Resident tourist.

We won't be around to help the guys next door move this weekend since Chris orchestrated an organizational coup and set up a trip to Orcas Island for us and Brett and Jess. I'm excited. I better see some whales.

I haven't been to the San Juans at all since moving here. This trip fits in with my wider agenda to use long weekends to catch up on my Pacific Northwest tourism. Three years after coming to Seattle, places I still haven't been include Mt. St. Helens, the Olympic Peninsula, Vancouver, eastern Washington and points beyond, and a whole bunch of other spots. There's a lot more to see around here than I'd expected when I first moved, and there's a big chunk of it that I'm very interested in seeing. It should be a fun weekend.

I'm a little sad that the guys next door are moving, although on the bright side Hilary is moving into the building and that's really going to expedite the organization of my televisual existence. A lot is changing this summer-into-fall: five weddings of people we know, including ours; lots of relocation; other stuff. I have many friends living in different cities than they lived in a year or two ago, and those friends are starting to put down roots, which reinforces the strange, sad reality of the fact that we're not likely to live in the same place with them again. I feel a lot more settled myself than I did a year ago, which happened mostly without me knowing it. If we have kids they're going to be from Seattle, which is totally weird but kind of in a good way. We've been here long enough by now that we have a whole spectrum of friends from casual to close. We live here.