New Power

I have the power. Well, a new power supply for the main home computer anyway. I just installed a new one because the fan on the old one was making this horrible rattle/screetch noise. John was quite impressed that I could replace the power supply, hook everything back up, and do it all right the first time in only about 20 minutes (had to take time out to find more light).

While I was fiddling with the computer, John was putting really big rings in his ears. When he ordered said rings, they didn't look that big, now, they look really big.









I spent most of the day at Starbucks working on the PM project. The Risk Management portion is done and the QA portion is 1/2 done.

On My Own Bike

Yesterday John and I went out to the beach around Ballard on my bike (me on the back) and then I rode my bike around the parking lot and deserted streets to get used to it.

Today we took our bikes out together for the first time! We had to go early in the morning before traffic started up. Our condo sits on a hill between the waterfront and 1st avenue and I had to practice starting off on an incline - it's hard! Once I had done that a few times we rode up and down the waterfront for a while. It was so much fun! We had to go back after about an hour because the traffic was getting to be too much for me and my fingers were cold! I really, really, really, really like my bike.

Now I am preparing to travel to Starbucks (on foot) and work on my project requirements for my PM class. We need to have everything done on Tuesday night so that we can integrate it all. The other project we are doing for "Integrating the Enterprise" needs to be complete by next Saturday so that we can put it all together.
Other things this week:

• Site Based Council meeting on Monday 3:00 - 5:30 (that's where we make policy/budget decisions etc. for Tolt.
• Westsiders Team meeting Tuesday 7:00- 9:00PM to integrate project
• IEP Meeting 7:30 Tuesday morning to discuss SPED testing on a student
• Field Trip to EMP Wednesday with all of the 8th graders
• Class Wednesday 5-9:30PM
• Thursday morning 7:30 504 meeting about a kid who was just suspended where we talk about accommodations we need to make for him in the classroom.
• Thursday and Friday night - finalize all of the project formatting, etc so it looks like a continuous piece.
• It's the end of the trimester at Tolt- grades are due next Monday so kids are scrambling and I have to get through everything in the "in box". Not so hard when I taught elementary, but with over 100 students a day it gets to be a big pile.
• Oh - somewhere in there I have to do all of normal stuff - like plan for lessons, commute back and forth to work, clean house, cook, do laundry, go to the grocery, write blog entries...

Ok. My list is done - I am now going to work. Really.

I Bought a Motorcycle!!!!

Yes - I bought a motorcycle today.
It's a 1999 Yamaha V-Star 650 with 5k miles and Vance & Hines pipes. John rode it back to Seattle and I followed him in the car and we stopped at a large empty parking lot for me to ride in for about 45 minutes. It's awesome! Don't worry - I am taking it slow and making sure I have all the skills I need before riding around in traffic or on the highway. The basic riding course I took gave me the confidence to ride a 125 cc motorcycle around in a parking lot - but that's about it. I definitely want to get used to this before going out on the road. Here are some pictures from internet sources until I can get out and take photos of my own. Unfortunately it is now rainy and cold and likely to be the same tomorrow.

The Real Truth about Thanksgiving

We thought we were having 8 people over - 4 didn't show up so we have LOTS of food left. We had a lovely mellow time eating all afternoon (after the THIRD trip to the store).
We had:

• cheese ball/cheese plate with cured meats and pepper jelly and crackers
• steamed vegie hombow (Tiana brought LOTS of steamables)
• mushroom soup (homemade of course)
• cucumber salad
• dijon pork chops
• mashed potatoes
• asparagus
• creme brulee (John bought a torch!)
• apple pie (from Trish - yum!)

We watched movies - odd movies. An anime movie about a pop-star turned actress turned psycho kind of called Perfect Blue and The Crow. Much fun was had and wine was consumed.

Turkey Day - minus the turkey

We have a list and are heading out to Fred Meyer. French style appetizers and dim sum, mushroom soup, cucumber salad, Dijon pork chops, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans(?), crem brulee and a pie. My goodness.

