Christmas Wrap (up)

A joyous and expensive Christmas has come and gone. It was the first White Christmas I have experienced in the Northwest.

My gift awards for the year!

Best gift as usual comes from my mother. This year she gave me an Xbox 360. Fun for the whole family!

Most timely gift came from my girls. We were just about done opening presents when the kids inquired about lunch. I had no food in the house, I was waiting till after Christmas to attempt a grocery run... So, I open up the present the kids gave me and guess what it was??? Lunch! A box of Smoked Salmon! mmmmm

Best personal gift came from B who got me a nice digital camera.

Most thoughtful gift came from Kyle to the girls. He went through my digital photo collection and found two nice picts of the girls from Disneyland. Then he had US Stamps made out of them! Accompanied by personal stationary for each girl. They loved it! Now I just have to teach them what a letter is!

Mark wins most unexpected gift, meeting me at Casa Rojas to hand me "Dance Dance Universe" which I regifted to Jessica, but I fully intend to play this game.

Best gift not seen... Lou and Larry are to redo the girls room with new beds and bedding! This will be a really great gift.

I enjoyed all me gifts very much. Thank you Santa and family/friends!


Christmas Morning



Grandmas House for Dinner

Trees look better with lights...

I blew a fuse and an outlet last week and have been living by extention cord for a while.

It was finally fixed yesterday, so I was able to light the tree!

Its been an interesting month at my place.. my Dishwasher is going to be replaced the day after Christmas..

Merry Christmas!

12/12 12:12 pm

at 12:12 pm on 12/12/07, the streetcar made its first trip and I was there! uh, yeah, ok, so I am a bit of a mass transit buff...

Its 1.3 miles in length, running from 5th and Olive to somewhere down at Lake Union.

I, as everyone in Seattle, was curious why this was built. We know that Paul Allen owns most of South Lake Union, and that seemed to be the only reason. However, the Mayor, Gregg Nickels, spoke before the event and mentioned the fact that in the last year, 12,000 housing units have opened up in South Lake Union. I had no idea. I really don't get down to Lake Union very often. So, maybe this will be a success and they can expand it to somewhere I might actually want to go to, like say the Ferry dock?

I thought about that this am as I watched the commuters run off the ferry to try to catch one of the few busses that connect to the ferry. I am willing to bet we are the only Major city in the world to have a ferry system and bus system completely out of sync. the bus tunnel doesn't even have a stop for the ferry doc which unloads some 10,000 commuters in the city every day. How lame.

As far as the grand opening of the street car, I didn't see Paul Allen, but I did get some bumperstickers, a cup and some streetcar passport thingy. It was so worth it! GO MASS TRANSIT!

Christmas season!

Its been a busy one this year.

So far we:
Attended a performance of the Nut Cracker by Liberty Bay Dance
Watched the Winslow tree lighting and arrival of Santa
Watched the boat parade in Eagle Harbor
Put up the tree and decorations
nearly finished my Christmas shopping!
oh, and I contributed a snowflake to hang from the ceiling at Isla..

Oh those pesky lights



Creating our tree topper, the Cherokee Star

Thanksgiving Weekend

finally recooping from a long Thanksgiving weekend....

T day was spent at cousin Mikes house, as it has been for the last 30 plus years... It was a fine time. It was great to see Danika, ms. ASU sorority girl, back for the holiday.

The following day, I like to take the kids to the parade in Seattle. Well, this year they boycotted, choosing sleep over a parade.. oh well, it was really cold that morning.

The kids went to a movie with their mother and she dropped them off that afternoon. We goofed around for a bit. Then Jessica decided she wanted to see a late movie with her friend. I couldn't get any info out of her, except that the movie ends around 11:15. She insisted she could walk home alone, its only a block. But I wouldn't let her. She asked her friends mom to drive her home. I stayed up to make sure there were non shenanigans. There weren't.

Saturday, Kelsey and I went for breakfast while Jess slept. We wanted to try the bbq breakfast buffet, but is was too pricey, so we went to Docs where once again, I had a spectacular breakfast.

Saturday night we went to the Nutcracker in Poulsbo. It was put on by the Liberty Bay Dance Studio. Jessicas friend was playing the part of Clara. It was good, but a little long. We didn't get home til 10:30.

Sunday was football day! my kids try to not watch games, or be around me during games, but due to the fact it was a 10 am game, they were stuck with me!

They actually got into the first quarter, asking questions and such. Then they played in their room until 4th quarter. We watched the final quarter. On the last play, with the Rams on the goal line down by 5... I was really freaking out. It was 4th down. I told them what was happening, that this next play was the game.. They were still not prepared for me to fly out of my chair at the speed of light and then proceed to dance and scream for 3 - 5 minutes after the Rams fumbled the ball on the goal line! Seahawks win!

all in all, it was a good holiday weekend.

Denver! November 2007

Its been a while, in fact a few weeks before I started this blog, but I was sent back to Denver for meetings with my clients.

The flight there sucked, in fact, I will take this opportunity right now to do a comparison of my flight to Denver and flight home.

Flight to Denver: United Airlines 737-300.
I had an aisle seat and found I could barely get my laptop bag under the seat. I noticed that the aisle seats are narrower than the middle and window seat... crazy.

The flight attendants came through the cabin about 15 minutes after take off. I ordered a beer and handed her a 10. Beers cost 5 dollars and I told her just keeep the change and bring me another beer. She came back5 minutes later with my change. That was the last I ever saw of her the rest of the 2.75 hours of flight.

There was only ONE bathroom on the plane... there was a line of 5 - 10 people the entire flight. Perhaps this is why beverage service ended as quick as it began.

My checked bag had been smashed, my sunglasses were broken...

The flight from Denver back to Seattle.
Alaska Airline 737-700

I got stuck in a middle seat, but it was so much roomier than previous flight.
The flight attendants worked the entire flight, coming through 3 times with beverage service and another time with water.

It was a nice flight, much better than United.

Ok, back to Denver.

I arrived on Sunday late afternoon. I had a quiet evening, a nice dinner at Steubens in uptown. Then I went to my favorite watering hole "Williams", also in Uptown. the place was packed. I asked someone where I could just get a six pack and go back to my room. Nope, there are no to go alcohol sales in Colorado on Sundays.. This is why Sunday was the busiest night I encountered.

Monday we had an afternoon staff meeting, followed by a presentation on the corporate redesign. I was invited to a staff dinner of my clients. We walked down to the Chop House, which apparently is owned by Rock Bottom Brewery.

There where at least 20 people there, of whom I knew 4...

Dinner was good, and after dinner I was on a mission to watch the Seahawks in Monday Night football. My immediate clients joined me and we had a good time watching the game.

Tuesday was more meetings all day.

Tuesday night I went out with the three employees in our company. We walked down the street to Shelbys. The night quickly got out of hand. See picts:






Wednesday was the last night in town. That meant I had to get to the Samba room, my favorite Denver restaurant. After dinner I went home and slept.

Thursday I hopped the light rail to Littleton to meet other clients. Light rail is cool, I can't wait till Seattle has the light rail.

That concluded my trip. I will be back in a few months for more fun...

Goodbye Summer - Sept 23, '07

What better way to say goodbye to a great summer than a trip to the coast.

We arrived Saturday night just as the sun set.

We had no reservations, so we drove up the coast to see if we could find a good place. We stumbled upon the Pacific Inn in Pacific Beach. It was reasonably priced and very clean and comfortable. Ground floor unit which had a small view, but was very close to the ocean. The sound of the waves crashing filled the room. We slept with the door open and heat cranked! Yeah, not very green of us, but its only one night....

Having eaten nothing and the main diner in town already closed, we had to go to the Navy Base for dinner. We ate in the officers club, a restaurant called the Windjammer. They might as well have given us a MRE and then kicked us in the shins, but this isnt my restaurant blog.. I brought it up only because it was odd to be civilians eating in the Officers club. All the beer signs had military references, not sport references... why do they allow civilians? Duh, everyone else in is Iraq...

