Into the Abyss

I've been on a search for the last month - a search that started win an innocuous blog post and some web research led me to strange parts of town and to stores I don't usually visit, I've braved snow, been lied to, and thoroughly disappointed.

What could cause me to get this crazy? Not the gotta have Christmas toy, or some needed remodeling supplies?

Of course not

Happy T-day

Lots to be thankful for this year!

LW
mornings when I'm the only one up
Family
Friends
Gluten free stuffing with gravy
second helping of stuffing
hot buttered rums
football

One post a month - that's all you get I guess, so be thankful for that too!

Only in the northwest

I've started using my Y membership - and not just because I still don't have a shower!

One of the things I do at the Y twice a week is a spinning class - it's really kinda strange when you think about it. A bunch of people sitting on bikes facing a person on a bike telling you what to do.

"ok folks we're coming up on a big hill - increase your resistance"

I like it because it makes me get up and exercise, and it's easier than riding in the rain during the winter, and it makes me focus on basics like cadence, pace, and technique.

And it totally kicks my butt...

Genius

I'm not always an early adopter of technology - which in many cases is a good thing, so I'm just finding out about the "Genius Toolbar" in iTunes 8. Pretty freaking cool. The Genius scans your iTunes library (takes a while but I'm at work so who cares???) Then when you play a song you can click the "genius button" and iTunes spits out a play list of similar songs.

I tried it first with "Caring is Creepy" from the Shins, one of my favorite songs, and it spit out a mix of Travis, Coldplay, Gomez, Guster, Pete Yorn etc... very cool. Then I tried a Sonic Flood song and I got a mix of Jenn Knapp, David Crowder etc... also very cool. Then I broke it - for some reason it doesn't know who Subset is (dream band of Sir Mix alot and Presidents of the U.S.) - tried a few other obscure/random songs and got similar results. The lesson here is if it's not available on iTunes, or if it's a MP3 you got from a friend with no title/artist info you aren't going to be very genius.

Thanks Apple for a cool tool, and thanks for wasting a billable hour this morning!

What a difference a day (or two) makes

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the weather in your life was shifted one day forward/back from your actual life? Like that snow storm that hits on a sunday instead of a school day, or your friends who schedule an outdoor wedding and it pours but the next day it's sunny...

I've been trying hard to work four/tens lately and take Friday off. And I've been trying to hike on the Fridays I take off - it's good for me and the mutt and it gets me to my goal of at least 12 hikes this year.

Because of this I've been watching the forecast all week. I check it every morning, I check it a few times a day, and just to make sure it hasn't changed I check it before I go to bed.







It hasn't changed - don't you wish we could have Wednesday weather on Friday?

It's all about Balance

I broke out of work today and went hiking - all it took was a creative out of office message and a few 12 hour days earlier in the week.

Asia - (Asia the wonder dog if you're nasty) of course accompanied me. With the remodel she's been home a lot lately and needed to get out as much as I did.

When I think about all the things that I try to juggle - relationship, family, faith, friends, hiking, remodeling, work, (at least grad school is done), I constantly feel like I'm not devoting the time I need to everything.

Maybe I'm too busy, or have too many things on my plate. I haven't even blogged in a few months!

I guess it's something to think about. Usually I don't fix things until they are broken, the problem with all these things is I don't really want to wait until they're broken.

At least I got some quality time with my mutt outside today.

Surrounded by Idiots

This weekend was an excellent example of how great people can be, and how incredibly stupid they can be as well...

I also try and cram too much stuff into my weekends - as evidenced by Saturday which included some well-deserved sleep-in time, running at Pt. Defiance, the Tacoma historic house tour, purchasing plants at the Rhodedendron society sale at Pt. Defiance, dinner at Il Fiasco (excellent!), and then a show in Seattle.

The show in Seattle was Devotchka which is an indie/gypsy/eastern european all around great but hard to describe band from Denver. You may know them because they did most of the soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine.

So LW and I get there when doors open, grab some overpriced drinks, and stake out one of the few tables in the "beer garden" area in the back of the club. This is nice because it sits right behind the sound board guys and because of the angle LW can actually see the stage. The place gets busier and more packed but we're good, we've made friends with some interesting folks and of course the people-watching is always A+ at a place like this. Needless to say LW and I both have some great new people on our teams...

So Devotcka starts and some douchbag decides to sneak him and his girlfriend into the small space between the table we have and the fence around the soundboard, standing right in front of the two people we've been sharing the table with. I mean this was like a 18" gap. The guy next to us taps the guy on the shoulder and explains that he's blocking their view, B LATENTLY blocking their view. He shrugs and he and his girlfriend moves over in front of us.

I being a nice guy politely tap him on the shoulder and explain that he is blocking our view.
He shrugs
I tell him to move because we've been here all night and now we can't see
He says he can stand wherever he wants
I tell him to move
He gets tough and asks me what I'm going to do about it
I decide getting into a fight would be dumb, the girl next to me offers to spill her drink on the two...

Complete douche-bag. The people next to us made some space and we move to a place where we can kinda see, I don't know if LW saw much of the lead singer but she assured me this was normal for her at shows. The best part is everyone around us told us how much of an ass the guy was. The two were also stuck there all night and couldn't go get a drink or go to the bathroom because they knew they wouldn't be let back to their spot. Karma is a bitch.

