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jrtomMegan, Corwin, and I came back from our May 2006 whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest a week ago. The first week was spent in Portland helping friends get ready for their wedding, and the second was in the Seattle area looking for houses for our impending move to that area.
Even more long-winded than is my usual wont. You've been warned.
The happy couple were![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hypgnosis and his sweetie, S. Both Megan and I were in the wedding party; I was best man (he'd been my own best man, almost 5 years ago now).
A few words about H and S and the wedding, first, before I start diving into some details of the prep and the event and lose track of the big picture. I've known H since 1992 or 1993 (Megan met him shortly after meeting me, in 1996); S we've known since about 2001. They're wonderful people, and lots of fun to hang out with; we're very happy, for a variety of reasons, that they're married; and we were very honored to be in their wedding party. One of the reasons that we're happy that we're moving to the Seattle area is that it will give us a chance to see them more often.
That said, it was an awfully busy week. :P :) Both H and S had to deal with considerably more than the usual amount of crap--over and above the wedding prep--and some of it spilled over. We knew this was going to happen--this was the main reason that we were in Portland that week--but, yow. :)
Another side note: Megan and I could not have helped nearly so much that week if it were not for the kind offices of our friends the Saulsburys (who let us stay with them, helped us with Corwin, and even let us crash their place at 11 PM for their net connection when we needed to catch up on house listings), Megan's dad (who loaned us a car), and Megan's mom (who let us stay with her later in the week, and helped immensely with Corwin (including considerable babysitting, including during the wedding).) They will probably never read this, but kudos to them nevertheless.
Megan, also, was a rock throughout this whole thing. Over the two week period, she probably was shorted the equivalent of two whole nights' sleep by comparison with yours truly.
Back to the messy details...
S had a couple of friends that had been going to sing Schubert's Ave Maria (in the Latin transcription, for you music geeks out there); however, that fell through. When we heard that this had happened, I volunteered to sing it instead (and, in an excess of enthusiasm, volunteered Megan to sing with me; fortunately, she was gracious enough to go along with it), and suggested our friend J as a pianist. This eventually worked out (and was very well received) but I need to be more cautious about volunteering Megan to sing in public; she's good at it, but it (and the preparation) stressed her out. Plus I ended up spending money on a not-very-updated version of a piece of software (MusicTime) that I hadn't really liked that much when I first bought it in 1995, so I could use my Mac to transcribe the music for purposes of practicing it. (I'd much rather have Sibelius, but damn it's expensive.)
The DJ that H and S had hoped to use for the reception (the same one that Megan and I used for ours--a good guy) also didn't work out. So I volunteered to run the music from my laptop (since I was already going to do this for the wedding). (Side note:amnesiadust kindly agreed to run the music for the ceremony, since everyone involved failed to notice that I couldn't both do that and be in the wedding party until the week prior to the wedding--oops. This was especially kind of him considering that his wedding invitation arrived very late. Thanks, amnesiadust!) This eventually engendered many hours of collecting music, transferring it to my laptop (and often typing in the CD data manually, since sometimes I didn't have a net connection), helping H purchase the stuff they didn't have, and organizing it into playlists. The music itself went OK, but I learned that, at the very least, I need more practice being a MC (and a DJ): some dead air, some awkward transitions, and perhaps most crucially, I failed to move things along fast enough, and we lost some of the guests to attrition before the dancing really got started. I feel kind of bad about this.
Fortunately, I didn't have to do much to organize a bachelor party; we had a joint bachelor/bachelorette party at a local amusement venue (miniature golf, video games, go-karts, etc.--you get the idea), which went pretty well. My knee prevented me from partaking in some of the available amusements, which was a bit of a bummer, and Corwin spent most of the miniature golf tourney being frustrated and hungry (and fed in dribs and drabs), but I think that the bride and groom had fun.
H & S decided that they wanted the wedding party (the groom's side, anyway) to wear kilts. Since I'd already bought a great kilt for my oldest sister's first wedding and this wedding was to feature dress kilts, I rented one...which was OK except that they changed my order without telling me (which involved an increased charge) and the vest had a missing button. They eventually made it OK, but as of this writing I still don't know if they've yet managed to pick up the kilt for return, which created more of a problem for H's mom (to whom I had it delivered, and who graciously agreed to be used as a pickup point as well, because I'd be out of town) than I'd anticipated. Still and all, though, we did make a nice presentation at the ceremony. (I wore the Irish National kilt with an O'Brien (mother's maiden name; the O'Madadhains don't seem to have had their own tartan) kilt pin; the O'Brien tartan wasn't available for rental. This basically green tartan made a nice contrast with the mostly red tartans worn by the groom and the other groomsmen, and complemented the burgundy gown worn by the matron of honor and green gowns worn by the other bride's attendants.)
