hi. i'm don.

Spotted this on Julie Anne’s blog, figured I’d try it as well.

Imagine my surprise:

You Remember 100% of 2008

You were paying attention during 2008. And you remember what happened really well. You’ll be able to talk about 2008 for years to come... Even when most people have forgotten what went down.

According to the Seattle Times article after the jump, the last several days’ delight of iced roads and daily insanity is fully intended by their snow-removal and traffic policies:

Update 12/31/08: Seattle will use salt in future winter storms.

It just kills me.

After the jump, an Associated Press article chucklingly nails down why Seattle is so afraid of the weather.

The recent weekend was pretty full, socially speaking. Events planned for each of the three weekend nights, it was kinda nice to have a stacked weekend for the first time in a while.

But it was also nice that the weekend started out with a big chunk of quiet time, a whole lounge day in fact.

Back a little while ago from the birthday festivities. Had a SPECTACULAR evening with Katharine and Julie Anne.

I had planned to slip out a little early so Julie Anne and I could play some pool and have a beer or two before we met Katharine for dinner tonight, but ended up leaving work right at my usual time when Julie Anne picked me up. We headed into Bellevue for a few rounds of pool at The Parlor Billiards & Spirits in Lincoln Square. Place has been open for a few years now but somehow we’d never tried it, a shocking oversight. They have something like 20 pool tables arranged to allow plenty of space on each side so players won’t encroach on other games (very often, anyway), and an extensive bar and food menu to keep you fueled up while you scratch your way through a few games of pool.

While we were playing, Julie Anne, who was vibrating in joyous anticipation at the gift she had arranged for me, suddenly could take it no longer and insisted I open her birthday card. Inside were two concert tickets for Vienna Teng on December 13.

My first thought was: How in the world could I have missed a Vienna Teng concert date in Seattle? I have the tour-dates feed in my regular reader, the last time Vienna Teng was in town I had tickets 12 minutes after the concert date was posted to the feed!

Then I kept looking at the tickets and two things struck me:

So I’m 37 today, which doesn’t faze me in the least because in my brain I’m still maybe 23 or 25 at most and that means I won’t be a grown-up for, what, 10 years at least?

Halfway through, then, here’s how the day has shaped up:

1. Actually got some sleep, glorious sleep! I’ve a mild cold and the biggest problem I experience with such things is sleeplessness, but I managed almost 7 hours last night. This despite the fact that
2. I woke up half an hour early so I could ferry Katharine to work so she in turn wouldn’t have to worry about her car during the fabulous Spa Day she would be enjoying courtesy Julie Anne’s gift for Kat’s own birthday 3 days ago. So I picked up Julie Anne and we headed north to Bothell, picked up Katharine, and
3. Stopped at Starbucks for caffeination. I ordered my usual, a triple grande non-fat no-whip white chocolate mocha (yeah, I am “that guy in line at the coffee shop who places an order with way the fuck too many syllables”—but I knows what I wants and I speaks their language!), which they got entirely right except for the “white mocha” part—I received a standard mocha. But I didn’t much care because we had already left the drive-thru lane and I was already starting to twitch from the caffeine. And then we were off
4. At work, with the caffeine and a slighly slow day making things tolerable, and now I’m waiting for
5. Julie Anne to pick me up for a couple hours of billiards and a beer or two at The Parlor in Bellevue.

Woo birthday!

Only one year to go! ;-)

I love you and I’m so glad you’re in my life.

Everyone else, go wish Katharine a happy birthday at any or all of these spots:

• Her web site
• Her Twitter page
• Her Facebook page

And rather a succinct summary of the weekend apart from the Thanksgiving holiday itself:

Twitter / Don Nunn: didn’t plan to spend the day off at work, goddammit (http://bkite.com/02FcQ)
13:37 Nov 28, 2008

But I ended up working much of the weekend, the luck of the on-call draw combined with a healthy dose of insanity from my teammates’ status updates on their ongoing projects and blah blah blah.

Long weekends that turn into extended periods of off-hours work just blow.