++ I SLEPT for 12 hours last night! yeah, i took some medicine for what i suppose is allergies, ate dinner and fell asleep. heather woke me up at 10.30 and slumped off the couch and into my bed without missing a snooze, i mean snore. i'm still tired today.

the house i live in is a triplex. they broke up the two story house with the basement into three livable spaces. the landlord lives on the top floor with her two children and husband. heather and i live on the first floor and the landlord's sister lives in the basment, which is converted into a nice living area (it even has windows). well the landlord has decided to go on a landscaping/cleaning spree and what was once a front yard overgrown with bushes and errant 'stuff' in the yard has/is becoming what looks like will be a nice landscaped front yard. the only drawback is the recently popular (among heather and i) snails which used to live in the bushes in front of the porch haven't been back since they have removed the bushes. i can't figure out if its because the snails lived in the bushes or because it hasn't rained in a while, because the snails never came out until night-time and only if it had rained that day. i hope they come back. i promise i won't accidentally step on on them again.

i had a dream last night and it was weird. l-ulu k-itten was in it. apparently in my dream i was at her house, which is actually my friend's parent's house. i was trying to drive my parent's old red minivan from their garage through the door into the house and down the hallway. well i had just got it into the driveway when l-ulu k-itten's parents came home. they also had a minivan. they pulled up into the garage and l-ulu k-itten walked past me standing in the doorway to put her food in the fridge. her parent's (who i have never met or even seen before) stopped on their way in the house to talk to me. l-ulu k-itten came back and stood next to me. her parent's kept on asking me questions and talking. end of story. it was really awkward. good story i know. ++

++ WENT TO VISIT a-n (old) p-al today in beautiful portland, oregon. heather and i drove to the washington coast and then down us-101 (the same us-101 in california .. the pacific coast highway) all the way down the southern half of washington's coast and then down a bit of the oregon coast to seaside, oregon and then east to portland. the weather along the coast was much nicer today than yesterday. cold, not as much as yesterday (i didn't use a jacket today). windy, not so much. fishermen, nope (there were people flying kites though). sand, the same amount as yesterday. rocks, must have been high tide, there were only a few. overcast, i saw a spot of blue in the sky. rain, nada. scenery, still awesome. worth it, yup. i even had someone to share it with today.

we also stopped by the washington state capitol (in olympia, washington) and had a poke around. they have a fountain out in front of the capitol which they say is a replica of the tivoli fountain in tivoli park, copenhagen, denmark. (which honestly, to me doesn't look anything like it, but uh i've never been there i guess, so who am i to make judgements and comparisons from pictures off the internet? oh wait, this picture of the fountain looks a little more like the one in washington )

oh right, so we drove 3.5 hours to see a-n (old) p-al (who had just flown in today and drove straight from the airport to the pearl district to meet us for dinner) and had dinner at this little french restaurant named Chez something. it was super good. a little expensive (for my feeble money-in-the-bank) and of course small proportions, but good food. an hour and a half for dinner and then we said goodbye and left to drive back 3.5 hours for seattle! its always nice to see old-school friends. ++

++ I WOKE UP at 6.00am this morning. that is by far the earliest i have been up this entire quarter. a few hours drive and it was the beaches of washington. cold, yes. windy, yes. fishermen, yes. sand, well kind of. rocks, where the sand isn't. overcast, (its washington in the springtime, of course.) rain, the mist kind. scenery, awesome (its the coast, of course). worth it, yup. ++

++ TWO THINGS occurred to me today (well more than two, but two specifically). 1. referring to monday, april 21 - i am not a murderer of snails. it was involuntary snail-slaughter. (knee-slapper. haha.) 2. referring to saturday, april 19 - peeps are just marshmellows and sugar. this didn't occur to me when i was biting the head off one of those yellow bunnies which all sit in neat little rows stuck together at their sides and ears. yesterday at work i was looking at the decapitated (invluntary bunny-slaughter?) peep and noticed it was white inside. i'm an idiot.

weak of heart, don't click here. those who wish to see something gross click here. i'm warning you though, its pretty gross. as in snails dying by the foot of some woman who decided to make a video of it and sell it for $65. ew.

