New York bound

B&I are heading to Manhattan to visit my sister and brother-in-law. I'll try to blog from the road. The weather in NYC is supposed to be nice with highs in the 50s and *sunshine*... glorious, glorious, sunshine.

Political Link

If you are interested in trying to persuade Al Gore to run for President in 2008, there is a petition at the following link. It would be nice to have presidential debates that focus on climate change as one of the most important issues facing our country (and the whole globe for that matter).

Taste of Spring

Sunday's weather in Seattle was like the first taste of Spring. There was a break in the rain and the sun actually came out. I can tell because Greenlake was crowded with people outside enjoying the sun. There were even people out in shorts!!! Sure it was warmer than usual, but come on! That's just showing off.

We ate ice cream (not possible when it's cold and rainy), walked outside, and even wandered in to an open house near Greenlake. It was a cute 2 bed/2.5 bth townhouse with wood floors, great kitchen, fireplace in living room and master bedroom, lots of bay windows, and a rooftop patio with an amazing view of the like. All that for just $725k! I guess the cost of a Greenlake view is equivalent to the cost of a beachfront property in South Beach, Florida. So spendy. Sticker shock nonwithstanding, it was a great day.

La Niña?

If you look at recent maps of temperature in the tropical Pacific, it seems things are a bit chilly down there. That is consistent with a La Niña event. What is a La Niña event? Check out this link from the NOAA website. Basically in the tropics, the Trade Winds blow stronger than usual and more cold water is upwelled from below (say 100m-ish) in the eastern equatorial Pacific (off the coast of South America) and the surface waters are cooler than usual. This means more nutrients, the fish are happy, and fishermen are happy too. La Niña (like El Niño) also affects the global climate. One affect during strong La Niña events is more precip and colder temps in the Pacific Northwest! We didn't need that! Thank you very much.

Addendum: It's really still too early to tell if it's La Niña, it could just be normal conditions. Stay tuned!

Renters woe

We are renters. We dream of a day when we can purchase a nice 3 bedroom home of our own with rooms we can customize and make our own. But in Seattle it just ain't easy. It is so discouraging that a 3 bedroom house we could rent for say $1500/month has a mortgage of $3000/month*. Housing prices in Seattle are - in a word - insane. Home sales are declining all across the country, but not here...not here. The one thing you see is houses on the market for longer, but that doesn't make the prices less insane. People are still being outbid by buyers who offer tens of thousands more than the asking price.

I keep telling myself it's a good thing we are renters. We are mobile and not tied down. We can use all that extra money (hmm... what extra money?) to travel abroad and visit our families. Maybe we'll continue renters and never take a dip in the home-owner pool... who knows.

*Numbers are just picked as an example.