First impressions

Leslie and I are getting settled into our new town. I said town because Redmond is pretty small (which is nice). Leslie and I have spent our first few days here apartment hunting, visiting downtown Seattle, and driving around learning the area.

In the few days we've been here, there are a few things that stick out to me/I keep noticing and I figured I'd share some of those.

--Evergreens are everywhere. People here refer to a group of trees as a "green belt" and there are green belts all around.

--There is a misconception that there is a Starbucks on every corner around here, and that is not true. There are 2 Starbucks on every corner... well maybe that is impossible, but I can count 7 different times where I stood in one spot and viewed 2 different Starbucks. That's not even mentioning the other coffee spots also in view.

--There are no painted lines on the roads here. There are just a bunch of little bumps on the ground that form the lines. The yellow bumps are very big and you know right away whenever you may be drifting into oncoming traffic (not that I've done that :)) and the white bumps are smaller but it still makes a lot of noise when you change lanes and your tires go over them.

--The streets are not laid out on a grid here. I assume this has to do with the mountains that pop up here and there. This has made learning the streets around here interesting, but the good news is that Leslie and I are starting to get pretty familiar with Redmond and that only took a couple days (of course we were driving around ALL day, but still).

I know that list wasn't particularly deep, but these are the small things that I noticed so far.

In case you were wondering, it hasn't rained at all yet. Every day here has been amazing, sunny in the mid to high 80s with no humidity. People around here say it isn't always like this, but we sure are enjoying it while it's here :)