Redhook Beer

Whew! Long weekend and another long couple of days coming up. Friday another friend arrived for the weekend (Don't worry I'm almost out of friends) and we did a lot of touristy stuff but got to enjoy the city a little bit as well.

The weekend in brief goes like this.

Friday
Pick up at Airport
Drive around in the unusually heavy rain.
Eat lunch
Drive to Chinatown
Drink a beer or three
Get some food at a Seattle landmark (Dick's for those who're curious)

Saturday
Go to the Market
Walk around downtown Seattle
Go to Gasworks park
Go on Redhook Brewery Tour
Go to UW Husky football game (they lost)
Eat very fresh seafood on the waterfront
Drink another beer.

Sunday
Go to promo for Budweiser and get tickets to Seahawks game (connections are helpful)
Seahawks Game (They won)
Shopping in downtown retail core
Eat at asian restaurant
Go to Belgian beer bar. (had a Triple Carmelite)

Monday
Back to Market for Fresh Seafood
Drive to Cascade Mountains (it was an amazing day in Seattle today)
Drop buddy off at airport...
Go to work.

It was a busy weekend and looking back at all the stuff we did, brewery tour and football games, it was a very inexpensive weekend. Due to fall schedules we didn't get a chance to take the ferry or a tour of the Seattle underground that I wanted to but I guess that was a lesson learned on my part. I did a lot more exploring of Chinatown this weekend than I had done previously as well. Every time somebody has visited I've tried to do something new that myself and the guest would appreciate and it's worked out very well so far.

The AB promo was held at a bar called Cowgirls. It was a Coyote Ugly type bar with girls dancing on the bar (at 11AM!!) and creepy dudes watching them. It was very surreal because it felt like it should have been much later - and in a city like New York or something. I actually felt a little strange in the bar because it's not a place I would have chosen to pre-game at myself. Personally I would have tried to find a sportsbar with all the games on but I'm not complaining too loudly either - especially with free tickets.

The UW Huskies and the St. Louis Rams are awful. I've learned that 1000 yards of offense between two college teams are pretty rare. Ridiculous is a funny word to say at a football game. Qwest Field (where the Seahawks play) is incredibly loud. Dry Cleaning is expensive.

Come visit me people!

Trip to Appleton/Milwaukee/St. Louis

This weekend a friend from Milwaukee is visiting for a couple of days. We've got lots of safe drinking to do at the Redhook Microbrewery (we both worked in the beer industry with Redhook in the past) and lots of football between the UW Husky and Seahawks games. The rest of the weekend is up in the air however so who knows what we'll be doing the rest of the weekend. The weather is rainy/cloudy/sunny/nice/cold/crappy/windy and that's before noon. Seriously, it's a little hard to plan when the weather is so erratic, something I didn't anticipate when I moved out here. What are you going to do.

As mentioned in the title next week I'll be in Appleton for work, Milwaukee for a night, and onto St. Louis for a wedding. If anybody wants to meet at the Lodge next Thursday around 8:30 - 9 just show up... a place to stay would be nice too.

Friday I'm going to be running errands all morning before I drive to O'hare. It might seem like a waste of time to fly out of O'hare instead of Milwaukee but it saved me over $300 bucks in airfare. Time well spent if you ask me since I'm paying for this one myself.

Random thoughts... Iman Shumpert should have gone to Marquette. The Big East has pretty good football programs. The Office is my favorite show on TV no questions asked. I eat too much pizza. The Red Sox are as bad as the Yankees now. Joe Torre made the right call. That's just Manny being Manny.

Husky Tickets

Well, I got my UW mens basketball tickets in the mail today. I give Marquette a lot of credit for giving the tickets out in a book or booklet format as opposed to the Baseball Card sheet. I took a picture with a beer bottle for reference as most people know how big a beer bottle is... and because I had one handy but the picture included some person data that probably best not on the web so I cropped the photo a little bit. Just know the tickets are about 18 inches high and 24 inches wide, which is dang big. The beer was a Leffe, which is basically a tasty yet mainstream Belgian. A little spendy but better than most beers and certainly with trying.

If anybody wants single game UW tickets let me know.

Lots of airline miles

I have a wedding to go to in St. Louis in two weeks. I bought the ticket in July because I was actually prepared for once. That doesn't always happen but it was a good deal and it made sense at the time. About 6 weeks ago I found out I was going to be in Wisconsin in October "sometime" for a work visit to Appleton Wisconsin, the location of some Kimberly Clark offices. Of course the trip to Wisconsin was the same week as the wedding. Instead of flying back to Seattle on Thursday only to turn around and fly back to St. Louis on Friday I canceled my flight and did some wheeling and dealing. The end result is a partial credit my original flight and a regular tour of airports. My schedule that week now includes Minneapolis, Appleton, a rental car to O'hare, St. Louis, Phoenix, and back to Seattle. Plus, I get to spend a night in Milwaukee - which I didn't get to do earlier so I think it's a push at the end of the day.

