Lucky Bells

After several years of living in the 'town (Belltown), Lucky's moving to the 'vue (Bellevue). He bought a great place, and today he cashed in his "Help me move" card (granted, he earned it fair and square -- especially after helping me move out of my 3rd floor, elevator-free apartment two years ago). He gathered a crew of very tall guys and one not-so-tall me to help him load up his stuff and transport it to his new place. Since it was a moving day, it rained (that's just how it works in Seattle), but all-in-all it was a smooth move. Plus, he treated us to a great lunch at Tu Casa. I think he may have regretted the lunch, though, as we all succumbed to food coma and stared at his furniture for a while, willing it to load itself into the trailer.

I wonder if this means that Lucky eventually plans to cash in his "Pick me up in your truck because I rode my bike too far and I can't make it home now" card?

Special day

Congratulations!

Brett & Emily
12/8/06

At least I'm not boring

We were listening to Jimmy Buffet's song "The Weather is Here, I Wish You Were Beautiful". Chris shouted out the line, "My girlfriend's a bore, my job is too dutiful" and looked at me with a huge smile, nodding his head in agreement with Jimmy. I said, "Hey!" and Chris said, "Oh honey, not you. You're my wife!"

Forecast: flat and bumpy

A day of fast groomers, no lift lines, and very flat light. What is flat light, you ask? It's when there's a solid cloud cover blocking the sun and removing any shadows. For skiers, it means that as you're cruising down the slope, you have no idea that you're about to encounter a bump until you hit it. As your knees suddenly smash into your chin, you think, "Ah hah. That was a bump."

Even with the flat light, we had a great day of skiing. Steven's Pass was practically empty, so we had the lifts and the slopes to ourselves. Although there wasn't any new snow, all of the runs were open and the snow was good.

I forgot my camera, so I used Chris' cell phone to take a couple of pictures (can't let a day go by without some sort of photographic documentation).

Lipbalmics Anonymous

I was looking through the make-up bag I carry in my purse today and noticed a couple of odd things. First of all, why is a woman who doesn't wear make-up carrying a make-up bag? And why is it so full? I opened it to investigate, and here's what I found:

• 1 compact mirror with a cool retro picture of a cowgirl on the back
• 1 tin of Burts Bees hand salve
• 6 tubes of assorted lip balms and glosses

Considering that I keep tubes of lip balm in my desk at work, my car, my laptop bag, my hiking pack, my climbing bag, my gym bag, the pockets of my softshell, fleece and ski jackets, my ski boot bag, and on my nightstand (and I use them all on a regular basis)...is it time for an intervention?

He rides the short bus

Warning: The following may be TMI (Too Much Information) for some of you. If you are not interested in the elimination habits of my dog, you might not want to continue reading.

When Cowboy goes on his walks, he has two functions to complete. For one, he lifts his leg (or sometimes he just leans forward). For the other, he circles and sniffs before finally settling on the perfect place to make his deposit.

Last night, Chris and I took him for a walk. After marking his way around the neighborhood, he finally started his circle-sniff routine. He found the perfect spot, got in position...and lifted his leg. But continued to complete the function that he originally started out doing. From mid-air. With his leg lifted to the sky. Chris looked at me and said, "Is he doing what I think he's doing?"

We're still not sure what was going on there. Did he get confused? Forget what he was doing and lift his leg out of habit? Or is this a new method for him...the sneak air attack?

Yes, Cowboy rides the short bus to the dog park.

Nah-nye-mo

Last year, Margaret threw me a wonderful bridal shower at a local wine shop. She made party favors with delicious homemade treats, and Carrie has been raving about them ever since. So last night, Carrie hosted us for an evening of treat-making, starring our local domestic diva: the one and only Margarita.

Margaret provided supplies and instruction, Carrie provided drinks and food, and I provided labor and a dog to distract Baxter (I obviously got the best job). Lori stopped by to say hi and have dinner, but she had to leave before we got down to business. We made a lot of Nanaimo bars (my favorite, ever since I spent Christmas with Margaret's family during our first year of grad school) and peanut butter fudge (Carrie's favorite from the bridal shower). We had fun pretending to be Rachel Ray while covering Carrie's new kitchen in a layer of sugar, graham cracker dust and marshmallow cream.

So now I have a full tray of Nanaimo bars and a full pan of peanut butter fudge. YUM. I've hidden them from Chris, so they are all mine.

Gettin' Figgy wit' it

Friday evening was the Great Figgy Pudding Street Corner Caroling Competition, an annual event to raise money for the Pike Market Senior Center. Over 40 choirs participate, performing and raising money to support the Center. I normally sing with the OK Chorale, but this year I decided to sing with the Starbucks Coffee Choir. This turned out to be a good thing, because the OK Chorale ended up not competing.

We had a lot of fun singing traditional carols as well as goofy coffee-focused songs (such as "I'm Dreaming of a Tall Latte"). We gave out free coffee to anyone who sang along with us to "Jingle Bells". I'm also in a smaller auditioned performance choir through Starbucks called "Special Blend", and we sang a few of our pieces too. Per Margaret and Chris (who froze their tushes off being loyal spectators all evening long), we sounded pretty good.

The competitive categories are as follows:

Figlanthropy: Awarded to the 3 teams who get the most donations before the event.
Most Original Performance: Awarded to the most original team. Creativity counts!
Best Choral Performance: Awarded to the team with the sweetest vocals.
People’s Choice Award: Spectators turn in their ballots for their favorite team.

This year, we won two of the awards! We won the Figlanthropy award in a big way. (3rd and 2nd place raised ~$4000 and ~$4700, respectively. We raised ~$27,000!) We were aiming to win Figlanthropy, so we were very happy about that (we've won Figlanthropy for the last five years in a row, beating our own record each year).

But the really exciting surprise was that we won Best Choral Performance!! Now, there are some stellar choirs who participate in this competition. Plus, we've never won any award other than Figlanthropy. I'm so proud of us! Whoo hoo!

Special Blend is performing our first official concert on December 13. I'm looking forward to it!

Wild blue yonder

The flight back to Seattle was quite nice. Not only was it ~6 hours shorter than my flight out to Vegas, but I had a pretty nice view of the scenery as we flew over Oregon and Washington. Below you can see Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Rainier. The last picture shows Seattle as we circled on our way to Seatac. You can't make out much of the city, but you can see Puget Sound through the clouds on the lower right, and the dark mass just above the water is West Seattle.

Viva Lost Wages

Actually, I didn't lose any wages while in Vegas...I didn't have time. I was there for Autodesk University, and they sure know how to pack a schedule! It was like being back at Explo, where every minute of the day is filled with classes, events or meals (but at AU, I didn't wear balloon hats or have my make-up done in every shade of sparkle by a group of 8th grade girls).

Even without the balloons and sparkle, it was a good conference. There were a lot of great sessions, I made some good contacts, and I got to see one of my favorite performance groups, Blue Man Group. (Actually, now that I think of it, the last time I saw Blue Man Group was with Explo...maybe AU is Explo for the AEC industry?)

I didn't take many pictures, since sitting in sessions to hear people talk about CAD standards and deploying design software doesn't offer many photo opportunities. The Wrangler Rodeo Finals were in Vegas, so I had lots of people I wanted to photograph in my 18 minutes of off time...but cowboys are rather big and intimidating, even when they are carrying fur-clad babies wearing tiny cowboy hats.

As always, mouse over the thumbnail shots below to see the titles and click on them for full-size.