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After the aquarium

After the aquarium
Flickr: Don NunnSpent the early afternoon at the Seattle Aquarium with Katharine, Julie Anne, and Julie Anne’s brother, sister-in-law, and 2-year-old nephew.

Adult-beverage time!

The Fireworks Test

Saw this on Julie Anne’s blog, figured I’d jump in too.

What Your Fireworks Say About You

You are focused, single minded, and intense. You don’t let others see your intensity often, and when they do, they are quite surprised. You burn brightly, but you also burn steadily. You have the endurance to get the one thing you desire most.

The Fireworks Test

Weekend in Salt Lake City

Returned Sunday evening from five days in Salt Lake City, where I grew up and still have family and close friends.

Happy birthday, Matt

My good friend Matt celebrates a birthday today.

Damn! I’ve now known him for almost half his life!

A few things, a few times over

Went to Salt Lake City and Reno for a (combined) week starting Thu 05/01. I remember the Salt Lake portion of the trip very well, the Reno part not so much. This is because I caught what seemed to be a mild cold at the beginning of the trip, but by Sun 05/04, the day we drove from SLC to Reno, the cold had exploded into a lovely sinus pressure / fever / coughing / woe-is-me thing that left me reeling that day and the next, and stumbling in a fog the third day.

Fog in the desert. Go figure.

The SLC trip was for the hell of it—I loves me a road trip, who needs a reason?—but also to help with, and by extension attend, Julie Anne’s brother Jimmy’s 30th-birthday party. The party was scheduled for Sat 05/03, so we drove down Thu 05/01 and ran errands Fri 05/02 and most of Sat and enjoyed the party by working our asses off in the kitchen all night. Lasagna, Caesar salad, and garlic bread for 60 people, coming right up!

Julie Anne had also prepared a 10-minute slideshow of photos scanned from Jimmy’s entire life, childhood all the way to 19:30 a week ago Tuesday. Show was a big hit, particularly the lingering shot of Jimmy astride an absurdly large cannon barrel (total "Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud, please call the hospital operator” moment—Big Laffs!) and the other photo depicting Jimmy in drag that vaguely resembled the Wendy’s logo if she were a hamburger-slingin’ ballet dancer.

The party ended about 22:00 and we finished cleaning up a week later, it seemed. Good thing my car knew the way back to the hotel because I sure as hell don’t remember actually making that drive, and even better it knew the way Sunday morning to Squatters where we met my mom for brunch before our drive to Reno.

I should actually say “Julie Anne’s drive, my ride to Reno,” because that’s the segment where my brain started to forget things like how to make me breathe correctly, and how to regulate my body’s temperature. Short version: I coughed our way across Nevada in between spates of almost death-like sleep while my temperature bounced gaily up and down like those little dots that track the song lyrics in karaoke bars.

Julie Anne was ever the trooper, however, and got us to Nevada in record time, despite her deep-seated need to follow rules which manifests itself most regularly by scrupulous observance of speed limits. This day, however, she threw caution to the wind. Our trip through Wendover to Elko, Winnemucca, and into Reno happened mostly at 85 mph or better, and I may be imagining this but I’m pretty sure she threw the finger to several large truckers (and their big trucks) and possibly a cop or two along the way.

But I was feverish, who knows.

We were in Reno because Julie Anne had a trade show to attend, and I had to be sick there. She was In Charge of the show, by which I mean she handled the show arrangements for her company’s product display there, and she kicked ass and took names and generally owned the world for the four hours of the show’s existence Tuesday morning. I know this to be true because she told me so; I was lying in bed squirming and moaning and coughing and trying to take a single full breath but my brain was still forgetting how to do that, though by then it had a fine command for inducing cramps in all 10 toes and one side of my jaw, I think from all the writhing I had done Sunday night and all day Monday and into Tuesday morning.

It’s an odd thing when you’ve slept for 43 of the previous 48 hours but you’re utterly EXHAUSTED and all you want to do is sleep more, except you can’t get comfortable because every time you move, every time an air molecule even TOUCHES you—and trust me, you can feel EVERY FUCKING MOLECULE touching you—some part of you cramps up.

Damned physiology.

By Tuesday midday I was back among the living, and it was time to wrap things up in Reno and drive back to Seattle, which we did over two days. We drove from Reno through Susanville, CA, and around the south face of Mt. Shasta on CA-89 to I-5 northbound, where we had to watch for cops because the damned road is PAVED with CHP cars, Jesus!, and stopped in Medford, OR. We got a blisteringly early start Wednesday, shaking out of our hotel room for breakfast at about ten minutes before 10:00 sharp, and we were home by about 18:30.

