Heckuva final hour of that game!

Everstine and I found a Coug-friendly bar in Pioneer Square, where we watched and yelled at the TV. A few straggling Huskies were gloating toward the end of regulation — little did they know. Those last two minutes were amazing, and the overtime induced some real nailbiting.

How cool it was to finally see Paul Wulff smiling. I don’t think I’d seen that all year. This season had been written off for months, but an Apple Cup victory makes it successful enough in my book.

Hopefully the game puts some heart and drive back in the football team. They’ll need it next season (I know, there’s one more football game this season against Hawaii, but whatever). Now we can all turn our attention toward the basketball team.

I guess we’ll see what happens. Hold on to your butts.

If you have been following my blog since February and know a few of my dorky blogging habits, the following announcement shouldn’t surprise you. Because I have now moved to Seattle, my dateline policy has been updated. From this post on out, all entries without a dateline are written in Seattle.

OK, onto the fun stuff.

Due to my boredom and lack of any reason to stay in Spokane, I have moved back to Seattle to live with my parents for a while. It’s a step back in the ol’ walk of life, I know, but it’s a lot cheaper than the alternatives. Because my parents are divorced — and have been since I was 3 — I’ve decided to switch between houses every week. There are a few reasons for this: 1) so I get to see everyone, including my brother; 2) so I don’t get bored out of my mind; 3) well, that’s pretty much the gist of it.

Now that Brad and I have completed a terrifying drive over the mountains — terrifying, thanks to an overloaded U-Haul trailer — and now that I have moved most of my stuff into a storage locker, I can start to settle back into my hometown. (By the way, monthly rent for a 5-by-12 storage locker is a little outrageous.)

I have no real projects or anything. I’m continuing my both exciting and frustrating search for work in the journalism world — applying to at least three a week to I can stay eligible for Washington unemployment. (The checks have not started coming yet. Argh.) I also bought a membership to 24 Hour Fitness, both for the obvious purpose of exercising and the purpose of getting out of the house at least once a day.

Somewhat unrelated — my recent fascination is NPR. Man, that would be fun to do.

EDIT: Oh, I spent a little time today adding a “writing” section to my website. It has links to and excerpts from a few writing examples.

I suppose it’s time for another update on what I’m doing. I’ve decided to move back to Seattle sooner rather than later — meaning Monday. I’ve been slowly packing up the apartment this week, ready to load it all into a U-Haul trailer Sunday.

My step-dad, Brad, is flying out Monday morning to help me drive back to Seattle that afternoon. I’m assuming he’ll be driving the Suburban+U-Haul, because I also have my Subaru, but I wouldn’t mind if we did it the other way around.

Good thing I haven’t sold the Beast yet; I can’t tow the trailer with my car. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been trying to sell it. If only Craigslist were working as well for my Suburban as it has this week for some other stuff.

Because of the move, I decided to get rid of my old TV/surround sound set-up and my old couch/ottoman. I listed them both on Craiglist, and they were both gone within 24 hours. It was unreal. Sold the TV, DVD player and speakers for $100. Gave away the couch for free.

So now it’s pretty empty in the living room, especially now that I’ve packed up all my books. There’s just empty bookshelves standing in a very echo-y room, along with my dining-room table. It makes these last few days in Spokane even lonelier.

There’s nothing like a long road trip to make you appreciate air travel. I’ve been known to hate flying on the airlines, but my trip back to Spokane from Minneapolis was pretty much hassle-free — and decidedly quicker than the trip east.

The trip was bookended by very American experiences. On our two-day drive from Spokane to Minneapolis, Lisa mentioned that traveling across our massive country reminded her of the pioneers. Of course, they took months to cross the West in ox-drawn “praire schooners.” We were in a Chevy Cavalier powered by internal combustion.

The other American experience was when Lisa and I visited the Mall of America on the way to the airport Saturday. It actually didn’t seem all that huge from the outside, just like a typical mall. Then you go inside, and you realize there’s three floors jam-packed with stores — and an amusement park in the center. Naturally, the only money we spent there was at Starbucks.

My trip back to Spokane was less remarkable of an experience, which I suppose is a good thing when it comes to air travel. The flight from Minneapolis to Seattle was delayed about 20 minutes — not sure why, probably just airport congestion. Luckily my connection to Spokane was also delayed 20 minutes — because the scheduled copilot (or, as they like to be called these days, First Officer) got sick and Horizon had to find another one.

Fun facts: Alaska Airlines now offers personal DVD players for rent during flights; they also no longer accept cash for food or alcohol, just credit cards; and Horizon Air offers beer and wine for free.

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Sorry about the horrible cell-phone photo, but it’s the best I could do. Tuesday evening, Lisa and I ventured down to the University of Minneapolis for some exploring before the night’s festivities. It was quite nice — the campus reminded me a bit of the University of Washington and the student housing/frat row area reminded me a bit of the University of Oregon.

