6/13/02 8:05 AM Pacific

Ugh. What a morning. We're at the airport now and finally at the proper gate for our flight. I'll try to back up a few days and see if that doesn't make me feel better.

Lying in bed last night I realized that I had forgotten one of the biggest things on Monday. While we were in the Kenmore/Bothell area we decided to take a quick trip over to the city of Woodinville. We had read some nice things about it and we wanted to take a look. What we saw really excited us. Woodinville has a very cute, really accessible downtown which contained a great variety of stores, all within easy walking distance of parking and each other. We spent only a few minutes driving through, but what we saw convinced us to make Woodinville our number one stop on Tuesday.

So now we move on to Tuesday.

Once again we were up by 8:00 AM and on the road by 9:30. We had a short-list of five apartment complexes to stop at and tour. Our first stop was at Trail Walk in Kenmore. While the neighborhood wasn't all that great it wasn't too bad either, and the apartments were nice. The place we looked at was relatively spacious and was around the high-end of our price range. The woman we spoke to was very professional and very friendly, which made a good impression on us. As a nice bonus there is a walking/biking trail right in front of the complex which would provide for some pleasant recreation.

From there we went back over to Woodinville to have a look at the Archstone Waterford Place. We hadn't visited there the previous day so we had some trouble finding it (the map on their site was hideously wrong), but we did eventually. It was a nice enough complex, though not as nice as Trail Walk, and the comparable apartment was a bit pricier. Still, it was a nice enough place and down town Woodinville was within a very easy walking distance. It also say on a multipurpose trail like Trail Walk, and the street it was on was much nicer and in a quieter neighborhood. Now we'll just have to decide which is more important: the apartment itself or where it is located.

From there is was on to Bothell (most people pronounce this like brothel, but I prefer to say boe THELL) where we were going to look a Brookwood Apartments. Brookwood was the only place we wanted to see that had townhouse-style apartments (which we love), but they were much more expensive so we planned on seeing the 2br model. Like Trail Walk, Brookwood is on a very busy street which isn't within walking distance of any place. Also like Trail Walk the apartments at Brookwood were very nice. Also like the previous two the staff was very professional. I seem to recall that the prices there were just a bit higher, but I could be mistaken.

Now it's 9:30 AM on 6/13 and our plane just left the ground. It is another sunny, clear day in the Puget Sound area and seal-level temperatures are expected to reach the low 80s—which is a bit high for the season but not unheard of. Now back to Tuesday.

From Bothell we drove North into unincorporated Snohomish county just West of Mill Creek (city) to visit our fourth complex, North Country Manor. Of all the places we visited, this one reminded us the most of Country Place Apartments (where we used to live in Warrensville Heights). This isn't to say that it was bad, necessarily. The staff and atmosphere was less professional and more laid back. The units were also older and not in as good condition as the other places we had visited. And the prices were lower for the square feet than anyplace else we had seen. Of these four this one was our least favourite, but will remain on our list as the most affordable, "fallback" option.

While we still had one place on our list we decided not to bother. It was no better than any of the others and was in a city/area we really didn't want to live in (Northern Lynnwood).

By this time we had spoken with Vanya, so we headed back to our hotel to rest for an hour or two before driving up to Burlington to see them.

The drive was a bit long and we got stuck in the Everett rush hour traffic, but even that wasn't too bad and we got up there by about 6:30 PM. Their house was easy to find, too. When we got there Vanessa's mother and friend were there, which was a bit awkward at first, but that didn't last too long. As soon as we arrived and had said hello Alexander grabbed Lauren and dragged her outside to show her stuff. It's amusing how readily people take to her, which is probably good since my people skills aren't all that great.

We had a home cooked dinner rather than going out, which was pretty nice. Vanya had made a spaghetti sauce which was very good and Vanessa had made "meatless" balls that were interesting. For what they were they were very good, but had an odd texture. All in all I don't think that they or their ilk will ever replace ground up mammal flesh for me. For dinner we had sticky rice and mango. The sticky rice was something like oatmeal or cream of wheat and the mangos were fresh and mild. I enjoyed it.

After dinner we hung out for a while just talking and having a nice evening with friends. We showed them the wedding pictures we had brought on CD and some of the vacation pictures still on the camera. We eventually dragged ourselves away around 11:30 PM for the long drive back to Lynnwood.

That concludes Tuesday which leaves only one day of our honeymoon vacation left to talk about. I'm going to take a break now to let my hand un-cramp. Whether I write more on this flight or the next one I should manage to get all caught up till today. Just getting to this point has required 64 pages in this notebook. I am really not looking forward to typing all of this into my computer. I wonder how much a voice-typing program would cost...