Greg

Snow Lake - wilderness with people. Lots of people.

For a while now, Clodagh and I have been talking about going hiking - even to the point of buying hiking boots recently.  Until this weekend though, we hadn't made it to any trails though - it's been one thing after another where we just didn't have a large enough block of time open.  This past weekend we finally made it out to the snow lake trail near snoqualmie. 

The good:

• Gorgeous weather.  Not too hot.  Not too cool in the shade or with the breeze.
• Beautiful views of the lake.  Which just looked cold - but we could see people swimming down in it.  They're insane! :)
• Not too hard - it's about three miles out and three back, with a decent amount of up-hill hiking, particularly as you get up to the lake...  I'm definitely not at the highest fitness level in the world, so there were a few stops towards the end, but it wasn't so hard that it killed us on the first hike out.  And it made the walk back to the parking lot seem a bit easier since it was all down hill :)

The not so good:

• the directions on localhikes aren't quite right - they have you get off an exit too late.  Fortunately they mention alpental parking lot, so we were able to just follow the signs for alpental
• People.  People.  People.  Man, is this trail packed.  If you're looking for a trail that let's you believe you're the only ones (or one of the few) in that section of the world, this isn't it.  The saving grace was that the vast majority of people were very friendly...

The (few) photos taken are now online here.

How not to motivate yourself to keep going to the gym

Motivation on week two of being back in the gym is waning.  Perhaps the following has contributed?

Step 1. Go out on the lake and have your upper body become very sore from holding onto a tow rope
Step 2. Go to the gym the following day while still sore and lift weights for those very same muscles.  At a heavier weight then you'd done previously.
Step 3. Wince in pain every time you lift your arms or stretch your back.

That said, I'm getting better about running - ok, really it's using the damn lifercise machine or whatever it's called - for longer and at a higher level.  Which just means that I'm getting back to the level and time that I was able to do when I stopped going to the gym previously...

Miscellaneous Monday

A few random thoughts floating around the old brain this morning...

The next person who hears me say "nah, I don't need sunscreen yet" on a really sunny day has my permission to hit me.  Was out on a friend's boat yesterday afternoon and as you might imagine based on me mentioning it, I'm a bit pink/red today.  Ouch.  This is compounded by my arms/back being sore from hanging on for dear life to the inner tube's handles as I was being flung around the lake - which, despite it sounding like I didn't enjoy it, is incredibly fun.  They were telling me that wakeboarding is even better but my arms were too sore to give it a go yesterday...  Have to save something for next time, eh? ;-)

The dishwasher is scheduled to be reconnected on Friday.  This may actually be the highlight of August for me.  There's a couple questions we aren't sure of - like will he have the end-panel for the cabinet above the microwave, but all-in-all the dishwasher is by far the most important thing to finally get done...  I'll declare the kitchen finished at that point even if a couple of other fit-n-finish things remain!

The Eastlake Shake was this past weekend.  It's basically like a neighborhood party thing - there's a few (in the most literal sense of the words "a few") booths, a couple places doing food, a beer garden, and some live bands.  And the coolest part?  A kickball tournament amongst area businesses that culminates during the shake.  The first year we went Clodagh was making fun of how small it was.  I just figured that it *was* the first annual shake and that was why.  Now that this was the third annual shake, it's pretty clear that it's not going to grow much, if any.  I'm not sure that it needs to though - the current size is pretty representative of the neighborhood.  If it grew a lot, it would need big crowds coming in from across the city to sustain it.  Not to mention that I have no idea where they would put it...

Changing face of the city

Seattle is undergoing a revival, or so it seems to read the news and drive around.  Ballard today is different from Ballard a few years ago.  South Lake Union is undergoing a massive revamp and marketing campaign by Paul Allen's company.  Fremont has also become hipper and hipper, only in a quasi-yuppie way.  Many of the dodgier looking condos/apts/misc buildings have gone away in favor of a condo/apt building that seems to be the style of the day - 2 or 3 colors.  Metal showing.  Very "cool".  Can you tell that I'm not much for this style?

