Living my fullest life

Yowzaz! Pretty sure this is the longest I've gone without blogging since I moved to Seattle. Perhaps if I get some major life updates out of the way, I won't feel as daunted by writing in my blog in the future, because the big things are covered and I can go back to writing about small everyday joys and more mundane musings. Here goes:

1. Alan and I moved into our new place on Lower Queen Anne! We had a successful housewarming BBQ/birthday party at the new digs with friends, our newly minted grill, and the most delicious homemade red velvet cake ever - kudos and thanks to my friend and baker extraordinaire Lauren W.


2. My temp copywriting job at REI Headquarters has been extended a few times, so I'm still commuting down to Kent daily to research, learn about and write about all the sweet gear we sell. Pretty pleased to still be working there! What kinds of things do I write? See here. Straightforward as our writing tasks often are, I am forever inspired by my colleagues' cleverness and creativity.

3. Yours truly has become a running/training/athletic MACHINE! Well, so I like to think. I got in a bit of inspired frenzy to sign myself up for a bunch of races. On the docket for the coming months are two full marathons, one half, and my third official ultra (50K). Oh! And I'm going to run 30+ miles around the perimeter of Mount Saint Helens in a few weeks with my friend and fellow Dutch/Swedish hybrid, Ged. Wish us luck!

4. Speaking of running...in July, a team of 11 friends and I tackled the Ragnar Northwest Passage 190-mile Relay for the second year in a row. Our team, the Alpacas by Day, Ninjas by Night, had a blast. I wrote a story about it for the REI blog here. (Beware: link does not always cooperate in Firefox. Try another browser if it doesn't work.)


I am blessed with good friends in this city.
5. Speaking of more running, I tackled my steepest, most rugged trail run yet last month, with my now-longtime trail running pals, Elodie and Tom - the Angel's Staircase run in the Methow Valley, about four hours east of Seattle on the other side of the mountains. 5000 feet of elevation change over 25 kilometers, peaking at 8000 feet, with stunning views in all directions. 6th place among women, I'll take it!


This ridiculously awesome photo courtesy of Glenn Tachiyama.




Beautiful views courtesy of race director James Varner, whom I interviewed and wrote this story on for Outdoors NW magazine several months ago.

6. Oh, and let's talk about where those marathons are that I've signed up for. I'm going to Vegas, baby! Running the strip at night - a nighttime marathon, how cool is that? Talked into it by my lunchtime running buddy at work, Logan (not that it was a really hard sell...)

7. But what's even better than Vegas? Answer: Flying over the North Pole on a direct flight from Seattle to Amsterdam to visit my mom and run the marathon there next month! Dutch Rosetta Stone lessons are in full throttle again. Can't believe it's taken me four years to get myself back to Holland, but it will great to see my mama and run 26.2 in the city that made me truly fall in love with running in the first place.


I took this photo in 2007. The marathon course runs along this river.
8. Alan took me to see Weezer on my birthday last month. In case you didn't hear the story (I love this story!), Alan and I were walking along a street in Seattle many months ago and passed a billboard advertising Weezer in Seattle on August 19. Knowing that I was once upon a time a big Weez' fan, he asked if I'd like to go. Snootily, I scoffed that the only way I'd go to a Weezer concert today was if they played Blue Album start to finish. We turned a corner and the next billboard we saw was, "WEEZER - Playing Blue Album and Pinkerton, start to finish." Wha?!! So we went! It satisfied in the nostalgia realm in big ways.


Yup, I was quite sure I could dig up an old photo of me in my trusty Weezer tee. Me, at 15, with my parents and Dutch cousins/family I haven't seen in years.
9. Been trying to ride my bike more lately...commuting a lot around on two wheels, including several bike trips up to Green Lake in the north part of this city, to go swimming with Oberlin friends - Ruth, who's happily staying another year in Seattle to continue working for Habitat for Humanity, and Shari, who spent the whole summer here leading kids' nature camps for the Audubon Society. Do I have cool friends or what?

