Nothing Interesting

I have been doing nothing of interst to the outside world. Monday - Thursday I was in a class in Fife (by Tacoma) on C++ from 8-5. Then I drove back to Seattle and met with my study group to work on our project. Wednesday, of course, I actually went to class from 6-10pm as well - so I was in a class for 12hours!!!!! I really learned a lot in the C++ class - it was worth the time. There were some basic programming concepts that hadn't really taken root in my brain when doing VB last quarter - this class really helped "solidify my understanding" of them.

We got our final exam Wednesday for systems design and analysis and database systems. It's REALLY long and it's due Tuesday at 10AM - oh boy.

Like I said - nothing interesting.

Ohana Karaoke Night

Beware of Blue Hawaiians...bad idea. No - I did not sing.

Happy Birthday to John

Today John is 33! We celebrated a bit yesterday because one day is just not enough.

First we went to see The Bourne Supremacy  downtown at Meridian 16.  It was so nice to sit in the air conditioning for a while!  It was a fairly decent movie, but nothing really great.  

Then we went to happy hour at Axis and had $2.99 pizzas and a couple of mojitos.  It wasn't that great - same experience as we had before, but at least we tried it twice before deciding it wasn't very good.

Then came the really fun part - parasailing!!!! It's so much fun!  It's like sitting in a mobile swing above Puget Sound.

John takes a picture of the boat from WAY up high.

One of the other guys on the boat with us - Larry from Tacoma. Nice view hu?

I got to drag my feet in the water. It was COLD!

Way up high.

What a beautiful city.

The sun sets over a ship in Elliot Bay

The Coast Guard patrols have machine guns mounted in front - feel safe?

Book Releases

I forgot to post about my bookcrossing releases Saturday.  I found a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Voyager really cheap at Half-Price Books, so I bought them and did a themed release.  I walked down the waterfront and put JLS on the statue of Ivar feeding the gulls in front of Ivar's famous fish place.   

Then I went down to the cruise ship terminal to release Voyager.

Can you spot the book?

Computers and dancing

Today I spent most of my time wrestling with computers.  I went up to school to get my computers all cleared out and set up for the fall.  One of my former students who is a computer guru volunteered to help and he is awesome!  We spent about 2 hours on trying to remove and install various programs before I had to go to a class (in the same building) where I was learning about hardware and took apart a computer.  Meanwhile, my computer guru figured out a much better way to fix all of the computer systems in my room, so things should be running smooth by the fall.  I have to go back tomorrow and put together the computer I took apart in class today!
 
After that wonderful experience, I fought traffic to get back to Seattle, had 30 minutes at home to say hi to Darwin, and headed to U. Village Zoka's for a team study session.  We are working on a big project for our systems design and analysis class.
 
When I got home at 9:45 I ate a quick bite, looked up my homework for the hardware class and then DANCED.  Yes - danced.  We ordered a dance pad for the Xbox and it is way too much fun.  This is definitely the best way to have a workout.

In the neighborhood

I decided to test out the new cameras I bought for yearbook by taking pictures of interesting things in my neighborhood.  Here are a few to give you a bit of the flavor of where I live.   You can click on any of the photos and then maximixe your window to see it in all its glory - or not.

This one is the weird bird-food pile that I am always updating you about.  See - it's really in a weird place. 

This is a concrete stairway in the middle of the sidewalk that leads nowhere. It makes a nice place to sit though.

Here is a great picture of John outside of our favorite local place to hang out.

And another of the same

Our friend Monty - the super barista acting super cheesy for the camera.

Cascadia restaurant - they have awesome happy hour with mini burgers and baskets of garlic rosemary fries. Yummy.

Often when I pass this sign I find myself singing a little Monty Python ditty about sacred sperm - you know the one. OK - click here if you couldn't get the audio version.

Marco's Supper Club

Rudy's Barber Shop - not your father's barber shop!

Our building - The Vine. We live in the high-rise (tan) part.

Ok - last one because I have stuff to do. This is in the P-Patch community garden right across the street from our place.

Ouch!

