"April is a promise that May is bound to keep." -- Hal Borland

I love spring here.

It’s not every day that a quote inspires me to start typing, but that one caught my eye last week. Mr. Borland’s quote could be taken as vague, but it seems to be the picture of my life right now. As luck would have it, I moved here just in time to enjoy the beautiful blooms there are to be seen this season. Everywhere I look there are gorgeous flowers and people and scenery that I'm intrigued by. Maybe it's the novelty of new surroundings. Or because of the simple fact that more hills and taller skylines would naturally result in more views. At any rate, I suspect that May will prove to be more interesting than April and in four short weeks the next adventure will, as is tradition, involve traveling with my favorite sister on Interstate 5. We’re still deciding which direction the weekend will take us. I have four glorious days off in a row and I’m going to enjoy every second.

Thankfully, finding my way around the city is becoming a little easier and I'm beginning to understand why Seattleites love their neighborhoods so much. I can already see an unspoken loyalty to my own whenever I’m navigating traffic on the drive home; this part of town feels wonderfully incognito and it’s generally within a few miles of everywhere I need to be. Even the hills give me an excuse to get outside and use the funny little running shoes my folks gave me a couple years ago.

Another interesting oddity I've found is the number of random public stairwells in the Queen Anne neighborhood -- which I found puzzling at first – that have been so much fun to explore. Most of my findings have been while I’m running (more like jog-walking) for the hell of it; it’s a perfect opportunity to snap photos of various things that are strangely new and amusing to me. The streets just down the hill, for instance, are parallel to each other, have the exact same numbered street name and are connected by one of the aforementioned stairwells. Definitely odd. So later that week I happened upon a map of these stairwells online, and it turns out there are at least a hundred of them scattered along the edge of the hill. I had no idea that walking around a neighborhood could be so entertaining.

Anyway, returning to the topic of unexpected findings, I stumbled into the well-known viewpoint at the top of Queen Anne Hill during last Sunday’s jog-walk-run. I recognized the giant cement stairwell instantly and knew I’d found the street we drove up to back in February, just after I’d made up my mind to take a plunge and put the deposit down on my new address. It’s been a grand adventure ever since. And I have a feeling the novelty isn't going to wear off anytime soon! Maybe I'll be inspired to write a third blog in three months and share with you the tiny bit of knitting I've done lately. But no promises ;) ‘Til next time!