11 pounds

hello,

everyday more and more christmas appears. the top of the space needle is a christmas tree and one of the three t.v. towers in queen anne is a giant lit up tree at night (i always wonder why only one of the three?). the bellevue buildings (and cranes) are christmas themed. and the christmas music has arrived on the radio. its a beautiful thing.

thanksgiving was a great traditional meal with all the usuals. it was a nice, slightly later than expected meal (does any one else think their red turkey-is-done popper is defective?) with jamie and mattia. we finished it with pandoro (probably the best christmas cake of time) and some super mario brothers 3, which is not as easy as i remember it being.

for friday we dropped jamie off at work and mattia and i went to the macy's santa parade:



after some shopping for mattia's italian friends and family, i picked up something that will bring me months of happiness. a five kilogram (11 pound) giant container of Nutella. as we were walking it back to the car through pike place market, i could only hear partial conversations. "oh my gosh, that is the biggest container of...", "man, look at that giant..." "nutella is my fav.." and in a way i felt like an extremely large breasted woman. all of the glances and second glances and double takes were all looking at my body and what was in my hands. they weren't seeing me as a person.

since it was an amazingly clear day, mattia and i went up to the space needle where the lighting was perfect and we could see all the mountains. these cold crisp days are good to get as much vitamin d as possible before the clouds roll in.

perhaps

hello,

the new computer has arrived! this is relevant to me for a few reasons:
1. i am no longer location limited to an electrical outlet (my battery power life was approximately 12 minutes if i did nothing on the computer, about 3 minutes if i decided to actually use it).

2. i now have the space to fully explore music and store all of my photos. the 30 or so cds that have been on hold at the amazing seattle library are now on their way.

3. it takes about a minute to start up and have already checked my email. this compares to about 8 minutes to my old one. a 7 minute difference really isn't that much, but was a pretty good deterrent since i could always find something else to do instead of waiting for everything to load up.

this may be relevant to the two readers that are left that still check this web log:
1. perhaps there will be more posts.

i say perhaps because i don't know really if there will be more posts or not. i think of this as an extra for my life. if i have to choose between experiencing something new or writing about a previous experience, i'll go with the first one. so we'll see.

jamie picking out her pumpkin at the pumpkin patch.

hermit octupi

my brother and his girlfriend staci came by for the second annual hang out during st. patrick's day (the last one we went to dublin for a very cool but very cold, guiness filled experience).

now, if you look close enough at the buildings in this picture~~^
you'll see one black building thats taller than all the rest of them (if you follow my brother's head straight up. he's the one in the middle). that's the one that i signed up my brother and myself to climb on the morning after st. patrick's day. there were two categories: the take your time, and the timed race. why would anyone take their time climbing 1,300 stairs? after about the 30th flight, i looked back and thought that my brother was going to die. i gave him a good three days (all of them work days for him) to train and prepare for it, so expectations where a bit unknown. and the team we were signed up for had a group of guys that are climbing the tallest mountain peaks in the world (and just returned from kilimanjaro? could be way off, but one of those). he came through strong though in 16 minutes. nice job.

we got this seattle pass were we did everything that i've always wanted to do in seattle but never did. it was definitely worth it. one of the coolest things i have ever seen:

i have no idea why but i could look at these guys for a long long time. little cows. little cows that look like pandas. a few of my friends have not been impressed by this and i feel like i'm taking crazy pills.

so after the seattle sites, we though a quick trip to canada was in order. pretty much consisted of random places, strange people, and me making a fool of myself. along the way we spent a night in port angeles, which for its impressive location of right at the base of the olympics and on the water, is a town with not much to do. we thought before dinner we would do some bowling and apparently we were the only ones that had that idea:

i think it was the only time in my life where we were the only people in a bowling alley. the only other person there was the bartender. i just don't see how a bowling alley in port angeles could be profitable.

in victoria we did a lot of hanging out. with the butchart gardens, where my brother had the great idea of buying and planting giant maple trees in las vegas. until he found out that you couldn't take those seeds back to the u.s. probably the thing that we shouldn't have done was the underwater observatory right in the victoria harbor area. my uneducated guess of octopi is that they live the hermit life. so when the sign says "no divers show/feeding today", it should really say "you won't be seeing an octopus today". we didn't see one. but we did go to the creepy wax museum! i would agree with my friend ryan, it might not have been the wisest choice of location for the torture scenes. right next to the disney and kid scenes. a little further down the walkway we saw a child still traumatized by the display of torture. he didn't want to walk past christopher columbus. although, maybe the more fitting place for him would be in the torture room.

it was really good to see the family and i'm liking the travel somewhere on st. patrick's day tradition. staci says the next place has to be warm (after ireland and canada she is ready for a hotter location), but for some reason i equate adventure to cold. i'll have to work on that...after i go to antarctica.

have a good day
your friend
chad.

that cold february trip

hello,

this one should have been up awhile ago:

north dakota (early/mid feb.) -

is pretty dang cold.

my disclaimer is that i fully realize this is not going to sound very cool or fun, but it was. there is no other explanation. traveling with my married friends ryan and amy, we set on a mission to experience the least visited state (maybe alaska is less, but north dakota must be high up there) in its truest form, in the dead of winter. thankfully we missed the freakishly cold -35 degrees cold spell by one week.