I was walking along in Trader Joes looking at organic vegetable broth in boxes and somehow I ran over my little toe with the shopping cart.  Like all toe injuries - it hurt, but I just ignored it and kept going until I looked down and saw that I was bleeding on my shoe and the floor.   (OK - you really need to be visualizing this now) I slid out of my shoe and stood on one foot holding a Kleenex to my toe and holding on to the shopping cart with the other hand.  I stopped a sales person and asked if he might have a bandage and he proceeded to go around to all of the cashiers frantically looking for a band-aid.  He brought me an antiseptic wipe because he was "concerned about the cleanliness of the cart wheels", and then ran to the back of the store to find a band-aid because none of the cashiers had any.  He came back with a wide assortment for me to choose from (I took the finger-tip kind to wrap all the way around) and then asked me to be sure and let him know if I required any other assistance.  I was quite embarrassed by this point, but decided there was nothing else to do but hobble along and finish my shopping.  It's a good thing I decided to pick up a few bottles of wine - I think I will need it later.
 
I am now off to my review session for Data systems design and analysis in Bellevue at 5, and then back over the lake to U Village Zoka's for my team meeting to work on our project at 7.  Maybe I will get home by 10 - I hope. 

Revelry and Recovery

After being in class for 9 hours yesterday, I went to the Collins Pub with John for a wine dinner. My friend Tracy invited us and there were a total of 6 at our table. The food was decent, the wine was ok, but the pairings were pretty bad. They had a really acidic white paired with heirloom tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar and then halibut with lemon gnocchi and a white sauce with a sangiovese. It would have been better the other way around

After that, we headed over to The Triple Door. The show was over for the evening, so we just hung out in the lounge/bar. It was quite swanky. There was a bit of entertainment to be had just in watching the young bachelorette party with the male blow up doll and glowing pink dildo - they kept getting in the way of the waitresses. Then there were all of the usually sedate people who were quite hammered by that time at night - the people watching was grand. John and Tracy both had ginger martinis, I had something with chambord in it and Neil had an 8 ball stout - yum.

Neil is in a great band called Anything But Hip. I haven't been to one of their shows in almost a year now, so I am going to try and catch them at Bite of Seattle on Friday.

All day today was rest and recovery. I read a bit, played around, and we went and got an Xbox. Our old one fizzled out and we found it would cost us $30 more to go buy a new one than it would be to get ours fixed...so off we went. We then had a heck of a good time playing Dance Dance Revolution. I am really going to miss having a life when school starts again in the fall...sigh.

A day in my life

Today is Saturday and I have been in class since 8AM. It's 2:00, so I have another 3 hours to go. It's not that it's boring stuff, it's just REALLY hard to sit in class for that long. I don't know what this will sound like, but I recorded one of my professors for a few seconds so you could hear what it's like.

Some interesting statistics on my class at UW:20% female, ave age 32, and 2% is in the field of education - I am the ENTIRE 2%. Back to foreign keys and SQL now.

Tula's Jazz Club

This is a short recording of what we did Friday night after going to McCormick & Schmick's for dinner. We headed over to Tula's on 2nd Ave for a bit of jazz. The music was good, the wine was REALLY bad.

Summer School Blues

Well, I ended up with 19 kids for summer school and they are not too excited to be there, but most of them are working hard. I am finding it hard to study for my own classes right now. Every time I open my books and start to read I fall asleep. We are having a meeting tonight to discuss our team project. Perhaps getting started on it will spur me along a bit.

The mysterious bird food pile has been some kind of corn meal for over a week now. I wonder if the bird man got a really great deal on it, or is trying to eliminate the seagull traffic (they don't like corn meal).

The 5th of July

We had a celebration at our place yesterday! Our condo association puts together a potluck every 4th of July and tons of people invade our rooftop deck to drink, eat, and be merry. This year we had 4 friends come over for the festivities. It was a lot of fun, especially the fireworks over Elliot Bay. John took some great pictures! I was too busy drinking champagne (left over from New Years!). Click on the images for a large view!

Summer school starts tomorrow and instead of the 8-10 kids I was told I would have, there are now 19!! These are all of the kids who HAVE to take summer school in order to pass to 9th grade. Usually it's pretty productive because there is a small group and they all know they have to pass summer school in order to go on. Unfortunately, someone has told them somewhere along the way that our principal does not want to hold anyone back from this group, so they have little motivation to do well (I am in the dark as to the truth of this statement). I know retention doesn't work - I've seen that first hand, but until we have an alternative program for these kids I don't think things are going to improve. If we hold them back they will do just as bad, if not worse than they did this year, they will become more of a behavior problem, and are 4 times more likely to drop out of high school when they turn 16. I am also afraid of how they will cope in high school next year. We have had to baby and cajole them way too much this year. I don't know if they will be ready. We need grade 8.5 for a semester before they go on!