New house, huh.

By now more than a few people who will be seeing this post have seen the house. It's nice. Really! Please, come and visit! We've more or less settled in, and have been getting out into the neighborhood. There are some fantastic little shops and eateries in the area, which is not really surprising given that we're straddling the line between two of Seattle's funky neighborhoods.

We've been back and forth to Vancouver twice in the last three weeks, once with dad to visit Simon in a planned visit, and once just this past weekend to visit Simon in a planned visit again, just one that he wasn't really aware of. We sure surprised him! Having a car has turned out to be the right decision, in the end; Char and I had considered the possibility of living without one, but in the end it was not plausible; the sense of isolation, given how stroller-hostile Seattle Metro is, was too much.

Isolation is a big thing in my mind these days, actually; I'm cut off from a lot of what used to sustain me. I've been finding myself paranoiacally parsing every tiny communiqué from friends, wondering if they're writing me off. It's not helping that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what I want to write to all of the awesome people I've left behind. I've always been an in-person sort of person, and that's really biting me in the ass right now. I have drafts of emails to four people in flight right now, and I feel awful that I have not written them. I've talked on the phone with a few people, but not often enough. I just worry about interrupting or being overbearing or... Well, let's just say that I am not immune to neurosis, despite having a couple fewer than most of the people I know.

In other news, Char and I are going to New York in October, to see a taping of The Daily Show!