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| Week 21 |
05/17 - Today was my
final day at the University of Illinois. I am a college graduate. It's very
surreal. Last night I stayed at a hotel with my mom and brother, and today they
and my dad and grandma attended my graduation ceremony. Before all of that, I
attended Melissa's ceremony and got to watch her graduate with the College of
ACES. At UIUC, the various colleges have separate ceremonies due to the large
college size. The College of Engineering is so a large that they even split it
up into two separate ceremonies, so, of course, I wasn't until Sunday night at
7:15pm. The weekend was extremely frantic and exhausting. I basically wore a
suit for three days straight during the most humid weekend of the year, yikes.
I'll be sure to get that dry cleaned before I leave Loves Park lol.
I will never forget
the people I have grown close to over my four years at UIUC. They have become
like family to me and for that I am forever thankful. I'm going to create a
Google spreadsheet with everyone's contact info that we can all keep updated. I
hope this will help us keep in touch over the years and give us an address to
send postcards! I love them all. I'm going to miss them a ton, hopefully I can
manage to drag them all out to Seattle to visit.
05/18 - After the
craziness of graduation weekend it feels good to be home. Now it's time to pack
strategically. When I packed up my room at school I made two separate piles for
clothes, one for Seattle and one to keep at home, so clothes should be good.
Otherwise, I have to make sure I have things like kitchen knives and my
hammock. All a man needs, right? Hit the bank and yes, I got the suit dry
cleaned, thank God.
05/19 - Packed and ready to go! I will be
taking two 45lb checked bags and a carry on bag to Seattle, plus a laptop. I
was originally only gonna bring one large bag and Mail myself a box of goods,
but it turns out it's cheaper to check that second bag. I'm excited for
tomorrow's trip and hope everything will go well. Also, I made that spreadsheet
I talked about, now I have to get people to fill it out.
05/20 - SEATTLE Bound! The day has finally arrived to fly out to Seattle to begin my internship. My
dad and I had a 7:00pm flight out of O'Hare. We got to the airport early and
ate some Macaroni grill (lasagna). I am currently at 10,000ft up looking down
on possibly The Badlands or something, everything looks rocky, hilly, and
desolate, maybe we are already at the foothills of the Rockies. There are very
few cities and lights below....Currently looking down on mountains! Finally!
When we land the plan
is to get out rental car and get to the hotel. My new roomie Ryan is already in
Seattle at the apart,net, but we'll join him in the morning. UPDATE: Capt. Just
came on intercom and said we are above Montana, so there we go. 1.5 hours left.
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| Where they throw fish! |
Made it safe and sound to the hotel, too tired to do anything so goodnight Seattle!
05/21 - Took full advantage of my first day in Seattle! We visited the apartment and met up with/picked up Ryan there. It's a nice place! First we walked down to the building I'll be working and checked that area out. Apparently
KPFF is in the hub of shopping so that's convenient. Next we visited the
Space Needle, which was really neat and not too expensive. Afterwards we walked on over to the famous
Pike Place City Market where they throw around fish and put
gum on the wall. We didn't actually see the gum wall yet but the market was sweet. It's only a few blocks down the hill from where I'll be working so I'm sensing fresh fish and veggies in my future. I'll just eat like a European and get my daily dinner each day on the way home from work!
For lunch we grabbed some food at
Anthony's Fish Bar, which was pretty decent fast seafood, though I know there will be much better fare in the city elsewhere. After the market we decided it would be good to get some essentials for the new apartment. Thanks to
Melissa, I have a handy pocket notebook to keep track of my day and make the all-so-important "to do" lists that I've become a slave to. Using said notebook, I jotted out a list of items we needed to turn the apartment space into a home. We decided that the 'burbs would be the best place to get all our stuff, so we headed out to Rentfort, WA, first stop: Goodwill.
So, at home and anywhere I'm a pretty big Goodwill junkie. I thrive on buying seemingly (and actually) useless items to clutter up my living spaces with the idea that it's just junk so if it gets thrown out, no biggie. What I've found about Seattle is that the Goodwill stores here are HUGE and loaded with treasures, real treasures, not just junk. It's a good thing I don't have a car here because that could become dangerous. Anyways, we went to Goodwill and got enough stuff to turn an empty apartment into a ten-week home. each of us got a plate, cup, coffee mug, and chair and we also picked up necessary pots, pans, and utensils...and a narrow table.
Next we hit up Target for misc supplies to round-out our adventure. Finally, we ate at a sweet Rock n'Roll themed restaurant called
The Rock: Woodfire Pizza and Spirits. The burgers were massive and the beers were delightful. That about rounded out the first day. It was exhausting but a lot of fun and I looked forward to the next day's activities.
05/22 - Today was another adventurous day. We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island to check out what was over there. We found a quaint little town with some cool small shops. We went on foot but next time it would be good to bring a car. We stopped at a cool bakery called
Blackbird Bakery. They had good treats and coffee. We also took a short nature walk along the water. I would highly suggest taking a ferry ride if you come to Seattle, it's the best way to see the Seattle skyline!
When we got back to the mainland we visited Top Pot Doughnuts, it was really good. (ASIDE: Note that you can always find more details about Seattle in my other page). For dinner we hit up Pike Place Brewery, which I hope to return to enough times to try all of their in house brews. After that we went to Owl and Thistle Irish pub and listened to a pretty cool musical duo play some folksy songs. Finally, we ended the night at Fado Irish Pub around the corner and listened to some live music by a live Irishman...Long day...Wait, just kidding! After Fado we went over to the Triple Door to find out about live music in the area and ended up staying for a bit, listening to yer another live musical act. It was a fun evening and I'm glad I got to bar hop with my dad.
05/23 - Day 3 of Seattle had less rushing around, but we still did some pretty awesome stuff. First we took the
Seattle Monorail to the
Folklife festival in the Seattle Center, followed by a walk through the EMP Museum (literally just walked through, didn't want to pay to see exhibits). The Folklife festival was pretty cool, there was tons of music to be found and a bunch of food/stuff vendors. Apparently this festival is completely funded by donations, making it the largest donation-funded festival in the country.
Later in the day we decided on a whim to try and drive up Mt. Rainier. We didn't really think it through, and being cloudy it was not the greatest day to go. We started towards the mountain and took the wrong route (thanks Google Maps). The route DID take us the shortest path but it wasn't to the entrance of the park, just a random side road. Anyways, it was super cloudy and foggy as we got up into the foothills, so it didn't really make a difference, we couldn't see a thing. We did have a really fun time though driving through the fog. We got out a few times to breathe in the fresh mountain air and listen to the sound of silence. I took this picture that I thought was pretty neat:
