Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
We're back in Seattle after spending the week in Southern California. It was a pretty whirlwind trip, but things went well. It was nice to thaw out with warm weather.
By the time this gets posted we had planned on being in Spokane with Melody's sister Celeste, but weather has changed plans. It would have been a slow drive over the pass, and we would have needed to turn around the next day and head back to Seattle. Instead, she'll sometime after the 1st, after travel is more sane.
Even though the roads and sidewalks have been slick, Melody and I have been walking around in the snow to go to the store, hang out at a coffee shop, etc. The snow we got during the week only went away a little bit and we got more last night, to the point where there's about 6" on the ground right now, and the snow has started back up.
I went up to the top floor of the UW Tower today to take a look at how the snow we've been getting looked from above. Since there are only a few inches on the ground, it doesn't look completely white, but I still thought it was pretty.
We don't get snow too often in Seattle, but it looks really pretty when we do. I suppose that's true almost anywhere, but it doesn't reduce our appreciation for the white stuff. It's not unusual for us to accumulate a few inches once or twice a year, but some years we don't get any and others we get a lot. We'll see how this year pans out - we apparently missed getting snow a couple days ago because of a low pressure system which ended up going to the north instead of through Seattle.
I was talking with my cousin Kay earlier this week and we talked about how this was the time of year when as a child I'd go out with my Uncle Easy to go shopping for toys for the younger members of our family. Being a bachelor, he would say he needed help picking out the right fits. When the planned day came around, Uncle Easy would pick me up and we'd go have dinner, after which we'd make our way to Toys 'R' Us and he'd ask "would this be good for so-and-so?", checking his list to make sure he had something for everyone. After we were done, we'd drop the presents off with Kay so she could wrap them.
For several years our neighbor (to the west) has been thinking about changing his house, either expanding it by adding a second story or by tearing it down and building a larger house in its place. Then last year he and his wife drove by a house on a golf course in Federal Way and decided that's where they wanted to live.
Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. Jean (Melody's mom) and her husband Ron came over on Thursday for dinner and we all went over to Keith and Bev's house on Friday.
When we lived in Sunnyvale, CA we were not very far from the Wolfe Road exit off I-280. We noticed there was a big ado on Wolfe so we put Kellen (about 1 year old at the time) into the backpack, grabbed cameras, and went to be typical gawkers. At first it was hard to tell what was going on with the traffic pattern, but then we saw the tail of an airplane.
If you enjoy science fiction and aren't listening to Escape Pod, you really should. It's a weekly short story anthology with a wide variety of themes and styles. The host, Steve Eley, reads many of the stories in addition to providing intros and commentary, but guest readers are not uncommon. It was Steve's blog entry about going on hiatus for a few weeks which prompted me to write about Escape Pod. I noticed last week that a new story hadn't gone up, so I went to check if something was up, and indeed there is.
This weekend was a busy one, starting and ending with pears (and apples) while going to a couple parties in between. As I write, one last batch of applesauce is reducing on the stove, so I guess it's not over, yet.
Thought it would be a good time to summarize where things are with my mom and hopefully fill in any gaps.
Last night Melody and I went to a two-piano concert by Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman at Benaroya Hall.
Like my dad and my kids, I enjoy doing Sudoku puzzles. You could even say I'm a big fan of them. It's OK to interpret that as being a Sudoku nerd.
We met up yesterday with the Prosser family at the Woodland Park Zoo. We lucked out with the weather (only a few sprinkles) so we did quite a bit of wandering. It was a great way to spend the afternoon!
Every time we drive to Spokane we go by the Wild Horses Monument near Vantage, WA (where I-90 crosses the Columbia River). One year I decided to hike up to take a look. The time of day was just right to have a near-silhouette and the clouds were also cooperating. There are several horses in the sculpture, but as a whole the piece is actually incomplete. The artist had planned to have the horses spilling out of a bowl, like a cornucopia, but the funding still isn't available.
Since Alexander Limi (one of the original developers of Plone, a content management system with which Melody works) was in town, a bunch of Seattle Plone people gathered tonight for some bowling at Garage Billiards in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Melody and I went along, and although she was the only person from where she's working (Web Collective), there were several people she knew from the business next door (ONE/Northwest).
It's tough being a sports fan in Seattle. As I'm writing this, he UW and Washington State football teams, the Seahawks, and the Oklahoma City Thunder (nee Seattle Sonics) have three wins - combined. That's out of 25 games. Needless to say, they're all at the bottom of their respective divisions. (In full disclosure, right now the scoreboard shows the Seahawks are way up at halftime.)
Last weekend Melody and I went to a lunch downtown to celebrate the 500th client for PRESS, which is a real estate referral service. We became clients when we bought our home in 2002 and it worked out well for us. Jim Stacey referred us to a great agent, loan officer, and inspector, and then tagged along at the inspection to give us yet another point of view of the condition of the house. Since then, he's been a good sounding board for us when we've had questions about home maintenance or even doing a short plat with our neighbor (a topic for another post).
