Picnic Double Header

Yesterday was a fun day as I had two picnic scheduled.  

The first was a work-related picnic.  I belong to a great organization at the company I work for; all great people to work and party with.  We get together at picnic or other social gatherings several times a year, and this is our annual summer picnic.   We had a good time grilling chicken, ribs, and salmon and after eating all that great food, we headed up to the ball-field and played a fun and competitive game of softball.  

I hadn't played softball since my knee and elbow replacement, but the workout must be helping cause I was able to hit, throw and even run the bases with some degree of confidence and very little, if any,pain in the joints.  Granted, today, the day after, I am a bit sore in places, but overall I was happy with being able to participate in a sport I used to enjoy.  BTW, our team won with a clutch  pitching save by yours truly.   

After the fun of that picnic, I headed to a great park on the western shores of the Puget Sound to meet up with some old friends for a birthday bash picnic.  These are friends I had in Seattle before moving to NYC and it was nice to catch up with them and their lives (and their kids!).  Three of the folks ll have birthdays in close proximity, so we had a big cake for them and celebrated with more good food, great conversation, and a beautiful view of the sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains.  

I was tuckered when I got home, but it was a fun way to spend a beautiful sunny summer day here in Seattle.  Plus I managed to do both picnics without gaining any weight.... YAY!

Mother Nature's Fireworks Show

As Independence Day approached here in Seattle, Mother Nature decided she wanted to display a little bit of her own fireworks show.  Wednesday night we had a rare lightning storm over the eastside in Seattle and thanks to a deck with a nice view and a bit of distance from said storm, I was able to get a decent lightning shot.  

I also got some photos of the human version of a fireworks show from the 4th.  They are in work and will hopefully be posted soon. 

SNOW!

It's December 1st and it is snowing here in mild-weathered Seattle. WHA?!?!? I don't think I have ever seen snow here this early. Awesome!

Blue Angels

This weekend is the annual Seattle SeaFair event to celebrate summer here in the Pacific NW. As part of the celebration, SeaFair puts on a fabulous airshow complete with the Blue Angels, the US Navy's elite formation flying squad.

Yesterday, they were out practicing and getting acquainted with the area and I was lucky enough to have a front row seat of their takeoffs from the local airport here in Seattle. Standing on the roof of my building at work, we had an eye level view of the Blue Angels as they past by us. The smoke, the roar of the engines, and the precision formation flying was awesome to see.

I am volunteering in the Air Operations group for SeaFair over the weekend so hopefully I will have other opportunities to see the Blue Angels takeoff and land as well as all the other airshow participants.

Today however, I am taking a vacation day and heading down to the hydroplane race area as my volunteer credentials get me into the pit area. Should be a fun day.... if it stops raining!

It is a Zoo in Here

Instead of work on Friday, I decided to take a day off and head to the zoo. Why the zoo you ask? Well, I wanted to check out some of my camera gear before heading to Africa (33 more days!) and what better way to do that then to photograph some animals. I have a new 1.7x tele-converter for my Panasonic Lumix FZ20 as well as a new monopod with shoulder brace. I wanted to try this new gear out to make sure it would work for my african safari. I also have an older 70-210, f/2.8 zoom lens that I am thinking of taking with me, but it is heavy and I was not sure if it was worth the extra weight to drag along.

So off to the zoo I went, getting there early to avoid any crowds and catch the animals while they were still active. I hit the African safari exhibit first (of course), seeing a hippo and some lions. The africa wild dogs were great and I hope to get a chance to see these wild in Botswana (they are rare).

About when I was finishing up with the Africa exhibit, in came the hoards.... a mass of screaming, whiny school kids. Ugh! There is not a better form of birth control than having to navigate this seemingly endless hoard of brats.

I quickly went the opposite direction and found a little bit of solitiude in the Jungle exhibit. The gorillas were enjoying their breakfast and the Jaguar was pretty sitting there posing for all. But the best was the lemurs. Now I am sure we have all seen the animated movie Madagascar which features these wonderful little critters, but seeing them live up in the trees was a treat. Howling and jumping all over the place, they are as cute as their animated movie counterparts.

