Jeni and I took a pretty crazy bus ride from Renton to southern Seattle to see the Blue Angels perform for Seattle’s SeaFair this past Saturday. It was pretty awesome. So awesome that I went back again with my officemates on Sunday. Unfortunately, we left too late to get all the way over to Southern Seattle, so we caught the second show from Mercer Island.

I brought my camera with me both days, but neglected to charge it before Jeni & I took off on the bus… The two pics of the Patriots and the two before that are from Saturday near Genesee Park, and the remaining are from Sunday on Mercer Island (with a charged battery) Too bad I didn’t think ahead the first time: it would have been cool to get both views.

Trying something new for these pictures, let’s see how it works:

Blue Angels

Aug 6, 2006 – 34 Photos

The following pairs of items are not equal, quantitatively mismatched, or otherwise inappropriate to equate.

Connection. In an isolating age…

This afternoon on the way home from work I heard Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4 on the radio, which naturally brought the associated quad/tenors groove to mind. Then I came home and decided on a whim to look through my Bookmarks folder of friends’ blogs and journals, revisiting some places I haven’t been in weeks or months. That was a cool experience in and of itself. And then out of the blue, another tab pops up in Adium, and there’s my fellow drummer and one of those very journal authors, one Joel Liberski.

It had been far too long, but it seems Joel is doing quite well, as the Poetry editor for the UWGB literary journal Sheepshead Review, and a near-future English major graduate. He has a way with words that I have only been able to regard in continued amazement since I first read his writings.

I can’t even believe that over 4 full years separate the present from the last time we were in class together, that it has been 5 since dashing across the practice field to beat the marching band out from behind the school in Joel’s car, 6 from a certain freshman showing up a certain junior on a rudimentary (ha ha) paradiddle lick, and 7 or 8 from a terrified middle schooler listening to an intimidating high schooler tell every one to be quiet because the audience could hear us at the Bay Port percussion night.

It was excellent to talk with him again, and to read a bit of what he’s been up to. Incidentally, he’s published now: UW Green Bay Spring 2006 Sheepshead Review

Thank you, as always, sir.

Holy crap:

http://www.channel3000.com/weather/9586944/detail.html

That’s insane. Makes me glad to be living above the ground, though I don’t think my buildling for this upcoming year would have been affected anyway. A bunch of my friends live on that floor though, and their apartment was flooded up to the door handles. Crazy.

In other news, Jeni & Lauren & I went to Vancouver, BC, this weekend. We spent a total of 1.75 hours waiting in line to cross the border. We also walked around downtown Vancouver for about 5 hours. We did not stay for the fireworks, but watched all the people up until that time.

Lauren is headed home on Tuesday… I hope her new apartment is ok! (Not sure where you are located, Lauren…)

I’m sorry Jeni… I said that the weather in Seattle was always great and comfortable, and then the weekend Jeni moves up here, we have a record heat wave. Of course, since Seattle “never gets that hot,” people here [read: my apartment complex] have no air conditioning. My roommate tried to buy a fan today, but apparently all the places he stopped were already sold out. We went to play racquetball this evening. It was a good time, except for the fact that it was definitely over 100° in the court. Yuck.

In other news, Jeni & I still managed to tour around Seattle a bit this weekend. We checked out REI, Fremont (including the troll, see pic from my cell phone below), and Gasworks Park yesterday. Then today I showed off the Microsoft campus, and we went to the Factoria mall and Frys. I’d never been in a Fry’s until today, and let me just say: it was cool. Not as cool as the fact that Jeni lives right down in Renton now, but pretty cool. Speaking of which, we also drove past Jeni’s house, down near the Sam’s Club, Walmart and Starbucks. It looks good from the outside, but it might’ve been a bit weird for me to be there when she was moving in, so I’ll have to visit at a later date.

Schedule for the remainder of the summer:
This week: Lauren comes to visit on Thursday. Saturday & Sunday Lauren, Jeni & I are going up to Vancouver.
Next week: a week of work, with an as-of-yet undetermined weekend.
Week after that: My parents come to visit, maybe we’ll go somewhere on the weekend.
Week after that: My parents go home, I work for a week, and I go home.

I can’t believe the summer went by so fast…
[time to see what we have time to see…]

Wow. I finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica about 10 minutes ago, and let me just say: awesome.

Anybody who likes Sci-Fi should definitely check it out. Simply incredible.

