Robb + Jessie Married & in the Badger State
What has happened in the past 30 days?
Wow. August has been busy. The biggest event was going home for the first time since our wedding.
And, it was quite fitting to go home for our friends’ wedding. It is such a blessing to see our friends getting married, and it is quite nice to have more married friends to share this whole new phase of life with.
August in Seattle is what is known as “California Sucker Days” because the skies are blue, except the occassional day of showers, the Mountain is always “out” and the temperature never rises much above 75ºF. Lovely.
Except, we did get the more-than-usual rain showers, but I loved being able to sit outside as the sun set and not be bit my mosquitos. And what is a trip home without getting stuck on 520 West Bound at 5pm?
Did I mention how busy we were? Honestly, our trip home consisted of seeing all of our friends and family and driving in a huge triangle from Seattle to Ellensburg to Fish Lake and back home. When we got back to Madison, we slept. I have never taken quite so many naps.
We didn’t spend all of August in Seattle, although that would have been nice; the rest of the month has been rather low key. Work, coffee with friends, cooking, gardening, running, and such. We are now gearing up for school again. And planning our winter vacation (San Diego - here we come!).
I know we’ve left you hanging, waiting to hear what has been going on in our lives, but seriously? We have just been living. Oh yes, and watching the Olympics. That has entirely consumed our free time. Sorry. I hope you can forgive us. I’ll be posting some of our recent gardening-expeditions soon.
Stay tuned!
Why we love Seattle.
Note: I apologize if you are not from the Greater Seattle Area.
The other night Robb and I watched about a million mini clips from Seattle’s classic “Almost Live!” from the 1990s (similar to Saturday Night Live, but better if you are a Seattleite).
For your viewing pleasure… some of our favourite clips:
Seattle’s own Speedwalker! staring Bill Nye:
The Ballard Files (why Ballard is the coolest neighborhood):
Studs from Microsoft and as your host, Pat Cashman:
Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan: Library of Death:
The Lame List or What’s Weak This Week brought to you by America’s Heavy Metal Community (or Seattle Grunge):
I hope you enjoyed this little sample of Seattle at its finest. Apparently NBC doesn’t want to release Almost Live! on DVDs (what a shame). So you can check it out on YouTube. There are many, many more excellent clips. Enjoy!
Starbucks
As a Seattleite, it is only fair that I compare Starbucks per capita.
Seattle versus Madison
To compare, I needed to obtain data:
- Populations of the city based on 2006 United States Census:
- Number of Starbucks located in a five mile radius of the city center (based on zip codes) using the Starbucks Store Locater:
- Starbucks Store per person:
- Additionally, for comparison sake, there are 15 times more Starbucks in Seattle than in Madison!
- Seattle 582,174 people in the greater Seattle area
- Madison 223,389 people in the greater Madison area
- Seattle (98109) 104 Starbucks Stores
- Madison (53726) 7 Starbucks Stores
- Seattle 1:5,597
- Madison 1:31,912
In conclusion, Starbucks stores are much more frequent in Seattle than in Madison. I could do this same type of analysis again and compare all coffee shops between cities per capita and the ratio might still look like that. The joke that there is a coffee shop on every street corner in Seattle is, yes, very true. But we Seattlites are proud of this! We need to have our streets densely populated with coffee shops in order to keep up our energy for the day… fueling our addictions! Actually, that being said, I am a tea drinker opposed to a coffee monger.
Now I shall leave you with two final questions:
What kind of business is on every street corner in Madison?
Does it outnumber Seattle?
Make your suggestions and I’ll research it for you.
Elevation
Another thing I have learned about living in the Midwest (again) is that clouds often deceive folks from the West coast as being snow covered mountains looming in the distance. To humor myself, I decided to figure out the highest point in Wisconsin and compare it to Washington’s standard of The Mountain.
Drum roll please… Wisconsin’s highest point is Timms Hill coming in at a remarkable 1,951 feet above sea level.
I was going to present you with a photo of Timms Hill, but I couldn’t find anything remarkable about it. Actually, when I went to their website, I thought the photo was showing you where you began to start the hike. Not the hill. Alas.
OK. Second drum roll… Washington’s prized possession is none other than Mount Rainier coming in at a spectacular 14,410 feet above sea level. And you may now be rewarded with a beautiful image of the summit. Hoorah!
