I heard this morning that the World Cup is also being broadcast in Spanish in the US and that the viewership of the Spanish broadcast has surpassed that of the English one. While it doesn’t surprise me given the normal demographic of World Cup fans, it’s still an interesting thing to remember the next time you visit Miami and you’re expected to speak Spanish when you walk into a store instead of English…

A quick update for my groupies out there, aka Mom. ;)

• I’ve moved my temporary housing into downtown Seattle (Lower Queen Anne) and am already enjoying the downtown life (Thanks, Dan, for consitently telling me I was a fool for living in Bellevue).
• I was in Omaha for about 20 hours for Jacob’s wedding. It was absolutely beautiful and even for the brief moment I met his new wife, I could easily tell they above and beyond meant for each other.
• I am now an official dancing master - just recently, I graduated from the Bronze 1 program at the Bellevue Arthur Murray studio, thanks in large part to my amazing instructor.
• That’s about it for now - I’m still moving at about a million miles a minute hence the lack of posting.

More later!

I took off this weekend down to the gorge to do a little bit of camping and mountain biking. I’m not sure I’ll get another chance to hit it up while I’m out here, but I certainly hope to! It was a good weekend, but the best part was the biking. I rented a full suspension bike called the Norco Fluid: hood_river/IMGP2690

What an awesome bike! There was a trail called the Whoopie Trail that we went on - it’s called the Whoopie Trail because there are three whoopie do’s on the trail - you know, big huge dips that you fly down on one side and try valiantly to reach the top of the other side, but usually end up making it only part of the way up and having to hop off to the side. They were tons of fun and there was some really good singletrack. Now I want to buy that bike. I got some sick pics of me going down the third whoopie, but I don’t have them yet. I’ll definitely post them when I do.

Update: I added a few action shots: hood_river/DSC_0102

Oh man, did I just get the hookup for some good places to go in Seattle for live music. I mentioned a couple weeks ago how I stumbled on Mycle Wastman. Well I went there again tonight and met a few people that recommended all kinds of other places I should go. One of those places was Paragon that had some good jazz/r&b tonight, but unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the band. In any case, I talked to one of the singers as well as another guy from Chicago (w00t) and they both recommended a few more places. Like Joanna’s on Cherry St., Malibou(?) across from Dick’s in Queen Anne, Isabella’s on Sundays (well, this Sunday…there’s a white party), and some other place that I didn’t write down properly. Also, Mycle will be at Wonderbar on Saturday.

Sweet.

Oh, by the way…if you need to know someplace to go for breakdancing in Seattle…just ask me! :-D

I forgot to mention that I hiked Mt. Si for the second time one week after my initial climb. It was a little bit different this time as it was a clear day, as opposed to the soup I climbed in the first time. You can see the difference in these two pics - same view, different days: wa_mtsi/IMGP2555 wa_mtsi2/IMGP2633

Pretty crazy! I uploaded just a few more pics to my gallery - there was even a nice girl at the top that offered to take my picture with Rainier in the background. wa_mtsi2/IMGP2664

In just a few months time, I’ll hopefully be standing on top of the sucker! On a side note, haven’t donated yet? Please support me and the Washington National Parks by contributing to my Rainier Climb ‘06 fundraiser.

I went back to Chi-town this past weekend and it turned out to be quite the crazy weekend from beginning to end.

I was originally planning on flying in late Thursday night, but the announcement of ChiSec 3 caused me to push things up a bit. The excitement started when I called Southwest (thank you for your flexible reservation policy) two hours before an earlier flight and re-booked myself to get home in time to participate. Then Friday it was brunch, lunch, and a BBQ that kept me busy all day long. Not to mention I came home to a car with a dead battery and one mostly-deflated left rear tire. So I took care of that after brunch, and then went and put on my summer tires so I could have a little fun in my car while I was home (thanks, Steve, for the recommendation on Cassidy Tire - theey were great!).

Hung out a bit after the BBQ (which included speed-shifting and some aggressive driving in order to get back in a timely fashion) and then finally crashed out Friday night.

Saturday found me up early taking care of bills, doing various other stuff, and then shopping for half the day. I got a sweet new pair of kicks! Then a quick trip up to Wrigley-ville to pick up my tics to a future cubs game, and an afternoon of chilling and assisting in an interview process by beating up any nerds that showed up.

