My weekend!

I had a busy weekend, busier than most have been recently. But oh so much fun!

Friday - I left work a bit early and headed downtown to meet friends for a happy hour at Twilight Martini Lounge. This is right by Pike Place Market and has a super yummy and cheap happy hour menu! We shared updates on our lives, good food and drinks!

I left the bar around 8pm, and drove my other friend home, and then came home to meet Tito as he was on his way out to Fremont to hang out with a friend. This is a friend of ours from undergrad who moved out here last year. He is from Kenya, and leaving for a matter of months to go home and see his family. He's not 100% sure if he's coming back so Tito wanted a chance to see him before he left. I stayed home and cleaned the house though since it was a boys night. :)

Saturday - I woke up to sunshine! I headed out and hit up the DMV to finally get my WA license after 3 years of living here. It took only 20 minutes, they asked no questions about how long I'd lived here, gave me my old license after punching a hole in it and sent me on my way for my photo. Stupid lady taking the photo, had me stand back, I smiled. Kept smiling. She didn't look like she was going to take the photo, but I still smiled. She looked down to her left and talked to someone of which made me think she wasn't going to take the photo yet so I looked at who she was talking to. Turned me head back around to the camera and she snapped the photo then. The result? A photo of my dead pan with my eyes half opened. I asked her if we could take it again and she said no. I usually have good license photos too! So I think I'm going to look into "losing" the license and see if I can get another one taken where I at least have my eyes open!

After the DMV, I drove over to the UVillage to walk around and go to H&M. Hadn't been there in awhile, and picked up a cute little top, some black satin peep toe espadrilles and a collection of little turquoise wooden beaded bracelets. I also headed to Crate and Barrel but didn't find anything to really buy but picked up a new shoe rack and some storage things at Storables. (Have to bring the shoe rack back because it was missing a piece which was annoying to find out.) Headed home and made brownies, and pico de gallo.

Tito headed to Kirkland to meet up with Erik and Mike for a man playdate. :) Headed out to M's house for B's birthday dinner. Had a great time enjoying fajitas, chips and salsa and pico, and brownies with ice cream and chocolate sauce, as well as wine, beer and good company! After dinner, we headed to a new martini bar in Kirkland. It was packed and a little small for the space, but B and M snagged a table and we camped out for the rest of the night.

Sunday - woke up, grocery shopped, then got lunch at Subway and Tito and I headed to St. Edward's State Park to enjoy the sunshine and have a picnic. We spent three hours in the sunshine, soaking up Vitamin D, relaxing, reading, and just loving life. Headed home, grabbed some movies and settled in and watched both (Role Models and 7 Pounds.) We liked both of them for different reasons, and it was nice to spend a good day together, and good evening snuggling and just enjoying each other's company.


Some photos from the weekend:


Jess and I (playing with the color accent feature on my new camera)


Jess and purple coat!


Not a great shot of me, but with my new license


The ladies at dinner


Happy Birthday B!


On the way to the bar - I'm riding in the "big girl" seat in the middle of E's new Highlander


Cheers to B!


The ladies


Tito and I at St. Edward's State Park enjoying the sunshine!



Epi and I after a day in the sun (with Monet looking on in the background)

Yay!

Greek is back on tonight...seriously, I'm a little angry that my DVR only records two shows at the same time. With three good shows on tonight at the same time - Big Bang Theory, Gossip Girl (yes I watch this and am not ashamed!) and Greek...I'll have to figure out which to watch and which to record. Yay for good tv...I know it won't last that much longer!

Photos from my weekend...can be viewed on my Facebook albums. I'm too lazy and too busy right now to download a bunch to here, so I'll post the links to my Facebook album instead.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?aid=2188593&id=5801614

and

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?aid=2188613&id=5801614

Enjoy! We had a great time and it was definitely a packed visit...we saw more of Seattle in 4 days than I think I've seen since living here!

Long week

It's Monday, and I'm taking Friday off, but I'm already having a hard time concentrating. I'm in the office alone again today for the 4th day in a row as my other co-workers are either working opposite schedules, or taking today off because they worked and traveled over the weekend. It's hard being the only one in the office. And I'm working longer hours since I'm taking Friday off.

Why am I taking Friday off? Because my brother in law and sister in law are coming to visit us in Seattle! We haven't seen them since their wedding in NC in August...I warned them about the weather being bad - the snow and cold this morning was a little much - but it's actually going to be in the 50's and partly sunny the whole time they're here! I'm excited about that.

This past weekend was spent doing some steam cleaning of our carpets - since we rent, our place is about 90% carpeted, and it had been over a year since I'd last steam cleaned them. Seriously, I vacuum the majority of the house once a week and am constantly using a dust buster on the entryway every day, but the amount of gunk and black water that was made in the steam cleaner was disgusting. I can't believe I've been walking around on that for so long. I can't imagine how much worse it would have been if we wore shoes in the house. I read somewhere that if you wear shoes in the house that there's a possibility of having feces in your home that are tracked in from outside sources. I'm already a clean freak, I don't need to be a germ freak too!

