I left for Nebraska on Tuesday and arrived in the late afternoon. Jenny met me at the airport. Meanwhile, Phil was finishing his graduate classes for the day, returning home, and cleaning the shower before I arrived.

I enjoyed spending a lot of time with Phil and Jenny while I was there. They’ve been married for 1.5+ years now and I appreciated the opportunity to observe two of my friends and how they treat each other in the context of marriage. I saw a lot of respect, concern, grace, and love between them in their words and deeds. I’m impressed and very grateful to have them as friends.

The Nebraska vs. Colorado football game on Friday was an incredible game to witness. It was high scoring, and ended w/ the right team winning — Go Big Red! My favorite moment was watching Ndamukong Suh (Nebraska #93 Defensive Tackle) put the smackdown on Cody Hawkins (Colorado #7 QB) while returning an interception for a touchdown.

Many games of Carcassonne the board game were played while I was there. Though I was experienced with playing the game, I only won on one occasion and didn’t know a couple rules correctly. However, I felt justified on returning home and realizing that my rules were different due to their being rule changes made over the course of the game’s history. (Source)

My iPod broke. Today, I bought a new one.

Seeing other college friends was fantastic as well. Many people came over on Saturday night, hung out, talked, and ate soup.

Other things: mediocre Mexican food and superb conversation w/ Jesse and Tyler and Nail Bunny, free dinner at Lazlos w/ Phil, Jenny, and Ben when the server lost our order, espresso shots at a new coffee shop, meeting w/ Hank (Aaron) at B&N at closing time to purchase football tickets, chilling w/ Varv and Linda, and brunch w/ Erika and friends.

One of the biggest revelations of the trip was the realization that there are numerous, attractive, single females in the world who notice my existence and appreciate partaking in conversations. I need to do a better job of finding a more local variety.

Picked up a few new things to replace the discarded ones. For books, I acquired Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” which I’ve heard good things about.

I’ve been on a bit of a Japanese culture kick the last couple of days. Yesterday, I bought two Utada Hikaru singles on Amazon MP3. Walter posted a few interesting J-Pop/J-Rock music videos yesterday as well. Today, I bought three manga volumes of Cowboy Bebop, two Japanese beverages (Calpico, Pocari Sweat), Pocky, and Hello Panda (”biscuits with chocolate cream”).

The local Hollywood Video was having a $3.99 DVD sale so I picked up The Namesake, The Departed, and Jet Li’s Fearless. I got Elizabethtown and Buffy The Vampire Slayer (the movie) at Half Price Books.

I’m trying to hide from the darkness lurking in the corners, but I can’t avoid it. Instead of turning on the lights, I turn on the HDTV, stereo, and PS3 to watch something besides my life. Or I play games on the Wii.

Work has been well. I’m adjusting to my new role and enjoying the change of environment immensely. Instead of worrying about the drudgery and inanity of the day-to-day, instead I make progress on projects that go somewhere and have an influence over the direction of my work.

I’m learning how to plan and prepare. In some of these projects, I’ve put in lots of time and consideration as this is not just for fun, but it’s my living and because many people will be affected based on the quality of the work I do.

In the beginning, I blogged. This blog has existed in one incarnation or another for the past six years. Initially, I hosted it on my Dell Dimension w/ Pentium 3 700mhz processor and ~128MB of RAM. When I went to sleep, I turned off my blog. When I woke up, I turned it on.

Now, the sites I work on day to day are alive 24/7. If they go down, my phone starts buzzing to let me know.

So I watch, learn, code, test, research, produce, and go.

What’ve you been doing?

In any case, I’ll be in Lincoln/Omaha from November 25 to November 30. I look forward to seeing my college friends and doing some conversational catch-up on life. Since I was last in Nebraska, I’ve changed jobs twice, gained fifteen pounds, and developed a fondness for Norwegian symphonic metal. Glorious.

If you’re going to be in Nebraska, give me a hollar! I’ll try to setup a get together of some kind for whoever is going to be around and wants to hang out on a day other than Thanksgiving.

I’ve lived in Seattle long enough that when I leave, I realize what aspects of the culture I miss. One of the biggest aspects is the local restaurants and variety of food available in Seattle. For instance, I have a favorite Thai place in Kirkland, Japanese/Sushi place in Bellevue, and in Pioneer Square an Italian place, Irish pub, a Greek place, and Jimmy John’s. In Longmont and Boulder, I know where all the chain restaurant are and it’s just not the same.

One of the things I don’t have in Seattle is relatives and longtime friends. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve met a lot of awesome people and made some good friends in Seattle, but it’s not the same as hanging out w/ my best friend from 5th grade, seeing his wife, and meeting his first child.

The reason I came out here this trip is for a friend’s wedding. The bachelor part was on Wednesday night; only the groom got drunk so I’d say it was a success… other than groom feeling ill afterwards. Do not ever buy anyone a shot with pickle juice in it. And no, I didn’t buy it.

