North Dakota

I grew up in North Dakota. It's flat, isolated, and I miss it at times. The story begins on Thursday at 10pm when I start heading for the airport. The bus was really late and I missed my redeye to Minneapolis. Luckily enough Northwest run a second redeye out of Seattle so no harm no foul. I slept most of the way on a crappy flight that was delayed and with no air on the ground. Awfully hot in a plane with no air.

The layover was long and the flight to Fargo was also delayed. Northworst. I landed in Fargo and was waiting for my friend from high school, Tyler, to pick me up. Out of nowhere a friend from high school comes up to me. Turns out a different friend from high school also lives in the Seattle metro and we were on the same flight out of the Twin Cites and would have been on the same flight out of Seattle if I would have made my flight.

A 10 year reunion doesn't sound fun to everybody, myself included to a certain extent, but it was a GREAT time. There were even a bunch of the "remember when" stories either, everybody has their own story to tell and rehashing the old ones was less exciting.

The class was very accomplished too. A doctor, two chiropractors, and a slew of professionals and self employed as well. When you haven't seen people in 10 years they grow and change a lot in ways you could have never imagined. It's hard to explain and a few beers make the memory worse as well.

I was glad to come home when it was all over. North Dakota is great, it really is. I could go back for weeks at a time but I can't imagine living there at the moment. I would miss all the cultural opportunities that are so close in a large metro area. I get bored easily and with so few entertainment options I'm not sure I could do it for a long time. Seeing the same people over and over again in the same 3 bars would be hard to handle. It was a great visit. If you are in a reunion year, or close to one, I highly recommend going.

Peanut Butter

Yesterday I went to a bar called the Firehouse for lunch. They had a bunch of burger options that were pretty standard but one caught my eye, The Peanut Butter Bacon Burger. I'm willing to take some chances with food and in my search for good burger I assumed any place willing to gamble like that would have a good burger. The burgers were average at best - the search for a good burger continues - but the peanut butter burger was different. I thought it was halfway decent because it was something different and it was a good mix a flavor with the bacon. It was more subtle than I had anticipated.

Today is some random volunteer event I signed up for when I got hired. It's called Seattle Works and sounds similar to Hunger Clean Up in Milwaukee. A bunch of people get together - clean up a park and drink some beer after. It's Seattle so of course it's going to be halfway rainy today. I can't complain however the weather's been pretty good so far this summer. While I wait for the rain to start I'm watching Serpico, the Al Pacino movie about NYC police corruption in the 70's. It's a pretty good movie and if even half is true it's pretty crazy.

Off to clean up a park.

Same Story Second Verse

So, at Roundy's I was managing a data entry department responsible for new item set up and item maintenance. As a subset of that I managed a few processes, including the new item set up process. Imagine the joy I had when I was invited to a Kaizon, a high intensity meeting designed to document current and future process, fix bottlenecks and eliminate wasted time and steps designed by Toyota.

I spent today with members of the consumable team documenting the new item process as it stands today. I think we can cut the time involved by at least 80% if not even more. At Roundy's the ultimate "speed to shelf" goal was 24 hour turn around and I don't know why Amazon can't get to the same point. I have already gone through a large number of these steps at Roundy's and I think we can implement a large number of the same process steps and designs that were already in place or we developed once the process was rolled out.

Totally unrelated by why haven't the Soprano's been this good the entire time? The last episodes have been totally wild and much more in line with the early season episodes. Drama, intrigue, and suspense are at maximum levels right now and it's a shame they haven't been here for the last couple of seasons. The ratings for the last Soprano's (until the movie) are going to be incredibly high these last few days.

Bands that have been good listening lately... Voxtrot - Fratelli's - Mute Math.... the 4 people who read this probably have already heard about them from me but you should recommend them to other people.

New Computer!

After going a very long time without a personal computer I bought a new laptop this weekend. Pretty basic but it will let me goof off, downlown music, upload pictures, and various other things. Tonight I'm going to a concert at The Crocodile, the band is Voxtrot. I think they are pretty solid and the show is at the super small venue so it will be fun no matter what.