Too funny and so true

You'll have to cut and paste this link because embedding is disabled by YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Photos!

So I thought I'd post some photos from the last couple of weeks:


Pisco from the Pisco Sour party


Tito pouring the first batch of Pisco Sours


Cheers and the "true" tasting with Pisco shots



Tito and I on Valentine's Day


My brother Sean and Tito in Post Alley


Gum wall...so GROSS!


Tito and Sean in the first Starbucks


In the Starbucks store


Post Alley


Getting ready to go out on our surprise weekend in Seattle





Tito having a blast. :)


Sunrise from our room - you can see Mt. Rainier through the buildings


Close up of Mt. Rainier


At the Seattle Center fountain


The "other" fountain


In front of the Museum...so many memories (good and bad) from my 15 month incarceration here...heheh!


Rainbow in the fountain - ironic after this morning's snow!

Weird - but it's Friday the 13th, right?

So weird things are supposed to happen today, since it's Friday the 13th and all, right? I think I've got it beat for "weirdest" things.

I was distracted in my office by some weird singing so I shut the office door. A few minutes later I went out because I had to go down the hall. In the shared conference room on my hall were a group of people who work in the next office down. They were all having lunch together - dressed in Robin Hood costumes. One guy is dressed as Robin Hood, and the rest are as maids, wood nymphs, etc. It seriously looks like a Dungeons and Dragons meeting on steroids happening (I had a lot of experience witnessing these "games" while growing up as my older brother played them all) except they're just sitting around talking about normal things. When I walked back by they were talking about LOST and how you can watch episodes online. I have no idea what is going on. And this office is a non-profit ministry group that represents environmental issues.

It's not Halloween - is there some other holiday I don't know about where you would randomly dress up?

When will this end?

15 Companies That Could Meet Their Demise in 2009

Big named businesses began declaring bankruptcy in 2008, and we'd be foolishly optimistic to think the buck stopped in the new year. While it may not make sense to pay any attention to predictions, it's always good to stay in tune with what's happening in our economy and the types of companies on this list say a lot about the bigger picture. Using data from sources such as Moody's Investors Service, US News compiled a list of 15 companies it believes will look much different by the end of 2009. Would you be sad to see any of them go?

1. Rite Aid
2. Claire's Stores
3. Chrysler
4. Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group
5. Realogy Corp.
6. Station Casinos
7. Loehmann's Capital Corp.
8. Sbarro
9. Six Flags
10. Blockbuster
11. Krispy Kreme
12. Landry's Restaurants
13. Sirius Satellite Radio
14. Trump Entertainment Resorts Holdings
15. BearingPoint

Ha this is funny...

I have fallen prey to the 25 Things fad... :)

25 Things About ... Facebook Fads
Despite Our Best Efforts, We Fall Victim to the List Obsession

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 5, 2009; 4:02 PM

1. We have been tagged in a Facebook note titled "25 Random Things about Me."

2. Update: We have received seven of these alerts in the past seven days from seven different people.

3. This is just another online outbreak of mass self-disclosure and self-importance, like personality e-mail forwards of yore (Boxers or briefs? Pacino or DeNiro?). Everyone is typing out Random Things this week, and asking -- nay, tagging -- us to do the same.

4. A friend's No. 3 Random Thing: "One of my favorite things to do is belt out monster ballads in my car, while pretending that I don't see people looking at me like I've lost my mind."

5. We are above reading these carefully word train-of-thought brain dumps, we think. And we'll make our own list only if we get paid by the item.

6. We read them anyway. Each list amounts to a single-spaced, one-page document enumerating "facts, habits, or goals" about the author.

7. Fact: We are weak.

8. Habit: Checking Facebook every 30 minutes.

9. Goal: To get back to work.

10. So we turn this Facebook mini-phenomenon into work.

11. In the past week, the daily rates of note-creating and friend-tagging have doubled and quintupled, respectively, says Brandee Barker, Facebook's director of communication. "People of all ages and from all over the world are writing 25 very touching and insightful "things" about their lives and tagging friends in order to share it more broadly," she says.

12. A friend's No. 17: "I have pooped my pants more than three times as an adult."

13. Sociology 101: People use Facebook like this to compete for attention. "Attention is power," says Michael Stefanone, assistant professor of communication at the University at Buffalo. "You see this in waves, friends contacting friends with this request. It's self-serving."

14. Sociology 201: People are supremely comfortable sharing intimate information about themselves in this pseudo-celebrity culture of online social networking, Stefanone says, but "what happens when I can learn about you and you're not aware of it? These information asymmetries might put people at a disadvantage." It's reality TV's fault, according to his latest study. We believe it. All those on-camera confessions and weirdly personal interviews ... all of a sudden America knows a little too much about your banal private matters.