Since this was the end of summer, I really wanted a shot of Petrone. They did not have it here on base, but they did have the biggest cooler of Rainer beer I had ever seen... The bartender suggested we go to the Seabreeze, a half a mile farther up the beach.

The Seabreeze was your typical hick bar. AND, they did not have Petrone. I asked her to run down the various Tequilas on hand, the best she had was Hornitos. So I said I will take that. She grabbed a bottle of Sauza and put her hand over the label and poured it.. LAME. They tried relentlessly to sell us on breakfast for the next morning. The cook brought out his homemade biscuits from the kitchen. After the bait and switch, we scratched this place off our list.


Then next morning we headed to Ocean Shores. I needed an internet connection so I could work Monday morning. We decided to take the foot ferry across Grays Harbor and watch the Seahawks game in Westport. The ferry ride was great. It was sunny and nice, we rode on the bow. I am guessing there are not many days you could ride on the bow and not get soaked by the boat crashing through the swells. We spotted a few porpoises and Sea Lions, and tons of birds.

After the game it was time to find a room for Sunday Night. We called all the major hotels. Either too pricy or booked. We started at one end of the beach and figured to work our way down. The first place we stopped turned out to be perfect. The Nautilus. It was a condo/motel and they rented us a great 2nd floor one bedroom condo. The price was right and it had internet. Great place, very comfortable, full kitchen, bathroom, living room and nice deck with a view. Many rules here though, dont back your car into the parking spot, don't talk in parking lot after 8 pm, wash and put away your dishes or be charged 10-20 dollars.. and so on. But, it was hassle free. apparently we followed the rules to their liking..

We went down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was spectacular..

Monday I worked from the room till noon then we went to the beach again for a few hours before heading home.

Third times a charm or Three strikes you are out...

time will tell....

Lightining Storm

The Pacific Northwest does not get many lightning storms. Its due to the stable air between the two mountain ranges we live between. So, when a good lightning storm comes along, I take a front row seat! I snapped a bunch of pictures, with no luck, so I put it on video mode and ran it till my disc was full. I had no idea if I had caught anything until this am when I looked. I caught two bolts. One I was able to get screenshot from the media player. The video files are 17mb each, so posting to YouTube would be a bit tedious.

Back to School

Not sure why, but I felt like it was the first day of school for me this am. It was for my kids, but not me. Anyway, we had a weekend like its the end of summer, so that probably had something to do with it....

knee boarding after work

What a great way to send off the summer!

Thanks Mark and have a safe trip up North.

Ferry alternative

Mark and Noble picked me up from the waterfront yesterday in Marks Boat. Much better than the ferry!

summer update

wow, this has been one crazy summer. I can't even put it in writing, to protect the innocent...

lots has happened since my last post. I finally got to see Blue Scholars perform at the Capitol Hill Block party, which was just phenomenal.

Last weekend the kids and I watch High School Musical 2 all weekend long... I must say, I was surprised that they could pull of a sequel, but they did and it was entertaining.

JD and I caught a baseball game, it was a bad day for the M's, so we settled in to some drinking....

Dave P left the company and we had a great going away party for him last week..

which catches us up to the last weekend. I went on a great hike up by Hurricane Ridge and then stayed the night in Port Angeles with a friend. We had a blast. See the story in my Hiking Blog...

Summer is almost over, I wonder what could possibly happen next? stay tuned, unless its like most of my summer stories, not suitable for blog :)

Seafair 2007! - August 5

It was a bittersweet Seafair, the first one since Glenn died. Glenn and I have been attending Seafair since the 80's. It was a bit different this year without him. I brought the kids along twice before, so we are building on our own tradition now...

The girls and I drove over to the races Sunday am. We found a house to park at not too far away. As I was standing in line to buy a ticket, someone came up and handed me a VIP pass. We waltzed right in through the VIP line, very cool.

We watched the races and the planes, we ate a lot of junk and we swam in the lake. It was a very nice, long day at the races. I would have been happier if Theoret had won in the U-37, but it was cool to see the U-6 O boy Oberto/Miss Madision win, even if they are from Indiana...