It's like 80+ and not a cloud anywhere. I'm sure when it's winter and cloudy for weeks at a time I won't remember these perfect days but it's pretty awesome right now. If the weather holds I think a hike in the morning tomorrow sounds like a good idea before I go to see Knocked Up. The guys from 40 Year Old Virgin in another movie seems like a good way to kill a Sunday to me.

Tomorrow the search for a good hamburger continues. I haven't found anything close to being as good as Sobelmans and I have a place that is supposedly pretty solid called the Red Mill so I have a mission tomorrow. I can find salmon and sushi places without going more than 1/4 of a mile but a good hamburger is a lot harder to find. Not a bad thing but I'm really craving a good burger right now and I can't imagine all the sushi places I walk by are going to help me out with that one.

Sasquatch

This weekend I went to George, Washington to attend Sasquatch. A festival held every year at the most visually stunning music venue I've ever seen or heard of. The stage is set so the Columbia River Gorge is in the background with cliffs and massive amounts of open space. It is downright crazy. Watched a few bands play and Two Gallants stuck out, Electrolane (girl power rock), and The Arcade Fire were all good. Citizen Cope was awful. Ugh.

To get to the Gorge you have to drive over the Cascades throught Snoqualmie pass to get to central Washingon. It's really hard to explain how crazy mountains and snow pack are. It is a pretty amazing thing and most people do it every day and don't realize how beautiful it really is. It's true - you don't realize what you have until it's gone. Wow!

Right now I'm watching the Indy 500 and debating whether I should brave the wonderful Seattle mist to do something outdoorsy today. On second thought I think I might go tomorrow when it's supposed to be sunny and very nice. Weather like that sounds like a good time to go hiking and get up high up into some of the aforementioned snow covered mountains.

I'll post some pictures of this Gorge and various other things I've been meaning to highlight since I've been out here. I've got them ready to go but I need to buy a computer and post them. Two time consuming steps.

Fight for your right...

Amazon sells a boatload of books.

This is evidenced by the counter on the homepage approaching 700,000 presold copies of Harry Potter. Since we are a large bookseller one of the perks is Amazon holds something called Fishbowls. A fishbowl is basically an appearance by an author promoting a book for Amazon employees. A few weeks ago I saw Cal Ripken talking about baseball and how he used to give signs to the catcher, who would in turn relay them to the pitcher. Ben McDonald apparently sucks. He also wrote a kids book about the dubious honor of starting the 88 season off with 21 straight loses. Anyway, in a couple weeks Russell Simmons is speaking and I think this might be the most entertaining speaker to come in since I've been here. Simmons basically started the commerical rap movement in the 80's with Run DMC and later on Def Jam records. An entrepreneur and influential member of the african american community I'm sure he'll have a lot to say with the recent Imus mess and upcoming elections. He apparently has come out in support of Dennis Kucinich oddly enough.

On an unrelated note, if you ever get a moving stipend for "incidentals" during a big move such I've just made, don't spend the bulk of the money on a party. You really do incur a bunch of incidental expenses. I hadn't anticipated buying all the condiments the movers couldn't take with and I've spent a lot of money in the last few days buying stuff that I had to leave behind or throw away during the course of the move.

I'm buying a memory card for my camera before I go hiking this weekend so I hope to have some pretty cool pictures of Puget Sound, the Seattle skyline, and the Olympic Mountains. I need to take advantage of the outdoors or else I'll start to take it for granted.

I have a blog.

So I moved to Seattle a few weeks ago. My friend Jay has been hounding me to start posting on my blog so here is the first official entry. In a few days/weeks I intend to format this so it looks like something and start posting some pictures. I think there might be 2 people in the world who know about the blog so I'm not too worried yet. I'm going to a concert later tonight - Britt Daniel of Spoon - at a place called the Crocodile. Supposedly the Crocodile is the place where Nirvana got their start. I'm sure how much I buy that but it's a good story. I've now been to Neumo's, The Showbox, and soon The Crocodile and the Croc has a lot to live up to.

Good times.