Where Am I?

I haven't blogged in a while so I thought I'd put a little something up.

Below is an awesome picture we took, but was unwittingly tarnished by a camera shutter that failed to open. Oh well, at least it makes the blog. The blog doesn't judge.

A wallaby on the beach, where could we be?

Not a Soccer Pic

Luckily I didn't get the silly notion to resolve to blog more, so the pressure is off. I am hoping, however, to improve my rate from last year and to beat 2007's and to include substance as opposed to what seems like substance abuse. So here is something pretty:

[The two LeAnn's (for a middle name, that is) - Me and my niece]


I doubt anyone notices, but see those track pants I have on? Yep, I pretty much wear those all the time now. Look at my last Christmas post, two different days, same pants. They are just too comfortable and with my thighs fluctuating as a result of too much soccer, then too much food, then no soccer but still too much food, I can't be bothered to buy actual pants since I don't know what size I will be in a month. My point: just get used to the track pants. It'll be like Where's Waldo with the exception that my pants will be obvious.

2008 Year in Review

What is that you say? You visited the blog a week ago and this post, which says it was posted Jan 1, wasn't here. Sorry, can't help you there.

So I had a few missed opportunities to post during 2008, so I am giving myself a second chance with the year in review. As I write this I am trying to think to think of something that occurred every month, but I don't think I'll be as successful as last year

January: Will broke his ankle skiing. I went to Tahoe to ski a week after (sorry). He was in crutches and an aircast for most of February. Fun times for a guy that lives for the outdoors. With all of his visits to the orthopedist, I decided to get my easily injured left ankle checked out, and interestingly it was me who he said may need surgery! Luckily neither of us had surgery, Will was good and did physical therapy, I tried it as well, but bailed after they gave me an ice massage, Yikes!

February: I scored my first league play goal. Despite my many years of soccer, I never got a goal because I always played defense -blessed with great speed but no real ability to dribble. I started to learn the forward position this season, and finally scored after 6 games. I'm still most comfortable playing sweeper, but sometimes it's nice to play forward and get the glory of scoring rather than the shame of letting the opposition score.

March: Will and I took a little in State break and visited the Long Beach Peninsula. I enjoyed making fun of the place more than anything, but did find a gem Astoria, OR.

Pics in Ocean Park/Long Beach:
[Saying it like is it, We's a bunch of okies]

[and we don't care about no grammar!]

[Will in heaven at playing pinball, the place had over 20 games]

[Me playing soccer with William Clark, from Lewis and Clark]


April: Started a new job, as a result not much else happened in the next 6 months. Less than impressed with something that could be run better. Would write more, but with the search engines and all...I'll give you the real deal via email if you want.

May: I really don't know what happened this month. I think I went to a few Mariners games and they played pretty poorly. I knew it would be a bad season after that, good for the Angels, but even I wasn't enjoying the Angels beating the Mariners, it's like watching someone beat up on the disabled.

June: Oh no, another month and I don't know what happened. Uh, I did...stuff.

July: Our first anniversary, July 5, which we celebrated at the romantic Prufrocks Bed and Breakfast in Carpinteria, CA.

August: Our 3 year anniversary of living in Seattle. I don't think we did anything/noticed, and I only mentioned it because I don't know what we/I did in August. Let me take this opportunity to say there is good Mexican food in Seattle at Mr. Villa's, at least by our California standards. We also like gelato at Bottega, coffee/tea/baked goodies at Zoka and the very local Black Cat Espresso, Spanish at Bilbao, Italian at Cafe Piccolo, bar/pub fare at Fiddler's Inn, Indian at Mysore, Thai at Thai Tom, Pinball and dogs at Shorty's, the Japanese version of French Crepes at Unicorn, and the best damn brewed root beer in the world at Snoqualmie Brewery. I'm sure I missed some, but those are a few of our favorite dining places in the greater Seattle area.

September: Birthday at the cabin in Mt. Baker. It was our first visit there. Sadly, the friend who was letting us stay there is selling the place. Here are a couple pictures nearby:

[Nooksack Falls]


[Not good picture of me, be nice, but the bird is cool]

October: Ended the employment I took on in April. Boy was the aftermath with a certain person there newsworthy! Again I can't really go into it on the blog. I can probably write a book about my 6 month experience, I'm thinking comedy or psychological thriller.

November: The cabin again, this time with friends. We didn't do much outside this time since it was too cold and rainy. Much X-Box and board games and introduced to our new obsession favorite board game "Settlers of Catan".

