Sickly in Seattle

Originally Posted:
Thursday, June 19, 2008

1:57:00 AM CDT

Feeling Listless

Hearing Nothing, just cars passing by.

I'm going to have to do this backwards since I've got some catching up to do. I'll start with the most recent and work my way back.

So, I'm in Seattle now. Yay! But, I have a terrible cold. Boo! My weather sensitive body didn't adjust to the 30+ degree temperature change from Evansville to Seattle very well at all. On the contrary, my sinuses have revolted. I arrived late Sunday night around 11:30 pm and by Tuesday morning I had been afflicted with a raw throat and the beginnings of a head cold. For those of you who plan to visit me, start taking your vitamin C, zinc and Echinacea now! I don't want you to be sick too while you are here.

Okay- back to the getting here part of it. Like I said, I got here late Sunday night, spent the night at a hotel, then met the guy I'm sub-leasing from to get the keys and see my new space. It's tiny, but perfect for me. With one exception...it turns out that I'm at Pioneer Camp for the summer...there's no TV. I repeat, NO TV. When I asked how to use the three remotes laying on the credenza, nowhere in my wildest dreams would I have expected him to say, "You probably won't need them." Huh? Why wouldn't I need them. There's three of them for goodness sakes...surely there's a highly sophisticated and very complicated system of turning all the audio/video equipment housed in that credenza. Huh? What do you mean the TV monitor sitting on the credenza is used just for watching DVD's? What are all the remotes for then? Oh. One is for the DVD player. One is for the speakers. And, one is for turning the TV on and off. You've got to be kidding me. All that for watching a DVD on a 17" screen? Okay. I can do this. No TV. I'll just read a lot of books. I'll be working during the week and won't have much time to watch TV, right? OMG! What am I going to do?!?

That was Monday. It's now Wednesday and I've survived three whole days without TV. woo. hoo. Know what the worst part of it is? I don't know what to do when I first get home from being out during the day. Normally, that's the first thing I do when I get home. I turn the TV on so I can have some sort of background noise and usually listen to the news to wind down the day. Now I walk in and go straight to opening the windows so I have the chatter of passersby and street traffic to listen to. For my nighttime entertainment I watch my soaps online to catch me up on the daily dramas. What the heck am I going to do on the weekend when there are no soaps operas?

I gave myself a week to get acclimated to Seattle before I started working. Normally I'm, a last minute kind of girl who would have (normally) arrived on Sunday and started work on Monday, but I figured since this is a completely different situation and I'm depending on bus transportation to get around the city, I'd better give myself a few extra days to get settled just in case. I'm glad I did because I've had a chance to get used to the bus system and venture around the downtown area. My landmarks are Macy's and Nordstrom...I know what's near each, so when I get lost, I can just ask, “Which way is Macy's?" I must say, so far Seattle is beautiful. It's 60 degrees and breezy. It's a bit on the chilly side as most people are wearing long sleeves, jackets and long pants, but it's still gorgeous. The houses of the neighborhood I'm in all seem to have full flower gardens in their landscaping. Flowers are everywhere! Seeing them makes for a very pleasant walk.