Finishing up...

I know I haven't been very consistent with the blog lately, but I'm doing my best! I'm actually in Portland right now (that would be the other Portland), but I wanted to finish telling you about my time in Seattle, and then I'll get to where I am now, probably tomorrow because I'm tired.

This past Sunday, I went to the aquarium with Kristen, Jim and the kids. We went to Pike's Market first for lunch, and here's a tip: don't go to Pike's Market for lunch with 3 children and an infant. It's not really set up for family dining. Kristen and I were saying later that sometimes having children in the city is a huge pain, but the payoff is that when you go to a place like the aquarium, you get a lot more out of it. Kids just have no filter, and they are not shy about letting you know when something is cool. So we WOWed around the aquarium for a few hours, and the kids pointed at the eels and squealed with delight at the otters, and sometimes just sat wide-eyed in front of the fish tanks. It was way more fun than going with older people. My whole time at Kristen's house was really fun—a nice break from work!

And there was plenty of work. I had a bunch of interviews this week in Seattle. A couple of the most notable:

—I talked to Jerry Kane, class of '38. I walked into his apartment at his assisted living place and started getting out my gear, and he asked me what I was going to do to him. I thought he was just being funny, and I told him I was just going to record our interview, like I had said on the phone. Turns out he's been sick lately, and he thought I was there to draw blood. We both got a good laugh out of that, and then he told me incredible stories about riding an open boxcar from Seattle to Chicago to get to school, and then coping with the death of his first wife from Alzheimer's.

—I also interviewed Karen Moyer, wife of MLB pitcher Jamie Moyer, daughter of famed ND basketball coach Digger Phelps, and certainly a force to be reckoned with in her own right. She's the mother of 7 kids, and she started and runs a foundation that gives grants for the research of childhood diseases and organizes camps for sick and bereaved children. And Steve Stone introduced her to her husband back when he pitched for the Cubs. I mean, seriously.

And one last thing about Seattle: Everyone knows it rains in Seattle. A lot. But everyone I met kept saying things like, "on a clear day, you can see Mt. Rainier from here," and I thought, so, you're saying one day a year you can see a mountain. Big deal. But as it turns out, I am the luckiest person in the world, because I experienced two clear days in a row in Seattle. And driving into that city on a clear day was absolutely incredible. To get there from the East Side, I had to drive across one of the floating bridges (520, for those of you who know the area.) As it approaches the city, 520 goes uphill a little bit, and as you drove up the hill on a clear day, you just see this row of snow-capped mountains in the distance. Then when you come over the top of the hill, you're on the bridge, with water on both sides (can't remember if it's the lake or the Sound, or both), and the whole city is right there in front of you, all these houses built into the sides of the hills, and skyscrapers off in the distance. It was absolutely incredible, and the best part was that I got to see it like that twice, since I had to go downtown on those two clear days.

So the moral of the story is, visit Seattle if you get the chance. Seattle, Seattle, Seattle. Ok, I'm done now :)