigencies. So now, we are just waiting for July 10th (maybe July 7th) for the transfer of money and keys.

Why this little explanation? I’m just tired of explaining the process to everyone, so I figured you can read about it.

But your title talks about a new home, what’s that about? We have been looking for a while and we have put an offer on a home in West Seattle. You can read about it here. This house has a ton going for it including a good size family room (in addition to a living room), a nice yard, and everything has been updated in some fashion. We have only put in an offer. So we won’t know for a day or so if they accept.

I’ve had my first week of work at Amazon.com and things are good so far. Zach started daycare in downtown Seattle (it’s across from the Greyhound bus station…yes, we sent our kid to daycare in the seedy section of town). Steph got her license plates and has been scoping out UofW for her BarBri course. Last weekend we went to the Woodland Park Zoo and the Chittenden Locks (our first real tourist thing).

That just about catches you up. Now for some additional details. First work…I share an office (actually an unused conference room) with 2 (soon 3) other coworkers. I have a view of the ballparks, a hill, and the top of Mt Rainier. Pretty amazing considering I haven’t had a window seat in years. I work in an Amazon building in the middle of the International district, therefore, I have access to tons of international restaurants. Although I’m starting to bring my lunch more since going out can get costly, plus, being in the city I now have to pay for parking. My commute is good…about 17 miles and takes 25 to 30 minutes.

Now to our house in San Mateo. Our initial buyers backed out; they got nervous about the sloping of the floors. We received 2 offers (1 decent, 1 not) on Saturday and we came to an agreement on Sunday. However they now appear to be getting nervous over the sloping issue. Arrrrghhh! We are waiting on whether they are going to do anything after hearing from a structural engineer today. They have until Monday, but I hope they don’t wait that long to make a decision.

Steph has been getting along well. She’s been driving around a lot, learning the city and UofW - her new home soon. She is finishing up her resume and relaxing this week before BarBri starts.
Now for some pictures.

This is why it took 45 minutes to check in when we left.

The view from balcony during a heavy downpour. Isn’t it beautiful?

Our bubby at the zoo. He was more interested in the other people then the animals, but he still had a good time.

Enjoying a fine day in Seattle.