The one weekend I don't go to a bar to watch the Vikings play awful football they end up beating the equally awful Chicago Bears. Lots of football watching this weekend in anticipation of my friend from Wisconsin visiting next weekend (yes a friend from Wisconsin is visiting me this weekend and I'll be in Wisconsin two days later for work) and the wedding down the road I took this weekend pretty easy. Baseball playoffs (does anybody care about the National League?), lots of football, and plenty of reading killed most of the weekend.

The official beginning of College Basketball was this weekend also. MU even got a commitment from somebody from the class of 2009 or something crazy like that. I do miss being in Milwaukee at times like this but I guess I'll have to make do with UW Husky basketball when the times come. I'll cheer for them and get into the games and everything but it won't be the same.

I'm excited about embedding video's in my blog. I'll be judicious with my new found power so I don't overwhelm the blog. I think I'm going to eat Ice Cream now.

Abba Rules

I'm pretty sure I learned how to embed a video!!



Awesome.

Reverbfest

I've loaded the Soapbox Derby videos to youtube. It was ridiculously easy and they've already been watched a few times, maybe I have the next great viral video or something. I'm going to work on embedding the videos in the blog so bear with me if this isn't a smooth operation.

This weekend was pretty quick. Saturday evening I meet up with some friends in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle for a musical event called reverbfest. It was a pretty good deal - for $10 you got a wristband that would let into any one of 8 (I think) bars that had live music going on. They had a wide variety of musical types and limited stage time so no one single band was on for more than 45 - 50 minutes before the next band was on. It was a pretty unique set up and we discovered some new bars and some interesting bands. The band TacocaT (Taco caT is an anagram) was particularly memorable for songs that were completely inappropriate, and for having a song about Peeps that incorporated a kazoo. The other band that stood out was The Bad Things for having an accordion, castanets, and a stand up bass. Good times indeed but they are no Riverwest Accordion Club.

My cable company in Seattle was Millennium Digital Cable. Millennium is now Broadstripe according to the TV commercial I just saw. They still are a terrible Cable company and I wish I had another option of any sort.

I just watched part of Rocky III - I forgot how truly awful that movie is. The Hulk Hogan wrestling/boxing scene was terrible but I was happy to find out his character was named Sugar Lips.

On to the youtube links.

As mentioned earlier - mother avert your eyes. It's a little naughty for your old fashioned sensibilities. The Crash If it looks a little weird it's because my camera was having a hard time picking up the video screen.

A crapper making a turn. Crapper This one is even more funny because apparently the UHaul they were transporting this vehicle around in had was stolen. Imagine opening a UHaul to find that thing.

This is just a flat out Bizarre routine. Every soapbox car had a routine and this was one of the more strange ones I caught on film - they also couldn't make it through the chicane turn and crashed really hard. The judges of the routines included Sir-Mix-A-Lot, a Seattle native, and some other random nobodies. Sir-Mix was very impressed with the Seattle Supersonics cheerleader routine.

I'm not sure how people embed the video's so now I'm going to some research.... because I don't want to do more laundry.

Redbull Soapbox Derby

Uploading videos takes FOR - EVER to quote the Sandlot. Seriously I've been loading these three (If they ever load) videos for days now and it's been a huge pain in the ass. Last Saturday, the 29th, I went to a Soapbox Derby put on by Redbull. If you'v seen a Redbull TV commerical you know that they have a slighly different sense of humor. I took a bunch of pictures and a few videos with my camera which as have been a pain in the ass. I want to say some of the random weird things I took pictures of video of would be out of the normal but the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle is pretty eclectic and strange. I'm mean they a 20 foot high statue of Lenin, a Troll, and plently of other randomness. I took these video's with my camera so they're surprisingly good, the audio in particular surprised me. The first video is of a crapper making a turn. If these video's don't post I'm going to be annoyed. They show up in the "preview" that I can see. If you want to see them email me or leave a comment and I'll either send them to you or figure out a way to put them on the internet and link to them... youtube or something.





The only crash I got on video. I had bad timing with the videos or else we would there be some serious carnage. Betwen the berm and the chicane turn lots of people didn't make it to the bottom. My parental unit may not approve. Mother - avert your eyes. It's little naughty.




This is the most crazy routine we got to see. Something strange must have happened with upload because it should be pretty long. In case you couldn't already tell I was taping a video screen atthe event.



Here a few of the pictures that I took during the course of the event as well.



A Troll drinking Red Bull.












A high speed pickle.













I pity the fool going down the hill in this ride.













Lots of people!












That's a scary curve to go around. Notice the guy standing there for a sense of height.



















I wish this was out of the ordinary.










After the soapbox derby Branon and I went to watch the UW Husky's take on the #1 ranked USC Trojans. The seats were, well, I'm not really sure how I feel about them. They were on the 50 yard line - which is good - but they were the second to last row from the top - which is bad. We could see the entire field and the scoreboard pretty well but it was strange being so far under the roof and nearly as high as the luxury boxes. All told it was a pretty good game with UW in it all the way until the end.