H's mother hosted a very nice (and relaxing!) rehearsal dinner, at which the wedding party received various gifts from the bride and groom; mine was a copy of The Meaning Of Everything: The Story of The Oxford English Dictionary. (He knows me so well. ;) )
All during this week, Megan had phone job interviews, and we spent at least a couple of hours each night poring over house listings and trying to both add new houses (to replace the ones lost to the high turnover) and to remove the ones we weren't as keen on to get the list down to a manageable size. Plus Megan's mom's birthday was Wednesday, and Mother's day was (effectively) the following Sunday. We didn't get a lot of sleep that week (especially Megan).
We arrived in the area on Sunday evening. Since Microsoft was paying for our first four days, we decided to give room service a shot the first night in the hotel. (Note to self: room service food can be terrible even if it's quite expensive. Megan's steak was very tender, but actually managed to give the appearance of being fake (in taste and texture), and my own selection was undistinguished at best.)
We'd constrained our search to communities within 30 minutes of both Redmond and downtown Seattle (since Megan's as-yet-undetermined job might be based in either place), i.e., basically up to Kenmore/Bothell/Woodinville on the north, Renton on the south, and Sammamish/Issaquah on the east. (The original western barrier will be left as an exercise for the map reader, although we actually didn't end up looking at any houses in Seattle proper; it was all east of Lake Washington.) We already knew, from our observations of the online listings, that the market was pretty active; houses in Redmond, Kirkland, or Sammamish tend to be expensive and are often gone in about a day of listing, following a brief but bitter bidding war.
The next four days were a blur: we probably either looked at, or discussed and decided to eliminate without visiting, about 60 houses or so. One house we actually drove by twice accidentally (probably a nice place, but it had major power lines and towers right next to the back yard) because we had mixed up our records of which houses we'd looked at. Our real estate agent was very helpful; she drove us everywhere (which let us concentrate on discussing houses rather than navigation, and minimized coordination), made sure we were properly supplied with snacks, drinks, and toys for Corwin, watched after Corwin while he was napping in the car and Megan and I were zipping through houses, and was invariably pleasant to deal with during 12+ hours a day of dealing with us and an occasionally cranky and/or recalcitrant 15-month-old. Friday we looked at a few new ones and a couple of previously identified favorites, Friday evening we made an offer, Saturday we accepted their counteroffer and had the house inspected, and Sunday we got up at oh-my-[INSERT DEITY HERE]-it's early and flew back to Irvine, mission accomplished.
It's in Renton, in a community called Fairwood Greens*. It's a pretty nice house, in good shape, in a very nice (beautiful, and apparently friendly) neighborhood, and a beautiful back yard; it backs up to a greenbelt with a ravine dropping down to a creek, so we have lots of trees out back, and the appearance of a huge yard without having to pay for most of it. :)
The major drawback is that it's not as close to Microsoft as we'd prefer; the expected commute time (by car) is nominally about 30 minutes, about 5 of which is spent just getting out of the neighborhood; this will probably balloon during rush hour. Plus, it's not quite as large as we'd like (3 bedrooms).
On the other hand, the price is reasonable (by local standards), it has a really nice layout, and there's room to expand the living space if we want to do that; Megan and I have already spent a lot of time plotting various modifications, like an additional bedroom, a solarium, and a deck overlooking the ravine...and since it was about $50K cheaper than some other houses we looked at, we can afford to make such revisions. As a further bonus, it's closer to Portland, which will make visits down that way that much more convenient. Anyway, once we have furniture, we'll have places to put visitors, which is something we haven't really had in Irvine; we look forward to this change. :)
We'll be moving in around the second week of July, as the sellers asked for a closing date near the end of June and an option to rent for a few days while they prepared their new house for habitation. Fortunately, Microsoft is providing us with 45 days of (free) temporary housing, so while we'd like to move into our new place on arrival, it will be nice to have a month without rent or mortgage expenses.
*Let's just get this out of the way now, since once the address is known, I expect one of my snarky friends to do a satellite lookup on it and notice the nearby golf course. I am in complete denial of the existence of said golf course, insofar as that is possible. As far as I'm concerned, it's called "Fairwood Greens" because we're living in a community of elf-ear-wearing fantasy-novel-reading Middle-Earth-pining-after unreconstructed hippies. Any evidence to the contrary will be summarily ignored and/or countered by "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" as necessary.