Now for some racquetball, then maybe I’ll clean my desk off finally, or label all some pictures (I have a lot to sort through… best I can promise is you’ll see them when you see them…), or figure out how to use Quicken, or cook some supper, or maybe I’ll just start in on season 2.

Seriously, it’s the worst possible place for an accident.

Here’s the situation. 3 lanes comprise 520-W. The rightmost is the carpool lane. 520 crosses a bridge, at the end of which the carpool lane becomes an exit lane for the interchange with 405. Then an on-ramp comes up from the right, which has a carpool lane on the left and a normal car lane on the right (2-lane on ramp). Those merge into one lane, which comes up next to the aforementioned 520 carpool lane-turned-exit lane. Now there are 2 normal lanes, then 2 exit lanes. The rightmost exit lane is 405-N, and the next inward is 405-S.

Seems vaguely reasonable. But then consider the traffic patterns.
First, you have carpool people barreling down the right-hand carpool lane of 520. Now that lane becomes an exit lane for *everyone* going to 405. So all of a sudden a quarter of the highway merges into the carpool lane.
Next, from the right, you have ordinary traffic, most of which is not interested in 405, because they want to take the 520 bridge over to Seattle. So all of these people need to cross from the right through the over-stuffed carpool/exit lane to get to the left.
Plus, all the people in the carpool/exit lane that want 405-N (me) are trying to merge farther right *into* the on-ramp traffic.

Now throw in rush-hour traffic in Puget Sound, and you’re looking at a grim interchange.

Then, for the icing on the cake, toss in a weekly accident complete with 2 cops, a tow truck, and 4 lanes of gawking idiots.

…

Estimated transit time from Microsoft Building 28 to The Park @ Forbes Creek:
   with no traffic: 15 minutes.
   rush hour traffic: 35 minutes.
   minor accident + 4 lanes of gawking idiots: 1 hour 5 minutes.

Why oh why do they all have to break down right there!?

For the 4th of July, I took a long-weekend trip to Crater Lake & northern California.

Jeni & I went to Grants Pass, OR, Friday night, and then down to Redwoods National Park on Saturday, where Jon joined us in the afternoon. We checked that out through Sunday, staying in Crescent City, OR, overnight. Then we went back to Medford, OR, stopping at Oregon Caves National Monument en route, where we took a tour through the cave led by a pretty crazy dance major tour guide. Monday Jeni had to work, and Jon and I explored Crater Lake and a few scenic pullouts nearby, including the Rogue River Gorge and Mill Creek Falls. Monday night we all stayed in Medford again, and discussed Minnesota sales tax code. Then Tuesday we all went back to our summer residences to get back to work.

Tuesday night in Seattle I made it back in time to catch the fireworks at Gas Works Park. Pretty awesome… synchronized with music, well choreographed, and even some sweet new ones I’d never seen before, like smiley faces, cubes, and some sort of “Italian Electric Show” that involved dozens of little explosions from one shell.

All told it was a pretty awesome weekend.

More pictures to come when I find my camera’s USB cable, but here’s one that I uploaded on the road (it’s deceptive because of the shadows, but there is exactly ONE tree in this photo):

The trees were large.

Just had to make a quick post from Klamath, CA. It’s a tiny little town near the Redwoods National and State Parks, but they have a gas station with free Wifi. So while Jeni is inside getting her coffee, I had to say hi.

(In explanation, Jeni & I are down here in Cali meeting Jon for a short vacation over the holiday weekend)

My roommate and I watched that movie tonight. Pretty crazy.

I was only 45 minutes later than usual to work today, but ended up staying almost 2 hours extra. It was pretty cool, I actually felt like I got some real work done, from submitting the last of my contribution to the project I’d been working on for the first two weeks to starting my debugging with a pretty interesting/intense hour-and-a-half long hands-on tutorial.

Then to top off a night that went considerably better than the end of last, we have a racquetball court in our apartment complex’s office! Plus, my roommate has all the requisite gear, when you add in my safety glasses. That should make for a pretty fun summer. He’s a little bit better than I am, but not by so much that its unbalanced or not fun. It’s pretty awesome.

In other news, I now also have a wlan card for my desktop, so I can finally get this thing back on the internet. All around a good night. Definitely beats spending 3 hours trying to get home because you were too stupid to get back on the right bus and too trusting of the idiot that told you these other buses would be fine.