Birthday fun

My birthday was this week, on Thursday, but with my MBA and work and the kids' swimming, a week day birthday is just plain ol' inconvenient. Why can't these things come on the weekend? Heather may say that I'm older than dirt, but I'm not yet old enough to just wish that birthdays would skip me altogether. With all that we've got going on, Heather blocked Saturday for some double-super-secret birthday stuff.

Yes, she needed to block my calendar so that I wouldn't schedule an MBA team meeting or take the kids to swim practice at 5am.

So, after living up to Kid 1's Friday night challenge of staying up past 9:30pm (and he exaggerates, I typically go to bed around 10:30pm), I slept in to a luxurious ridiculously late 7:30am. I think Kid 1 and 2 were already awake, since they slept on the couch in front of the TV. Heather woke up a bit later and we headed out for the secret activities. All I knew was that the required uniform was jeans and a sweater.

It turns out that the sweater was almost overkill, because we had a beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest. Crazy, almost spring-like weather (though winter is back today).

Our first stop for the day was a new Dim Sum restaurant which just opened in Issaquah, Macky's Dim Sum Restaurant. The food is good, all very fresh, and not oily, and the owner is quite friendly. It was a great word of mouth marketing find - I discovered it via the Issaquah Press's Twitter page and sent the link on to Heather and she chose it for the our lunch spot. We didn't turn down a dish they brought by and throughly enjoyed every one. The BBQ pork is quite good and the Turnip cake was a surprise delight for Heather. Their dumplings are wonderful, any one of them.

From there, we headed into Seattle. As we approached I-5 North, the traffic was looking awful, but Heather was getting off the freeway at the first exit. I had no clue where we were going - I'm not all that familiar with the area other than thats were Roger used to live. We ended up at the Frye Museum, someplace I'd never been to before. We wandered through and enjoyed the exhibits and we're pleasantly surprised by a new exhibit opening. We got to listen to a presentation about the exhibit, the art and more. The Frye's had quite a penchant for German painters and the salon hanging. I'll have to come here more often: parking and admission is free!

The museum went a bit faster than Heather had planned and so we headed to a park in Seattle, again, someplace we'd never been before. Just picking a destination and seeing whats there was a continual theme of the day, and played out quite well for us. We drove to Golden Gardens Park, but never found any gardens. There were beautiful views of the snow capped Olympic mountains and people and dogs playing on the beach. Heather let me use her camera, but had to remind me to save battery, as our dinner spot was going to have a great view of sunset.

At about 4:30, we headed over to Ray's Cafe for dinner. The timing was perfect, as we were seated the sun began to dance lower on the horizon, illuminating the skyline with a beautiful glow. We started with off-menu (ohh, aren't we fancy) sweet potato fries for an appetizer Heather had the Cioppino (delicious, peppery and creamy) and I had the crab and shrimp cakes (not something you find too often). The portions weren't so large, so that we had room for dessert and we ordered half of the dessert menu and forks all around and shared 5 different desserts. Every single one was great.

After that, Heather told the GPS to direct us home. I think her GPS has routing options of shortest, fastest and creepiest. We drove on surface streets, through a waterfront industrial area and it had to be the creepiest way home. We were only a block from a much larger, well populated, well lit street, but this was the way the GPS took us.

As we were driving South, paralleling I-5, we could see a large, well lit building up on a hill. It had a gigantic round window on it and it looked like a mausoleum. So, we headed out to see what it was. We had a rough idea where we were going and Google maps indicated that there was a cemetery close by, so I figured that it pretty much cemented my guess of a mausoleum.

As we approached the cemetery, I pointed out to Kid 2, the one who is scared of anything zombie related that the barb wire on the cemetery fence was designed to keep people in the cemetery, rather than keep people out. She didn't find it funny. Being that it was also quite dark out didn't help either.

We discovered another park, Volunteer Park, which has an arboretum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum, but couldn't find our mausoleum. As we wandered (driving) through the rather nice neighborhood, we stumbled upon St Marks Cathedral! It was the "masoleum" we were seeing. There is a gigantic rose window which at night, they illuminate so it can be seen from the rest of Seattle. The view from the Cathedral is beautiful - on a clear night like we had, you could see the Seattle skyline, the Space Needle and more.

Having found our mystery destination, we headed home. It was an enjoyable day, out and about with my family. I enjoy visiting museums and spending time with my family relaxing.

Thanks Heather and Kids 1, 2 and 3 for the great day!

Snowshoeing at Gold Creek Basin

A few weeks ago, I asked my wife if she'd like to go snowshoeing as a family and she said that she'd like to, as long as we went for under 3 hours. Anytime getting into the woods and snow is great by me, so I agreed to that constraint. I sought out some locations where the elevation gain was minimal and we went out Saturday afternoon.