After a brief lunch, I headed to the far-off North American exhibit with grizzy bears and mountain goats, but as it was mid-day, most of the animals seemed to be in sleep or hide mode. The good thing though, the school kids also seemed to be in hide mode. YAY!

The Asia exhibit was next with elephants, orangutans, and other cute monkeys then it was time to head to the exit via the Africa exhibit. The wild dogs were much more active as it was close to feeding time.

It was a fun day watching all the animals and it was nice to see our local zoo focus on a lot of endangered animals. I think it brings some great awareness on the plight of some of these endangered species. I do however, wish that people would actually read the signs next to each animal exhibit. I lost count of the folks who called the wild dogs hyenas or called the jaguar a tiger or called the lemurs monkeys. And I am not talking about the school kids either; it was their parents, teachers, and chaperons who were getting this wrong. The signs are there for a reason folks!

As for the camera gear .... I was very happy with the results. The teleconverter on my Lumix was fabulous, getting me up to near 700mm zoom capability and the monopod allowed me to use the massive 70-210 f/2.8 zoom and maintain most of the sharpness. I was happy with the results and it made the trip to the zoo and the day off work very worthwhile.

For more photos, you can check out my smugmug site.

This morning I went downtown to the Bodies: The Exhibition. This exhibit uses real human bodies that have been preserved and cut open so you can see inside. Gives you a great three-dimensional view of the bodies. It sounds gross, but it is actually really cool and interesting.

They had sections on skeletons, muscles, organs, nerves, and the ultra cool section on the circulatory system. They had a reproductive section where they showed fetuses at different times during a pregnancy; 18 days, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 20 weeks. It brings a whole new perspective on the abortion issue when you see that tiny little body at 4 and 8 weeks.

It was also interesting to see things like the thyroid gland that is the cause of my hypothyroidism and knee and elbow joints which I have had replaced. Very cool.

This would be a great educational exhibit for school age kids or anyone who wants to learn a little more about the human body. So if you are near Miami, New York, Seattle, Vegas, DC, or Pittsburgh, check out this fascinating exhibit.

At The Carwash

Ahhh..... Its was a beautiful Saturday morning here in Seattle yesterday and the recent rains and snows have disappeared (at least for a while). So, what to Seattlites do on a sunny Saturday morning in winter?

Head to the local Car wash.



That's right. The car wash. Seattle folk spend hours in long lines just to clean all that dirt and grim off their vehicles. I was there too, but I had camera in tow, so I thought I would take a few photos as I cruised through the carwash.

Enjoy!

Snowbound

Boy, do the weathermen out here in Seattle suck. We had snow and cold temps at the end of last week and all the weather reports said that warmer temps would come on Saturday along with melting of all the snow.

So Saturday comes along and what do I see out my windows. SNOW. It snowed all day. And today? No snow coming down, but it is still freezing and now there is fog all over the place. I don't think we are gonna see the sun anytime soon.

Is Seattle's weather that unpredictable or do these weathermen stink?

My Birthday at the Market

It was a relatively nice, somewhat non-rainy day here in Seattle on my birthday. So mom and I decided to head downtown to Seattle's famous Pikes Place Market to do a little eating and shopping. There isn't much else to do at the Market other than eat or shop, but wow, this is some of the best eatin' there is.

We walked past the various fruit and vegtable stands and flower row, although this wasn't quite the season for fresh flowers so some had only dried flowers instead. There were various stands selling honey and chocolate covered candies and of course, there were the famous fish stands. The most famous of them all, the Pikes Place Fish is at the main corner in the market and always draws a crowd.

We joined the crowd and watched the obligatory fish throwing and other sights to be seen. The had a Monk Fish lying on one of the ice displays and all the kids would walk up to it and look at it with disgust. Of course, Pike Place Fish had the Monk Fish rigged and it would jump every once in a while right when some unsuspecting kid would be close enough to the fish to get the crap scared right out of them. Hee. Let's just say, it was fun to watch the little kiddies be tormented. I know, I am bad.