this morning was absolutely beautiful! it was the best spring morning i've seen in seattle so far. it was sunny through a light fog, the kind that makes the entire place just glow and radiate with omniscient light. and the air was crisp, but not searing or cutting, just crisp. and well it was a good morning to be in seattle.

and we went to a mariner's game last night. i got to see the roof close before the game. "holy cow" that thing is big. and the whole roof is actually these space trusses turned vertically, which act as columns upon which these huge 15 foot hydraulic jacks support the space trusses which span the field. its pretty incredible. oh right, the mariners beat the indians last night 4-2. i was torn between being a seattle fan or representin' the big OH. (granted i'm not from cleveland, but its 'east of the mississippi, way over there'.

joke of the day: "what is the longest word in the english language?"
..
..
.."smile. between the first and last letters of the word is a 'mile'." ++

++ SOUTHCENTER MALL - think any suburban mall (because they’re everywhere) and put it next to a highway (because that’s where they are always located) and put a sea of parking around it (as always) more smaller strip malls surrounding the sea of parking (because it wouldn’t be a mall otherwise) and then put a rainforest café in it. and that’s where we went yesterday. nothing new. nothing shocking, i know. here lies the point of my story. heather and i were walking around the mall (because that’s what you do at malls) and heather wanted to go into abercrombie and fitch (because she had not been in there in a very long time) so who am i to argue with, there are hot girls in there (granted half of them are in high school) and who knows, maybe I’m cool enough to shop there now (nope, never was, never will be) and they play good music. so of course i didn’t find anything i wanted, i could afford, i want, but heather found a $5 sweater. so she goes to buy it and the girl who was at the cash register (actually all the girls) was wearing ¾ pants and a maroon tank top and she was falling out of her shirt! it was enough where even heather made a comment about it. anyway, the reason why I write about this is because seattle is full of people who are physically unattractive. not that that means anything, yeah yeah i know, because there is more to the book than the cover. but seriously, people in seattle are ugly on the whole. (maybe you could argue they are weathered or they are beautiful in other ways, but traditional beauty here, traditional meaning east-coast style is rare) so if you want to see physically attractive people, go to the suburbs or to abercrombie and fitch.

a&f bad things: i’m not cool enough to buy their clothes. their clothes fall apart easily.
a&f good things: i’m not cool enough to buy their clothes. pretty people to look at. (and girls who are wearing practically nothing and falling out of what they are wearing)
a&f gross things: high school girls who are looking at lace, see-through g-string panties, who are ugly and bigger than people who should be wearing stuff like that.
a&f even grosser thing: 8 high school girls who are no older than 16 looking at the g-string panties and thinking about trying it on.
a&f make me puke most grossest thing: the ugliest 1 out of the 8 high school girls who are no older than 16 try on the lace, see-through g-string panty (thank goodness I didn’t see). ++

++ WEEKLY OFFICE MEETING - whenever there is an office meeting or any meeting for that matter where food is involved, i know when the meeting or appointment is suppossed to occur. i know when we are late in starting it. i know when we should have started. i know, only because the food is free, sometimes i don't even know what the meeting is about. sometimes i'm not even suppossed to be attending the meeting. still, i know. oh yes. i know when free food is abound.

i saw snails outside on the porch again tonight. it was amazing! i saw about 20 of them. the smallest being about 1/8" in diameter. the largest being just a tad bigger than the size of a quarter coin. these dimensions being the size of the shell. and i saw a snail without a shell. it looked weird. kind of like a slug. (i'll slug you.) did you know a snail has both male and female reproductive organs. and its eyes are actually on the tentacles which protrude from its head, but it has really poor eyesight (probably because they keep moving them around in small circles kind of like i dance.) most everything i've found says that snails eat plants and decaying matter. well after i stepped on a snail a few days ago i went back outside a little later and the snails i had not stepped on were eating the dead snail. these things are carnivores also apparantly! we have cannibalistic snails living in the bushes next the porch outside our house! lovely. can't wait to see what else washington throws at me.

more useless animal facts.

it rained today. which is both a good thing and a bad thing. good-makes everything green. bad-rainy, again. good-free car wash. bad-more standing water in my car. good-get to see the snails on my front porch. bad-i might step on another one. good-going climbing. bad- too poopy to enjoy the outdoor for the evening. good-time to drive to another part of the city i haven't been to yet to explore. bad-heather hates driving, when its dry out. rain just means i drive more. good-i like driving. bad-not all the time. good-well it's mostly moisture outside in some form or another all the time so this isn't a big change. (its atmosphere). bad-its all the time. good-not all the time, just most of the time. bad-right, whatever i'm lying and i know it. good-whatever. bad-see, i told you. good-whatever. bad-ha. i win.

