Big Fat Wood Cookie!

Now that finals are over, we're doing the obligatory holiday preparations... one of which involves dragging a tree full of pine needles and sap into our house. So I decided I wanted a big tree since Emily and I are hosting Christmas at our house for both of our families. Because we were in a big rush, I pretty much had to have the first big tree I saw (even though Emily tried to talk some reason into me). A guy came and loaded it in into the car (mistake number one because of all the pine needles) and we drove home. We got home and lifted out our extremely heavy 7 foot tree out of the car. Then we got the tree stand and realized we were going to have to saw through the damn thing to make it fit. So we dug out a rusty saw we found in our garage and took turns for around 20 minutes in the below 30 degree weather. We somehow managed to carry this mostrocity of a tree up the stairs into our house, taking several breaks along the way. Anyway the moral of this story is that one should look at the size of the trunk before one buys a Christmas tree. Big trunk means very heavy, probably won't fit in your stand. Here's the big fat wood cookie Emily and I sawed off the tree. Note the nice knot in the middle of the second picture!

It Snowed!!

Yay, it snowed in Seattle on Thursday! Emily took the pics since I was in New York for a work retreat. I've been waiting for snow since last year and I missed it!
I'm hoping is snows again, I really wanted to build a snowman and throw snowballs at things. Seattle is definately frickin' cold right now, last week I played soccer in near freezing weather and my little ears turned into ice cubes that gave me that headache you get with you drink slurpees too fast.

Yakko-Lantern

So this is my halloween post, I know it's like a month late. No tricker-treaters came to our house so we decided to torture the little Yak Yak. This little pumpkin outfit is a handmade Emily original. Yakko totally did not appreciate the effort that was gone to for him (just like the spoiled brat he is) and whined the whole time. Then he leaped out of her arms and wiggled out of the costume.

So if Yakko was a pumpkin for Halloween... what do you ask did cat girl from my bus dress up as? Not a cat! Can you believe it, the one day a year you're supposed to dress up and she took off her cat ears?!! Instead she had a bunch of white power on her face and a black hand drawn scar along one of her cheeks. To complete her costume she wore some sort of incredibly big tutu.

The Sorting

So I finally took the Harry Potter sorting test....

I got into Gryffendor because I'm so brave and all. Emily was sorted into Ravenclaw because she likes Ravens and clawing stuff.

Take the Sorting test!

P.S. No more exciting news about cat girl, she's still riding my bus and wearing cat ears.

Jeph and Bridget Do Seattle

J+B came to visit us in S-town this weekend and a good time was had by all. We went to the science museum and walked along the waterfront. The science museum re-awakened Star Trek Next Generation yearnings, so we rented Star Trek Generations. I was a bit disappointed about the less than adequate Deanna Troy screen time. Deanna is totally the best and hottest character. Emily has assured me that the second movie has more Deanna, or maybe she's just saying that to get me to watch it....

Corroborative Evidence

Just so you don't think I'm lying about cat girl, Emily saw her on the bus when she was coming back from campus. Emily tried to take a picture, but then she realized that she couldn't turn off the camera sound on her phone, plus that's kinda creepy stalkerish...

True story, don't let his happen to you, beware of moving companies! So this is about my co-worker trying to move her stuff across country by hiring a moving service.

First incident: Random truck driver calls said co-worker to tell her he's not moving her stuff unless she pays him. This truck driver was apparantly contracted to move her stuff by Go West movers (the peeps she paid to move her stuff).

Second incident: She calls Go West and says "fool I paid you to move my stuff, now some truck driver is threatening to move my stuff." Well... not the fool part, she was actually polite!

Third incident: She makes several calls to people at Go West to figure where this disgruntled truck driver dumped the stuff and figure out who's going to move it.

Fourth incident: Her stuff finally makes it to Seattle. This driver calls her out of work in the morning and doesn't show up until 4pm. Then he realizes her stuff was packed first so he says he has to come back after the other peoples' stuff is unloaded.

Fifth incident: About an hour later, truck driver calls her to ask if she knows anyone he could hire to help him unload the truck. When she says no, he asks her if he could hire her to help.

Sixth incident: Truck driver finally shows up at 11:30pm to unload her stuff. Now she has an angry landlord because she's moving stuff in so late, plus she has to help carry her stuff.

Seventh incident: A bunch of her stuff was broken in the move (including her bed).

Eight incident: She had to pay $200 extra dollars to the truck driver on top of what she already paid Go West movers.

I joined a Band!