The kids had swim practice that morning, so Kids 1 and 2 and I were all up just after 5am. After their practice, I rented snowshoes at the Issaquah REI and headed home for lunch and final preparations. I've taught the kids enough about layering, that they're pretty good at getting the right gear for a day outdoors in winter, but there is always something that is hard to find. This time it was sunglasses, though lucky for them, it was quite hazy in the mountains. With a warm lunch of Macaroni and Cheese in our stomachs, we headed up to Snoqualime Pass.

I had read about Gold Creek Basin, and with its total elevation gain of only 400 feet over the 4 mile trail, that was where we were headed. A Washington Sno-Park pass is required to park there (which I had to run in and buy online while everyone sat in the car ready to go) and the "trailhead" is pretty easy to find. As you drive along FS 4832, you'll come to FS 144 just after the valley opens up. You can walk up the FS road with some small lakes on your left.

The first 4 miles (though we didn't go that far) stay in relatively safe avalanche terrain, though our weekend it didn't matter. There had been freezing rain all morning and there was a significant crust. While it didn't bond much with the snow below, it did make the snowshoes almost unneccessary and provided continual enjoyment for the boys to break off large sheets of crust.

On the off-chance that we'd find some spots to sled, the boys dragged sleds behind them. They didn't lag too much, but I didn't mind either, as I was also doing a bit of a load test myself. Next week, a friend and I are going snow camping and I was seeing how much stuff I could get into my daypack. Its a larger daypack (45 L), but I was only able to get 3/4 of what I wanted to carry in there. I'd be okay if I wasn't interested in eating! I also was reminded to think of how I load gear in a pack - it turns out I loaded all of my liquids (2 L water and 1/2 L hot cocoa) all on one side of my pack. Our trip wasn't long enough nor my pack heavy enough for it to bother me, but its a good thing to remember. I'll use my larger pack next week and have plenty of space.

Scouts Honor, Kid 2, 3 and I stuck to the road, but Kid 1 snowshoed through the trees. Since he was in the trees, he could see the lakes better and when there was an iced over part of the lake, he asked if we could go down there. We went down a steeper portion (reminder of the lesson: when you have trekking poles, you don't need them, when you don't have them is when you really want them) which everyone slid on their butts down the hill and stopped for some pictures by the lake.

As boys will do, there was some more exploring of the ice along the edge of the lake, when Kid 1 realized that "the snow next to the ice is actually over ice over water." Unfortunately, he learned this lesson when one foot broke through over the top of his boot. Luckily, it was just above freezing, he was wearing no cotton, his boots (my old Intermediate Cold Weather boots) are prett good and we weren't too far from our car, we were able to continue on without having to stop and change a sock.

We could see the road on the other side of the lake and decided that we would walk around the lake as our way back to our car. Others had snowshoed before us around the lake so we just followed their path on an easy jaunt around the lake. Kid 3 asked if we could stop for a break and we broke out the hot cocoa. As we sat there an enjoyed our still quite hot beverage, ScoutsHonor kept saying that we had postcard views. The view was beautiful and it turns out that at that spot, we only took pictures with her camera! We sat there on the side of the trail until the cold started to seep through ScoutHonor's pants and headed onward.

Because we were so close to the summit and the ski area, we still had cell phone coverage. Everyonce in a while, I could feel my phone in my pack vibrate, but Kid 2 was texting her friends and posting to facebook.

I used my Christmas present GPS to check the time and when sunset was and we had only about 45 minutes before sunset and the clouds were already low-hanging. We continued on around the lake, ScoutsHonor setting a little quicker pace, until we found a small knoll where some other people were sledding. The total height was maybe 10 feet at the highest, but it was steep enough that the sleds would go. The kids got several runs in and even made a little jump. I started to get cold there (I didn't layer up like I did when we stopped for cocoa) and we headed off.

The sun had set by the time we made it back to the car and there were still 1 snow shoer and 1 cross-country skiier who were heading out. Kid 2 had her headlamp, though it wasn't because she was bringing the 10 Essentials, she wanted to be able to read in the car as we drove home.
All in all, it was a fun afternoon. The snow conditions were terrible and at that elevation only about 3 feet deep which will make digging a snow cave a little challenging next week, but we still were outside. My GPS told me we went for just over 2 miles in 2-1/2 hours (70 minutes moving, 80 minutes stopped) which meet Scouts's time and distance criteria. Gold Creek Basin is a fun place to come for an easy cross-country ski, snowshoe, or if the conditions are "right" just a walk in the woods. There's not much opportunity for sledding, but the views are beautiful.

