Home for the holidays

I’m going to be down in Southern California from December 19th through January 6th for my winter vacation. I’m looking forward to hanging out with everyone. It’s been about eight months since I moved up to Seattle, and this will be the longest I’ve spent in SoCal since then. Give me a call (714.686.0096) or email me () if you want to do something while I’m down.

After living up here for 2/3 of a year, I’ve found some things that I miss from California, and some things that I couldn’t find in California:

Things I miss from SoCal

• In-n-out: Sometimes you just want a double-double & animal-style fries
• 75° winters: It hovers around 30-50 here during the daytime and closer to 20-35 at night
• Driving 80 MPH on the freeway: The speed limit on interstates is 60 MPH here, and people don’t go much faster
• Randomly having bonfires on the beach: Uh, the closest beach is hours away
• Liquor at grocery stores: Liquor is state controlled here, so you have to go to special liquor stores (though prices are pretty good on some things)
• Souplantation: I always loved Souplantation, but the only one in Washington is on the southern border with Oregon (i.e. ridiculously far)
• The sun: Today was the first sunny day in months

Things I love about Seattle

• Delicious and plentiful beer: The grocery store shelves usually used for liquor are filled with lots of different types of beer including micro-brews and imports
• Seasons: We actually have four real seasons here. Summer here is amazing, 70-80 degrees, sunny, and beautiful. Autumn is cool and crisp – the leaves turn and eventually fall off. Winter is cold with occasional snow flurries (see below). Spring is wet but warm.
• Snow: We get snow here…not much of it, but it snowed for a few hours last weekend, and it is supposed to snow again tomorrow morning. I’d never seen snow falling before last weekend – it’s wicked cool.
• Awesome downtown: Downtown Seattle is actually desirable to go to and I usually go there at least once a week with friends. There are lots of cool bars and restaurants along with interesting culture including hippies.
• Tully’s Coffee: Despite Starbucks being everywhere (you thought LA had lots of them, there are many places here with two locations in one shopping center), we’ve also got Tully’s Coffee. Tully’s makes better (IMO), bigger, and slightly cheaper drinks than Starbucks and on top of that, I get a Microsoft discount.
• A new area to explore: Beyond everything else, the thing I like best about Seattle is that it’s totally new to me. I get a chance to learn about a whole new locale which is a fun challenge.

I’m glad that I moved up here: I love my job, I’ve got lots of friends, and it makes coming back to SoCal so much more special.