So, yeah. It kind of went like that.
Even more long-winded than is my usual wont. You've been warned.
The happy couple were
hypgnosis and his sweetie, S. Both Megan and I were in the wedding party; I was best man (he'd been my own best man, almost 5 years ago now). A few words about H and S and the wedding, first, before I start diving into some details of the prep and the event and lose track of the big picture. I've known H since 1992 or 1993 (Megan met him shortly after meeting me, in 1996); S we've known since about 2001. They're wonderful people, and lots of fun to hang out with; we're very happy, for a variety of reasons, that they're married; and we were very honored to be in their wedding party. One of the reasons that we're happy that we're moving to the Seattle area is that it will give us a chance to see them more often.
That said, it was an awfully busy week. :P :) Both H and S had to deal with considerably more than the usual amount of crap--over and above the wedding prep--and some of it spilled over. We knew this was going to happen--this was the main reason that we were in Portland that week--but, yow. :)
Another side note: Megan and I could not have helped nearly so much that week if it were not for the kind offices of our friends the Saulsburys (who let us stay with them, helped us with Corwin, and even let us crash their place at 11 PM for their net connection when we needed to catch up on house listings), Megan's dad (who loaned us a car), and Megan's mom (who let us stay with her later in the week, and helped immensely with Corwin (including considerable babysitting, including during the wedding).) They will probably never read this, but kudos to them nevertheless.
Megan, also, was a rock throughout this whole thing. Over the two week period, she probably was shorted the equivalent of two whole nights' sleep by comparison with yours truly.
Back to the messy details...
S had a couple of friends that had been going to sing Schubert's Ave Maria (in the Latin transcription, for you music geeks out there); however, that fell through. When we heard that this had happened, I volunteered to sing it instead (and, in an excess of enthusiasm, volunteered Megan to sing with me; fortunately, she was gracious enough to go along with it), and suggested our friend J as a pianist. This eventually worked out (and was very well received) but I need to be more cautious about volunteering Megan to sing in public; she's good at it, but it (and the preparation) stressed her out. Plus I ended up spending money on a not-very-updated version of a piece of software (MusicTime) that I hadn't really liked that much when I first bought it in 1995, so I could use my Mac to transcribe the music for purposes of practicing it. (I'd much rather have Sibelius, but damn it's expensive.)
The DJ that H and S had hoped to use for the reception (the same one that Megan and I used for ours--a good guy) also didn't work out. So I volunteered to run the music from my laptop (since I was already going to do this for the wedding). (Side note:
amnesiadust kindly agreed to run the music for the ceremony, since everyone involved failed to notice that I couldn't both do that and be in the wedding party until the week prior to the wedding--oops. This was especially kind of him considering that his wedding invitation arrived very late. Thanks, amnesiadust!) This eventually engendered many hours of collecting music, transferring it to my laptop (and often typing in the CD data manually, since sometimes I didn't have a net connection), helping H purchase the stuff they didn't have, and organizing it into playlists. The music itself went OK, but I learned that, at the very least, I need more practice being a MC (and a DJ): some dead air, some awkward transitions, and perhaps most crucially, I failed to move things along fast enough, and we lost some of the guests to attrition before the dancing really got started. I feel kind of bad about this. Fortunately, I didn't have to do much to organize a bachelor party; we had a joint bachelor/bachelorette party at a local amusement venue (miniature golf, video games, go-karts, etc.--you get the idea), which went pretty well. My knee prevented me from partaking in some of the available amusements, which was a bit of a bummer, and Corwin spent most of the miniature golf tourney being frustrated and hungry (and fed in dribs and drabs), but I think that the bride and groom had fun.
H & S decided that they wanted the wedding party (the groom's side, anyway) to wear kilts. Since I'd already bought a great kilt for my oldest sister's first wedding and this wedding was to feature dress kilts, I rented one...which was OK except that they changed my order without telling me (which involved an increased charge) and the vest had a missing button. They eventually made it OK, but as of this writing I still don't know if they've yet managed to pick up the kilt for return, which created more of a problem for H's mom (to whom I had it delivered, and who graciously agreed to be used as a pickup point as well, because I'd be out of town) than I'd anticipated. Still and all, though, we did make a nice presentation at the ceremony. (I wore the Irish National kilt with an O'Brien (mother's maiden name; the O'Madadhains don't seem to have had their own tartan) kilt pin; the O'Brien tartan wasn't available for rental. This basically green tartan made a nice contrast with the mostly red tartans worn by the groom and the other groomsmen, and complemented the burgundy gown worn by the matron of honor and green gowns worn by the other bride's attendants.)
