This was supposed to be posted on Oct 20

Today is my birthday, happy bday to me! Not doing much, just staying home, I have to work tomorrow. =P

The thing that astounds me about living in Federal Way is that it's a small city compared with Seattle. Yet every single business/restaurant chain you could possibly think of is here! Well, except Hooters, but that's not far off. There is not 1 but 2 Walmarts and they are only about 1 mile from each other, ridiculous! I guess all those people living in apartments make for lots of business.

I get only 7 or 8 TV stations here from my rabbit ear antenna. Those HD stations don't broadcast nearly as well as the old broadcast spectrum. One of the stations I get is the weather channel. I don't remember seeing a weather channel in the SF Bay Area. I think it's because the weather isn't that big a deal in SF. The weather is basically the same all year round, cold, windy, foggy, sometimes warm, etc. Here we get the whole gamut from rain, to snow, all the way to 90 degree heat.

People seem to pay a little more attention here. If it's raining lots of people will postpone doing things. In SF you don't worry about it because it doesn't rain. It's been cloudy and raining the past 4 days. The threat of flooding is very real here. The Green River Valley, which is not far from me, flooded last year. When it gets too wet the army corp of engineers releases water from the dam. When that happens you can get floods.

There's lots more water here than in SF. There are little lakes everywhere. Some of them are recreation areas, many are private lakes off limit to those who don't live around the lake.

People here are much more conscientious of hitting other people's parked cars which can be extremely annoying. I was getting out of my car today and I had to open my car door close to the car next to me. I didn't hit her car, but the owner of the car was walking by and she literally stopped and looked right down at me as if I had dented her car door. As I walked by her she walked straight down and scrutinized her door as if I had hit it. Stupid woman. When you hit someone else's door you can tell, it's really obvious. Even if I did hit her car, if it's that subtle it never results in any damage anyways, car doors aren't that fragile. Most have little side bumpers anyways, it's not like those doors are made of eggshells. Very annoying. Oh well, I guess it's a good thing that people are so conscious of it. People in SF didn't car about my car and they trashed the sides pretty good, many of them were VERY blatant without any care or respect for me or my car at all.

My cousin told me of a story how he hit the lady's car in front of him while he was parallel parking. She tried to sue him for hit and run after he touched her license plate while he was parking. I'll have to keep that in mind next time I parallel park. People here have a different mentality than in SF. You have to baby them a bit more here which is actually a good thing because I'd rather be conscientious. That's always a good thing.

Weather

It's getting real cold. The fall is here and unlike the SF Bay Area the leaves on the trees turn yellow and red. It's beautiful. 1st time in my life I seen a real fall. The leaves on the trees all fell off one day. Within 3 day period about 80% of the leaves fell off the big tree in the back of my apartment. It fell in a big whump! There were so many leaves on the grass you couldn't see the grass underneath. It looked like someone dumped a pile of leaves in the back.

Tomorrow my work is celebrating Halloween. They are having costume contest, but I won't be dressing up. Too cheap for costume. I'll just go over maybe and give some energy and say hello.

Went to Tiger Mountain today for small hike. Only went about 2 miles, nothing much. I went for 6 miles the previous week. Supposed to rain today, not a drop fell. For some reason the rash on my hand felt much better on the top of Tiger Mountain. Can't wait to get to the top on Sat (tomorrow is supposed to rain) and spend a couple hours there. Should be interesting, hope I can make it up. I felt tired today.

My flight to Bangkok got cancelled. Can't believe it. I had a free flight, some 80,000 frequent flyer miles. Enough for a free international flight and they tell me that the flight changed and to call United back to rearrange a new flight. Of course when I called back there were no more flights (it was actually on China Airlines- a Star Allliance member). I think they wanted to give my seat to a paying customer. Looks like my trip back to San Fran in December may have gotten dashed.

I like to always think these things happen for the better. Now I can make a new trip to a different place since they extended the expiration date from this Dec to Dec of 2010. That was nice. Part of me didn't want to go back to Bangkok anyways. Same ole thing.

Looks like I'm going to Southern California for my Dec anesthesia exam. I'm studying this time around, unlike last time. Hopefully I can pass.

Next week clocks turn back. Can't believe it's so soon. It's going to be dark so soon, but mornings will be nice and bright. :)

First BBQ

My first attempt at BBQ. Please send any hints or tips cause I could sure use them! The salmon and beef came out real well. I only used 12 piece of charcoal. 1 piece did not burn. Next time I will use 13 piece. Not sure the best way to burn them, they are like little pieces of wood, they need a little bit of persistence, good heat, and firestarter (gasoline-like stuff) before they will start to burn.

Baseball Game

Saw a couple of baseball games over the weekend. It was the last 2 games of the year. It was good, the local team won both games. They looked pretty good too. Picked up some cheap souvenirs .99 cent pennant and wrist bands. Griffey Jr hit homerun today so it was good everyone happy. I really like baseball games. Should goto more next year if I can stay here in Seattle. :)

ATM Gripe

ATM machines around here definitely do not service the people as well as San Francisco Bay area. Every time I goto Wells Fargo ATM here in Seattle or Federal Way there's only 1 machine. That's right! 1 machine! Back in SF at the bare minimum there would always be 2 atm machines, if not 3 or 4. Granted the pace of life here is slower, but I have had to wait in line about half the time. Usually it's only 1 or 2 people, but there have been as long as 4 or 5 people before.

Living here has definitely been good. I feel like I'm healing and I'm healthier than I was in SF. I picked up some firewood from a toothless old man selling firewood from the back of his pickup. The wood was unseasoned, but at least he warned me ahead of time. I'll let it sit for a couple months before using it. Well, I was tempted to burn on small log, but had a hard time. I'll have to consult one of my uncles one of these days to find out how to light these big logs because it's definitely not easy.

I didn't pass my restorative exam unfortunately. That makes 2 exams I have to pass before I'm good. A lot of work. I'm not looking forward to the preparation. Work is going ok, patients still like me and I like working for Geriatric very much. I have to learn to be nice and bring cookies like the other employees do.