This along with the usual round of T-town bad driver shenanigans was proof the world is going to hell and we're just along for the ride. Thank goodness I had some quatro de mayo food and cerveza on Sunday to make things right...

More hiking!

Two trips in a month - makes me happy!

We headed out Saturday for the Olympic Peninsula to hike to up the Duckabush River Valley. Rain was forecasted but we decided to go anyway.

The weather continues it's craziness this spring, it's the middle of April and there was snow on the ground in Olympia.


We stopped in Hoodsport to buy a trail park pass, and talked to a really nice lady who was obviously lonely but knew a lot about current conditions which was great!

Finally on the trail, and sun!



















Then it started to hail - and not just a little hail, more like "turn the trail white I can't tell if it's snowing"hail.

We decided it was a good time to turn around and head to dinner in Port Townsend!

Be sure to be safe

At work we have a safety program (of course) They've come up with some pretty inventive posters lately - some would even call them a little over the top, here's two to share:

Gotta Get Out and Hike!

Had a free Saturday and LW, Asia, and I had to get out and do something - with the snow and weather I figured the best way to guarantee good trail conditions was to head over to the east-side and hit the Ancient Lakes Basin:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=47.141103,-119.92487&spn=0.044137,0.11467&t=h&z=14

After a hearty breakfast at the Harvester (who knew the Parkway and PSP don't open for breakfast until 9:00?) we were off.

Quick stop in the 'burg so Asia could go potty and we're finally in Quincy around 1:00. The Ancient Lakes Basin or Quincy Lakes, is a series of lakes created by pumping water from the Columbia up to a reservoir and then letting it run back down a series of stepped ledges towards the Columbia.

As you can see from the pics Everyone had a great time - and the best way to top off a trip to Central Washington: a tour of Ellensburg and dinner and Rainier at the Tav.






Look at that happy hiker!















Check out all the old bathtub rings on that lake!














Honest - it's central Washington not Afghanistan!















One of the coolest things about Ancient Lakes is all the water...















Asia loved it - she slept all day Monday!














Asia loves to be as close to us as possible...

I just want to get to work...

Driving 10 minutes to the transit center every day seems dumb so I decided to try the bus today. After waiting 20 minutes a bus finally showed up.

So my options are:
Drive 10 minutes and 2.5 miles to the transit center, wait for the light rail, walk from light rail... 35 minutes each way

Drive 10 minutes, 4.5 miles and park on stadium way, walk to office. Total time 20 minutes each way but I have to park on the street and still drive my car.

Walk to the bus, bus, walk from bus to office. 45 minutes each way? And 3 dollars a day... Plus the crazies on the bus!

I hate you and your transit options Tacoma!

More thoughts...

Was listening to a travel show of all things - Rick Steves - and heard this quote:

When faced with love and temptation you have to choose which one you want the most. To love and be loved by one person or to love the feeling of endlessly falling in love.
-Jennifer Cox

I heard this and thought it was pretty cool because I think it summed up my 20's. I was stuck in the same relationship for most of college and after college in another pretty serious relationship after college, and I think I really needed to date different people for a while - does anyone really know what they want when they're 21? I know some folks get married at 18 and it works out forever but I think about who I was then, and who I am now...

Sometimes you have to wait a while to be happy...

Change Sucks

I'm at an emergency management/GIS conference this week focusing on "critical infrastructure" ie. bridges, roads, water pipes, stadiums etc...

Most of the U.S. infrastructure is in a state of disrepair, this combined with the impending global warming crisis, impending lack of fossil fuels, changing U.S. and World demographics, decentralized government thats divided by arbitrary boundaries and general belief among people that they pay too much in taxes is theoretically all going to evolve into one amazing, tragic crisis soon...

On that cheery note I did like this quote:

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."

-Machiavelli

Over a month...

and no knew blogs - obviously I'm not all that great at keeping this thing up. Lots of stuff happening that I need to find time to post. The fence on the East side of the house is about 95% done and looks really great, also need to put pics up of the bench I made LW for Christmas. In other good news I'm pretty sure LW and I found a church we really like!

Maybe this weekend I'll post

I like this quote:
"What we are doing is hard to explain. It would take diagrams
and curse words, complicated facial expressions and lengthy
descriptions of little known tools." -- Clemens Starck

It's been a while...

Over a month since I posted and lots of things have happened! Several new projects "almost" done at the house including the back fence, the bathroom, and my first woodworking project - a craftsman style bench I made LW for Christmas. More on all of that once I've dug through all the pictures and can post something finished...

It is new years and I'm not much for resolutions but I do think there's some value in documenting what I expect for the year. I've also been reflecting on the past year, and thinking about how things can be better this year.

1. City of Tacoma half marathon - June 10th
2. I need to stop caring so much about how others live their lives - some people are just selfish, or mean, or generally dumb. They always will be and I can choose to live with them or not.
3. I'm done being careless with other people's emotions - it's bullshit and it needs to stop.
4. I'd like to find a church I really like in Tacoma - driving to Seattle is no fun...
5. I need to do a better job of recognizing people in my life who I care about, and who mean something to me...

There's always more but now I at least feel like I can get back to work...