You think you're a bike hobo until the day you see this...

As Nick said, if you put yourself into a January state of mind, the weather was great!

From Sunday morning @ 2am.

There are three men in this photo. One is unable to stand and throwing up on the tree. One is helping his poor friend. One is laughing and taking pictures.

Best part about Wednesday? At the end of the day this week's issue of The Stranger starts appearing around town. I enjoy light trolling on the SLOG but soon I hope to shred my sockpuppet and post for real.

Yesterday I took the 150 down to Kent and rode the interurban all the way down the Pacific. And of course then I rode back to Seattle while recalling sweet memories of the .83 Kent Art Pit ride.

Moo invited me to a 花見 in Cap Hill tody. How about in Tokyo?

It's okay, even I'm jealous of myself in that photo.

Today I leave for Narita, Japan on United 875. At 7pm local time I'm riding with some folks in .83 to Tokyo Disneyland. I'll be back Monday on United 876.

I've changed the URL for my RSS feed. "rss.xml" works better for my browser than "index.rss". Stupid Firefox, why won't you give me an option to ignore the extension and obey the content type?

Did you know I blog on request? Back in college I used to always read people's away messges on AIM to keep in touch, without really keeping in touch. If ever someone would have an interesting message, communication would occur, but you probably already figured that one out for yourself. I hate when people say the obvious, maybe that's why I don't talk very much. I have no insight. Just thumbs. Anyway, here's a link to Doug's blog, which I've added to my Google personalized homepage. In an astonishing bit of narcissism, I actually have my feed on there as well. Purely as motivation to update for my stalkers.

While we're on the subject, if you live in the Alexandria, VA or perhaps Washington, DC area and you read my blog a lot, yo, send me an e-mail or an IM or something.

Friday was Andrew's last night in town. We had a joyous Fête @ Nickerson Street Saloon, preceded by a "guy's night" on Thurs, an Alki beach BBQ on Wed, etc. I guess because I've seen it coming for so long that it's easy to deal with. Imagine if he had just been hit by a car one day, it'd be tragic. Now I'm not saying I'll never see him again, but the chances are kinda slim. Perhaps that's what makes getting old not be so bad. You know it's coming. I still remember the first time I really pondered death. I was in my parent's living room watching some weekend movie that was sponsored mostly by Sears window siding and they'd take up almost the whole commercial break. Guess it kind of bores you into thinging about bigger things.

Saturday I slept in late, organized my closet, and filled out rebate forms. Except I needed to fix one of them, and I was going to buy whiteout but I fogot until just now. Errr. Like yesterday when I could find my camera. I'm getting old alright.

But yeah, yesterday. Finally had a chance to watch Almost Live! with Margaux. Well, it turned into an almost live-a-thon as we've been in planning since at least July 9th. I am a patient boy, I wait, I wait, I wait...

The last time I started to write an entry was on June 19th. The title was going to be "figure 8 action," regarding the sweet time I had at Evergreen Speedway. I've never seen a more exciting auto racing event in my life.

But anyway, today is the last day of my first real vacation since I started work over a year ago. It's been good. I took some great photos which one day I'll post. In the meantime, you'll just have to come visit my apartment. Speaking of visitors, Dan and his girlfriend, Julia, will be stopping by somewhere around Aug 4th-7th. And with any luck, Saara will be in town sometime around Aug 29th-Sept 1st. Hooray for visitors.

I went to the Norah Jones and Bob Dylan Amazon.com 10th Anniversary Concert yesterday. I'm just going to come right out and say it--Dylan sucked. But now I can say "I've seen Dylan live." I've really seen a lot of "artists" since moving to Seattle. Collective Soul, Clive Barker, North Mississippi Allstars, They Might Be Giants, James Gosling, Bruce Campbell, Bill Maher, and Diana Anaid, just to name a few. Either way, it's more famous/artists/influential people than I've seen in the whole 22.5 non-Seattle years of my life. Pretty cool, man.

A couple weeks back I finally met up with some Colby people from my COOT, Alice and Jenni. We hung out in Fremont, had some Thai, and got a drink at the local McMenamins. I really like all of their pubs. Recently I had a chance to visit the Queen Anne location with Renée and I had a swell time there as well.

I finally did some touristy stuff lately. Last weekend I went to the Chittenden locks w/ Margaux and her friend and this Friday I went to EMP (okay, but small) and SFM (meh). Well, once again it's more exciting to think about blogging rather than actually write the entry so I'm going to fade out and leave you with a link to Rick Russo's commencement address to my class.

Yesterday was one of the best days I've had in Seattle. The high was a record 75°F with clear skies. Had a team lunch outside at Ivar's Pier 54 Fish Bar, and then after work I attended a fantastic picnic at Gas Works Park with my friends. On the way there with Kyle I saw Andrew at the bus stop where some guy was talking to him, so we picked him up. I love how often I run into people around here! Saw Yvette at Top Pot last Sunday as well. But anyway, he had a phenomenal story to tell from the guy at the bus stop, and the picnic kept the fun moving along. Good people, good times. I even have a picture of Kyle half wet from falling into the water. :) Seattle looked spectacular, as always, from across the lake. Afterwards I met up with Kristina (she was in town for the Tori Amos concert) for drinks. I had a swell time talking with her, and I'm looking forward to our trip to Tacoma even more now.

