Too Busy For Beauty?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

A really interesting article on a social experiment that took place in DC involving Joshua Bell. It makes me wonder how I would have acted in the same situation.

So busy and so isolated we can be.

The Exciting Metropolis of Bellevue

Is where I spent my week so far. I was at a management conference / event and it turned out to be really interesting, enlightening and fun. To be honest I am pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed and got out of this training. It had all the necessary components of an awful week, a random hotel in a suburb, no communication with others, lots of opportunities to "open oneself up to the experience", only Microsoft over-achieving managers, etc...

Instead I learned a great deal about myself and the way I approach random situations. I won't bore you with all the details as they are probably not very exciting but I am glad that I did not waste a week of my life. It is funny how jealous of my time I have become recently. If I had not gotten anything out of this training I think I might have gone slightly crazy.

I am happy to be out of Bellevue though. The time spent there made it even more apparent that I am nowhere near ready to spend any significant time in a place such as that. The one advantage of the project I picked is that it involved a food bank in the U-District so I got to spend a lot of time there and in various areas of Seattle that I have never been too. Overall it was a great week and I am sure you will hear me mention it at some point. Feel free to tell me to take a little shut the hell up though if I babble on too long.

14 / 14.85

I am back alive and completely without pictures. I fooled myself into thinking I would be able to take some shots while in Vegas but it did not work out quite like I imagined. Sorry for the delay in posting since I got back but one of the numbers in the title is how many hours of sleep I got in 4 nights of Vegas. The other is how much I walked home with in gambling.

That was the first big surprise of the weekend, I actually won money in Vegas. Not a lot but enough to be positive for the first time in my life. I was lucky enough to find a 4-8 limit table with poker players even worse than myself. I also made my first (and maybe last) sports bet. That shit is addictive. I know just enough about sports to make it feel like I could make a killing in sports betting but would probably just end up getting killed.

The rest of the weekend was chock full of firsts. First time shooting guns. I know I have sold out and am going to a special hell where I have to listen to gun control advocates tell me about the dangers of guns for eternity. Shooting was a lot of fun. I fired a M5, shotgun and glock .45. It was fun in a video game way though. I still am not really sure why guns are necessary in real life and what would be hurt by completely preventing them from existing (Not possible I know).

I had another bunch of clever firsts but it is getting late and this is the latest I have been up since last Saturday. Maybe I will remember them and you will get the unique pleasure of hearing them live and in person. Feed me alcohol and at least I will make up a good story.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I do so I am heading to Vegas and plan to to win enough gambling to cover our condo and a new car. I am not coming home till I have won this amount.

Actually I am just going for a friend's bachelor party and will spend all my money on the things Vegas offers (Maybe even the pile marked "Do you really need this?"

If I do win tons of money I will take everyone who reads this blog out to dinner when I get back (Google web crawler I'm talking to you).

A Coma Of Some Kind

Last weekend was a crazy drunken (On both food and alcohol) haze. The perfect way to warm up for Vegas this weekend except for the plague I managed to catch Thursday night which I am predicting will be with me longer than it takes the Piston's to win their next championship.

Friday started off with a BBQ on top of my apartment that turned into more of a boil-a-que when we found that the grill the building provides ran out of propane sometime much earlier. After drinking an incredible 12 of the 36 beers we had among 15 people we headed down to catch Grindhouse.


It turned out to be a pretty amusing movie but the highlight of the night was Marques almost taking himself out on the banister in the theatre. His leg fell asleep and he realized this only after he tried using it to walk down the stairs three at a time.

We finished the night out at Shorty's in their very swanky new back room which impressed me with both comfort and at least one Tom Waits CD in the jukebox. The walk home was epic as usual with a rousing edition of the sign game.

Saturday we celebrated Shahaf's 30th birthday at another BBQ place which turned out to have all their shit in order. Ipanema Grill never seemed to run out of propane or if they did they still managed to make an incredible selection of delicious meat. Any place that feeds you meat even while you are in a coma (They teach the waiter to open your mouth and massage your throat) gets at least one comatose thumbs up from me.

Afterwards we headed to Zig Zag and started taking birthday shots in earnest. There was a slight miscommunication between Shahaf and myself which led to about 14 more shots of Crown than I expected so we had a lot of drinking to do. Eric and Marcelo came through like champs at our table by cleaning up most of the left overs. After some 86'ing and general rowdiness we decided to head back up the hill.


On the way there we came across the saddest dog ever. I am not sure why this dog was so sad but I am guessing it had to do with being a killer trained to enjoy its job and its keeper's callously locking it to the door handle instead of allowing it to fulfill its most basic urges through rampage.


Sunday was a magnificent Easter feast that lived up to that designation more than any other meal I have had the pleasure of having in anyone's home in Seattle. The companionship was exquisite matched only by the food and settings.


This is a shot of the kitchen that produced a portion of the wonderful food and how full it was. Teresa won the civility award for the evening by managing to kick everyone out of the kitchen in a most polite fashion.


As you can see it was an undertaking of significant proportion and went of without a noticeable hitch (Except for perhaps the poor design of boxed wine).


Overall a most enjoyable weekend.

A Small Triumph

For anyone who watched the recent spate of college basketball with me you might have heard me complaining about Billy Packer being a horrible announcer. He has been around forever and seems to love minutiae of the game more than the game itself. I find him pretty boring and just annoying especially considering how long he has been commentating the final four (21 years nonstop).

It looks like my wishes might be granted for next year. Below is Packer's comments to Charlie Rose before the last game (Thanks Eric for sending this my way)

Our Little Babies All Grows Up

Today I went to find the best taco truck in Washington for lunch aka Taqueria Guadalajara only to find that it no longer existed in truck form.

Turns out they retired the truck and opened a restaurant with chairs and tables and free chips. It is even better than the truck. They kept all their old favorites (at the same $1.25 price) and added a bunch of amazing looking entrees which I partaked in today.

I talked some with the owner's son and it sounds like they are doing really well. He was pretty excited about the new place as well he should be. If you ever have the misfortune of being stuck on the Eastside at lunch time you should be able to alleviate some of that by stopping at Guadalajara's.