10. So, I've been writing all this while sprawled out on a bunch of pillows and blankets on our balcony, looking at the night profile of the Cascade mountains, the shimmering Lake Union, the Seattle skyline all lit up, and even a good number of stars. Really, really happy in the new apartment! A good friend of mine whom I'll kindly keep anonymous recently paraphrased my blog as "Blah blah blah ohhhh Seattle, blah blah blah I'm so special because I love Seattle soooo much blah blah"...snarky, sure, but that's the nature of our friendship anyway (he's the big brother I never had!) and furthermore, I can't imagine a better summation of my feelings. Thank you, you know who you are, for stating it so eloquently. Indeed, I freakin' love this place!

11. Have we been over the fact that I get to have a reunion next month with this wonderful woman?


It's been a long time coming. Thank you, good world, for giving me the opportunities to work hard, play hard and accomplish so many of the things in 2011 that I hoped I could. And thanks to everyone in my life who's making this one amazing ride! You all are great.

The times, they are a-changin'

Two weeks ago, Alan and I got a notice on our front door, announcing that our building had been procured by new owners. In 60 days, our rent would jump by over $500 a month. My mood about it, since then, has ranged from stress and anger (stage 1) to delirious amusement (stage 2) to a quiet, tentative sense of excitement (stage 3).

Stage 2 delirious amusement came in considering how NOT worth the new rental rate our building is. Yes, it's been a great place to settle into Seattle - walkable to everything from work to downtown to the stadiums to quaint neighborhood main drags to stunning views and urban parks, close access to highways to the mountains too, a quiet building with mostly good neighbors, etc.

But there are plenty of issues that we've tried to ignore for the last couple years. I won't go into detail here about them, but they're pretty 50/50 with the positives.

The new owners are not really landlords. They're a small investment company who renovate beat up, old buildings into fancy new apartments to make them far more profitable for owners. They don't really expect us to pay the new rent; they just want us out to do their renovations and help along our "rapidly gentrifying neighborhood." (Their phrasing, not mine.)

Learning that caused a brief plummet back into stage 1 (stress and anger), but it was shortly replaced by a leap into stage 3 (!) when I started cruising apartment listings. Although the market for renters is much tougher now than it was two years ago when we were last looking, we managed to land a new place within about a week and a half of initiating the search - and it's a great one!

And so stage 3 continues. Now that I know for sure where we are going, I feel like I'm at the beginning of a new relationship - giddy, distracted, and ultimately obsessed with the concept of something I really don't know at all...but will, very very soon. As I write this, I'm on my lunch break at work, chowing down over my keyboard so I can get some of my infatuated ramblings off my chest before plunging back into work.

We'll be moving to Queen Anne - the other major hill in Seattle that nuzzles downtown. The famous, so-called "Frasier view" is taken from Queen Anne. I took the following photo on my first run up the hill, nearly two years ago.


Hassles of moving week itself aside, we'll get to enjoy all the perks of moving without the hassle of having to find new jobs or new friends. Instead, we'll get to explore new cafes, new restaurants, new bookstores, new libraries, new ice cream shops, new running routes, new evening walks, new hidden public stairways and secret views...all the exciting aspects of going somewhere new!

We'll be in a nicer neighborhood overall, and finally have covered off-street parking! We'll have our very own balcony with beautiful views of the Seattle skyline, Mt. Rainier, Lake Union and the Cascade mountains. We'll have enough space to not need a separate storage unit anymore. And all for about the same price we pay now!

Clearly, we should have made this move a long time ago.

In the meantime, as with all goodbyes - however small - I have lists of things I will miss about our current home...lists of things I still haven't ever gotten around to doing in our neighborhood, that are imperative to do before moving next month. Funny how a deadline sometimes is all the push you need to grant yourself the experiences you've been thinking about, if not dreaming of. Nostalgic list entry coming soon to my blog :)