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Saturday was beautiful. The first day where you could go outside in a light jacket and not feel cold. Shawna and I tried to take advantage as best we could by having a delicious sub lunch in a local park (we used our gym parking lot to go eat subs... how great is that). Then went down to Fremont and walked around gas works park for a little while. There is a big hill that overlooks lake union and it's evidently the bee's knees for kite flying. I was not impressed with the competition, it's high time I dust off my octopus kite and take these chumps to school.



How was Easter Sunday you might ask? I got up at 5am and had Shawna drive me to the hospital! Kidney stoned again! After doing some reading online it appears that once you've had kidney stones, you are a candidate for getting them again. That's some very very disappointing news... I did manage to retrieve said stone, and will whisk it off to the doctor so that he can tell me all the things I shouldn't be eating anymore. Evidently there is one type that forms because of chocolate... ouch.]]> Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:29:53 -0500 468_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=467
Does it rain a lot in Seattle? Yes.
But its not so bad, at least to me. You get some perks from all the rain, rainbows being one of the more compelling ones. This is a crappy picture taken from my window, I really wish I had been up higher and outside, where you could get the actual bow effect, you could actually see both sides of the rainbow, which is pretty cool. All the green stuff is also nice. Things are beginning to settle down a bit, the apartment is for all intents and purposes unpacked. The nail in the coffin of moving will happen this Saturday when the movers come get the mountain of boxes in our living and dining rooms. Soon I will lack any kind of excuse for not being attentive to this space.

Well, there's always work... I ended up staying home today so I'd have less distractions. I really love the freedom to be able to do that when I need to. This weekend Shawna and I are going to try to test drive a new (new to us, not factory new) car. We've decided to sell both our cars and consolidate them into a single vehicle. As I take the bus to work every morning, and we only have one parking space, it seems foolish to let my car sit outside, only being used occasionally on the weekend. Currently we have our eyes on a Suzuki SX4. Its a wagon (which I like), gets better (or as good as) gas mileage than both our current cars, is all wheel drive, is pretty compact for around the city, and seems to have gotten pretty good reviews. Plus we can buy a nearly new one with the money we get for our cars, which means no car payments.

There was a preety good writeup about Gary Gygax in the grey lady. If you don't know who he is, I really question how you could have possibly ended up on my website. Suffice it to say, he's a fallen hero.

FINALLY! Some new sins. Am I the only one who feels like it took forever for these to come out?

I love this website:Stuff White People Like. Its dead on. I like all of this shit.

Ever wonder what bills were bigger than a hundred? Well fuck you, I did.]]> Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:00:15 -0500 467_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=466

This weekend I promised myself that I would do nothing but unpack our apartment. Between guest visits and just general exploration of the area, Shawna and I haven't really focused on moving into the apartment since we started the lease 3 weeks ago. This weekend was our big push to get the apartment to look like something more than the bombed out husk of a Howard Hughes bachelor pad. We made a lot of progress, but alas we fell short. While all but a hand full of boxes remain packed, about 30% of the stuff isn't organized into its "right place". For an example, nothing is hung on the walls, just laying next to the walls. There are still stacks and stacks of books without a home. All this crap fit into our old place... what happened?

I'll tell you what happened, That. Just. Happened. Ok, it hasn't happened yet, but it will be happening soon, and it will be happening less than 3 miles from my house. What does that do? Does that blow your mind? Matt and I have already gotten tickets, we encourage others to do the same. There is plenty of room in our burned out husk of an apartment.

Stylish Blight, interesting.

Look how kickass our money used to be... what happened America? You used to be cool...

Albino Moose, that's what happened. Blame Canada.

This one is pretty amazing, but it needs a better title. How about The ravages of time. ]]> Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:00:41 -0600 466_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=465
To try to make up for the super buffet fiasco, Shawna and I did a little road trip to Whidbey Island. It was a good time, we drove through a few cute little towns, then visited Deception Pass State Park which was absolutely beautiful. We managed to make it home by 7:30. It was a good time. Here be some pics:





]]> Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:38:06 -0600 465_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=464
The 22nd was Shawna's birthday, as most of you probably know. She likes to get dressed up on her birthday, so I always feel compelled to get a picture. Not that she doesn't often get dressed up, but on this day of special days, she prefers that I take note.

