Thursday, March 25, 2010

Trip to Milwaukee

I need to blog about something since I've been lacking a lot in this area lately. Last Wednesday (the 17th) I flew to Milwaukee with my buddy Aaron and watched a lot of college basketball with David, John, Jay, and Mike periodically. As John called it, it was a retro weekend with a fair amount partying and old school video games. N64 James Bond Goldeye in particular. We even busted out the old TV set up with one game strictly for video games and another for watching college basketball. Sadly enough Marquette couldn't win the game they had against my current hometown team, the UW Huskies. Que Cera I guess.

Work has been, well, work. It's been hard to get caught up with work after a few days off but it's been going. It's a fast moving place and tomorrow will be the 3rd anniversary of my start. It does seem strange that I've been in Seattle for three years now but when I look back lots of people have gotten married, had kids, and bought houses so I suppose it makes sense in some ways. I'm not looking to leave anytime soon either because the winters are mild and the mountains are high.

In two weeks, over Easter, a bunch of us are going to Vancouver for the weekend to watch the MN Wild take on the superior Vancouver Canucks. We had to overpay for tickets to the game and I'm stilling waiting on a bunch to get shipped over the border. Blah. Since the game is on Sunday night (Easter) it means that I'll be enjoying my Easter in Canada rather than at my aunt Vicki's place on Lake Martha. It's an interesting trade but I'll make a concerted effort to go to Vicki's some other weekend.

It's 40 and rainy here again. This is the worst time of the year to live in Seattle if you ask me. It's not terrible weather at all it's pretty mild, actually it's just like regular winter but the problem is it's spring almost everywhere else and it stays somewhere between 40-50 and rainy all the way through May and it stinks. I'm not really complaining but this is the hardest time of the year for me. I need to go hiking or something to remind myself that the outdoors are fun and close by.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Vegas Recapped

My friend from Marquette, Matt, lives in Las Vegas and got married over the weekend. Being the doldrums of winter/spring here in Seattle, it seemed like a good time to take a few extra days to enjoy the sun in the Sin City. Jessica and I went down a little early and stayed an extra day at the MGM Grand to get some extra time in the sun. It wasn't super duper warm with temps in the mid 60's but is was sunny most of the time and it felt warmer than it was. Good times were had at the wedding and there was a good amount of Marquette people in attendance so it felt like a mini reunion of sorts.

The next big trip for me will be back to Milwaukee in a few weeks to attend March Madness. Marquette is the host site so I got tickets and I'll be heading out for a long weekend there as well. It won't be in the mid 60's I'll bet but it should be a fun weekend and I can only hope Marquette isn't playing opposite the game(s) at the Bradley Center. I'm really hoping MU is a Thursday / Saturday site as opposed to Friday / Sunday.

I just finished a book called Tokyo Vice and it was a non-fiction work written by a white, Jewish, journalist about the seedier side of Japanese culture and from the perspective of someone who isn't 100% familiar with the culture. It's a solid but sad book. You find yourself rooting for the author even when you sort of the know the result that is coming. I've been reading a lot lately but I might have to look into getting Kindle as I'm going to either need to get rid of paperbacks or buy more bookshelves. Getting rid of the paperbacks from high school like The Siege of Ocean Valkyrie which is apparently so "rare" Amazon doesn't even have a picture of it. By "rare" I mean a pile of crap. Included in the pile of Crap is The Edge which I must have bought from Jenny, the bookstore lady in Lisbon when I was obsessed with Tom Clancy. Speaking of which, does he even write books anymore? The last two were plain awful and the last one came out years ago. Maybe I should do both: get rid of the crappy books and get a Kindle.

I'm trying to think of other things to write about right now but I'm falling short at the moment. I feel like I should keep more notes because I always forget the topics that sound good during the day or week.

LIKE THIS! On the way to Las Vegas we took the cheap flight option and had a connection in LA (LAX) for a few hours. The LA airport is enormous and Jessica and I just headed towards the nearest watering hole for a few a beer to kill time. When we sat down there wasn't a lot of space so we took the only open seats and ordered our drinks. After a while I noticed I was sitting next to a tall white guy with sweats pants and hoodie pulled down low over his eyes. In LA, that screams moderately famous, and since the guy was trying to be low key that made me want to catch a glimpse of his face. Once I saw him I recognized who he was but I needed to make sure and was about to ask "hey, are you who I think you are?" but around that time somebody went up and asked for an autograph and saved me from making an ass out of myself. I was sitting next to 14 time gold medal winner Michael Phelps, and in the "Stars" they're just like us category, he plays online poker and was bitching about being delayed to Philadelphia on what sounded like a redeye flight. I used the quotes "stars" because I can't think many real stars fly redeye's but maybe that's just me. He is fairy tall and seemed sort of dickish but then again if I was delayed on a cross country overnight flight I'd be complaining a lot myself. Drew, he was drinking a dark colored beer but those were the only calories I saw him intaking; he had a long way to go before he hit 10,000 calories but it was 10 at night so it's hard to say if those were calories 2000 through 2400 or 8400 through 8800.

His girlfriend seemed sort of cute at least.