So I joined an all girl jazz band. I'm so stoked it's awesome. We play big band and jazz tunes. We've got a couple of saxes, two trombones, a flute, a piano player, bassist, two guitars and a singer. Hopefully we'll get a drummer and a trumpet or two soon! It's so cool, it's just like high school, I'm a band nerd all over again. The other trombone player is a nerd like me too! She does computer support and has a degree in computer science, imagine that!

In other exciting news, cat girl from the bus showed up on my way home on Friday. She is still wearing her cat ears and black clothing. She showed up near the street that goes along Greenlake. I wonder what that's about? I kind of want to talk to her and ask her what's up with the ears but she might think I'm some weirdo, hey but I'm not the one wearing cat ears.

Also, if Jeph or Bridget is reading this, which I doubt because they are way busy with school... I finally listed to your goodbye CD. It was sooooooooooooooooo great. The "Emily there is only one of you" song was really cute. "Kittens Last Jam" was pretty cool too. That Maddy has a good voice. Check out these Phat Tunes!

The Bus

I haven't taken the bus since we lived in our place on Pearl, so it feels a little weird to be taking the bus to work every day. It's so weird how you ride the bus to work with the same people and take the bus home with another set of the same people. I'm always really tired (I guess some would call it grumpy) in the mornings so I'm not very aware of what's going on around me. Every morning I rush to step onto the bus and almost bump the same girl that gets off at my stop. It's not like I do it on purpose, I'm on autopilot and just start walking as soon as the bus doors open (I really have to stop that before I bowl her over). Next, I sit down on the right side of the bus in next to an empty window seat. I always feel so lucky to get a coveted window seat near the front of the bus because it's the last one available on the buses way downtown. Just today I found out the reason why I get the same seat is because the girl who I almost run into on my way in the bus sits in that seat every morning (funny that). The same people are seated in front of and behind me. Next the bus stops to let the gothish girl with her cat ears and pink miniskirt out. She looks to be anywhere from 15-18 years old. I'm really curious where she goes when she gets off. She either goes into the Bishop Blanchet High School across the street or somewhere into the residential neighborhood. Seriously cat ears every day! If she's in high school maybe she's a drama geek? You have to be pretty comfortable with yourself to wear cat ears to school every day...

Anyway, so I check out this cool shark game
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/madshark.html
Emily played it and wouldn't eat the scuba divers and only ate the fish, you have to eat the scubas though it's the fun part! Emily thinks that the game is immoral.

Eric and Steph's Wedding Pictures

It's Saturday morning and rainy in Seattle, go figure.... So Meriel this blog is for you, I know I promised to post Eric and Stephanie's wedding pictures last June on my website, but I never got the chance. Speaking of weddings, four different couples we know got engaged this summer and are getting married next summer! How crazy is that? Why is everyone getting so old and mature? Ok so the wedding pics, uh I added the pics in the wrong order so you should look at the bottom ones first. Also, I know there are some people I didn't get pictures of, but remember there was a lot of Ruby and you can't easily have a glass in one hand and camera in the other.

New Place Pics

Okay so I finally got this picture thing working. Here's my virtual tour...

Here's our two big living room windows, it kind of a dark picture since I took it in the evening, but it's usually really bright. After dragging my sister around Capitol Hill, to help us look for a place live, she reminded us that in Seattle people spend a lot of time indoors so we'd better get something with a lot of windows. Best advice ever!!

Here's more living room at a different angle. Notice the rug on the floor, my "research gang" co-workers gave Emily and me a Bed Bath and Beyond gift certificate so we used it for that rug and an ice cream maker. We are still working on making the thank-you card. I really miss all the good advice and wiseness of my research team (that and wearing Priscilla's pink jacket).

So next is the dining room... I think I took this pic in the morning
Here's the kitchen with funky blue tile

Dining room

Here's the deck

Bathroom...
and then there's the bedrooms, but those are kind of messy so I didn't take pictures...

Here's our new Ikea chair and already the kitties took it over! Ikea was the deciding factor on moving to Seattle instead of North Carolina.

So that's all for now, stay tuned for more pictures. I promised Meriel that I'd post Eric and Steph's wedding pictures so I'll get on it next...

Starting a Blog

Sadly my darkwing email is gone so I'm forced to move somewhere else in Internet space so here I am in blog land. I'm hoping I can post a couple of pictures of our new place.

So getting used to living in a fairly large city is interesting. So far the most noteable differences are that downtown buildings are more than three stories high, people dress a lot hipper, I have to remember the combo code to my office bathroom door (which poses a problem when you're in a hurry), people drive worse than Greg, everybody walks fast, and there's a coffee shop on every corner. Someone laughed when I told them I worked downtown by the "Seattle's Best Coffee?"

Ok so pics of our new place...they aren't loading so I'll try it again later :(