Directions:
Take Exit 54 off I-90. Go north. under overpass a few hundred yards. & turn right onto F.S. Rd. 4832 & head east approximately 1 mile. on this road that parallels the westbound lanes of I-90. Park along the shoulders of the road near the small bridge, by FS 144. There were porta-potties there when we went in early January.

Thanksgiving Catchup

Man, its been a long time since I've blogged. Almost a month and a half, which is pretty long, even by my standards (if you can call them that).

School, work and life have been keeping me pretty busy. Just this morning, I finished my Finance exam (Real Options), so I'm one presentation and a take-home final away from finishing the quarter.

My daughter's computer had a power supply failure and she's switched to Ubuntu. I learned that cron doesn't set the USER environment variable, but it does set the LOGNAME variable, which is pretty important when making scripts. To those of you that this last sentence was all pops and clicks, I apologize.

I went snowshoeing with the Seattle Outdoors Adventurers on the day after the first big snowfall of the season. It was great to get out there in the fresh powder and break trail. Once school is done for this quarter, I hope I can get out some more. I posted some pictures on Flickr from our daytrip.

We had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with the five of us. We made a great spread and even though we tried to cut back, we still have a lot of leftovers. I'm really looking forward to a turkey sandwich, following my Grandma's recipe.

1. Butter one piece of white bread and put cranberry sauce on it.
2. Lay some slices of turkey (I prefer the breast) and lettuce.
3. Finally, top with another slice of white bread with mayonnaise.

I think that this is the best way to make a leftover turkey sandwich and I like the memories of my Grandma.

That's all for now. Happy Thanksgiving.

Memories of Grendel

When you lose someone close, you are left with a space in your heart. However, we're lucky to have something to fill that space with: our memories.

On Friday, October 16, 2009, Grendel died. She was our dog of 14 years, longer than my wife and I had been married, older than any of our kids. She had been struggling with cancer for a while and was not doing well. She no longer has those pains and struggles and is now at peace.

Here are some of the memories that I have that fill her space in my heart.

• When we first got her, Grendel would chew shoes, only Heather's shoes and only one of the pair.
• When she was young, Grendel would also do this leg humping thing, which was ironic as she was a spayed female. It probably wasn't the best of things for a dog owner to let their dog do, but we all thought it was funny. She even clawed a hole in my jeans more than once with her dew claws.
  
• At a Christmas party in Missouri, Sam Robinson shared some Kahlua with her. She liked it. A lot. And then she peed in his lap.
• She was always a small, compact dog. Ron Gouvaia would call her Santa's Little Helper, more so I think because he was a fan of the Simpsons, than she beared resemblence to the Simpson's dog.
• Grendel sometimes peed in our apartment above Peoples' Park in Berkeley. I'd clean/cover it with vinegar. This resulted in the statement, "Dog's don't belong in apartments," from my college room mate and friend Erik Muller. I'm glad you let her anyways, thank you.
  
• Grendel was afraid of water, regardless of the size of the body of water. When ever we'd go to the beach, she'd stand with her back to the ocean. She'd never look at the ocean. Whenever I go to the beach and don't keep a watchful eye on the ocean, I'd get smashed by a wave. She never got close enough to be smashed.
• When we moved to Washington from the Bay Area, I drove with Grendel and Sebbie. I was prepared to drive all the way to Portland without stopping, where I was meeting a friend for dinner. The dogs, however, were not ready to that far and I had to stop twice to let them pee. Then, because I still made great time, when we got to the Seattle metropolitan area, we didn't really have a place to stay. Heather called all kinds of hotels to find some place we could stay with the dogs. We ended up in an extended stay hotel in Sea-tac. I was glad the dogs were with me for safety; the cops all had AR-15's, it was that kind of a neighborhood.
• When we were in California, Grendel would always lay outside in the sun. Maybe it was her downfall, but she always looked so peaceful sleeping in the sunny spots.
• We got Grendel at the Safeway on College Avenue in Oakland. It was a last chance adoption push, because the dogs were going to be put to sleep the next day. Later, when we returned to the Bay Area, I worked right down the street from this Safeway and it was always a nice memory.
• After dinner, when I was loading the dishwasher, Grendel would always come and see what scraps she could find there. Though I'd never feed her people food from the table, I always looked the other way when she did that. Then when I was emptying the cleaned dishes, she'd always come to check if there was anything left for her to snack on.
• As she grew older, she'd hang out with me. I work from home, so she'd always be around. Grendel would sleep in the office, on the couch or under the desk. I've gotten into the habit of keeping my legs very still while I sit, because I learned to not suddenly stretch because I'd kick her under the desk.
• She'd follow me around. When I wrapped up for the day and would come out of my home office, she would to. When I'd come home from school at night, she'd follow me around, waiting for me to go upstairs to bed. Many times, when I had several things to do when I got home, she'd even follow me back and forth as I'd go from the office to the kitchen to the family room and back again. But then, when I'd go upstairs to bed, so would she.