The rest of the week involved unpacking my suitcase, which actually took about 20 minutes Wednesday night but somehow feels like it will NEVER be finished, and then going to work for the two remaining days of the week. This morning was laundry, the usual routine of getting up and meeting Julie Anne at 07:15 to be at the laundromat at 07:30 sharp so we can beat the operator to her job, but today we were half an hour early because it turns out while we were gone, they changed their hours to 08:00 daily. Bastards. I could’ve slept another 30 minutes, got up at 6:45 instead of 06:15, but they didn’t bother to tell US they’d changed their hours.

So we got coffee and bagels while we waited, and we still finished our laundry faster than in weeks previous. MOUNTAINS of laundry, I swear we summited Mount Purex a dozen times over, which would be funnier if either of us used that brand but I needed something with two syllables.

And tonight I’m going to the Seattle Mariners game versus the Chicago White Sox (it was important to say “Chicago” there, to differentiate them from the famed Bristol White Sox) at Safeco Field, where I fully expect the Mariners to get trounced in their usual fashion, thereby maintaining their place at or near the bottom of the AL West. Only San Diego is doing worse than the Mariners right now, so let’s go, Seattle! You can do better!

Have a good weekend. :-)

Rattle and Hum

Rattle and Hum
Flickr: Don NunnThe blur on the front left is Phil.

Harry O’s

Harry O’s
Flickr: Don NunnWorld-famous!

Beer goggles!

Beer goggles!
Flickr: Don NunnMug Club rules all.

Dinner and a movie

Some time ago, I think in the middle 15th century although lately my sense of time has been, to put it mildly, a bit warped, I added all three Jason Bourne movies to my Netflix queue. I’d thought, at the time, that though I had already seen the first two—I rented The Bourne Identity from Netflix shortly after it came out, and I saw The Bourne Supremacy both at the cinema and by Netflix rental—it would be good to see them both once more before I saw The Bourne Ultimatum, the trilogy’s final installment.

Turns out Julie Anne hadn’t seen the final movie either, and when Katharine wanted to see Ultimatum in the cinema last summer, we both begged off because we wanted to see the first two movies again. Refresh our memories, you see. So I added the first two movies to my Netflix queue.

Just barely got caught up on them tonight, and I have the third movie too, because we never did see it in the theaters. Julie Anne came over and we saw the first two flicks, pausing in the middle for spaghetti with homemade sauce (I made the sauce, Julie Anne brought the spaghetti). Finished the second movie over tea from the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, BC, along with a slice of the spice cake I happened to make this morning, with the cream-cheese frosting I happened to make last night because I found the cake mix in my cupboards and thought it would be kinda good to make.

Third movie is waiting impatiently on my DVD player, probably will watch it sometime over the weekend. For now, though, it’s a school night of sorts for both of us, so I’m off to bed.

Recently

In roughly chronological order.

1. Friday night: ToddlerWatch 2008. Baby-sitting for Julie Anne’s nephew at the Red Lion on 5th Ave, where Julie Anne’s brother and sister-in-law were staying over the weekend for a friend’s wedding.
2. Later Friday night: Beer, nachos, and billiards at Rock Bottom, also on 5th Ave. A short one-block walk, in fact, for the post-ToddlerWatch masses. (All two of us.)
3. Saturday, 00:15: Legalized extortion—$30!—to retrieve my car from the garage which had closed just 15 minutes before. The hours were clearly posted but we ignored the sign. Just barely too late to enjoy the standard $7 flat fee, dammit. Ah well, got the car out in no time, but the gall of it....
4. Saturday: Hungover a bit. Generally run-down feeling from dehydration and crazy day/night schedule. Damn my absurd circadian rhythms.
5. Sunday about 11:15: Comcast ate my Internet. There was a Comcast truck outside this building around that time, I think they goofed up my connection when they connected someone else. Earliest technician-call availability: Thursday afternoon, which happens to be the day I already scheduled for the relocation of my cable services in conjunction with my upcoming move.
6. Monday morning: Comcast still chewing on my Internet. Called back to check on known problems, still none. Customer-service person helpfully informed me that if my cable-TV signal is working, and my Internet connection is not, it must be my modem, and he would be happy to dispatch a technician for earliest arrival on... Thursday afternoon. I really wanted to slam the phone down hard enough to drive earpiece shards deep into his brain, but it’s hard to do that since my cell phone doesn’t have a hook. Also I have killed too many cell phones over the years.
7. Also Monday morning: I loaded up a few boxes and wandered down to the elevator for the quick trip to the 4th floor, only to find the elevator occupied by moving-company workers who were moving two residents’ belongings into their apartments. They also had both stairways blocked above the second floor as they manhandled furniture items up and down. Blah.
8. Monday midday: Luncheon with Katharine in Redmond to get her mind off killing a particular coworker-from-hell, and then errands around Queen Anne in the deluge. Firehose, indeed.
9. Monday late afternoon: I snaked Julie Anne’s network signal and actually managed to get a usable and steady connection from it, provided I don’t even THINK about opening any IM or chat progra LJlkhdflkjf +++ ATH
10. Also Monday afternoon: I posted a “free to first taker” notice on Craigslist Orlando for three universal (i.e., not tied to any specific attraction) FASTPASS tickets we received at the Magic Kingdom during our trip to Walt Disney World in December. We were riding Pirates of the Caribbean when there was some unspecified breakdown. They took us off the ride midway through it—we were backed up to a dock of sorts and walked through the attraction area, outside to a backstage area, where we were strictly forbidden (smilingly, of course, because of the Disney Happy) from even raising our cameras anywhere near eye level. They gave us the FASTPASS tickets as tokens to offset the inconvenience. I, for one, thought the whole off-the-ride, see-the-backstage-areas thing ROCKED UTTERLY, so the FASTPASS thing was an absolute bonus. Anyway, I posted the “free to first taker” listing on Craigslist at 16:04 PST and the tickets were claimed at 16:17. By 16:21 I’d received 44 more responses and was scrambling to remove the Craigslist post. By far the fastest response time I’d ever seen via that service.
11. Later Monday afternoon: I saw Julie Anne’s Weekend Wrap-Up posting and thought, hey, I should do that too. SUCH a sheep am I.