-15 was plenty for me, and if it keeps getting colder, you can't even ice skate on frozen ponds. after a great day at the mall of america and a night of watching a fightless nhl hockey game (yes, slightly disappointed) in minnesota, we tested our own hockey stop skills in the park pond recommended by the sellers of the cheapest possible ice hockey skates at dick's athletics. my vote goes to ryan on the best hockey stop.

the real fun of north dokota started with an overnight in fargo. going to say that there isn't much there.


the next day was shiverfest 2007 in devil's lake north dakota. along the way we mistakenly stopped at the second tallest structure in the world. it looked pretty tall but is sadly three feet shorter than the tallest structure in the world, which happens to be located about ten minutes drive away. after the proper visit of the worlds tallest structure (a t.v. tower in the middle of nowhere), we made it to devil's lake only to find out that shiverfest 2007 is more of a loosely connected gathering of mid-winter events rather than an organized town community event. there really wasn't any place to go.

our answer was to take the rental car for a spin on what, from our sound judgment (being from Las Vegas), looked to be a solid devil's lake. we got the car into some pretty good spins with the parking brake. it turns out amy has a fear of walking on frozen water. she's a trooper. i'm pretty sure her fear didn't expect spinning rental cars on frozen water. so maybe it overwhelmed the fear and made it possible. that's my guess.

the best part was driving all the way across the lake in our rental car with california plates, stopping at a fishing shack, and asking the two north dakotan men where shiverfest 2007 was. "Well...you have to get back onto the road... And then go around that way. I think you'll see the snowmobile event there."

the rest of the trip continued with meeting the most random cool people, like the kite guy. some guy that makes huge (massively huge) kites and takes them to events all over the country. he let us help him put all the kites away for the day so we got to spend a lot of time with this guy that is following his passion, however strange it may be.

or going to more weird places, like the worlds largest buffalo. it was metal.

definitely the right kind of trip. lots of talking, lots of doing and not doing. and seeing the other parts of life. trips with ryan and amy are always the best.

adventure day II

hello,

adventure day - one day a weekend (very similar to seattle saturday from when i first moved here) where adventure is the theme, or at least one of the themes. sunday was adventure day II.

i didn't have my camera for adventure day I, but to sum it up: a flower show at the bellevue botanical gardens; a quick visit to the park right next door to the bellevue botanical gardens; jamba juice, where we both ordered a small and jamie got a medium while i got a small and for some reason felt left out; a park on mercer island where i read on the small patch of swimming beach. way too cold for people swimming, but this tiny dog was determined to guard the beach from slightly confused ducks; and a walk down some of the i-90 floating bridge. a definite park theme with this adventure day.

with the camera ready, adventure day II was set to go:

driving to a secret destination (not that secret for the thousands of cars that pass it every day) south of seattle, we came across shipwreck beads, the worlds largest bead emporium. i replaced the word emporium with their use of the word "store" since i thought emporium was a better description, especially if it was a "worlds largest." one great big building with many many beads. i kept trying to look at all the employees and even the people shopping to see if they had bead necklaces on, but most of them didn't (i saw two with them on, about 15 with nothing). i guess people are doing different things with beads these days other than wearing them. Yep there it is, the world's largest bead emporium.

after a bit more driving, we arrived at the secret destination: four giant metal cows! They were right off of the freeway and made of giant oil cans. not sure if they are painted or just naturally rusted. The mother/calf one was a bit confusing since the mother cow had horns. After a little bit of research, apparently there are many breeds of female cows that have horns. The city of Austin public library says that the Danish Red, the White Park and the Texas Longhorn all have female cows with horns. It must be one of those then.


For the return trip we stopped by the Spar cafe and restaurant in Olympia, the Washington State capital. Olympia is a much cooler place than Carson City, Nevada (apologies to the 17 non-governmental residents of Carson City, Nevada). It has that cool small town downtown feel to it. Kind of like a surviving Fargo, North Dakota.

After a miscommunication with the waitress, we received our spicy macaroni and cheese $5.00 blue plate special (which was definitely not our spicy macaroni and cheese pizza $5.00 chef's special). We wondered how they were going to do a macaroni and cheese pizza, since putting pasta on top of pizza is not a usual practice. And the answer is that they can't.

The final stop was the world famous Bob's Java Jive. I guess back in the day, Bob had two chimpanzees named "Java" and "Jive" that would bang on bongos while they would play the guitar and sing. That would have been awesome to see. This place is not the easiest to find since it is nearly under two freeways. Its been in a lot of movies that were filmed in Tacoma: Three Fugitives, I Love You to Death, Ten Things I Hate About You, and Say Anything.
I don't remember any of those (ten things vaguely, but I don't remember this place in it).


So there it is. Adventure Day II.


And a side note. My friend is embarking on an amazing multi-year world trip (she doesn't actually know when she is coming back). Have fun Megan! We will definitely miss you.

I don't know who the guy in the back is.

Spring!

hello,

first post of the year and its already march! which also happens to be the month that spring starts. seattle usually doesn't realize this for another two months, but what is more important is that the sun does realize it. yesterday i was talking to someone about watching the sunset from my last place i lived, and how it was at 9:00pm. i just can't even imagine that at the moment, but am greatly looking forward to those days. the apartment wrapping should be finished by that time as well (yep, still under construction), and the sunset views are from my bedroom window.

currently i am looking for employment. it must be (in order of importance):
a place i am passionate about working at
in a field i am passionate about pursuing (i must want to own my own business within the field)
with a position i am passionate about filling
and they must offer a bus pass. i miss reading on the bus.

other than that, nothing else matters.

i read my 2nd-half-of-the trip journal a few nights ago and it was a good shaking of my life. it almost doesn't feel like i wrote it, except there are a lot of memories that are sparked by every entry. there are a lot of opportunities for living to be had.

have a good day
your friend
chad.