The piture above is the Minneapolis skyline at dusk as we were walking over a footbridge near the student union building. It’s hard to make out, but the bridge in the photo goes over the Mississippi River, over to the smaller campus on the west bank.

Check out the map below for a blow-by-blow of the evening.

In chronological order –

A: We park our car in residential Dinkytown.

C: After wandering campus for a bit, we eat dinner at a funky burger joint called Annie’s.

F: To settle our full stomachs, we wandered some more, including a walk across the Mississippi River.

E: To kill some time, we hung out in the student union building reading the print version of The Onion. After a while, we moved to the main library to check election results in the computer lab.

D: Northrop Hall, where Bob Dylan was playing a concert. Lisa got one ticket off of CraigsList. I, as not much of a Dylan fan (I know, I know), was just fine with finding a cool bar, settling in and watching election coverage.

B: The Library bar, which had on NBC and CNN. After the concert, Lisa met up with me here just in time for John McCain’s concession speech and Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. It was perfect.

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — There was a point during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last night when the camera focused on an American flag behind him. It was the first time in about five years that I felt proud to see the stars and stripes.

For years, the American flag has stood for things I don’t stand for. Finally, with the results of this election, the Star-spangled Banner now represents hope, it represents promise, it represents progress. It’s time to move forward from the past eight years of corporatism and failed governance. It’s time for America to be the country it can and should be.

We can finally catch up to the rest of the world in dealing with climate change, human rights and peacekeeping. And now we have the opportunity not just to march with the progressive world, but to lead it — in a good way.

I’m joyful that a majority of Americans feel the same way I do. With the 2004 election, I lost faith in a lot of my fellow Americans for re-electing Bush. Finally, the country is starting to wake up and see what a bad position we are in, and see how we can best try to fix it.

As a journalist, I am supposed to remain outwardly neutral in politics. I realize this blog post may appear to overstep those bounds. But, to me, this election was not about politics or partisanship, but about progress. Few people can dispute that the Bush administration turned out to be a horrible choice for this country and the world. It was time for change, and it finally has come.

I consider myself neither a Republican nor a Democrat. But I do consider myself a supporter of progressiveness, social advancement and global responsibility. And, hence, I consider myself a supporter of Obama’s promises.

Thank you, American voters, for restoring my faith in this country.

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — It’s Nov. 4. I haven’t gotten my free cup of coffee yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Should be interesting to be in this swing state on Election Day. There’s probably a little more excitement and uncertainty here than in Washington. But, I have a hunch Minnesota will go with its traditional Democratic leaning.

I’ve already voted — about two weeks ago via the mail. (I believe that’s the only way to do it in Washington anymore, with a few exceptions.)

Anyway, here we go!

EDIT: By the way, this from The New York Times is the coolest thing ever.

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Our journey across the West is complete. We got to Lisa’s home, in this suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul, about 7:30 p.m. Central Time. It took us just about 10 hours today to go 680 miles. Together with Sunday’s 685 miles from Spokane to Miles City, Mont., our trip was 1,365 miles in about 20 hours.

Looking back at how relatively little time it took to travel 1,365 miles by car, it’s hard to tell whether it makes the world seem bigger or smaller. Sure, the United States is huge and it takes a long time to cross — but not that long. The fact we were able to drive this entire distance in less than 24 hours actually, to me, makes the world seem a little smaller.

Anyway, it was cool to see parts of the country I’d never seen before. I can now add North Dakota and Minnesota to my “Where I’ve Been” map on Facebook. And I’m looking forward to the coming days, when Lisa and I will be exploring the Twin Cities. (By the way, a little Wikiwandering told me an interesting factoid. The greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area is the 16th-largest in the nation at 3.2 million. Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma is the 15th-largest at 3.3 million. And Spokane is the 107th at 456,000 people.)

A dozen photos from Monday’s trip are in the below slideshow.

MILES CITY, Mont. — Yesterday I alluded to a post about my plan for the near future. And as Lisa has said on her blog, that plan entails both of us moving out of our apartment in Spokane. It’s Lisa’s turn first, and we’re in the middle of a two-day road trip from Spokane to Minneapolis to move all her stuff back home.

Today was 10 hours of driving on I-90 and I-94, mostly through Montana — which is humongous. Unfortunately, it steadily rained for about eight of those hours. Fortunately, we’d recently seen a lot of that part of Montana — on our last road trip, three days ago. On Monday, we have another 12 hours of driving, largely through North Dakota and into Minnesota.

Above is our Sunday route — 685 miles — and below is a short slideshow of the view from the passenger seat (we each got a few turns). Monday will be 680 more miles.