Saturday night was pretty crazy…so crazy that I found myself headed home with the sun at my back. So crazy that I set my alarm to 6:30am PST (oops). So crazy that I managed to arrive at the airport 3 minutes after my flight had departed (thank you, SWA, for your flexible reservation policy) . So crazy that I had to just toss everything I brought into my suitcase in a jumbled mess. So crazy that I felt like a tourist in my own town…and it was awesome! :)

Thanks to all involved. I felt a little out-of-place when I first arrived on Thursday…almost as if I didn’t belong and even my own apartment seemed foreign. But now I can’t wait to come back next time!

Additional Comment: So in conclusion, I think I pretty much accomplished everything I wanted to while I was in town. Chicago dogs Jake’s Beer Club++ Wings Gyro’s BBQ’ing Hanging out Friends Dancing the night away Zoom-zoom’ing in my car New kicks - went home with 3 pair, came back with 5 Packing as much fun as humanly possible into one weekend

Headed home early today to hit up ChiSec. Good group of people (larger than I expected!) and got to meet up with some friends to boot. Nice to know that there are security people here in Chicago, and from what I hear the industry in this little city is getting a little bit better. It’s funny too, how you run into the same people from time to time…Sherrod/Mike D…you know what I’m talking about. ;o)

Until the next second Thursday on every-other-month…

And Yes, Sherrod…I have already started syncing up my cvs/svn homedir/downloads directories…grin

Most of you have received my email already, but in an attempt to reach some of you others out there in the blogosphere, I would like to post on my decision to summit Mt. Rainier.

As has been mentioned, I am currently in the Seattle area for work for an extended period. At the end of my project, I will be taking some time off and have decided to attempt to summit Mt. Rainier! Mt. Rainier is the highest volcano in the Cascade Range standing at 14,410ft. I will be doing this as part of a fundraiser for the Washington National Parks (WNPF), and in order to join the climb I must raise $2500, which will be corporate-matched in a donation to WNPF in order to help maintain the park that Rainier is located in.

I ask that you consider sponsoring me not only to help me achieve this goal, but also to support the wonderful parks here in Washington. Whether it’s $10 or $50 any little bit will help and would be much appreciated. Heck, chip in $20 and I’ll let you forget about my birthday! For easy access, you can donate online. Also, please let me know if you would like to be recognized for your donation on my website and how you would like your name to appear. You can keep track of how I’m doing on my Rainier Fundraising Status page.

To get some incentive going like any good fundraiser, if you donate $50 or more I’ll send you a nice print of me (hopefully) at the top of the Rainier that you can do with whatever you like…hang it above your fireplace, use it in a dartboard…whatever, I just appreciate the donation.

Thank you for your help!

Happy Mother’s Day to a wonderful Mom. I am the person I am today because of my parents and my mother had a large part in making sure that I always looked nice and treated people with respect. Thanks, Ma, for all that you did so I (and my siblings) could succeed in life.

Can this place get any better? I decided to take a quick hike up to Poo Poo Point this evening after work. Another one of the benefits of Seattle in the summer is that it doesn’t get dark until after 8:30! Tonight’s sunset was right at 8:30pm.

The hike is 1.7 miles up - 3.4 round trip. Starting elevation is 200ft, and the Point is at 1780ft. I decided to push myself and keep a decent pace on the way up and was able to make it to the Point in about 40 minutes, including a few stops for photo ops. Not as good as I was hoping for, but still not bad. Poo Poo Point also happens to be a launch spot for paragliders and when I got up there, I was lucky enough to see a few launches. Here’s one of my favorite pics from tonight:

I uploaded a bunch of the pics to Flickr and you can view the whole Poo Poo Point set at that link.

After a half-hour, I was pretty chilly so I started to head back down the trail. For some odd reason, I thought that jogging/running the entire way down would be a good idea. It was definitely fun, and I made it in about 15-20 minutes - I’m not sure because I stopped to talk to a couple guys on the way down - but I ended up with a pretty decent blister on my heel. It was kind of fun to pass a group of people that I had originally passed on my way up as they were headed down the trail. I got a couple odd looks, but I’ve always loved trail running like that. That run, combined with yesterday’s soccer finally wore me out, though, and I think I might take it easy tomorrow…but we’ll see!

PS - Kind of neat, but if you zoom in on Google Maps, you can actually see a paraglider in the process of taking off. They land in the field just to the West next to the road once they’re done soaring with the birds. Oh, and Mom…they do tandem jumps! grin