++ IN THE THICK OF TRAFFIC
A blind man is walking down the street with his seeing-eye dog one day. They come to a busy intersection, and the dog, ignoring the high volume of traffic zooming by on the street, leads the blind man right out into the thick of traffic. This is followed by the screech of tires and horns blaring as panicked drivers try desperately not to run the pair down. The blind man and the dog finally reach the safety of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, and the blind man pulls a cookie out of his coat pocket and offers it to the dog. A passerby, having observed the near fatal incident, can't control his amazement and says to the blind man, "Why on earth are you rewarding your dog with a cookie? He nearly got you killed!" The blind man turns partially in his direction and replies, "To find out where his head is, so I can kick his ass." ++

++ I SPOTTED MORE SNAILS on the front porch today. there are a lot of them! its really cool. any time it rains, there are 5 or 6 snails that come out to play on our steps and on the porch. the bad thing, you have to watch out for them so that you don't step on them and kill them. most are about the size somewhere between a nickel and a quarter.

i made my pilgrimage to costco today. that is one big store. i forgot how huge those stores are and exactly EVERYTHING they sell, which is more or less everything. i also forgot how expensive it is to buy things in bulk. it doesn't seem like are getting that much food and it doesn't seem like its going to be that expensive until you get to the check out counter and its $110!!!!!! holy wow thats a lot of money...and we only got maybe 10-15 things! (granted its not so much 10-15 things as 10-15 packs of three or whatever you buy) but seriously, thats a lot of food. and to think they sell it at a discounted price too. so costco was expensive, but on the other hand we won't have to go shopping for about another 5 months.

after we got back home we had to unload the car in shifts. i had a huge load of whatever we bought and couldn't see over the top of what i was carrying. crunch. shit. ew. snail guts on the bottom of my black dress shoes. and its oozing down the steps. gross! it was one of the bigger ones too. the nastiest part is i heard it crunch and then goo splatter all over. and then i looked back and saw it and that is even more gross! so now there is one less snail to spot. (and to make it more gross and disgusting, heather was playing with the snail when we left to go to costco and i'm sure i stepped on the same one. she called me a murderer. which theoretically i guess i am. damn. guess i'm going to hell. well that sucks.) the snail should have saw i was coming and moved out of the way. ++

++ ITS EASTER TODAY. yay, i guess. (heather seemed awfully happy about it). i'm not so sure. i mean i know its a major holiday and more importantly a celebration of the re-birth of Jesus Christ and all that, but i guess its just not that big of a deal to me. not that i don't believe in God and all that, because i do, i just don't think its that big of a deal. (as in why can't i praise and worship Him when i want, where i want, however i want) do i have to go to church to do that? isn't there any other way? i dunno. i think i'm already treading on thin water with this subject, not only with today but just in general.

i watched the red violin again last night. its a beautiful movie. and it makes me want to play the viola again.

heather and i went to ihop for brunch this morning. reminded me of this past summer in san francisco when we went to go visit n-onstop f-ashion while she was at work waitressing. ahh the memories.

yeah not much happenned today. it was a really mellow weekend.

oh yeah and correction. the irs quote is from a snoopy comic strip posted in the office kitchen. thanks b-orn h-appy. ++

++ i went to the tulip festival today 60 minutes north in mount vernon. i've never seen so many cars in one place just to see flowers. its not like you can see them growing. they don't dance for you. all you do is drive (or sit and idle your car slowly at 0.3mph) to one of the fourteen tulip and daffodil farms, park, get out of you car, and walk to see a field full of tulips. some are white, some are purple, some are pink, and most of them are red. you take a few pictures, then you hop back in your car and drive to the next farm and repeat. this will continue until you realize they all look the same and realize you have just wasted half your day looking at the same stuff which you saw in the first 5 minutes upon getting out of your car at the first farm.