H's mother hosted a very nice (and relaxing!) rehearsal dinner, at which the wedding party received various gifts from the bride and groom; mine was a copy of The Meaning Of Everything: The Story of The Oxford English Dictionary. (He knows me so well. ;) )
All during this week, Megan had phone job interviews, and we spent at least a couple of hours each night poring over house listings and trying to both add new houses (to replace the ones lost to the high turnover) and to remove the ones we weren't as keen on to get the list down to a manageable size. Plus Megan's mom's birthday was Wednesday, and Mother's day was (effectively) the following Sunday. We didn't get a lot of sleep that week (especially Megan).
We arrived in the area on Sunday evening. Since Microsoft was paying for our first four days, we decided to give room service a shot the first night in the hotel. (Note to self: room service food can be terrible even if it's quite expensive. Megan's steak was very tender, but actually managed to give the appearance of being fake (in taste and texture), and my own selection was undistinguished at best.)
We'd constrained our search to communities within 30 minutes of both Redmond and downtown Seattle (since Megan's as-yet-undetermined job might be based in either place), i.e., basically up to Kenmore/Bothell/Woodinville on the north, Renton on the south, and Sammamish/Issaquah on the east. (The original western barrier will be left as an exercise for the map reader, although we actually didn't end up looking at any houses in Seattle proper; it was all east of Lake Washington.) We already knew, from our observations of the online listings, that the market was pretty active; houses in Redmond, Kirkland, or Sammamish tend to be expensive and are often gone in about a day of listing, following a brief but bitter bidding war.
The next four days were a blur: we probably either looked at, or discussed and decided to eliminate without visiting, about 60 houses or so. One house we actually drove by twice accidentally (probably a nice place, but it had major power lines and towers right next to the back yard) because we had mixed up our records of which houses we'd looked at. Our real estate agent was very helpful; she drove us everywhere (which let us concentrate on discussing houses rather than navigation, and minimized coordination), made sure we were properly supplied with snacks, drinks, and toys for Corwin, watched after Corwin while he was napping in the car and Megan and I were zipping through houses, and was invariably pleasant to deal with during 12+ hours a day of dealing with us and an occasionally cranky and/or recalcitrant 15-month-old. Friday we looked at a few new ones and a couple of previously identified favorites, Friday evening we made an offer, Saturday we accepted their counteroffer and had the house inspected, and Sunday we got up at oh-my-[INSERT DEITY HERE]-it's early and flew back to Irvine, mission accomplished.
It's in Renton, in a community called Fairwood Greens*. It's a pretty nice house, in good shape, in a very nice (beautiful, and apparently friendly) neighborhood, and a beautiful back yard; it backs up to a greenbelt with a ravine dropping down to a creek, so we have lots of trees out back, and the appearance of a huge yard without having to pay for most of it. :)
The major drawback is that it's not as close to Microsoft as we'd prefer; the expected commute time (by car) is nominally about 30 minutes, about 5 of which is spent just getting out of the neighborhood; this will probably balloon during rush hour. Plus, it's not quite as large as we'd like (3 bedrooms).
On the other hand, the price is reasonable (by local standards), it has a really nice layout, and there's room to expand the living space if we want to do that; Megan and I have already spent a lot of time plotting various modifications, like an additional bedroom, a solarium, and a deck overlooking the ravine...and since it was about $50K cheaper than some other houses we looked at, we can afford to make such revisions. As a further bonus, it's closer to Portland, which will make visits down that way that much more convenient. Anyway, once we have furniture, we'll have places to put visitors, which is something we haven't really had in Irvine; we look forward to this change. :)
We'll be moving in around the second week of July, as the sellers asked for a closing date near the end of June and an option to rent for a few days while they prepared their new house for habitation. Fortunately, Microsoft is providing us with 45 days of (free) temporary housing, so while we'd like to move into our new place on arrival, it will be nice to have a month without rent or mortgage expenses.
*Let's just get this out of the way now, since once the address is known, I expect one of my snarky friends to do a satellite lookup on it and notice the nearby golf course. I am in complete denial of the existence of said golf course, insofar as that is possible. As far as I'm concerned, it's called "Fairwood Greens" because we're living in a community of elf-ear-wearing fantasy-novel-reading Middle-Earth-pining-after unreconstructed hippies. Any evidence to the contrary will be summarily ignored and/or countered by "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" as necessary.
So, yeah. It kind of went like that.