Craig, who's birthday is the 21st (the day before) was visiting Seattle on business of a nature I shall not divulge (no doubt you can figure it out) as he has not publicly discussed it. The upshot is that on Friday night the three of us went out to Ocean Aire and drank too much, ate too much, and spent too much. But damn, it was a delicious and fun time. We each got our own desserts, which we were warned were meant to be shared. Boy were they right. I got baked Alaska with huckleberry ice cream. Delicious. Oh and the seafood was also good.

After such a night, and because Craig's flights got foo-bared and he spent an extra night with us, we ended up going to a "super buffet" for Shawna's birthday. Before someone organizes the lynch mob, let me just say that it wasn't my idea. In fact, I offered many times to go elsewhere. Well it's about what you would expect from a super buffet, asian food, a lot of poorly implemented American dishes, and to my surprise quite a bit of seafood. Let me just tell you that buffet seafood terrifies me. There is nothing I can think of more likely to make you sick/kill you. My terror however, was not shared by Shawna and Craig, who seemed to genuinely enjoy the smörgåsbord. The crazy devils. ]]> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:24:19 -0600 464_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=463
A little secret: I, despite having a lifelong, over the top, OCD-level love of computers, have never owned a new monitor. In fact, I've never owned a flat screen monitor, new or otherwise. I've always had the big ol CRT monsters, lumbering around, taking up 80% of my desk space. My two most recent monstros each had their own little "quirks" as it were. My secondary monitor was just plain old, and the colors on it were TERRIBLE, blacks looked like purple, greens sickly, and no amount of configuring could salvage it. It was very interesting trying to work on photographs with such a beast. My "main" monitor wasn't too bad, except for every other day or so, the picture would get super fuzzy, unusably so, for maybe 2 or 3 minutes, and then would *POP*! back into full working order.

Well, I've had enough of that shit.
Working for Amazon does have a few perks, one of which is we get some nice discounts at, say, Dell for instance. Saved a non-trivial amount on these two ultra sharp 24inch beauties. Now, I'll never be able to go back.

Did you go outside and watch the lunar eclipse? Shockingly, it wasn't cloudy today so Shawna and I got to see some of it on our way out to pick up dinner. ]]> Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:30:43 -0600 463_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=462
I'm still not going to promise regular postings, not at this point. We still have about half of our apartment left to unpack, not to mention that work is starting to give me real actual responsibility. That's cool, but at the same time we actually have *gasp*! Deadlines. And since half of our team quit (oh did I mention that? yeah, one of the two people on the team decided to part ways...) there is a lot more slack that needs taken up so to speak. Also, we've already had visitors! Joe and Jenni stopped by for a weekend and made certain that our Craigslist futon was sleeper friendly. It was nice having them visit, it forced us to get out and see several neighborhoods that we hadn't been to.

Seattle really is a large collection of neighborhoods with a very small downtown cherry on top. Nobody really lives downtown, its more of a business/shopping district. However, all of the neighborhoods have their own personality, and are quite a lot of fun to explore. Shawna and I got a GPS as a joint Christmas present, and it's been great to have. We've managed to discover a lot of stuff we otherwise wouldn't have known about, less than a mile from our home.

Today (Sunday) was probably the nicest day we've had since moving here. Not a cloud in the sky, that's pretty much a total rarity. So we went to Olympic sculpture park, ate some burgers and walked around down by the water. Since it was clear you could actually seem the mountains. I believe this one is Olympic:


It really is gorgeous if you can catch them on a clear day. Time for bed, more to come...]]> Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:20:30 -0600 462_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=461
TWO WEEKS! I scarcely believe that I've been here that long, the days have been whizzing by. So here is the skinny thus far (WARNING! LONG POST AHEAD! TOOT TOOT). The first day in town I pretty much just found my temporary housing, and went out to get poor Rutherford (the cat) a place to pee. Some woman at the pet store was really impressed by my Chevy Malibu rental car. I even opened it up so she could take a look inside. I'll resist the urge to judge an entire state by what appears to be just one person easily impressed by domestic automobiles. I ended up going to bed early, what with the 3 hour time change.

