The Weatherman

The wait to get Dubb-ya and the conservatives out of the white house is finally over.  Go Obama.

Yep, no longer want to be a tornado chaser…I’ll become a permafrost chaser.

So he’s been getting better over the last few weeks.  This week he’s definitely made the switch to walking more over crawling.  Here are some movies of his walking over the last few weeks.

Barack Obama delivered one extremely inspirational speech at the Democratic National Convention.  This is clearly what this country needs to get things moving forward.  Someone with a plan and conviction…but most importantly, someone who can inspire others to move, compete, and succeed.

I was also impressed by the show that the Dems displayed on the last night of the convention.  Very gutsy, but cool, to hold the last night outdoors at Invesco Field.  That place was rockin.  The other aspect I enjoyed were the stories of everyday people and how their lives have negatively impacted by the last 8 years of crap.  I particularly liked a gentleman named Barney Smith who said that we want a government that supports Barney Smith, not a government that supports Smith Barney.

In any case, I’m pretty jazzed about this election.  I’ve been saying over the last month or two that Mccain has no chance against Obama - no matter what the polls say.  Obama can inspire like no other…Mccain is old, rickety, boring, and lifeless showing no inspiration.

FYI, I was actually a Hillary supporter, although, I’ve always felt that the Dems had two very strong candidates with Hillary and Barack…and I would easily support either one.  Tonight’s speech has definitely impressed upon me that Barack is ready.

This weekend Steph did something to irritate Zach - so instead of calling her mommy, he started calling her Steph.  He did this for most of the afternoon on Saturday.  Ironically, I’ve always assumed Zach would call me Paul before calling mommy Steph.  Oh well.

Lin came up for the weekend so the boys got a healthy dose of grandma.  Overall we had a mellow weekend enjoying the very warm (around 90 during the late afternoon and upper 60s at night) weather.  I missed the lightning last night so I’m hoping we get another round of thunderstorms tonight.

As I mentioned before the kitchen is done.  Here are two pictures.

We are waiting for the hardware for the doors and drawers.  Plus we still need to paint.  Otherwise, everything works exactly as expected.

I like airplanes, flying, and the overall experience of going from destination to the other through airports (yeah, call me crazy). So I tend to follow airline news better than others. Lately, the number of articles on cost cutting measures are just comical. It is truly amazing the hoops airlines are jumping through to maintain that low ticket price.

RAISE AIRFARES ALREADY! Don’t take away my peanuts! Don’t charge me for my first checkin bag! Don’t take away pillows! Don’t take away the meal service! This is a complete joke. Just raise my ticket price. At least that doesn’t cause delays at the airport. I don’t have to wait for the dude in front of me bitching about paying for his checked luggage or listen to passengers near complain about no snacks.

If the high cost of fuel is a problem - simple, at time of ticket purchase charge me a fuel surcharge which is a percentage of that day’s crude oil price. These are futures so I essentially paying for the cost of gas when I fly. So if the crude oil price is $100/barrel then charge me, say, 25% or $25. Not enough to offset the cost of gas - fine - increase the percentage. Don’t try to keep airfares lower and cut conveniences purely to save fuel. This is becoming a much bigger inconvenience for the passenger.

I know, the airlines will always say it just isn’t that easy…and maybe it isn’t. But the changes they are making now are not easy for them or the passenger. Ridiculous.

Here are some of the articles are changes coming our way:

United raises airfares by up to $60; soon may charge for all checked luggage

US Airways Group to stop serving snacks on domestic flights

Airlines ponder how far they can push customers

American Airlines institutes checked bag fee

I’m sure Amtrak must be happy.  I can’t believe they are not advertising heavily to get these customers.

Wow, what amazing chili I made tonight.  Flavor was A+++ and the spice was perfect.  It made you sweat but you kept coming back for more.  I had over two bowls and now I’m stuffed.  My t-shirt was wet from the sweat caused by the chili - that’s how good it was.

I immediately took 2 tums since I still need to work tomorrow.

Barry Zito has really turned into a stinker for the Giants. Last year he had a very subpar year but at least he showed signs of the old Barry Zito. Now he just plain stinks. Today, the Giants lost 10 to 1 to the Cincinnati Reds.

Zito gave up 6 runs in the first inning. Here is his linescore for the 3 innings he did pitch:

What a Bust! Time to think about benching him so he doesn’t keep bleeding off wins.

On a good note, Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez are solid.  These guys are throwings strikeouts and keeping games close.  Which gets to the next issue - we have little hitting.

The electrician arrived today and spent from 9:30am to around 3:00pm running the 220 line and getting our spa hooked up.  Right now it’s about 82 degrees - it started off at 52 degrees - so it’s warming up quickly.  We’re hoping it will be up to 100 by 10pm tonight.

All the chemicals have been added so there is not much to do but wait.

We had snow fall on Friday, Saturday, and today. Never enough fell to stick but yesterday it snowed for about an hour. This morning, while it technically snowed, it was light and only lasted for 15 minutes.

Now on to the new coffee maker. I’ve been pondering getting a single cup coffee maker but wasn’t sure which one. I decided on the Breville BKC600XL Single Cup Coffee Brewer

It brews using K-Cups and it also supplies a K-Cup for your own ground coffee. So far, the results are great. The coffee is good and the coffee maker is extremely easy to use.

Our Sundance Spa was delivered yesterday during our snowy, wet afternoon. Now we just need the electrician on Wednesday and it should be usable by Thursday!  BTW we got a Sundance Altamar

Yep, all South Park episodes are now online for free!

