Weather

My computer, running Ubuntu, has icons in a system bar to show certain things. When I sat down this morning, I saw something I hadn't seen before - a yellow dot. My first thought was it was some cautionary alert.

But then I realized that it was the weather applet!

I had never seen the sunny weather indicator before!

I should have been able to connect the dots; I went out this morning to get coffee beans for my wife and when I came home, I didn't take my sunglasses off because of the sun streaming through our kitchen window.

Today looks like it will be a nice day. I'm wearing shorts (and ankle high socks, for those that it matters). I'm glad to be home again. I just spent 4 days in California, but it wasn't very sunny there.

I wish my office was like this!

It's kinda long, but it is pretty good. I didn't know there were so many different NERF weapons!



But wait, it could be... The kids are on summer break and my office is at home...

Continuing to have great weekends!

Heather and Daughter had a swim meet in Tacoma and Son 1 had swim practice and then played with a friend, so Son 3 and I had another Saturday morning together again. After his swim clinic, we headed into Seattle to pickup my graded final exams and wander around the University.

We got the University at 11:36; had we arrived at noon, parking would have been free. We stopped by the MBA Lounge, and grabbed my finals and he and I played some foosball! It was a bunch of fun and he is about as good as me at foosball (which either means I'm not very good or he is really, really good for a 6 year old). However, this fun time suggests to me that if we ever convert the toy dump play room to a game room, we should get a foosball table.

We wandered through the Burke Museum (free because I'm a student). Unfortunately, the same exhibits were there last time when we visited. In eight days, though, we might have to go back. There is an exhibit on Polar Bears coming, 28 June - 31 December.

Son 3 chose Mediterranean food from Sammir's Mediterranean Grill and we took our food back to the University and ate on the grass. I'm not sure why he chose food from the med, but I'm not complaining - it was pretty good.

We came home and played some more Wii (another one of our typical Son 3 and me activities) until the rest of our family go home!

Chalk one more enjoyable weekend day up with Son 3.

Father's Day Weekend

No, we didn't celebrate late, I'm finally writing about it.

It was great!

I could stop right there, but I'll share more. The weather was excellent - one of the first great weather days in a long time. And when I mean great, I mean like San Diego great; blue skies, hardly any clouds, not too hot. It was just a beautiful day.

Then, my wife and kids took me to Alki Beach, some place in Seattle I'd never been before. And its a real beach! Sand (and women's beach volleyball that day), waves, roller bladers and bikes on a little path; it felt like we were in California. I didn't realize that people actually wore bikinis in Seattle either!




Alki Beach really felt like Santa Cruz, you were on the beach, yet you could see the mountains. I was really in awe all day long.



We got lunch at Christo's and then walked down to the tide pool area where Daughter had a school field trip a few week's earlier. We got there during high tide, so we weren't able to see many tide pools but we had fun dallying on the edge of the water.

We tried to stop at the Alki Bakery, but they were out of baked goods! Entirely. Being the supply chain geek, I couldn't help but realize that they failed to account for both the increase in demand due to the holiday and the causal factor of the great weather (I think the weather was the one that tipped the scale). So we went to Starbucks instead (at least their local, right) for cold drinks.

I can't tell you how great it was to be free of school, enjoying a father's day with my family and having such a beautiful day to enjoy.

Schools out for summer!

Today is the last day of school for my kids and they are all quite happy!

So am I - my grades for this quarter were posted yesterday and I was quite pleased with the end result.

Summer time (at least from school) has arrived. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate as well and summer will finally arrive. It's shaping up to be a nice day today - blue skies with high clouds at my house.

Here's to summer!

Summer is here?

I think that summer might have arrived. We've had two beautiful days in a row! I will write about my great Father's day separately and some other things I've done recently, but tonight, I want to write about how nice it has been.

Today, I saw nothing but blue skies all day long. Heather was at swim practice and I called her to see if she wanted to have a picnic dinner. She was up for it and we met on Mercer Island at Luther Burbank Park. It was a great time.

The kids tell us that it should be a nice afternoon tomorrow as well. This is probably good for Son #1, since his school is letting out after something like 2-1/2 hours; he'll get to enjoy the nice weather.

If tomorrow is as nice as today, I'll be rooting for another picnic dinner and I might even work outside on the patio table! I hope good weather catches up with where ever you may be!

Done. For this quarter.

All my finals are done and submitted.
Now I can breath a sigh of relief.
Until classes start again on July 7th.

Shopping

Yesterday, I got some new shorts - its spring time, so it is nothing remarkable.

My oldest son and I went shopping, sort of a strange father-son activity:

1. refit the liquor cabinet with vodka, tequila and rum and some bloody mary mix
   
2. I needed new socks
3. my wife strongly encouraged me to get some new shorts
4. oldest wanted to buy some candy
   

We ended up going to about 6 different places, which made the experience all the more humorous, as I forgot to buy the mixers at the liquor store and Target. We ended up at Safeway, with a detour at REI, where on top of the mixers I bought steaks and potatoes and mushrooms for dinner.

I got home and showed off my shorts to my wife - all of which she approved of. I was fairly certain she would find them acceptable because before we left, she said that our oldest had good taste. At the store, he stood outside the changing room and gave the shorts a thumbs up, down or in the middle or the best vote of 2 thumbs up. I have now doubled my non-soccer short wardrobe and none of the new ones are khaki!

I started to prep dinner and realized that I bought steaks for braising not for grilling. I didn't want braised meat, I wanted grilled steaks, with oven fried potatoes with a sage leaf, sauteed mushrooms and onions and a salad. My dinner wasn't going to be stopped, back to the store I went.

Sure, I did some other things on my Saturday (chess with a 6 year old, bike rides, working on final exams), but the amount of shopping that my son and I did approached silly. And thus, I share it with all of you.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!