Next, mom and I found a delicious little doughnut stand. For around $2, you get a bagful of little doughnuts coated in cinnamon or powdered sugar. A great trat to nosh your way through the market.

Then I discovered DeLaurenti, a wine and cheese store. And I loved their cheese selection. Does it match Murray's in New York's Greenwich? No, not even close. But they did have a rather nice selection, so I bought some Gruyere and Emmenthaler for a future cheese fondue. Yum!

We continued on through the market passing news stands, trinket stores, butchers, and other various food stores.

I lived in Seattle for 11 years prior to this, and never really realized how large the Pike Place Market actually is. You could wander for hours through the small stores and never even come close to seeing all of them.

We ended the tour getting some bread at the 3 Girls Bakery, eating some DELICIOUS mac and cheese at Beechers Cheese Shop and then buying some jewelry among the many booths in the Market.

We then dropped all of our goodies off at the car and headed down to the waterfront to one of my all time favorite places to eat... The Crab Pot. Yummy! Nothing is better than fresh Alaskan King Crab, Snow Crab, and Dungeness Crab steamed to perfection and dumped from a bowl right onto your table. To me, this place is Seattle. Forget the poshy places to eat here in this town and come down to the waterfront and get your hands dirty crackin' crabs. Thank goodness for plastic bibs or else the clothes would have been ruined with all the mess we made.

Overall, it was a great and memorable birthday.... the last one of my 30's.

I Love Electricty

We here in Seattle had a massive wind storm here Thursday night and seeing as wind and tall trees usually don't go together, we had quite the number of power outages. Over a million homes and businesses were without power.

I was lucky however and my place never lost power. In fact I never realized how bad the windstorm was until I went out to run some errands on Friday. D'oh. Traffic lights out everywhere and stores all over the places closed due to no power. Our local Safeway lost over a half million dollars in food when they lost power for just over 24 hours.

My friend Lori is staying at my place now cause her house has been without power since Thursday night. And it has now gotten cold here over the weekend. And of course, everyone without power is heading to the already overcrowded malls. Hopefully all the power will be restored soon.

I've been in training this week for my future job and today we had a fire extinguisher class. This is not just watching some 30 minute video on fire extinguisher kinda class, but our companies fire department actually had a setup where they were able to light a controlled fire and we actually got to put them out with fire extinguishers. Fun!

In other news, this was the view of Mt. Rainer from my back deck yesterday morning....

Snowbound

Snow in November in Seattle. And not that light little dusting that disappears quickly, but the full on blizzard deal. YAY, I am so excited [/sarcasm].

Seattle folks are already bad drivers, so when you add some snow, the roads become litteral parking lots. Do they not teach these people how to drive on snow? Or when you get stuck on a patch of ice that you don't sit there and spin you wheels? Morons!

I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams yesterday as I was coming back form moving the first of my stuff into my new condo (YAY!). And yes, there were many folks trying to get out of ice patches by just pressing on their accelerator and spinning their back wheels at high speed. And of course, they weren't going anywhere. Low gears folks, that is what those rarely used "2" and "L" things on your gear shift are for. Heck in the "2" gear, my wussy little Camry pretty much moved along slow and steady by itself without even hitting the accelerator.

So now it is the day after and there are only three of us here at work in our group. Everyone else is probably still sleeping in their warm beds at home.

Not the Best Neighborhood

Its a good thing I am closing on my new condo today....

LYNNWOOD, Wash.- Police are searching for a shooter who fired at a man at a Lynnwood hotel early this morning.

The man was wounded at the (hotel) near the Mall.

Police responded to a report of shots fired about 2 a.m. and found a man who had been shot once in the leg. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Two women in the room were not injured.

Police are checking the rooms and the neighborhood for the shooter.

Sergeant Wes Deppa says the suspect and victim knew each other. The shooting was not random.

Yup, this happened at my hotel and I slept right through it. I was however interviewd by Fox News this morning as I left for work.