Wow! It's been a whole month and three days since I last posted!

I have to admit I have been busy and lots has happened. So this post is going to be more of a recap...

For starters we have moved! We are now living in a much bigger (although still rented) house in our favorite neighborhood of Seattle - Magnolia, close to our favorite park, Discovery Park. Up to this point we were in a one bedroom apartment, in a fun but very different neighborhood of lower Queen Anne, which we had originally found during our visit in August of last year. We had been itching for bigger place for a while and at one point explored a possibility of buying a townhouse. And then we stumbled on this one and the rest as they say is history. Our favorites are certainly the views of Mt. Rainier and Puget Sound from the living room, abundant light, finally plenty of space, and a backyard with a garden. And of course Hoon is happy with a his "man cave" downstairs - a huge office and a media room.

How funny that we should start looking for a bigger place because Hoon needed an office (he was working from home and had had enough of being stuffed in a corner of a living room) only to have him start at a new job a week after the move. He is still consulting for UGO in New York but is now also working for a local start up, on a "contract to hire" basis. He commutes across lake Washington over the dreaded "520 bridge" but since we were used to far worse conditions in New York we both think his commute is awesome. Traffic does get backed up but he leaves for work earlier in the morning and returns earlier to beat the worst of rush hour traffic. As he says "I don't see what the problem is, there are a lot of cars but they are all moving." :-) I have unfortunately lost my daily walk through the Seattle Center but have access to a direct bus line to downtown so I can't complain.

On the culinary front we finally made it to two of the Seattle's best sushi restaurants, Nishino's and Shiro's. Nishino's was absolutely superb, quite possibly the best sushi I have tasted so far. Shiro's was also good but less formal. A while ago we also enjoyed the Bite of Seattle, an annual food festival at the Seattle Center, in particular the Alley by Tom Douglas (in fact we went back for a tasting menu from a different restaurant line up on Saturday and Sunday). In the mean time we also tried Lemongrass, a great little Vietnamese Restaurant, and Ezell's Famous Chicken (which Oprah supposedly ships to Chicago and now we know why!).

We also attended a perfomance of Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), at the Seattle Opera. This was our first Wagnerian opera and the first performance at the Seattle opera. Singing was superb but the production at times seemed somewhat unfocused. The legend calls for a heightened, romanticized approach yet so little of the production's look and feel suggests a folktale realm. The clash between the old and the new (everyone but the Dutchman is in modern dress - jeans and sweatshirts, work boots and windbreakers) and more importantly a bit reserved and undemonstrative performance of the soprano in the lead role simply kept me from being immersed in the story. It was as if there was no chemistry... still I enjoyed finally hearing an opera in German (I could pick up on a good part of the libretto), even if my favorites are the classical Italian operas of Puccini and Verdi.

We have had a bit of funny weather this summer but it is also true that the regular gorgeous days make us forget the spells of a few really nasty ones. We made it back out to Rattlesnake Ledge for another great hike with friends, Jess and Shu, who will unfortunately be leaving us soon for Hong Kong.