More later

The Seattle Times: Local News: All eyes on state recount

The Seattle Times: Local News: All eyes on state recount: "The state Republican Party on Saturday sued King County over how it was handling ballots that had been rejected by the counting machines. The Republicans argued those ballots should be excluded from the recount because they have to be checked by hand and inspectors have to surmise the intent of the voter, a process they say isn't being followed in 14 counties that use punch-card ballots."

Textbook disclaimer stickers

This really scares me.

Textbook disclaimer stickers

Great Sunday

I had a great day yesterday. I woke up at 6:30AM because John was about 3 inches from my nose staring at me. He has jet lag and had already been up for about and hour and a half. "Want to get up and go to Starbucks?" he said with a grin. And we did.

It was really great walking around that early in the morning on a Sunday - the streets were pretty deserted and it was crisply cool (read: cold). We were at Starbucks for about an hour or so before John started making me anxious by describing all of the wonderful food in the new cook book he bought while in England, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. So, we made a list, checked it twice, left Starbucks and headed home to check the supplies we had on hand.

John wanted to make stock (as in chicken broth that you use to make other things taste good) and pies. I wanted to make mushroom soup for dinner. We both wanted to drag our snowboards out and get them tuned-up. Down we went to the tiny storage locker we have off of the parking garage to find the large stock pot we once had and our snowboards. We came up empty on the pot, but we did find the snowboards and some accessories and some Christmas stuff.

OK - after the grocery store, I took the snowboards to get tuned-up while John pulled the meat off of all of the chicken drumsticks. Then we made portable sandwiches and headed downtown (on foot of course) to catch an early movie. We saw National Treasure. It wasn't that great. After a quick tour through Urban Outfitters (looking at very cool irreverent X-mas cards and Jesus action figures) we went home.

The cooking commenced to the tune of my mellow Sunday play list. John chopped, mixed, rolled, and simmered while I read for a while. He is trying out different pie crust recipes. After he had 2 pies in the oven, I started the mushroom soup - great stuff. Turns out I was leaning down HARD on the lid to the blender while pureeing the hot mushroom liquid, but not not hard enough; mushroom spewage all over the kitchen. :) It was awfully good soup though.

I don't know how the pies turned out - I resisted and John took all 3 (2 pumpkin and 1 pecan) to work. Mom - if you read this - send me pecans when you find some. They are way expensive up here.

Tonight I have a team meeting at 7 - here - so I need to tidy up a bit. Then I need to work on my paper about the Medico Company who is trying to decide if they should buy a CRM package, or add-ons to their current ERP system, or both, or neither.

TaTa for now.

Keyhole

Keyhole

No real point here

I just finished writing an email to John (he is still in London) and thought I would cut and paste a bit to save time! Warning - stream of consciousness can be boring to read.

While with Tiana the other day I tried on a vinyl dress - very shiny - but too big - I had it laced as tight as it would go and it didn't work. Then I tried on a velvet dress that wouldn't go over my - chest. It was the day of too big or too small.

I asked around for someone to eat sushi with on Thursday or Friday night - no takers yet. I have a sushi craving. On Sunday I made a large pot of vegi soup and grilled some chicken breasts. I have been combining and alternating to make different dishes all week. Yesterday I had salad with chicken and nuts for lunch, soup with added tomatoes and noodles for dinner. Today I have soup w/ chipotle and left over noodles and who knows what for dinner at school.

At work today I have to present the school budget proposal to the staff for approval and explain the changes/additions, etc. I expect a few dissenting voices over some of the choices we made so it should be interesting. On the days we have "work meetings" (usually twice a month), the kids are here until 11:10, making the class periods about20 minutes long. It's really kind of nice, but I can't get much done and some of the kids just can't handle 1/2 days - they go a bit nuts because of the constant transitions.

I am avoiding finishing my memo about NASA/JPL. The case itself was really interesting to read about, but I don't want to finish the memo- too much thinking. I have to get it done before 6:00 though!

