Still Waiting

Sorry everyone. We're still waiting for our modem to show up. It's in Mount Vernon, WA as of right now, so we should be blogging our heads off pretty soon here. Right now I'm in the Fairhaven Library, which appears to have set-up inside an old church or something. The building is extremely old and sweet-looking.

Other things that have happened lately:

1. There are all sorts of high school students camped out at the entrances of grocery stores around town handing out flyers to people walking in. The flyers are for a food drive, which is a good cause, but I have an innate fear of being handed little pieces of paper. Anyone who walked over the footbridge to campus in Eau Claire knows exactly what I'm talking about. Do you have to stick that piece of paper out at me like I'm obliged to take it? I really don't want another piece of paper to throw away as soon as I'm out of sight, but I feel guilty not taking it. Anyway, today I tried my hardest to enter/exit through side entrances, like through the pharmacy or the store cafe. Seems to have worked.

2. We have awesome neighbors. T and I attended the Fairhaven Neighbors Association Picnic at Marine Park (which I've blogged a little bit about before). We're clearly the youngest people in the neighborhood, but don't let that fool you. All of our neighbors--most of whom have children older than T and I--are the friendliest people in the world. They introduced themselves to us, forced food upon us, and even played bocce ball with us. Nice folks, really.

3. A strange thing about leaving Wisconsin is not seeing liquor for sale in grocery stores, department stores, gas stations, bus stops, parks, etc. Apparently Washington State controls the sale of hard alcohol. You can only find liquor in two stores in Bellingham, and the stores are owned by the state. I couldn't figure out why at first, but all the grocery stores, department stores, and gas stations sell beer and wine like you wouldn't believe. And since they make some of the vino in Washington, it's cheap! And since we're poor and unemployed, that's great!

4. The Interurban Trail runs everywhere. Literally, we walk to the end of the street and there's an old railroad line that was converted into a walking trail. From our house its 7 miles to Larrabee Park, the camp where we slept the first few nights. All sorts of different organizations sponsor marathons out to Larrabee. There was one this weekend, but we're still out of the loop, so we missed out.

5. Since we've gotten to B'ham, it has only rained once. All of the neighbors and other locals have made us swear that we wouldn't tell any of you that the weather is delightful, but I just broke my promise.

6. The city has done an awesome job of planning very specific things. For instance, the central Library, City Hall, and the Courthouse are all on the same block. The Police and Fire Departments are on the next block down. Near our house, the Amtrak station, the Greyhound Station, and the main terminal for the Alaskan Marine Highway (the Ferry that carries everyone up to Alaska) are within 100 yards of one another.

7. I have never, never, ever seen a Farmer's Market like the one here in Bellingham.



There will definitely be more updates in the next few days here once we get the internet working again, and that's when I'll probably start making this thing private so that we're comfortable uploading a few more photos of ourselves here.