highlights of the tulip farms: seeing the lone renegade yellow tulip invade the sea of red tulips. hearing every language in the world besides english. (seriously, who would come to see tulips besides tourists. its not like they don't bloom every year.) eating a $4 "bloomin' onion" and buying a 16 once 'fresh-squeezed' lemonade for $4 at the fair part of the festival. (talk about an expensive meal. and we only got to sit on picnic tables. and they didn't give us napkins. $4 for an onion deep-fried with flour, water, and bread crumbs. and $4 for water, sugar, and lemon juice.)

i must admit though, the daffodils and tulips were pretty. who would have ever thought i would have spent an entire day and driving an hour to go see flowers.

for all you who like to go peeping (not to be confused with peeing).

and if you want a free zours sample. ++

++ I SIGNED UP for a kayak class at REI with heather for may 13. its not a whitewater class, but flat-water kayaking, otherwise known as sea-kayaking. (which isn't flat the more i think about it.) i'm pretty excited.

i also have learned four, yes count them four, new commands in autocad since coming to work. i probably have known them at one point in my life and consequently forgot them and now have re-learned them and am just as excited as when i probably first learned them. they are draworder, attedit, imageframe, and imageclip. pretty exciting stuff i know. makes anyone want to be in my shoes. i also remembered a command i haven't used since my last co-op, snapbase. this is sad, not only am i excited to know these commands but i just spent 5 minutes typing about them.

i walked by the chapel of st. ignatius today to get lunch (its only two blocks away) and they were revarnishing the two wooden exterior doors. also exciting. uh huh. i'm pretty lame. i did get into work today at 7.30am. and its friday. what was i thinking?

oh yeah! so today i had to go...you know i HAD TO GO. the view downtown isn't as nice as i thought it would be. and there is three windows, well two full size windows and a half window. ++

++ I ALMOST CRASHED yesterday in my car coming home from work. there was a ladder sprawled across a lane and a half of traffic on the freeway. i didn't see it until i was right in front of it. i swerved, ran over the end of the ladder, swerved to fix my swerve and then swerved to fix the swerve in which i tried to fix the initial swerve. i didn't crash. but i almost did.

i peeked into the women's bathroom today at work. traditionally its the women's bathroom, but you know if you gotta go, you gotta go. (one of the partners told me this. i swear.) well i didn't have to go, but i wanted to see what perks the women get while they are taking care of business. here they are: two windows with nice views downtown, an elevated throne so they can see out the two windows with nice views downtown. a bathtub with a clear shower curtain so they can see out the two windows with nice views of downtown. and no curtains on the windows, so they will always be able to see out the two windows with nice views downtown. on the flip side, everyone they can see, can see them too. the only thing the men get in their bathroom is a little cup which holds strike anywhere matches so when we let loose of number 2 and drown 'em, we can pay tribute to them by stirking the strike anywhere matches on the brick wall which the sink faces and then blow out the match and put it on the tray. (we don't even have to throw it away. apparantly someone else does that.) women get nice views, men get fire. ++

++ OVERHEARD tonight at the climbing gym: "i have receipts and accounting books scattered all over my room. if i get audited by the irs, i'm going to go to jail. so i'm looking for an accountant for my company. i'm looking for an accountant who is not ethical, just kind of ethical. someone who will fudge numbers, but keep me and them out of jail." all of this was said with a smile. (i know beacuse i couldn't believe what i was hearing out loud in the very public climbing gym, so i stared drop-jawed listening.) unbelieveable.

I was driving to pick heather up downtown today (just like i do everyday after work, so she doesn't have to take the transfer, which she says takes a half hour more as opposed to me picking her up and taking only 5 minutes. plus she gets to avoid the creepy man) and i saw woman whose right front wheel had come completely off. i guess the axel broke or something, but it was weird. i couldn't figure out where the other tire had gone. i didn't see it underneath her car. i didn't see it down the street. she must have had it on when she first started driving, because her car was halfway around a turn, thus blocking my lane of traffic and the other lane of traffice also going in my direction.

oh yeah and heather went to olympic national park. i said that yesterday. but the great thing was, we were really hungry, so on the car ride back we stopped to get pizza at dominos and they didn't have any tables, so we ate it in the car. a whole pizza. straight from the box. it was great. ++

++ TAXES - one word. suck. i can't believe i'm going to have to do them for the rest of my life. "dear internal revenue service: i am writing to you to cancel my subscription. please remove my name from your mailing list." oh yeah and i mailed off my taxes today and forgot to sign them.