Now this is coming to Eastlake.  I think that it's probably been in process for the last few years and it just happens that I'm here when things are starting to come to fruition - and a quick read through the Eastlake History page shows that this seems to be the case...  Apparently the million-dollar plus condos of Mallard Cove on Roanoke was a student and low income apartment block in its former life.  The home of Porta Greek Taverna, Bandeleone, and Hines Coffee Market is being torn down to be replaced with street level retail/restaurant upper level apartments.  The work should be beginning soon - Porta and Hines are supposed to be out by end of Aug, Bandeleone already moved to Fremont a few months ago.  Even though we've only been here a couple of years it's weird to see this progress (as I suppose it's called) coming to our little section of Seattle.  What must those who've lived in the likes of Ranier Valley or Columbia City which are undergoing this change to the nth degree think?  The upshot is that when we go to sell all of this should help raise the property values so I'll get a better price.  The downside is that the area might be starting to lose a little bit of it's character...

Oh, and did I mention that we have a Starbucks in Eastlake these days?  And it's a standalone building.  At least the Subway is tucked into a strip mall relatively inoffensively...

[Edit 8/15/05 9:45 am: Add link to Eastlake history webpage (thanks for the link Aaron!)]

Auto racing doesn't have to be nascar(tm)

Earlier this afternoon we went out to Kent (which is far, far away from lake union) to go see the car racing there at Pacific Raceways.  Bruce's brother races (you can check out his car/team's web page.  My pictures from the the races we saw (and a couple random shots) have been uploaded.  This was road-style course where there were hair-pin turns and a nice straight stretch, not like "left-turn only" races.  This you could actually watch and enjoy!

Clodagh half-threatened that I wasn't going to be allowed to drive back on the way home because she thought I'd start driving crazy - and after watching them drive for a bit it definitely makes you want to drive very fast and pass people.  Fortunately I kept my sense as we saw a couple people pulled over while heading back up...  I keep going back and forth on the logic of buying a nice fun to drive car.  On the one hand it'd be really fun when you could drive fast - but on the other hand, it'd be incredibly frustrating when you're stuck in traffic and there's always the threat of the tickets and insurance hikes...

the kitchen remodel that will never end

If you read my blog regularly (hi Aaron!) you know that the kitchen still isn't finished.  We had plumbers come out to connect the kitchen sink, since the cabinet people were on vacation or something for a couple weeks in July.  Flash forward a couple weeks.  I've been leaving messages on the cabinet people's phone without any response and today I get that the mailbox is out of memory, so I talk to Lowe's. 

They can't get in touch with them either, but apparently the installers have had a death in the family and are out of town making arrangements.  I should hear something back "in a few days".  I'm more and more thankful we got the plumber out to hook up the kitchen sink in early July - I'd be ready to kill someone if we were still washing dishes in the bathroom sink.

Since I've just gotten back from Vegas and am still in somewhat of a gambling mindset: Over/Under on the kitchen remodel is now set at 4 months (that'd be end of Aug).  Who wants to place a bet?

Into August...

I've now been in the new job for a bit more than a week...  So far:

• Day 1: set up machine, read some docs
• Day 2: morning meetings, leave for a conference.
• Day 3,4,5: conference in Las Vegas.

Tough life, eh? 

The weekend before this I went home for a couple days to visit the folks...  I know it's nowhere the scale of what a consultant does on a weekly/monthly basis but I know that I couldn't do it on a regular basis.  I got back in Sunday night around 11 and then only had Monday to do laundry and pack for leaving on Tuesday.  I'd definitely get annoyed waaaaay too quickly.

While I was gone I missed the last 3 softball games, including our two playoff games, and now the season is over.  Softball is generally fun (the exception being the game that we got pounded because we didn't have enough players and the game that I forgot how to pitch) but I won't mind having my Sundays back.  Most of the games we played this year were in the mid-late afternoon and it makes it tough to go out and play golf or go for a hike or anything like that.