What I like about Seattle

I am starting to accumulate posts that I have written but not finished, while I am posting other things. However, I have noticed that Blogger posts things based on the dates when they were started, so those of you who check my blog, make sure you scroll down to see if there are some exciting and fun posts you haven't already looked at. There probably won't be, but you never know.

In the meantime, I wanted to pay tribute to Seattle. In discussions about favorite cities in the US, I always come back to Seattle. Here's why:

• I love the rain.
• It is the perfect place to get good Asian food because a) there are Asian people there who know what it's supposed to taste like, and b) they have great fish. When you got to an Asian market, it is the size of a regular supermarket, and none of the food looks like it has expired.
• They have 3 MFT programs between Seattle and Tacoma.
• There's a temple in Bellevue. When you come back to Seattle from Bellevue, you can drive across Lake Washington on a floating bridge. At sunset, it's about the most beautiful thing in the world.
• It has essential retail like IKEA and Trader Joe's, as well as tons of funky independent retailers.
• You are automatically cooler for living there, as opposed to some places where I may or may not be currently living.
• It is a good size for a city. It's large enough to support things like an IKEA, but small enough so that it has its own personality. And its public transportation is pretty good.
• It's known for being sort of an artsy town, with places like Pike's Place and Fremont (where the big troll is). In addition, I have recently discovered that they love kitsch. Here is a link to the Official Bad Art Museum of Art. Irony and redundancy. Redundant and ironic.
• It's got mountains, trees, and ocean, all of which make for some incredible nature experiences.
• There are tons of places to take people to when they come to visit, like the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
• The skyline is beautiful (see above).
• It is only a couple of hours from Vancouver, which has a hockey team.
• It has been the setting for many recent movies and TV shows. Oddly, on TV, Patrick Dempsey is a surgeon in Seattle, but I saw him in a Seattle-based movie where he worked at a bagel shop.
• Ichiro (see below).

Things I do not like about Seattle

• There are times when rain is inconvenient, like when there's an outdoor food festival, and Seattle doesn't seem to care about that.
• Things are pretty expensive there.
• Their MFT jobs are not the highest-paying jobs in the country, which, considering the previous bullet point, would make it difficult for me to live there.
• It is widely acknowledged that Seattle is having some hard times with its sports teams, despite being home to an NBA (for now), an NFL, and an MLB team.
• In some pockets, if your political views are not somewhat liberal, you may be mocked. However, I would guess it's probably not much worse than if your views are not conservative and you live in west Texas.
• There's no professional hockey team in Seattle. However, Vancouver is not that far away, and it's still a better place for hockey than Lubbock.

Things other people do not like about Seattle:

• Its traffic is bad (hence the good public transportation).
• The University of Washington is apparently not very pretty (what kind of a man cares about that?).
• In the wintertime, it gets kind of foggy (but summers are amazing!).
• It can be hard to find restaurants around the University of Washington campus.
• There was a freak earthquake there a couple of nights ago. It was very minor. No one died.

All in all, I think the good outweighs the bad. Sadly, I don't live in Seattle, so it doesn't really matter. I live in Lubbock, which is a subject for another post.