Some of my friends have shared a few memories and I'll put them here, too:

David Hickman, another friend from college wrote: "I fondly remember Grendel from Berkeley. I recall she used to always bark at cops."

Orit Aizenman Daly, also from college, remembers, "her as a puppy being walked by Heather pregnant with Alec."

Thanks for sharing those memories, because they help fill the space in my heart too.

I miss you, Grendel, but you'll always be in my heart.

Changing lightbulbs with Kid 3

Yesterday, I was outside with Kid 3, changing some lightbulbs (stay with me, the story gets cute). He was opening the lightbulb packs and I was actually putting the lightbulbs in. While we were outside, the girls across the street were out putting up a few Haloween decorations.

As we finished up, he suggested that it was time to put up decorations. Heather is big on seasonal decor and it really is her thing, so I said to him, "Mom'll get it soon."

But he decided that he should make ghosts to hang from the tree. He found some tennis balls then wrapped them in 3 paper towels.

It was quite cute. And today, Heather has decorated the house, i'm sure pics will be coming.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Making funny faces

My wife makes funny faces while she's at her computer. I think that its quite cute and over the years, I've learned to interpret her facial expression to let me know what she's doing. Sorry, there are no pictures of these faces, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Big cute grin
When my wife is blogging or, more importantly, responding to comments on her blog, she has a big cute smile. Its one of those smiles that just makes me happy when ever I see her with that face on. I like to ask her what she's doing when she's making this face, as its obvious that she is happy. Keep the comments coming over on her blog.

Concentrating face
When my wife is composing an email for swimteam car pool or PTSA volunteering or something like that, she is concentrating hard. Her lips are pressed together, thinning them to almost a line. She looks very stern - and knowing some of the car pool coordination problems she deals with, she should be. I'm learning to not disturb her when she's making this face. Its sort of like the headphones worn by cube workers to say Do Not Disturb.

Concerned face
This is a new face that I observed this morning (and which instigated this post). Her brow was furled, but she was intently watching her computer screen, only looking away when scooping more oatmeal from her bowl. I asked her what she was doing and it turns out she was watching Fringe on Hulu. The particular episode was about mutants and they were conducting an exhumation. She doesn't like shows about mutants in the same way that our daughter doesn't like zombies.

Writing this made me think of one other face she makes. She probably won't want me to write about this one (and get your head out of the gutter). Its her Focused Physical Concentration face. When she's doing something that requires a great deal of focus, like threading a needle or using a jewler's screwdriver, she sticks the tip of her tongue out of her mouth, just a little bit off center. This is another face that says Do Not Disturb lest I break her concentration.

This is not a strange phenomenon, as I do the same thing. Heather can tell when I'm in pain, as I have my pain face. I'm sure we all have faces that we make? What are yours?

The End of Summer is near

My summer vacation (from my MBA) is drawing to a close. Work is picking up pace again and classes start next week. While I was on vacation, I was able to do a few things which I enjoyed and are worth writing the "what I did on my summer vacation" post.

I wrote earlier that I had set up some Ubuntu servers and I have established them as backup servers for all of the computers at home. I replaced the 40 GB disk with a 1 TB disk and now can backup all of the data on my wife and kids' computers and have some room for future expansion. While it was quite easy to do, I had to swap disks, not add a new one, as the case only has space for one hard disk.

I've written some scripts for both linux and windows XP to backup user's data. I'm sure that there are a billion of these on the internet, but let me know if you are interested and I'll share them with you.

I'd really put in a plug for installing CygWin on a Windows machine as rsync is much more configurable and provides better feedback than the Windows backup tool. And it provides a little more flexibility in what you can do with the files once they are on the backup server.

I was also able to get two day hikes in, one with my family and one with a Meetup group. It was great to get into the outdoors, take some photos and just enjoy the views. We went on one day hike to Denny Creek and as a family then I went to Tolmie Peak at Mount Rainier National Park with the Meetup group.

I'm glad I was able to get those in, because its so hard to do stuff on the weekends during school with team meetings, homework and swim meets. I'm looking forward to the snow this winter and really want to get a snow camping trip in this winter. Don't get sick, Wade!

I'm on vacation today and Heather and I are figuring out what we're going to do for our upcoming anniversary. It'll be quite nice to have some relaxing alone time with her.

That's all for now!