Category: Work

Categories
General Travel Work

Finally, a post

Finally a followup to my last post since returning from London. The cold I got at the end of the trip lasted quite a while, much longer than I'd hoped (and then, sadly, I gave it to Kelly), and since then I've been getting back into the normal life.

Over the past couple weeks I've gone out with friends, visited with family, and have been very busy catching up with work.

I'm still working on adding captions to my photo site from the trip, though at this rate it's going to take forever to get it all sorted. I also want to set up a sub-gallery of the 100 or so 'top' photos of the trip. However, I suspect it may be a little while until I get it set up, so hopefully you all don't get too bored with the mess of photos that I posted.

Some potential good news (trying not to jinx things), Kelly's had a couple really positive interviews for a job opening that would be perfect for her. I'm keeping fingers crossed (and you should too!). 🙂

Categories
Travel Work

Home, head cold, holiday snaps

Well we made it home safe. I didn't write Monday when we got back because we didn't make it home until 9:30 and after being up and going for 20 hours, it was all I could do to make it to the couch and pass out. What made it all worse was that when I got up in London on Monday morning I had a stuffy head and sore throat. The flight only aggravated things because when I woke up Tuesday I was even more sick, with a chest full of gunk. So I took that day slept a lot, watched a lot of classic Star Trek episodes, and caught up on emails.

I woke up today and felt a great deal better. In fact, due to the timezone shift I'm waking up at 5:45 or 6:00am every day, so I got up and managed to sort through photos and add them to the gallery finally. Yes, that's right, there's photo's online! Go here to check 'em out. I cut them down to 655 photos (from over 1800). I could probably keep cutting, but eh… nobody has to look at 'em all. And I usually appreciate having more online later anyway (rather than having to dig up a CD backup).

I'm still fiddling with the gallery itself (the themes that come with the software leave something to be desired), and adding descriptions and keywords (it's going to be a long process) but you can at least get a look at all the things I'd blogged about over the past week or so.

Working from home today, and regardless, I have to go to work tomorrow, but at least I don't feel like I'm dying like I did yesterday. Chat with you all soon! 

Categories
Beer Food News Work

Outing with work folk

Today SuperSweetCo launched a new version of the fancy new web-based collaboration software. To celebrate, the team who make it go went out after work for food and drinks. We started off walking up to Jake's Grill, which is on the ground floor of the historic Governor Hotel. The happy hour menu at Jake's is incredible, everything is $1.95, and it's not all small appetizers, but full meals such as the 1/2 pound cheeseburger with fries. I had a small hummus plate and it was delicious. After sitting around and sipping on a few pints of Guinness we walked down to Kells to meet up with a few more coworkers. Had a great time.

Kelly met up with us at Kells (she had a happy hour with a friend not far away) and we rode the bus homeward together. We ended up taking a bus that ends up pretty far away from home, but the weather was great so we decided it wouldn't be a problem. We get off the bus on the corner of 15th and Alberta, only to remember that it's Last Thursday, a monthly event held up Alberta for about 20 blocks, with art, crafts, musicians, hippies, yuppies, and everything inbetween (good blog about it with pics here). As we turned the corner we ran into our friends Ty & Aymie (Aymie had a table set up selling her bead works). Chatted with them for a bit before wading through the heavy crowds to get home. Apparently a couple hours later there was a brawl between some drunken idiots and cops, ending up with riot cops showing up. Some moron apparently threw a beer bottle at a cop, the cop tazer'd the moron, and then the moron's friends started fighting back, and it escalated from there. Sheesh. Bunch of morons.

Categories
Beer Entertainment General Movies Work

Unghhh

What a week, and what a day.

The past week has been pretty crazy at work. SuperSweetCo is prepping a new version of the software that I worked on a few months back. The UI is changing a little bit, which means that there's quite a bit of work for me to do. I can only hope the changes are received as big improvements. Stress!

After work yesterday I decided to walk homeward for a bit, the weather was nice, and I needed the physical and mental break from the week. I ended up walking about halfway home (at little over 3 miles) before catching a bus. Once I got home I drank a few beers and watched some movies from Netflix that K had already seen during the week. One of them was a pretty good (and quirky) romantic comedy called Happy Accidents. In general, anything with Vincent D'Onofrio I like… and Marisa Tomei isn't hard on the eyes either.

Today I had to get up early to help my friend Jenn move. In general helping a friend move is relatively easy, not because I'm all that fit, but it's normally pretty straight-forward… move stuff from point A to B. However in this case my friend Jenn swapped houses with a friend who lived about 3 blocks away. This might sound simple, but it's not. It meant that myself and the 10 other hard-working blokes had to fill the moving truck for a couple hours (climbing and descending steps and stairs, weighed down with heavy boxes, furniture and appliances), only to get to the other house, unload all that stuff, only to refill the moving truck with the stuff from the other house… effectively starting all over. Despite a couple beers and a short pizza break, after four hours I was exhausted. I'm not used to that level of strain. Oh, and the best part was about half-way through it started raining. Whee! All my complaining aside, I was still happy to help Jenn move. Just hope I never have to help move a house-swap ever again. It's a bit like rubbing salt in a wound. 🙂

After getting home and washing the stink off, and spending a couple hours relaxing (and letting the soreness set in) K and I joined Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at the Mash Tun for a fantastic meal and some delicious beers. One of the beers that both GD and I enjoyed was a brown ale called Turbodog from Abita Brewing Co. in Louisiana. It was a delicious, quality brown ale with a slightly sweet and bitter flavor. And, it's got a cool name! 🙂 Had a great night, but I'm feeling very sore. I suspect tomorrow is going to suck. 

Categories
General News Travel Work

Travel news, and stupid ants

So something I didn't write about earlier like I should have, Kelly and I booked our flight to London late Sunday (yup, after I ate two full plates of meat, maybe that had something to do with my complicity?) We're leaving Saturday, April 28th, flying British Airways direct from Seattle to London, and will return on Monday, May 7th. We're both really looking forward to the trip, despite Kelly's recent unemployment. This all seems so familar. Perhaps this means Kelly will find a kick-ass job and start shortly after our return. It just seems so weird. See Kelly's post for all we plan to do while in London. All of that aside, we'll also make it over there a couple months before the smoking ban that will take effect in July. My last chance to enjoy a pint and a fag in an English pub. Hooray for me!

Now for the downer, Kelly yesterday pulled a beeping smoke alarm from the ceiling only to get covered with ants. Here we thought we'd solved our ant problem, only to discover hundreds of them in the walls. We have an exterminator coming out tomorrow, but dammit, so annoying, and potentially a very expensive issue. Grrrr. Stupid ants.