The racks, they all look the same

Yesterday my friend Matt asked me—and by “asked me” I mean “sent several text messages that were so plaintively worded, they channeled the tortured screams emitted by the thousands of souls who have been forced to sit through Daniel Day-Lewis’ last several acting gigs”—if I would take him to a walk-in clinic so he could get checked out and possibly drugged up for the head/chest cold and nascent sinus infection he’s been enjoying for the past several days.

Matt lives in Mukilteo, about 25 miles north of Seattle—an easy 90-minute rush-hour drive north on I-5 (just under 30 minutes on foot), but I scored and drove in the middle of the day when there’s no traffic other than silly British Columbians who think the big SPEED LIMIT 60 signs are calibrated in metric units. So it only took me 35 minutes by car, though I was passed in Shoreline by two speed-walking soccer moms and a kindergarten class on a nature walk.

We celebrated Matt’s stay in Clinic Purgatory—two hours and change, including the correctly quoted one-hour wait—with lunch at Azteca (a first for me) on SR 525, a lovely road the locals call Mukilteo Speedway despite its more-often-than-not crawling line of minivans and police vehicles. And after lunch we stopped at the little pet store next door because Matt needed cigarettes.

See, as we walked out of the restaurant, Matt patted his pockets to find his cigs, because the thing you definitely need after you’ve just had a sinus X-ray and then filled your prescriptions for broad-spectrum antibiotics, industrial-strength Sudafed, and codeine-infused cough syrup, after all that what you absolutely REQUIRE, is a smoke. But he had no cigarettes on him, either they were stolen out of his pockets by the clinic doctor (Matt’s utterly certain declaration) or he had left them at home. And Matt had noticed as we walked into the restaurant that the same small strip-mall style retail building housed a smoke shop, one Tobacco City by name—clearly it has aspirations to greatness, this tobacconist on the edge of Paine Field, and Matt was determined to help it along by making his smokes purchase there.

But before we got to the smoke shop, I was looking through the windows of the pet shop at the stacks of cages for the puppies and kittens that probably had been manufactured in sweatshops by not-quite-adult dogs and cats who never got to move more than about 14 inches in any given direction, when they weren’t doubled over grunting out the young’uns. All of which is erased by the utter cuteness of the floppy ears and the big paws and the barking, and also the terminally adorable puppies.

And so we walked into the pet shop and it was stocked with row upon row of cigarettes and packaged tobacco and also wine in racks which greatly resembled pet-store cages, hence my confusion. Also they had beer. Cigarettes and alcohol, readily available together from one clerk via a single transaction, BAM you have two vices ready to go. But no puppies, nor kittens or goldfish or little reptiles. And no pet foods, toys, behavior training areas, and the like.

Finally it occurred to me: Not a puppy factory, the sweatshop dogs are cranking out the fine-grade tobacco and they also have a lovely knife rack over there—you need a large saw-edged dagger when you smoke, it’s the only way to guarantee you get your lighter back.

