Greg

the start of the sailing lessons

You might remember from September that we never got to take our sailing lessons last year.  This year we made sure to book in early-ish and yesterday we took the first of the lessons.  The way it's set up, you do a two hour class called "shore school" where you go over some basic terminology and the basic principles behind how sailing works, how to tack, etc.  So while I couldn't actually tack, dock the boat, or do anything like that, I can tell you what it means when the jib is luffing and that it's not possible to sail into the wind.  At least that's something :)

We didn't make it to the bonus sail that they did after the shore school session, but we're both very much looking forward to getting out there on Lake Union in the next couple weeks and learning how to do things ourselves...

Stay tuned for more updates on how the lessons go and how we get on with the sailing.  And if you're out on Lake Union and there's an out of control sailboat coming out you with someone talking like a pirate, don't worry - just give some us extra space until I get the hang of it :)

a quick tune-up and a upgrade for the bbq

A few weeks ago I finally got around to buying new "flavorizer bars" and grill grates for the bbq.  The weber has seen a hard three years of life with LOTS of usage and it was to the point where the bars were starting to rust and the current grate wasn't cleaning as well as it should.  But really the motivation behind finally buying stuff for the grill was that the propane regulator thing started to leak and I wanted to grill that night without blowing myself or our condo up.

That's the tune-up part.  The upgrade?  Well, while I was in the grill section of the store, I noticed that they sell rotisserie attachments for our model...  Intrigued, I tucked one away in the shopping cart, brought it home, and then promptly got busy enough that it took three weeks to try it out.  Well, no longer must I wonder how it works - last night we finally gave it a go!  One thing that suprised me was that there's only a couple of "rotisserie" specific reciepes in the grilling cookbooks that we have - I'm presuming that's because any "normal" reciepe can just be used if you want?  But if that's the case, why call out some as a "cuban rotisserie chicken" (which is what we had last night)?

Photo of the bird before cooking: boy were we worried that we hadn't tied it together well enough and it was going to fall apart.  We weren't really worried it would completely fall off - we had a pretty good feeling that the three foot long metal stick would prevent that from happening...

Photos of the bird after cooking: an hour and ten minutes (or so) later...  It's still there!  And looks might tasty, don't you think? :)

Are we going to use it again?  You betcha - it does help you end up with a very juicy chicken.  We just need to make sure that there's "kitchen twine" at the house so we don't start hunting for things we can use to tie the chicken to together.

Uber Tavern - discovery of a cool tavern in seattle

Last night I made it up to the Uber Tavern for the first time - it was the site of this week's pubnight.  Despite not being on the "future pubnight" backlog list, the pubnight moderators* decreed that we would try this place out.  And it was good.  Very good actually - it set a good tone when I saw that because they don't serve food they had a book of delivery menus handy behind the bar.  A lot of places won't give out if you bring in food, but they don't actively help you get it.  Once you tack on some cool atmostphere (the table around a fire pit was a definite bonus - I spent the entire evening playing with the glass chunks that were in the firepit :) and an excellent beer selection and you have a winner for a pub.

Lest you think that all was perfect, there were a couple of strange things.  Like the 2L (yes, that's 'L' for litres) boots of Spaten Pilsner that you could buy.  Who drinks two litres of beer.  And if you were to make such an attempt, wouldn't the bottom of the boot be disgustingly warm by the time you got to it?  Particularly if it was sitting next to an open flame? :)

So far pubnight has been very good for me seeing areas I usually don't visit, and for branching out in beer selection.  The strangest I had last night was a "calva reserva" which I chose because it was small and I was going to be leaving soon.  Yes, it was chosen after having forgotten the beer ordering guideline "beers only come in small bottles if they're strong."  Or in the case of calva reserva, super duper strong.

*"Pubnight moderators decreed" is code for Aaron suggested it and I agreed and sent it out later that night instead of the previously agreed upon location.  Which has now sparked a desire in Aaron to see how long we can go finding cool places and not using the list of pubs.  I'm OK with this as long as the places are cool, but eventually we do need to make it through the backlog of suggestions...

Playing the local tourist

It's been a while since I've posted and like usual, it either means I've been really busy or really lazy.  Or a bit of both :)

What's been keeping me busy these last few days?  Well, it feels like I've been a bit of a local tourist lately.  Including the Bonza Bash at the Space Needle, I've now been to or done the following "tourist like" activities in the last couple/few weeks:

• Visit the Space Needle (Bonza Bash)
• Visit Kerry Park to take photos of the Seattle skyline
• Eat at Lowell's in Pike Place Market, spend part of the day just puttering around the market
• Visit the new Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park
• Safeco Field and a Mariner's game

I even have some decent photos from a few of these things, and will likely be posting them in the next week or so.

When you add in that pubnight is getting me to areas of the city that I've never been to before, all in all it's been a busy few weeks :)

Stop! Thief!

After talking about it for a looooong time, we finally got plants out on the balcony last summer.  We didn't go too fancy - just some sort of woven grass like enclosure in a metal frame that hangs off of the railing.  Since they've been out there, we've managed to kill most of the plants that filled the boxes - with the exception of the parsely that's grown like it's on steroids.

Well, a few weeks ago I noticed that the condo-side of one of the planters seemed to be falling apart.  At first I thought it was our fault for not taking better care of the plants.  Maybe one had grown too much and the roots were pushing it out.  Or maybe the planter was defective.  Now I know the truth!  It seems that Spring has sprung and there's a new family of birds in the area building a nest.  A nest built with material from our planter.  Oh well, could be worse - it could have been a bee hive or wasp nest that went up by our place