Target Acquired: Seattle

We're in Seattle! After all the moving, the three days of straight driving with all our worldly possessions in the car, the stress, the everything, we are living in the beautiful house we've wanted all this time, perfectly situated in a gorgeous city, ready to take on our lives like rabid wolverines, and the hot tub works!

I cannot properly explain how right all this is. The place needs some cleaning -- particularly the grill, which has probably never been cleaned in its life. We have some very nice beef tenderloins (sold to me off the back of a truck by a man at a gas station in Spokane) that desperately need to be barbecued. It's a beautiful thing.

There are all sorts of strange things that were left here, like a pool table in the garage and a fully stocked spice rack and two big-screen TVs...and a live fish in an aquarium over the fireplace. The fish is alive, somehow, despite this house being empty for months and no one feeding it. Perhaps it's a zombie fish.

Today we're unpacking and getting oriented. I've got some calls to make to set up doctor's appointments and things. I'm on Medicaid in Pennsylvania, so I need to figure out how to get on it in Washington without stepping on any legal toes. You see, I am also pregnant. We found out about six weeks ago but didn't want to post it here until we'd made sure to tell everyone who ought to hear it in person. It's a boy, due in October, and we're going to adopt it out. So one of the calls I have to make is to the lady running the Seattle branch of one of the adoption agencies we're thinking of using.

Tonight we took advantage of the enormous stack of free movie tickets Cassidy gets as an assistant kitchen manager at the local upscale yuppie theater (called Cinebarre) on the theater's opening day. We saw Star Trek, which Steve and I had seen already but liked. It requires even more suspension of disbelief than most Star Trek, but the acting and writing are way above par. Everyone nailed their roles, especially Bones. Spock and Kirk were impressive too, but dammit, Jim, Bones was perfect. And they worked in a whole slew of classic lines, like "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!" and "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" I'll probably acquire it when it comes out on DVD, and I can't wait to see where they go with this new alternate Trek.

And now I've got to get to work. I've got a bunch of jobs to apply to and all that other stuff I mentioned already. Good night, guys.