Links for 2007-09-05: Football, wineries, beer, and—oh yeah—a couple of unrelated straggler items

First, a stack of links related to my trip with Julie Anne to Corvallis, OR, over the Labor Day weekend to attend the Oregon State/Utah football game and to do some winery touring and pub-crawling. The links are in the rough order we encountered each place:

• Hilton Garden Inn Hotel Corvallis Oregon - Oregon State University - Corvallis, OR Hotels
  Across the street from Reser Stadium, our base of operations for the OSU/Utah football game Thu 08/30
  (tags: hotels corvallis oregon travel roadtrips football sports)
• Home page for Oregon State University
  Julie Anne’s alma mater in Corvallis, OR
  (tags: oregonstateuniversity osu oregon corvallis friends schools universities travel roadtrips football sports)
• Oregon State University Memorial Union
  Center of student life on the Oregon State campus; we went there for the bookstore
  (tags: oregonstateuniversity osu oregon corvallis schools universities students travel roadtrips football sports)
• Football - News - OSUBeavers.com—Official Web Site of Oregon State University Athletics
  Orange never ends....
  (tags: football sports universities oregonstateuniversity osu beavers travel roadtrips corvallis oregon)
• The Official Athletic Site of the University of Utah - Utah Football
  The team I favored. Even though I didn’t attend school there, I grew up a couple miles from their stadium. Hometown team, etc.
  (tags: football sports universities universityofutah uofu utahutes utes saltlakecity utah hometown travel roadtrips)
• Elmer’s® Restaurants, Inc.
  Breakfast on Fri 08/31 in Corvallis. Good hangover cure
  (tags: breakfast restaurants dining foodanddrink corvallis oregon hangover roadtrips travel)
• Allann Bros. Coffee - The Beanery
  Coffee shop on the northeast corner of the Oregon State campus
  (tags: coffee corvallis oregon foodanddrink dining travel roadtrips)
• Oregon Wine Country: Eola Hills Winery, Wines, Wineries & Vineyards Homepage
  First tasting stop on Sat 09/01. Apparently they also have a kick-ass Sunday brunch
  (tags: eolahills wine tasting wineries vineyards wines willamettevalley oregon corvallis rickreall roadtrips travel foodanddrink dining brunch)
• Firesteed Cellars
  Stumbled over this winery on our way north from Rickreall, OR along Hwy 99W
  (tags: firesteed wineries wines wine vineyards rickreall corvallis eolahills willamettevalley oregon travel roadtrips foodanddrink dining)
• Cherry Hill Winery - Oregon Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley
  Lovely range of Pinot Noir at this off-the-beaten-path winery in the Eola Hills region of the Willamette Valley
  (tags: cherry hill wines wine wineries eolahills willamettevalley corvallis oregon rickreall foodanddrink dining roadtrips travel)
• Amity Vineyards
  Two delicious Rieslings and some fine Pinot Noir in the North Willamette Valley
  (tags: amity vineyards wineries wines wine foodanddrink dining oregon corvallis eolahills willamettevalley)
• McMenamins - Lighthouse Brewpub - Homepage
  Happy hour Sat 09/01 afternoon in Lincoln City, OR
  (tags: mcmenamins lighthouses beer breweries brewpubs foodanddrink dining restaurants lincolncity oregon corvallis roadtrips travel)
• Woodstocks Pizza
  Corvallis pizza joint for dinner Sat 09/01. Total throwback to college life for Julie Anne: The back room, Suds & Suds, offers beer and laundromat
  (tags: restaurants pubs pizza corvallis woodstocks sudsandsuds laundry laundromat oregon travel roadtrips foodanddrink dinner dining)
• McMenamins - Hotel Oregon - Homepage
  Good spot in Oregon’s wine country for touring, drinking, dining, etc. We had lunch at the Rooftop Bar Sun 09/02 before we drove back to Seattle
  (tags: mcmenamins mcminnville oregon hotels hoteloregon brewpubs breweries restaurants foodanddrink dining lunch travel roadtrips beer)
• McMenamins - Hotel Oregon - Rooftop Bar
  Spectacular views of the Willamette Valley atop the tallest commercial building in McMinnville. Favorite beers and pub grub too
  (tags: lunch foodanddrink mcminnville oregon mcmenamins corvallis roadtrips travel dining hoteloregon breweries brewpubs beer outdoordining alfresco)

Second, a couple of random items of interest:

• Panasonic Real Pro Ultra Total Body Massage Lounger
  $4800 chair. All of the furniture I have in my apartment now barely adds up to that amount
  (tags: furniture shopping chairs insane via-matt sharperimage wtf)
• Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life | zen habits
  I have one: How about ignoring the 72-item “simplify your life” lists? I mean, *72* ways to SIMPLIFY? Hello, contradiction...?
  (tags: lists blogs ideas amusing contradictions articles organization productivity lifehacks)