So I’ve been back in Seattle now for just shy of two weeks. Wow the time has gone fast! It doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago that I was at Mount Hermon doing check in for summer Family Camp. But between the drive home, getting unpacked (which to be honest isn’t completely finished), and starting school, time flies!

Speaking of school, I’ve started at Northwest University for my masters program and that has been fantastic. I knew I missed being in the academic setting of classes, and even homework, but I didn’t realize just how much I missed it. Grad school is this fantastic mix of people who are all really smart and really want to be there in class. I’ve enjoyed checking out every coffee shop in the Edmonds/Lynnwood area I can as I try to find a go to place for studying. Currently the three front runners are Aloha Cafe in Lynnwood, Caffe Ladro in Edmonds, and Richmond Beach Coffee Company in Richmond Beach. There are some great ones down in Seattle I want to check out but I’m not going to drive 20 miles round trip just to get a cup of coffee and some peace and quiet.

Speaking of peace and quiet, moving back home has been interesting. Fortunately, there are lots of comings and goings between weekends at our cabin and afternoons at coffee shops that we don’t drive each other too crazy. Still, I forgot how much I like living by myself and being able to make as much noise as I want late at night. For now, my 1am rock outs are on hiatus.

I’ve settled for the most part on a new church up here. I’ve gone the last two weeks to a place called Sanctuary (http://sanctuarycrc.org) down in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle. I’ve already been talking with them about doing some photo work so that should be fun. I like the demographics too, with lots of recent grads and 20 somethings that are missing from a lot of the suburban churches. And of course there have been lots of laughs about CRC vs RCA, which is really just a good example of self-depricating Dutch humor.

The other big transition is my new laptop. As part of starting school and trying to do more photography work I picked up a 13″ MacBook Pro to replace my EEE PC. While I do enough gaming and enjoy PC building enough that I’m never going to permanently switch over, there have been some very nice benefits. Mostly on the hardware side because, frankly, as a lifetime Windows user and someone who is very excited about Win7, OS X just isn’t all that compelling to me. I don’t really have anything against it, I’m just not in awe. I don’t think it’s THAT much better than Windows. Sorry. On the hardware side however, holy crap this thing is awesome. The screen is fantastic, I’m leaning to love the trackpad, the battery life is great, the weight is awesome, I’d forgotten how nice it is to have a full sized keyboard, and on and on I could go. So long story short on that, I’m extremely happy with the purchase at this point. And really after the academic discount the “Mac Tax” was pretty much irrelevant. You still pay through the nose for a 17″ MBP or MacPro desktop but when it comes to the 13″ models, pricing out a Dell is pretty much the same price… and HP is just a disaster. Anyway, I think that’s about all there is for now. I’ll update as my adventures unfold!

Filed under: life by Jonathan