COMPUTERS - i think my computer here at work may blow up. anytime i (try) to do a command (inevitably in autocad) which is 'complicated' and requires the computer to do more than just draw a line, extend, or trim a line, it starts billowing steam and "error, not responding." i forgot co-ops and interns get the computers that no-one else wants (or can use) because they are absurdly archaic.

oh yeah, i went to olympic national park this past saturday. beautiful. 6 mile hike next to a river. not quite as scenic as the halfdome hike in yosemite or the rim to river hike in the grand canyon, but pleasant and beautiful in the washington sort of way, complete with...you guessed it, rain. but i got a new camelbak (actually its a hydropak) and it works wonders and its light and i like it. ++

++ I SLEPT too much saturday night. and now its 2.12am and i have to get up in 5 hours to go to work. and i'm not tired. this sucks.++

++ WE HAVE SNAILS outside on the four steps leading up to our porch at night. they are the storybook snails that poke their long neck and head out of their shells and have anteneas moving around in circles slowly. i didn't see any of them move, but i saw five of them and one was decently big. i've never seen any before, so i thought it was really cool.

++ WENT TO REI tonight and started looking at kayaks. and did some pricing in my head, ok actually extensive pricing to see how much it will cost me and it will cost me a lot. so heather and i are going to go sea kayaking a few times to see if we like it and if we do...well who knows what we may end up lugging back 2900 miles strapped to the top of my humble 1996 green honda sedan. so the break down of cost (all in approximations):
$0600 - flat water sea kayak.
$0100 - paddle
$0050 - pfd (personal flotation device. think rubber duckie around your waist. ok, maybe more like life vest.)
$0050 - spray skirt
$0400 - yakima car rack including kayak mounts
--------- - equals
$1200 - total without tax.

so yeah. thats a lot of money. guess i'm going to have to go try it out. but first some hiking and trail running in Olympic National Park.++

++ SCARY ITEM of the day: i was walking to go get lunch and i saw a homeless man mumbling incoherently while drinking a foe-ty (40) and brandishing his pocket knife while staring at me as i passed by him. creepy.

FUNNY ITEM of the day: i was walking back to my office and i saw a sign in a window that read, "chair for lease."

QFC: the (one of two) local QFC store has a seattle's best coffee 'house' which spills into the grocery store. this seattle's best coffee 'house' comes complete with a fireplace and a hearth. also attached to the QFC is a noah's bagels store which is kind of connected, but more so only through an opening connecting the two. its more part of the building and they just decided one day they were going to knock a hole through the wall and connect it to the grocery store. there are tables and chairs which sit in between the checkout counters and the noah's bagels store. they don't really belong to either. anyway, the point of me talking about these two items is i went there to get groceries last night about 10pm and i saw college kids hanging out at the grocery store. ok, not the grocery store per se, but the coffee shop and the table in between the grocery store and noah's bagels. granted this place is close to the university of washington, but still, a grocery store? i guess its a local "hang-out" spot and study area. there were students (i can only assume) studying at the tables which belong to neither the bagel shop or the grocery store and in the coffee shop. it was weird. only a college student would find 'fun' in an environment like this. when they get bored of sitting next to the hearth, they go to the books/magazine aisle and sit on the lfoor and read or go buy a drink and then go back and have their 'fireside evening chat.' amazing. ++

++ Top Ten Things I've Learned about Seattle so far...