Tacoma didn't happen on Tuesday as planned because I was sick for a few days, which sucked, to state the obvious. But keep in mind that I'm not a sickly person and I even managed to have perfect attendance in high school. After killing a box of tissues on Tuesday, I caved and called the doctor on Wednesday. And by the time I actually saw one on Thursday, I was feeling quite a bit better. Just some viral thing on it's way out, so stop worring, Mom. Anyway, the exciting part of the story is that I got to work from home and enjoy my gorgeous view of the Olympic Mountains. I think I need to try sneaking off with my laptop to the 8th floor lounge. It's a shame that I live in such a beautiful city, but work in an office destitute of a window.

Mac Mini is on its way from Shenzhen, China. Last I heard it was passing through Indianapolis. By the way, back in mid-September I finally called my collection agency about the whole Indybox thing. Apparently they followed the corporation's trail to Chicago (which cofirms my suspicion that a regular visitor to my Indybox website from a hostname along the lines of "chicago.devry.edu" was Charles Martin) but then the case went cold and they didn't end up collecting anything. So I only got $1 back out of the whole deal (to make the contract with Foremost legally binding or some jazz).

Last night at 3:30 I decided that I would like to buy some art. The first piece I had in mind? Mike Schall's Insomnia, of course. It's an "18x18 full bleed composition mounted on 1/4 foam core," I hear. The second piece is one that I saw at the Colby museum a while back. I wonder what it'll take to obtain these?

This morning I finally finished Life of Pi, which I started reading on March 14th. At least I know where I need to devote more of my leisure time.

I'm not so sure about the future of my journal. Even Pat Sajak is out blogging my sorry ass. Oh well, these thing happen.

If you were looking to buy something for the man in your life, might I suggest Pocket Ref? I discovered it while watching the MythBusters clip show on shopping. Speaking of shopping, have you been to my wishlist lately? What's that? You forgot the URL? Well, please allow me remind you. http://amazon.com/septor.

After many years of well deserved hatred (pre-emptive multitasking? protected memory? overpriced hardware with an elitist image?) I've finally decided to purchase an Apple. A Mac Mini 1.42GHz, 80GB, 512MB, 4x Superdrive to be more precise. I was a patient little boy and waited until Tiger was announced, so I qualify for the up-to-date program. It's on a 2-3 week part backorder (apparently it's the Superdrive's fault) so if it's delayed long enough, I'm told Apple might just throw the 10.4 CD in the box and I won't have to pay the $9.95. Either way, this will be my first big-endian machine. It will also be my first computer with FireWire, a DVD drive (let alone DVD burner), and my first computer with a CD burner. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. But let's not forget that I have a sexy 5-disc CD changer in my current rig. Mmm, SCSI. I also purchased a Mac keyboard and a Canopus ADVC^₁₁₀ to go along with it, so I'm excited to see how plug-and-play the world of commercial operating systems can be. Will I really be encoding and burning shows from TiVo in a matter of minutes? We'll see.

The Seattle Monorail makes me happy. Very happy. I like just sitting by the window of my apartment and watching it go by on its 90 second journey. I still don't understand why it honks the horn... as if some other tram were oncoming. I've also found an establishment to replace "Belltown" the pub/bistro/whatever the hell it's called, Six Arms. Although Six Arms isn't smoke free, it's never been a problem, and they're making it smoke free until 9pm. Six Arms is also the source of the best grilled cheese I've had in Seattle. And their homebrew tater tots are fantastic as well.

Lately I've really started to feel a bond with my co-worker/friends. They've become much more friends than co-workers. And not just because my attempts to "branch out" and meet people via craigslist have largely failed. We're just all here, in the same situation more or less, growing up. It's been fun, and I'm sure when I look back twenty years from now I'll be really mad at myself for not journalling the experience as well as my college days. Yes, "journalling" is a word, but I don't run spell check on these entries anyway. As of 9am tomorrow the live hard week begins because I go off-call, and Andrew and Denise don't go on-call. I really wish our pageable rotation had more than four people in it. Oh well, these things happen.

After seeing a Rael Dornfest talk I decided I wouldn't return to the blogging scene without an RSS feed in hand. Seems only fair since I rarely get around to updating. It would be lame to use the same orange XML button that you've seen around, so please just point your syndication monitoring software here.

I use my journal as a memory lane and often to write about the various events I partake in. Although I've been having a great social life in Seattle, I haven't blogged much because I've been keeping track of my finances with GnuCash, and in addition to recording how much I spent and when, I write in where and with whom. The only events I haven't digitally recorded would be my birthday (Jan 22nd) when Patrik and I were treated to Axis and Belltown Pub, and my trip to Gas Works Park on Jan 30th after having brunch with Chris and Sandy.

Last night I went out to Norm's Eatery & Ale House in Fremont for trivia night with Andrew, Yvette, Sagarika, and eventually Chris. It's smoke free (woo!), and they serve 40s of PBR out of a brown paper bag. Joanna suggested it to me on Monday, and she was right on, because I highly recommend it.

Not so secret links to check for valid XHTML 1.0 Strict with valid CSS and RSS.