I realize they don’t rhyme when you say them right, but I don’t.
Lots been going on! Lake came in for the weekend before Christmas and that was awesome. We did lots of roaming around, found a scary as hell bar (The Whisky Bar), went out to the mountains to see the snow, went drinking and partying in Bellevue and just generally had a blast.
Then it was Christmas and we didn’t do much. We exchanged gifts on Thursday cause we were too excited and we had dinner with my boss’s family on Christmas day which was very nice. The food and the company was really excellent and it was nice to be with a large group on Christmas.
Then my brother and sister in law came out for a while over New Years and that rocked. We discovered Beecher’s mac and cheese which is responsible for the incredible growth of my gut over the past two weeks, and we went ferry hopping, explored downtown a little, saw the fireworks from right under the Space Needle on New Years and attempted to go tubing at Snoqualmie but ended up having to pull off and just play in the deep, deep snow for a while.
A note on that: We were about 6 miles away from the exit we needed and suddenly everyone was pulling off and putting on snow chains. I haven’t used my Explorer in deep snow very much yet so I didn’t know if I could continue without chains. We didn’t think it was worth the risk so we pulled off the exit and played in the snow for about an hour. It was deep as hell. When I stepped out into the burm I sunk up to my crotch. Turns out my truck probably would have been fine, but I’m gonna get a set of chains just in case.
What else? Courtney and I drove out to Rainer last weekend and took Sonja in the hopes she would get a chance to play in deep snow, which she’s never really done before. The drive up to Paradise was awesome but we found out that dogs are not allowed in the snow. We’re definitely gonna go back soon and play more but we’ll have to leave Sonja home. I’m planning to take her to Snoqualmie this weekend for her chance.
The snow plows at Rainer are really sweet. They look like giant rotary lawnmowers and just destroy the snow. That trip was also interesting because the road between the bottom town and the top town gets closed off at 6:00pm so you have to be out of there, or I guess sleep in your car? I’m still not clear on that. We were totally unprepared to camp so we came back early 🙂
And… work is going well. We’re busy and expect to get super busy in a few weeks. A few of our people went to CES to meet with customers and it sounds like we’ll have a lot of business coming our way soon. Till then, make sure you check out our kiosks in InMotion stores in airports around the country!
Also, I really like the “fake” metal band Dethklok. They are a made up band for the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse and they totally rock.
Oh! And I’ve switched my music buying to Amazon’s MP3 service. It’s cheap(er), DRM free and they have everything I’ve searched for so far. They also have downloaders that work in Windows and Mac so it’s really just totally awesome.
I guess there’s more… actually.
I’m working on a new LED based project that has me experimenting with lots of new stuff. I don’t want to give the idea away too much yet, cause I am really excited to surprise people with it, but I’ve been learning how to work with high powered neodymium magnets, various types of casting resin and made my first silicon mold ever. So that rocked! You can see some pictures of my progress at Light^2
So far I’ve been working with polyester resin, which fucking reeks and I hate using and recently clear urethane resin which has no real smell but is apparently really bad for you. I think I’ll end up going with the polyester because it degasses much more nicely. The urethane has a ton of tiny bubbles that fuck up the surface when I sand it.
What I am working on now is trying to figure out how to cast the thing I am casting with all the stuff embedded in it that I want to embed in it and have the exposed surfaces even with the exposed embedments. So there’s that.
Woo! Life!
Oh, I totally forgot the Pho. I tried Pho for the first time a few weeks back and really liked it. Last night I convinced Courtney to try a Vietnamese restaurant with me and while she liked what she had (not Pho) she tried my Pho and loved that. So we went back tonight and both had Pho and it was super good. I’m definitely a fan.