The Weatherman

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. 

These are not the typical red light runners, ie a fast car.  Nope, this is the Seattle bus system.  I am frickin tired of our buses running red lights.  I catch them all of the time making left turns against the red light.  This morning two buses skated through a right turn on a red doing no less than 15 mph – basically this is the inability to stop on a red before a right turn.

They are not above the law.  It’s time that our officers start ticketing these buses before someone gets hurt.

And yes, I honk at them every chance I get.

Check out SkyBus.  They will actually be flying in/out of Bellingham, WA.  Be sure to read their rules of flying, they are pretty entertaining.  Most things I agree with, except I think you should be able to bring food on the plane.

This morning I was supposed to catch a 7:30am direct flight from Seattle to Washington DC. So, I got up nice and early (4:45am) and caught a cab to the airport. When I arrived the United representative at the entrace to the line asked what my destination is.

I told her it was Washington DC and she placed me in this special line. Over the next 10 minutes I learned, from talking with others in the line, that we were all headed to Washington DC…or not. It turns out the flight was cancelled – No Crew!

It took me almost 2 hours to get through that line, all the while, I was on the phone with Expedia (that’s who Amazon uses for corporate travel) working on a change of reservation. I’m currently booked on a United flight leaving Seattle at 7:08pm tonight for LA…yes, Los Angeles. From there I catch a red eye (leaves at 11:40pm) to Washington DC arriving at 7:16am.

It was tough for United to book people on alternative flights since there was no space available…I guess the airlines are busy with spring break.

On Friday I had an appointment with a ski boot fitter since I have had issues with my current boots. He added some foam into the heal to raise it so it fits better in the boot.

Today I went up to Alpental which is only 50 minutes away. Alpental is 5% beginner, 20% intermediate, and 75% advanced. Alpental is part of a resort that has 3 other very small peaks (like Boreal) but Alpental has a vertical rise of 2280′. So, lots of steep bumpy runs. Overall, it was an excellent day except for the fog – it was tough to see.

The alterations to my boots were definitely helpful. I still need some additional tweaking done but they are not too far off from being a good fit.

Normally, this isn’t something to blog about, but these 3 headlines in succession are worthy. Here they are:

Brace yourselves for another stiff blow

‘Sexualized atmosphere’ in county jail

1 percent of Web deemed pornographic

Today I cruised out to North Bend, WA and hiked up Mount Si.  This is basically the initiation hike you must do in the Seattle area.  It’s 8 miles round trip with a 3500 ft elevation gain.  Yep, 3500 ft in 4 miles.  That’s pretty steep.  The trail is a steady climb with no section proving unbearable.  The half mile from 2.0 to 2.5 was by far the steepest, although other sections were more challenging (rocks and steps).

The trail has lots of steps (several hundred) and a fair amount of rocks.  The last 100 yards are over boulders and sharp rocks – not a good place to fall.  The view from the top was nothing less than spectacular.  You have an unobstructed view from the southeast to the south, southwest, west, and northwest.  It was very clear and Mt Rainier looked spectacular.  You could see the Puget Sound, Seattle, and the Olympics.

Looking out toward Seattle

Mt Rainier.  I didn’t have a filter so the shot is a little bright.

Some fall colors.

Speaking of Fall colors – the leaves are changing and it’s beautiful.

Well, we had about 2 weeks of gray and some rain, which made things flower and the grass green.  But the last 4 or 5 days have been beautiful with highs in the upper 70s.  I went over the Admiral viewpoint to shoot some photos of downtown.  Here is one I took…

On Thursday evening we fly down to the Bay Area.  This will be our first trip back since we left and we are very excited to see everyone.  Hopefully I’ll have more photos to post after that trip.

Very good (very long) article in Rolling Stone magazine regarding the 2004 Ohio vote.  It’s sad how unreliable and corrupt our voting system is, especially when we are trying to be a model for the world.

This weekend Grandma and Grandpa showed up to hang out with Zachary.  They arrived early Friday and they leave tomorrow morning.  We took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island and had lunch on Saturday.  Today we went to the Ballard Locks and had lunch at Ray’s Boathouse.

I bought the Canon 50mm F1.8 lens on Amazon.com last week and took some pictures with it.  Not a bad lens for $80.

Here are some shots.

Playin in Zach’s room.

Looking out of a ferry window.

I’m not a baby.  I’m a toddler…cruising the deck on the ferry.

As for weather, we had a bit of rain on Saturday morning, and the remainder of the day was cloudy.  Sunday was very nice – just a bit brisk.