December: You need only to read the post before this to get the summary, however, for the update...We finally were able to get out Christmas day. I tried to dig my car out first, but I was stuck in a hole my tire dug a few days before. Will successfully dug his out, and we slid our merry way until we reached a plowed main route. Unfortunately the return trip wasn't as easy as we were not able to slid back up the hills. Parked at a school about 1/4 mile away. The post office did not deliver anything the 26th or 27th; Fed Ex went AWOL during and after the storm; and our last pickup of the year from Waste Management was December 11. Here is a picture the day before they finally picked up the trash (recycling and compost followed almost a week later) on Jan 2 (ignore the posting date, I rigged it):

[3 households worth of trash and recycling, growing since December 11, not seen: compost bins to the left]

The Annual Christmas Post

I'm not as bad of a blogger as I thought. In the 3.42 years I've had this blog I've managed to wish you all, my loyal readers, a Merry Christmas: 2005, 2006, 2007. And much like 2006, I have nothing better to talk about than the weather. In fact, I'm not sure what the fine citizens of the Seattle area would do without the weather to talk about. Not that I am mocking them in any way.

So Merry Christmas! For everyone I updated my last post to include my teammates (yes, I have teammates) and will now go on to talk about the weather. Yep, I'm a freaking Santa,

The snow started falling Sunday December 14. Not much fell. Our cat Donny was the only one who wanted to play in it, and by play I mean "try to run as fast as he can to get his paws out of the snow "

Scoping it out:

Screwed:

Then that Wednesday a big storm was supposed to hit, but Seattle was in some sort of 'snow cone' so instead we got rain, all surrounding areas got snow, and our snow melted.

[no photo, as if this post isn't boring enough]

Finally on Thursday we got our snow! And as is the case in Seattle, no one can go anywhere because we are all too afraid to drive in it. Given the terrian and information later in my post, I don't blame them. Will and I luckily can both work from home. Yay, well, sort of.

Not working, but walking to the park:

The park and frozen pond:

Since the weather people were completely wrong about Wednesday's storm, I didn't heed their weekend warning and figured I could wait until Friday to send out my Christmas packages and "cards". So when the snow kept falling and the temperature kept dropping I knew I screwed up (note: if you did get something from me and it arrived on time, you can thank Will for busing it to the post office on Thursday, unfortunatley I didn't have many addresses on hand nor many presents wrapped so I got a grand total of three "cards" sent).

We got somewhat of a break on Friday. It didn't snow, but the high was below freezing and not much was melting off the road. Day 2 of the confinement by snow.

On Saturday I was desperate to get some gifts mailed so I braved the icy roads to get to the post office (note: if you got something from me sent the 20th you can thank my sense of adventure or stupidity, depending on the perspective).

That night it began to snow, then snow, then snow, [Enter Sunday] then snow, then snow... pretty much a foot of it, which is quite unheard of in Seattle, and it was light an fluffy to boot! It was deep enough that Will got out the old cross country skis and skied the bike trail. I would have joined him but I slept until 10 instead. Oh do I value my sleep. Anyway I'm veering off topic

Below is the Burke Gilman trail which I spoke of in this post. See, I told you I would post a picture of it:

All the while the temperature didn't rise above freezing, so here are more snow pics on Monday.

Shoveling our walkway, but really I only did it in hopes to burn off some of the 5000+ calories I had been consuming of since I all I did snowbound was eat. Later, I ate a handful of truffles:

Will heading out to the trail again. I'm not sure why I didn't go with him this time. Since cross country skiing is a much better form of exercising than shoveling. I must have really wanted those truffles:

Our neighbors shoveling our shared driveway:


Now for the complaining...

Guess what our street looked like on Monday?
Yep, just like the driveway. I know it's there, but where?

Snow storms are rare, so Seattle has a whopping 24 snowplows to cover the entire area. Since they cannot possibly help us all out they focus on the arterials (in English: main roads). That doesn't help when you are half a mile from an arterial but have to drive down a steep, snowy and icy downgrade. It also doesn't help when you are .2 miles from another arterial and have to make it up a very steep snowy and icy upgrade to get there. Even if you can get to an arterial here is Seattle's, or more appropriately, Mayor Nickles' way of dealing with that: Seattle refuses to use salt; roads "snow packed" by design. Although I can sum it up with these quotes:

The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains.

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt...

That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it.

And to help us all sleep at night:

The city's patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot...

Alright I'm done with the complaining...Finally we got some relief on Tuesday. The roads were still crap, but the city was above freezing, and there was no further accumulation. We still couldn't drive, but Will was able to get to work and I was able to go to the store. These were both great accomplishments.

A ghost town AKA Microsoft around late December:

The question now is, if I was stuck inside for days why didn't I catch up on emails/facebook/other blogs or post anything until now...oh the mystery.

More of the Same

It's December and I am not ready so I am posting more soccer pics because that is all really know how to do. We just played our last game of the season yesterday (photos not shown). I have no idea what I will do to stay fit in the meantime. My ankle has given out and the gym is way too boring these days. Poor me. Well, I may post something of relevance...someday

(These are high res photos, click on them if you want a closer view. I know you all want to see my sexy back.)


We were up by 5 so I tried my hand at goal. I gave up one (that photo not shown):


I got it:


Taking a goal kick with really bad form and not sure what's going on with my thigh:


Was bored in goal, had to get back out on the field:

I'm having soccer withdrawals already, better go eat some chocolate to make myself feel better.

UPDATE - MY TEAMMATES: