I know blogger is almost dead.

I ended up on this blog randomly.

How times have changed. When I moved to Seattle I was single, under 30, and living in a small apartment.

Now I'm a full-fledged adult with a house, pets, wife, kid, and a real fence. I'm going to be 40 as well. I don't totally understand how this much time has passed.

Back to the grind.

Something in the water.

I'm bored and surfing around various sites and blogs and for some reason, I went to my own blog.  So  I haven't posted since 2011, Jay stopped in 2011, Rachel stopped in 2011, Joe stopped in 2010, and Drew stopped in 2012. I know the reasons I stopped but wow, we stopped at about the same time for some reason.

So, hell if I care.  I'm still married, I moved back to Seattle, I still have Ruby the crazy Beagle, two cats.  There is also a mini me, a house and a new car.  Holy cow.

Simply put there has been so much stuff to happen it would take too long to recap.  The gist is this: I'm two years older, I'm back in Seattle, and maybe I'll start updating again.

In London!

A photo of the Swiss Alps, The Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and Ruby sleeping.




It’s been months since I’ve posted something on the blog. Mostly due to laziness and a little bit because moving to London was time consuming and stressful and I didn’t feel like writing about how much things were hard. It’s a little whiny to complain about how much it costs to live in London or how hard a move is.

Here is a the last 8.5 months in a nutshell. I took a few weeks off before we moved to London and said goodbyes to everybody in late January. We packed up and moved our stuff in February and lived in corporate housing in Central London for about a 6 weeks, which felt like forever. After that we moved to an apartment in the West Kensington area of town, just outside central London, it is a little bit cheaper, still centrally located, close to transportation, and lastly, allows pets. That’s right! We got a dog. Ruby is a Beagle who is about 4.5 months old now. She is very smart and partly devious like all Beagles are.

Jess and I have done some travelling. We’ve been to Switzerland, Munich, Brussels, Western Ireland, Iceland, Canterbury England, and a few other small places in England. Jess has also been to Montpelier France. We don’t have much in the way of trips planned out at the moment. We’re taking it easy, playing with the dog, and generally relaxing and exploring the city a little bit.

Things I miss the most include Mexican food, Mt. Dew being readily available, and being in the same time zone as friends. All American sports are on during the middle of the night except football, which I intend to watch religiously.

Things I like the most include the global nature of news, easy travel to Europe, and trying new ethnic foods. (Lebanese anyone?) I’m also finding myself getting into soccer(football) and rugby because they are the sports I mostly understand and they happen to be on TV regularly. Cricket, while I mostly understand it, is slow and hard to maintain focus around. I don’t think I can get into the 5 day international test matches. Too much wasted time for me.

I’ve driven on the left side of the road and lived. I can think in £ (British Pounds) and not covert to $$$.

Once I decide to not be lazy I may post photos from the various trips but no guarantees.

New Year, New Me

I saw Tron Legacy yesterday. It was the BEST movie I watched on New Years Day 2011. My lord that film has scarred my brain. It has some interesting special effects and a semi decent cast of actors but it's best to not spend time trying to understand the plot or the multitude of holes that permeate the whole thing. I would say it's sort of like The Dude was dropped into the Matrix 2 and 3. Give me a cool action film not some weird semi-religious / philosophical take on humanity and creation.

I'm at home watching the Sunday Night Football game (AKA the Toilet Bowl) between the 6-9 Seahawks and the 7-8 Rams to determine the final NFC West champion. It's going to be a hard game to watch. Charlie Whitehurst is starting the game and I predict the Rams win by 14.

Overall it was a quiet week with the holiday hangover. Jess and I decided to do nothing for New Years Eve which was the right move. We stayed in, drank some champagne, and watched the ball drop on TV. I think the most interesting thing we did was go over to our friend Kevin's house and have a homebrew taste test. We've been home brewing for a few months now and bought industry standards to taste test against. Stone Pale Ale vs. CDBC (Central District Brewing Collective) American Pale Ale. I'm don't think I'm going too far on a limb by saying our beer was drinkable and not a complete farce when compared to Stone. I would also say we have light years to go before our beer is as good as Stone anything.

Who is commenter AN by the way?

We have been gorging ourselves on good TV before we go since the UK will have different, interesting shows to watch. In particular I think Breaking Bad on AMC is the best show on television so Jessica and I have been watching several episodes at a time to close out Season 3 before we head out. It's fantastic!

The UK is creeping up on us slowly and really fast at the same. Some dates are hammered out and some have a ways to go but it looks like I'll be going over in early-ish February to start work and find a place to live with Jessica coming sometime after that to wrap lose ends and oversee the pack and move from Seattle.

Progress.

New Year, New You, or something like that

So here is another update and it's only 8 days after the most recent update. It was a quiet week at work because the holiday stuff I would work on was pretty much over by the actual week of Christmas. There was still plenty of stuff going on but it wasn't urgent to the point of causing issues.

Anyway, Jessica and I went to Semiahmoo resort in Blaine WA. Semee Ah Moo is a way up by the Canadian border on this tiny little spit.


View Larger Map

It's pretty slick and it was very quiet and relaxing. We watched a few bad X-mas shows about the misers (both snow and heat) and a few about a BB gun. It was a little rainy but it was a perfect pre-holiday weekend to de-stress and not worry about things. Getting married to Jessica is the best present ever.







After Semiahmoo we went to my cousin Melissa's place to have X-mas day with my local family. It was also low-key and the present trading was funny and light. Anytime you can do Christmas shopping at Walgreens you know it's been a good year. I got Beers of the World and a few other nice things. Thank you Vicki, Daniel, Melissa, Jesse, and Eric.

Once we got home we watched 6 hours of stored up Zombie TV. The new show is called Walking Dead and is sort of similar to The Stand by Stephen King. Think post apocalyptic type stuff where limited survivors go around trying to survive evil, zombies, and good meaning people who don't get the new world order. Good show but needs work, it has a long way to go before I put it in the same category as Breaking Bad.

Working this week and having a low key weekend is the plan for now.

About Damn Time

It's about damn time I write something. I don't how I got so far out of routine when it comes to posting updates on the blog but once you lose the rhythm it's really hard to get it back.

Anyway, still moving to London but it's taking a little longer to get going than I would have thought. I should have known it wouldn't go smooth but all the immigration bumps appear to be smoothed out and HOLY SHIT the Hyundai commercial with the weird band singing a holiday song makes me want to not buy a car from them. Overkill! Anyway, the immigration stuff has been sorted out and things should be going forward as I type this. I would expect to be in London in February but everything has taken longer than expected to date so no promises.

We're in the process of getting rid of books, furniture, physical music and dvd's (since they are are different standards in the UK) and also because they take up a ton of space when I listen to almost all music on my Ipod/Iphone anyway.

Things that have happened in the last few months:

Went to Ohio to spend time with Jessica's parents in sort of a mini-holiday.
Went to Vancouver BC for a failed attempt to attend a hockey game. (failed because traffic went totally crazy because the freeway was closed)
Started homebrewing beer with some friends in Seattle. (It's watching water boil a few different times - it's not rocket science)

I think Jess and I are going to a little resort near Blaine WA for Christmas and then over to my cousin Melissa's for a holiday gathering. They're my Seattle family so to speak and spend quite a few holidays with them.

Right now I'm finishing up a pain in my ass called re-burning all my CD's onto Itunes. My PC took a crap a few weeks back and I lost all my music and a few other less important programs. It's taken me more than a couple hours to put them all back on my PC. I certainly will be backing these suckers up this time around so I don't have to waste hours doing this and since I intend to get rid of all these CD's anyway I better have them saved somehow.

I figure I'll get a new phone once I get to the UK anyway so having these songs saved in a couple of places is probably a good thing.

I'm sad TRON is getting bad reviews. :-(

I'll try to post more, dinner is calling.

The blog will most likely be renamed Beutler in Seattle.

My Update

I'm moving to London for at least 2 years in January with my girlfriend to work for Amazon.co.uk

I'll post more soon but that's my update.