10. I FORGOT AT WORK THEY DISABLE TO CAPS LOCK BUTTON SO THAT EVERYTHING YOU TYPE IS IN CAPS. ALWAYS. THE ONLY WAY TO GET LOWER CASE LETTERS IS TO HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT BUTTON WHEN TYPING.
9. "The preferred vehicle in Seattle is a Sports Utility Vehicle, ideally a BMW, Cadillac or Mercedes model. However, under no circumstances should these be
used for anything other than hauling groceries home from the supermarket."
8. There really are Canadians here and do say, "eh." And "soe-rry." For a more precise description of Suburban Seattle Women and Suburban Vancouver Women...
http://www.seattlesucks.com/page6.htm
7. Everyone in Seattle is against the war in Iraq. You see it on bumper stickers, on signs taped to windows, in store windows, in house windows, and taped to
baby's foreheads.
6. The Monorail actually has three rails.
5. There are Asians everywhere here. The only place where I've seen more Asians in one place was Asia. The only thing which rivals the amount of Asians here are
the Terriyaki Asian Restaurants.
4. Seattle doesn't rain everyday, its more like someone spraying you with a mist bottle, 24 hours a day, from every direction, and its the cold kind of
mist.
3. Seattle is never clear. Cloudy yes. Partly cloudy, yes. Rain, yes. Mist, constantly. Sun, (I'm not sure they know what that means here.)
2. People in Seattle don't know what 4 seasons are. They only know one, rain. (When it does happen to hit one of the other 3 seasons, everyone runs to the grocery store to stock up on canned foods and water...and first aid kits with bandaids, because they think its a terrorist attack.)
1. Alaskans have 100 words for snow, Egyptians have a 100 words for sand, and Seattle-ans have 2 word for rain, always and wet. ++

++ SO IT SEEMS or (h)rumor has it SARS has reached the seattle area through some (dirty) sailors who just sailed from hong kong. although i haven't heard anything about t recently. maybe they died or or it went away? yeah i'm not sure.

work is well. a bit quiet. i've been here for a week now and feeling alright. not too rushed to get anything done, but not sitting around surfing the internet either. and i've been on two site visits, in the first two days. i think thats about as many as i have gone on in all my other co-ops combined. its really relaxed. sometimes i feel like i'm over-dressed. maybe i should stop wearing a three piece tuxedo to work everyday. people wear jeans and t-shirts to work everyday or at least someone does everyday. and they don't have casual fridays, because pretty much everyday is casual. its a nice atmosphere. and i have a skylight over my desk. how nice is that. (except for the afternoon glare...which is not really a problem seeing as how its mostly been overcast so far.)

there is a western union a little ways on my walk to work. i pass by there about 7.55 every morning and every morning there is a different person waiting at the door for it to open. and never the same person. never the same crowd. one day a homeless man, the next day two mexicans, the next a guy well dressed in a business suit and tie, the next day a middle class soccer mom in sweat pants. i don't get it. does the western union here give free handouts. where do i take a number? maybe a raffle? guess my number just hasn't been called yet.

oh yeah and the mist, seattle has mist all the time. its not an outright rain all the time (just to dispell the rumors and folklore.) it is rain sometimes, but most of the time it is a mist or a light drizzle. but its enough to piss you off and make you want it to stop. and here's why, the amount of moisture collected on my shoes runs off onto my car mats after i get in the car, right? not a problem. except that every day there is a little bit more moisture and so the other day i stepped into my car and there was some standing water where my car mat was. granted it was avery small amount of actual standing water, but there was accumulated wetness there. there was always just enough rain there (and it hasn't been warm, so none of it evaporated or dried up obviously) that it just keeps getting more and more, so i had to spend a half hour slamming my car mats down on the pavement drying to flush all the water out. i must have looked like an idiot beating a car mat against the sidewalk. its still not dry. ++

++ I CAUGHT MYSELF talking to myself out loud 4 times yesterday. I figured it out. its lonely because the only human interaction when you live alone is 1. over the phone ande 2. when i purchase something. luckily i live with someone, so now i have three forms of interaction. well four if you count people at work. and the other day before heather got into town i fixed myself some dinner and it was super good, except i was the only one enjoying it, and well so it wasn't so enjoyable anymore, so i only ate half of it (which never happens) and put the rest in the fridge. so then heather flew into town and we fixed dinner and it was super good, but then i wasn't so hungry, so i ate half of it and threw the rest in the fridge. good story. i know. i'll tell another.

i went to go re-heat my food from the fridge only to finally realise we don't have a microwave. i never knew how great mmicrowaves were until i tried to heat my food up in the oven. those plates are hot when you take them out of the oven after they have been sitting in there for an hour. its too bad the food doesn't actually heat up with plate and the oven. it just gets hard and crusty on the top and cold in the middle. on the other hand if you put foil on top of it...it takes even longer than the hour it takes to get a crusty top and its still not warm. ++