Sunday before I start the new job, I decide to go to Pike place market, to see if I can watch them throw a fish (I'm easily entertained). Pike place was awesome, tons of fresh food everywhere, including that beauty above. What is it? A delicious mini donut. You could watch them being made, floating down the river of boiling oil, and into a rotating vat, where you were given your choice of coatings (cinnamon & sugar, powdered sugar, plain, sprinkles, chocolate, mixed bag). Let me just say what you can probably already gather: fucking delicious. They were still warm as I ate them. A bag of these and a coffee set the day off right. I did get to watch them throw a salmon, in fact I got to watch them hit a woman in the face with a salmon. She laughed it off, the ultimate sign of a tourist. I ended up buying some supplies for linguine and clam sauce. It worked out well.

First day of work! Amazon's Pac Med building is an old hospital on top of a hill converted into a nerd emporium. The building looks a lot like it should be in ghost busters. I don't actually work there, but that's where orientation is. First order of business is I get a bad picture taken for my badge, HOT! Anyways, the orientation goes till lunch then I meet my manager downstairs and we go to Columbia tower, 18th floor, where I'm actually working. The view from my office is actually pretty cool, from the top of the building you can see all of Seattle, the Cascade mountains, Mt Rainier, etc. It's really quite nice. The first day I'm actually busy setting up my computers, learning about the training, etc. Amazon has a ton of proprietary software systems, which translates to a huge learning curve. Basically my first week is taken up by training, all of which is done via online resources, which is nice cause you get to do it at your own pace.

The first week goes really fast, between work and just trying to get used to where stuff is in the city I don't do much in the way of anything else. The weekend comes and it's time time to do some apartment hunting. I end up looking at about a dozen apartments, all over the place. By the end of the weekend I think I've actually found a place, which is kind of scary, but here it seem like if you find a good deal, you have to jump on it or it isn't there by the time you come back to it.

So Shawn and I will actually be living a few blocks up from the temporary housing I'm in now on Kilbirnie Apartment on Dexter Avenue. It's 1200sq feet, which is larger than where we were living, and it's only going to be $100 more, which is a pretty good deal. The area is also pretty nice, right on the water, with about a 15 minute bus ride to downtown. If things don't work out, hey it's only for a year.

Next week of work is still a lot of more training, but I've been given some small tasking to begin the transition into “real work”. So far Amazon seems like it's going to be awesome, it's culture is really designed with developers in mind, freedom of schedule, no dress code, plenty of interesting work, I'm hopefully that things will work out well here. The other thing of note is that I've discovered that there is a whole foods store within walking distance of my apartment (or a short bus ride, your call!). Now i've never actually been in one before, but now I can see why people rave about them, they are a foodie's dream come true. Tons of great pre-made foods, organic and fresh veggies, meats, cheeses, etc. Awesome. I've been wasting too much money on delicious food.

This weekend I bought a futon from craig's list and had to drag it up alone to the new apartment. The upshot: people who visit don't have to sleep on the floor! Hooray! They have to sleep on a broken husk of a futon! This weekend was also Amazon's after Christmas party. Amazon does their party after the holidays, which evidently is pretty common for retail, as the holidays are really busy. I wasn't planning on going as I really didn't know anyone and I'd have to go alone, but then I found out that The Presidents of the United States were going to be playing! How could I resist? Free food, booze and a good band to boot! It actually turned out to be a pretty good time. The band was great (they're coming out with a new album!), food good, and they even had Rock Band setup to play/watch others play in the theater. It was also a sci-fi themed party, and some people came dressed up. I also found out that I live about 2 mins from the space needle, which makes sense since it's easily viewed from the apartment.

So that's enough rambling for now, Shawna is due in on Saturday, along with all our stuff. At that point I'll have my camera and computer, and hopefully be able to do some more regular posting.