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

Here is the latest movie - Zach looking for Easter eggs!

You can’t make this stuff up…unbelievable:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/video-f-16-bomb.html

Sorry for the lack of posts, photos, movies.  I’ll get some up this weekend.  It’s been a pretty quiet month.  The biggest item was Nate getting sick - fever, ear infection, pink eye, and cold all during the same week.  He went on two different antiobiotics before things cleared up.  Of course, mom and dad got sick also.  Zach escaped the illness (so far) which was nice.

We’ve had relatively mild weather so this last weekend we spent Saturday morning at Marymoor Park in Redmond and I was able to do a lot of gardening on Sunday.  I attended the Seattle Home Show last Friday and we are now looking at bids on kitchen refacing.  Other plans we have include remodeling Steph’s bathroom, a new roof, and landscape work including a hot tub.

That about sums things up.

Californians whine when they get 1 to 2 feet of snow in their mountains - don’t believe me, check cnn.com. Our mountains just 1 hour out of Seattle received 100 inches in one week closing I90 for several days. I90 is major east-west route across the cascades (3 lanes in each direction - bigger than I80 in California). Never a story (that I found) on cnn.com about that. The Southern Californian mountains may receive a foot of snow tonight - that made national coverage - please…get some real snow. Anyway, I’m tired of the sob stories for California.

FYI, I used to live in Northern and Southern California - so I can bitch about their whininess.

As for the Super Bowl - what an upset!!! I can’t believe the Pats let that one get away -what the hell were they thinking. Brady and his offense sucked! How do you suck in the biggest game of the year after being the most dominating offense ever! I don’t get it.

Oh my god!!! How bad can Fox make the pregame coverage. I watched the ESPN coverage up until 11am (after that Fox has the exclusive coverage) and the EPSN coverage was all about football and the game - what I expected and it wasn’t bad.

Fox has a red carpet with Hollywood stars and it’s emceed by Ryan Seacrest. What The F*ck?!? This isn’t that crappy American Idol show! Does Fox really think that football fans really want to watch this crap. Then they had these mini ‘crappy’ concerts…like Alicia Keys singing to what is obviously non-football fans considering most were wearing fluorescent clothing and not football jerseys.

Ok, so we changed the channel. Then we flipped back on 2:50pm only to watch Fox show former football stars read the Declaration of Independence! Have they frickin lost it! This is not football…Don’t get me wrong, I’m patriotic, but I don’t need a history lesson before the super bowl (unless of course it is super bowl history).

I must admit that it is nice having groceries delivered to your home.  In the past, it was annoying since you had to select a window of time to be home - I could never guarantee I’d be around for any of those windows during the week.  This left me with weekend deliveries only but that I meant I must order by Friday and that never happened.

Well, Amazon Fresh provides a new type of delivery that is a great idea.  Pre-dawn delivery. You can order your stuff the evening before and it will be on your doorstep in plastic totes (whose lids are tied down) before 6am.  This is exactly the type of delivery I need.

I’ve used it twice.  The first time was last week and it was a small order - only around $36.  Oh, you don’t pay a delivery fee for pre-dawn if the order is over $25 - sweet!  The first order was all non-perishable items.  It was delivered before six and everything was exactly as ordered.

I placed a second, larger order last night, and this was loaded with plenty of non-perishables.  I ordered chicken breasts, yogurt, milk, orange juice, bagels, bread, cookies, firewood (yes, firewood) and more.  Everything showed up in a tote by 6am this morning.  The perishables were in totes that contained a styrofoam ice chest with some ice packs.  The firewood was stacked on our doorstep so there was nothing special we had to do there.

All dates well into the future - no concern about which day you hit the grocery store and whether you get bread that is 1 day old or 7 days old.  Our milk is dated Jan 22, 2008 - how is that possible?  I assume they get early shipments and these items don’t have to be delivered to stores and then stocked which all takes time.  Anyway, the point is, everything is fresh.

The chicken breasts are individually vacuumed sealed - that is incredible.  Amazon Fresh works directly with a meat distributor.  All there beef is corn fed and comes straight from the butcher.  It too is vacuumed sealed like the chicken.

So far I’m very impressed with the service and quality.  The predawn delivery makes it very easy also.

BTW, they will either pick up the totes on your next order or they will stop by within a day and grab them - your choice.

So United Airlines has a mileage plus store at store.ualmileageplus.com where you can redeem your points for stuff.  For example, I just picked up a 19″ LCD HDTV by Samsung for 56000 miles.

Considering I don’t use my miles, this is a sweat deal.  We’ve been wanting a better TV for the bedroom - this will be perfect.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t use your miles for whatever reason, this is a great way to dump them.  The site has home theater stuff, tools, jewelery, and a bunch of other crap.  Perfect way to waste..er..use your points.

Nope, we are not on vacation…I’ve just been busy and haven’t had a chance to update our blog. We have some photos and videos to upload but I need to get them ready so it will be a a few days, but I will get them up onto the site.

Otherwise, life has been good.  Work has been busy for me so I haven’t had much time during the week to update my blog.  Nate is getting bigger and he’s been a very good infant so far.  Zach is back into his normal routine with daycare.

Tonight our block participated in ‘Night Out 2007′ so our block was closed.  This is an annual event sponsored by law enforcement to encourage neighbors to meet each other and discuss any upcoming issues.

So this judge is suing a dry cleaner for $65M for losing a pair of pants for a week. Part of the lawsuit even includes his rental car for having to go to a different dry cleaner. Of course he is representing himself…what an idiot.

Check out this story.

Other frivolous lawsuits.