The wedding for Benjamin and Suzanne was yesterday afternoon. I had a fabulous time. Short ceremony, long reception. I got to dance with some beautiful ladies, talk to a lot of good friends from my post-college days in Boulder, and generally have a good time.

Among the most impressive things Benjamin and Suzanne built into the wedding was their first dance. It started out w/ a slow song that I was surprised they picked, but after 30 seconds the song skipped, the DJ looked like “oops,” but then Ben & Suzanne broke into some excellent choreography for Jump Jive ‘n’ Wail. Well played.

I got out there and danced. If you didn’t know me in college, you’d probably have no clue I know anything about dance. One benefit of living in Nebraska and being around my friends was picking up Country Swing and going to enough weddings that I learned how slow dance and also not care what people thought of how bad I danced the rest of the songs.

Props to Cora, Tracy, Jenny, Amy H., and all the other girls who danced w/ me during that time. I wouldn’t be the same without those dancing experiences in college. And thanks to the guys who taught me the few moves I do know.

Fresh Broccoli

• boil water
• add broccoli
• cook it for a while
• eat it

I like my recipes uncomplicated and imprecise.

If that doesn’t help, quit.

If that doesn’t help, the problem is you.

Blindside - All of Us Lyrics:

All of us are searching for an open arm.
Well, it’s a shame how I curl up in the dark
When it’s the same old word giving me the spark.

All of us are searching for an open arm.
Well, it’s a shame how I curl up in the dark.

(view full lyrics)

Another difficulty in crafting a list is considering how realistic the items are. In the movie, the main characters do much traveling, race car driving, and sky diving. Not all of these actions would be reasonable or even possible for most of the people in the world. For instance, a Guatemalan villager may not care to travel to the other side of the world or participate in an extreme sport whether or not it was financially reasonable.

In my case, I have decided to focus on including items that would be achievable given my current life circumstances. I am also trying to include items that are not dependent on material successes, but a result of time, effort, and interaction with other people.

The List:
• woo a beautiful woman
• teach people - pass on skills and knowledge
• invest in people - bring richness to life in the form of love and liberty
• become conversationally fluent in another language - and use it!
• experience health and fitness
• create something delicious

It might be a little bit more than two weeks, but it’s happening and happening for sure. I’ll probably post more detail on Facebook or Linked In or somewhere slightly less “open,” but wanted to make the general announcement here first.

Around 1pm when the decision was made, I threw some essentials in my backpack and we headed out.

As usual, traffic out of the Seattle metro area tried to slow us down, but we made it pass the inevitable jams and traffic accident. Made it to the border.

I didn’t know what to expect at the border with this being my first time crossing an international boundary by vehicle (other than once when too young to remember). We passed the American side of the border and waited in-between queued up for our turn while looking at the Peace Arch and other scenery. After about a half hour wait, we made it to the border guard, showed our passports, had our backgrounds checked, and proceeded into Canada.

We took a “creative” route to Vancouver and initially found ourselves in New Westminster — a suburban town where the mall closes at 5pm on Sundays. Purchased a map from a local gas station, got back in the car, and headed to Vancouver proper.

The first part of town we visited was China Town. I was shocked out how run down parts of this area were. There were many homeless people in the area and I expect from observing the alleys that it’s also a prime area from drug trafficking and prostitution.

We serendipitously encountered a Chinese Market where vendors were hocking food, clothes, bras, panties, DVDs, trinkets, jewelry, and more. I found a table where the vendor was selling Blu-Ray discs for $6.00 (Canadian). They had a Chinese movie I’d seen at Pacific Place in Seattle called “CJ7″ and decided to purchase it. CJ7 ended up costing me $5 (USD) and 27 pennies (CAD).

Through later investigation I discovered this “Blu-Ray” disc is actually a region-free DVD (meaning it can be played in any DVD player — most DVDs are restricted to playing in the region of the world you bought it i.e. North America, Asia, etc.) I didn’t get what was advertised, but I also expected it considering the price at the location of purchase.


We continued our journey in Canada by trying to find food. We encountered difficulties in the pursuit when trying to cross town we kept being halted by a race. It ended up being Vancouver’s The Nike+ Human Race 10k. Eventually I gave up trying to drive around them, stopped outside of Science World (from the 86 Expo), watched the runners, and took photos.

Afterwards, we wandered towards nicer parts of down and ended up in the English Bay area. Finally found parking after searching for 15 minutes, walked around a bit to decide on a restaurant, and ended up at Ciao Bella Restaurant (reviews on Yelp).

I was tired from all the driving earlier (and recovering from the stress and frustration of being trapped behind thousands of runners not able to move through the city) so Martin drove home. I slept most of the way, and ended up back in Kirkland just as Monday began.