Bonus Material! here's a quick list of some differences I've noticed between home and here:

• Grocery stores, target, and pretty much anywhere else can sell alcohol. Target had a rather large wine selection.
• Speaking of target, the one I went to was two stories (but about the same overall size), it had an elevator in the center, as well as a special elevator for your cart.
• everyone here thinks it's a lot colder than it actually is (it isn't even freezing!)
• QFC is a grocery store...it's the only grocery store i've found so far
• The bus system leaves something to be desired (they have no underground), If you go online and find a route, it shows you where the bus travels, but not what streets it stops on!
• The bus system leaves something to be desired, I was on a bus yesterday and it changed routes half way through the ride! Wtf x 10
• This town is into sushi in a big way, there are at least 3 sushi places within 4 blocks of where I'm staying
• It does rain a lot, but not nearly as much as you would think based on the stories. Plus this is evidently the rainiest season
• When it isn't raining, and you can see the mountain ranges across the water...amazing.

]]> Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:33:53 -0600 461_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=460
Something you don't think about when on a cruise ship: its windy at night on the sea, VERY windy.

I realize its been 3 weeks without a post. Sorry about that, between the cruise and moving across the country, things have been busy, very very busy. I'm also out here without a camera, so the whole take a picture and post it thing falls apart in that situation. But, for now I'll post this one I had from the cruise of Shawna. This post will be about the Cruise, then hopefully this weekend I'll do another post about life to this point in Seattle.

The cruise was a lot of fun. We set sail from Florida, went around Cuba to Jamaica, then to the Grand Cayman Islands and back to Florida. 5 days. The boat is a little city, its just so fucking crazy big it's kinda hard to put it in perspective. Initially this is cool, but by the end of the trip I was ready to get away from people. If you want to "get away from it all" a cruise might not be for you... there are people everywhere you go. That said, there really is stuff to keep you constantly busy. The food was pretty good, and its all you can eat of it for free... don't go on a cruise if your trying to not get fat. I do wish there was more time at the ports of call, Jamaica is a naturally beautiful place, perhaps the most beautiful place I've been to. It's also the poorest place I've ever been to. This didn't bother me, the people were very pleasant. Some people were not as comfortable with it though. Cayman was also pretty, and still being under British rule, is a little better off financially. We did a bike ride in Jamaica which got us out of the tourist area around the boat, which was nice. Shawna did a cliff dive into the ocean, I did not. In the Caymans we did some snorkeling with some absolutely huge stingrays. It was also an awesome experience.

Another positive about the cruise is that there's something of interest for everyone. We went with my whole family, and I don't think anyone ever felt left out, or without something to do. Next cruise: Alaska!]]> Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:44:23 -0600 460_mantrout365_com http://www.mantrout.com/view_post.php?postID=459
Kanpai! It's over! That concludes mantrout 365... I managed to take a picture very day of the year, I think I had around .01% "good picture" success rate, but oh well, I can say it was definitely a learning experience, and for the most part pretty fun. This year, I'm not going to try to do a picture every day, as I found that it just forced me to take a really lame picture every night when things got busy. I think this year I'm going to try to shoot 2 "good" pictures a week, maybe one portrait one landscape, see how that goes. It's still up in the air, we will see, but rest assured I'm going to keep the website up, and probably do a redesign for the new year, once I get a little spare time, which honestly will be months away. Thanks to all the people who've visited, I'll try and keep it rollin...

So for New Years Shawna, Joe, Jenni, and I had a laid back make your own sushi party. It turned out to be a lot of fun, we had tons of ingredients, and got to try making a bunch of different stuff. Oh and Shawna did a great job making the sushi rice, so it was delicious to boot! Here are a lot of pictures:


That sweet little frog is actually a chopstick holder Shawna got me 2 Christmas's ago... finally got ot use it!

We decided to go all out and eat seated on the floor, this actually ended up giving us more room for stuff, so it worked out well.

Sushius Mastericus (Joe was way better at rolling sushi than the rest of us)

Things were busy at the sushi rollin table, also we ended up drinking a lot... oh well, new year!

Some of Joe's handy work

A hard boiled egg from one of Shawna's new Christmas egg molds. Looks different, still tastes great.

Shawna with a nice piece of Unagi and rice.

Unlike the rest of us, Joe saved up his sushi in order that he may more fully express his dominance over us.

So that's it. New Years, which I usually associate with a lame time, actually turned out to be really fun this year. Who knew drinking and sushi making could be such a good time. Hope everyone else had a good new years, and if not, you're onto a fresh start for 08!]]> Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:39:37 -0600 459_mantrout365_com