Catching Up

Holy frac, how time flies when you’re having fun! It’s been like 8 months since I last posted so I figured I would quick hit a few things…

I bought a new condo just north of my office, in Snohomish. Cute place with 2 bedrooms and a garage which will eventually become a workshop/workout room. Its got a little deck for the grill and a nice sized kitchen. I’ve still got some decorating to do, mostly in terms of hanging pictures, but it’s nice and homey so far.

This past summer I took a great vacation to Alaska with the moms and Jared. We flew into Anchorage and rented a motor home for the week. The trip was motivated by a wedding for Jake Milstein, and old friend, so we first drove down to the Portage Bay Glacier for the wedding - which was on a boat at the base of the glacier.
We then headed farther south to Homer Spit. Jared and I took a half-day fishing trip and caught about 100 pounds of Halibut.
Once the fish was packed and shipped, we drove back up north to Denali National Park. Not only did we luck out and have a great view of the peak as we came in, but we then had the best of luck with wild life, seeing a mother grizzly and 3 cubs about as close to the bus as they could get without coming inside! Slightly farther off were Moose, Mountain goats, and a couple of wolves. On the second day we took a hike near the visitor center for what we expected would be a wildlife-free excursion…until we walked smack into a mother moose and two kids! We were able to spend a good amount of time watching them from close range as they ate and frolicked around a small lake.
No big blow-ups considering the four of us were locked together in an RV for a week!
Some photos are posted here: http://groups.msn.com/JonathanStuff/alaska.msnw

Fall, once again, was soccer season. The Blue Angels were back in full swing having moved up to the gold division following last years silver championship. I also took a Crossfire Select team for the first time – a group of 10 year-old girls hand selected from hundreds of candidates! Ok, so not really ‘hundreds’…but hand selected none the less!
The Angels finished up with a regular season record of 7-3 and a 4th place finish. Amazingly they won the majority of their games with less then 11 players. They are about to kick-off their indoor season.
The Strikers, as we named ourselves, struggled a little in terms of their won/loss record, but still made a lot of progress throughout the season and finished with some really strong games.

No one wants to hear about work so I’ll skip that.

The Seahawks provided some memorable events this fall as I took advantage of my season tickets. I got to see the beat up on the Bengals and Bears, beat San Francisco on a Monday night, Virtually clinch the division by beating Arizona, and win another home playoff game by beating Washington! The only disappointment was having to see them lay and egg against New Orleans…but hey, at least I got to see Reggie Bush. No Superbowl – maybe next year.

This past Christmas was dominated by discussions on the nature of gift giving/receiving, expectations, and budgets. Basically…remember that family guy scene of the three wise men walking to go see the baby jesus; one turns to another and asks “so what did you get?” “Gold” he replies. “GOLD! You got GOLD! I thought we agreed on a limit! We got him Frankincense and Myrrh over here!” …that about sums it up. We also got to see Peter’s film in an actual movie theatre thanks to mom and grandma. It’s awesome! Hopefully it will be in enough festivals that people can see it. Keep an eye out: Crenshaw Nights.

Interesting how I can sum up 8 month in basically 5 paragraphs.