15. A former teacher's No. 11: "I knew I was going to marry my wife when I went over to finally break up with her -- and then couldn't. This, despite the fact that she was looking particularly unattractive that day, and yet I have never seen something lovelier."

16. We are touched.

17. We feel stupid, getting emotional about something that amounts to a marketing boon for Facebook.

18. We feel misled when we see that many of these Random Things are just comic fabrications, or textual performance pieces.

19. A friend's No. 5: "I killed John Updike."

20. Fact: Lung cancer killed John Updike.

21. Maybe this contagion isn't about self-disclosure; it's about our obsession with lists. It's a comfortable format. It's an orderly way to publicize the Random Things that make us oh-so-special.

22. Once you make a list about yourself, "you'll suddenly discover an inventory of personal secrets, fears and desires that flow out effortlessly and surprise you. There you are, big as life, in list form," according to the book "List Your Self: Listmaking as the Way to Self-Discovery."

23. Wait a minute. We are more complicated than list form, than pseudo-celebrity! Our journey of self-discovery is not divisible by numbered items!

24. Goal: Not to reduce ourselves to Random Things.

25. Fact: Too late.

Bike accident in Seattle

This is so sad...and it happened 1 block from my office yesterday morning - 4 minutes (roughly) after I left this intersection (which is where my bus drops me off). This is so sad...when I went to the bus stop at 5pm, I noticed a small memorial on my side of the street with some flowers but no sign. I immediately knew something had happened. 5 minutes later, a girl (probably 14 at the most) walked up the street, looked at the flowers and took them! As she passed me I said that I thought they were there for a reason...she asked why. I told her I didn't know but that it looked like some sort of memorial and that people leave flowers at memorials for a reason and she should put them back. She said they had been there for four hours already and they were going to die anyway, so why shouldn't she take them? I tried to get her to understand, but being a teenager, she wasn't listening to what this "old" lady was telling her...

Anyway, here's the article on the accident...so heartbreaking for his family.

Bike rider killed in Ballard

Friends, colleagues mourn UW scientist

By BRAD WONG
P-I REPORTER

Kevin Black, a molecular neurobiologist, was such an avid bicyclist that he pedaled from Seattle to California for his high school reunion.

Colleagues at the University of Washington recalled the 39-year-old father of two girls as a man who excelled at his work, got along with others and had a car but never used it.

Black died Wednesday after he was involved in a morning accident with a Ford van in Ballard.

	Kevin Black

"Everybody loved him. He was the glue of my lab," said UW professor William Zagotta, his supervisor for 15 years.

Traffic investigators are continuing to piece together exactly what happened near Northwest 64th Street and 24th Avenue Northwest, Seattle Police Detective Mark Jamieson said.

Calls started flooding 911 dispatchers around 9 a.m. to report the accident. Black was riding south on 24th Avenue Northwest, and the van, which was traveling in the same direction, had moved into the two-way left turn lane, Jamieson said.

Black was on the van's left side, and possibly tried to pass it, when the driver turned, Jamieson said. He hit the pavement.

Laurel Whitley, who lives near the intersection, spotted Black in traffic and later heard his screams.

"I'll probably never forget that," she said. "It was an accident. It happened so fast."

Immediately after the van hit him, people rushed to help. A person administered CPR and a nurse stopped to help, employees at the nearby tavern The Viking said.

The female driver did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Jamieson said. She cooperated with the investigation.

Tavern employees said she was trying to make a turn to stop at The Viking and check on its refrigerators for regular maintenance.

Witnesses said Seattle firefighters and police officers arrived within minutes of the accident. Medics rushed Black to Harborview Medical Center.

By about 1 p.m., his friends had placed two long-stem red roses against a pole and put up a handwritten sign that said: "In Loving Memory Kevin Black."

A Harborview spokeswoman confirmed his death and identified him. At the UW's Department of Physiology and Biophysics, word traveled fast about the accident.

Black, a native of Southern California, was a specialist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and based at the UW. He moved to Seattle in 1993.

He was researching molecules that produce electrical signaling in the brain, Zagotta said. The two had co-written four research papers and were writing two more.

"He was, No. 1, a great dad. He was an excellent scientist," colleague Legay Sheridan said. "This was his first job out of college."

By 5:30 p.m., about a half-dozen people, including bicyclists, gathered near the intersection in Ballard to remember Black. They left flowers and lit candles for him.

Many, such as Seattle bicyclist Steve Brown, did not know him.

"I feel connected to the guy. I rode through the intersection 10 minutes before the accident," Brown, 38, said. "I just wanted to pay my respects to him."

In life, bicycling filled Black's heart. The Web site for the Alki Rubicon Racing Team lists him as a member, noting his long commutes and that his two daughters would be future racers.

After he finished that trek to California for his high school reunion, he admitted that it was more difficult than he expected, Sheridan said.

But friends in Seattle, she added, cheered for him along the way -- by cell phone and e-mail.