Entry 6: Week 2 In Review

And so with each day that passes, I become more and more of a Seattle resident. First on the list this week was to get a voter card. Why a voter card, you ask? It's not like I'm going to be, you know, voting or anything. Well, the way it works is this: Washington state requires an obscene amount of documentation to be able to get a driver's license. I have to show them something like three forms of identification and two forms of proof of residence. So of course I don't have most of the stuff they will accept, nor do I have any way to get them. The guy on the phone at the DMV helpfully suggested that, since I have no way to prove that I'm a WA resident, I get a voter card with my address on it. If you're like me, at this point you're probably thinking "Wait a minute, DMV guy - don't I need to prove to THEM that I'm a resident?" No, apparently not. So really, all it takes to establish residence in Washington is to show up the the Voter Registration Office in Renton and ask nicely. Fifteen minutes later (plus two hours for bus rides) I was a proudly registered voter, and new resident, of Washington state.

Next up: getting an apartment (my temporary housing only lasts me halfway through July). My primary concern in looking for a new spot was that I was going to get the hell out of the wilderness they call Belltown. Unfortunately, it seems that Seattle only has one neighborhood less wildernessy than Belltown, and that's downtown. Good enough, let's go there. One catch - they were too busy building office buildings and such to remember to put in any apartments. To my current knowledge there is exactly one apartment building in downtown Seattle, and they didn't have anything decent available. Luckily there opened a condo for rent in Newmark Tower, so starting in July, that's where you'll be able to find me (as if there's anyone reading this that isn't 2500 miles away). I'm happy with it though; it's got floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows in the living room which look right out over the bay and down on Pike's Place Market, which is only a block away.

A block in the other direction is the "bus tunnel". See if you can follow along, cause I didn't fully understand what they meant until I actually saw it. Ok, so when I first got here I was telling everyone how dumb they were for not having subways, which are the greatest things in the world. They were like "yeah, but we have the bus tunnel". Me: "What's that?" Them: "A tunnel where only buses can go". So, I'm picturing the buses driving along their normal routes, and then at one point they go into this special tunnel, so they can go faster or something. Big deal. Actually, here's what it really is: it's a subway, except instead of subway cars there are buses. So you actually go down the stairs onto the platform and wait there for a bus to come along, and there are 5 different stops in this "bus tunnel". It would be fantastic if it went to more places. But it doesn't. But it will get me close to work, which I guess would be more exciting if I wasn't planning on getting a motorcycle anyway, which is why I needed to get that voter registration card. It's funny how life always comes full circle.

Last night I went back to Unexpected Productions to see its longform show. It was so horrible it will require a blog entry all its own. Stay tuned.