On the way home from our team meeting at the UW library last night I stopped and got gas and washed the car. It was kind of weird going through the car wash at9:30 at night, but it needed it and I was there. With the freaky music that was playing on the radio it made for a bit of a surrealistic experience.

Our team project is moving along, but we are way behind where we should be. We need to meet more, but none of us have time to do so. I found out last night I also have a 3-page paper due Saturday that I was unaware of. Wonderful.

Brain Drain

I just finished a timed (2.5hr) quiz for my project management class. WOW. I am pooped now. I wish John were here so he could console me. I didn't do too badly, but I ran out of time and had to guess at 2 of the problems that required calculation. Now I have a little while to relax before finishing my stakeholder analysis for my team meeting tomorrow night and my 2-page analysis memo for Wednesday night about NASA/JPL.

Oh - and my principal is observing me tomorrow morning so I had to spend a while today explaining my lesson plan and the objectives, etc...after I wrote up a pre-observation form. I am so behind on grading papers it's ridiculous.

Yesterday I took some time off and ate Pho with Tiana and tried on weird stuff at the shops on Capital Hill. Dress up!

John is in London and I am really missing him. Apparently Darwin is too. He sat by the side of the bed and howled last night. Very annoying. He is currently running back and forth between the entry way and doing figure eights around my legs.

Auction

I went to a semi-formal charity auction Saturday night. First - I walked down to the Waterfront Saefood Grill - wrong place. Started walking to th Marriot Waterfront - right place - hailed a cab to take me the last 6 blocks because I was in high heels and a long dress - not good for walking.

They had MANY cool things for auction. The food was bad and I didn't win any bids because the prices were way out of my league. I wanted the mushroom hunting expidition and dinner by a chef, but it went for $800. All to benifit Casa Latina.

Here is audio from my table:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Hobbit' joins human family tree

BBC NEWS Science/Nature 'Hobbit' joins human family tree

I find it completely fascinating that another branch of humanity was co-existing with us until 12,000 years ago! And they nick- named them Hobbit! The stories of leprechauns and "little people" have taken on a whole new meaning.

Black Day

Today I wore black. I am in mourning for our nation, which seems to be going down the wrong path. I find it very hard to believe that over 1/2 of the nation sees George as a worthy leader. It makes me all the more willing to follow John's dream of moving to London. A black day indeed.

New Cyberdog tricks

On Saturday, we went to see The Motorcycle Diaries. I really enjoyed it. I had to go out and buy a book about Che Guevera afterwards. Katheryn was not so enthusiastic. She was starving and couldn't concentrate - it was not a fast moving movie.

After the movie we went to Cyber Dogs for a VERY weird experience. The guy behind the counter was acting really weird and said things like, "Oh - I haven't heard of that one." when we placed our order. Not confidence inspiring. The food was not very good and there was a really stupid movie on – old B&W about some guys on Mars. We soon found out why the guy was acting weird:

“So, how long are you going to be here?” said the Cyberdog guy in a whispery effeminate voice. He was addressing the only other customer in the place; a woman in her 20’s dressed in her own unique style of knitted shawls and legwarmers. She was typing away on her laptop and looked up, a little concerned.
“Oh, about 30 minutes, is that ok?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s just the owner’s on her way and I have to go.” said Cyberdog boy.
“Uh…,” said style girl.
“Yeah,” Cyberboy replied with a sheepish grin. “I have to go to work and she won’t be here for another 20 minutes so I just wanted to know if, like, it would be ok to go. I already put most of the cash in the safe so it’s not like you could steal much.”

At this point we were all looking at him as if he were mad. Apparently he was just a friend of the nutty Russian lady who owns Cyberdogs. He doesn’t really work there and was just filling in because of a no-show. Then, Cyberboy actually did put on his coat and grab his things and leave!!!

Many ideas about new weird hotdog recipes we could create and how best to play as if we worked there until the owner came in danced around in our brains. We really should have taken the opportunity to play Cyberworkers for a while, but we were too inhibited and didn’t grab the chance while we had it. Now I’ll always be left to wonder.