Christmas in Florida

Just got back from a glorious week or so in Florida, visiting Matt's parents. The weather was incredible---for the most part, we had 80-degree days, lots of sun, very few clouds. I was wearing flip flops the whole time and never needed to wear the jeans I brought down with me. It was a whole bunch of relaxing, eating yummy food, shopping, and watching many episodes of Lost. (we are totally addicted to it now, by the way...almost done with Season 2 now) One highlight while we were there was visiting the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. Yup--as in the Ringling Brothers. In addition to starting a famous circus with his brother, John Ringling was wealthy and had a beautiful mansion in Florida. His wife, Mable, was passionate for the arts and put together a fine collection of art pieces, which are all now part of the Ringling Museum of Art. There are multiple buildings on the grounds--and the first that we visited was the Tibbals Learning Center, which included a massive miniature model of the Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1919-1938 based on pictures and anecdotes.

We then visited the museum of art which is housed in a building with nice landscaping. There were Caravaggios, Reubens and Los Caprichos from Goya.


Our last stop was the mansion of John & Mable Ringling which is located right on the water with gorgeous views of the Gulf water.

Another highlight was simply enjoying the weather. We hit the beaches twice, once to Englewood Beach and the second to the gorgeous Siesta Beach, which had the nicest sand. I learned while I was there that the "sand" is actually quartz, which comes from the Appalachian Mountains, down into the Gulf and finally depositing itself onto the 8-mile stretch of the beaches of the Siesta Key. The result if a flour-like sand which always remains cool.

Englewood Beach

Siesta Beach

The quartz sand

Wedding Highlights

We had some friends over tonight to check out the wedding video and also just to catch up before the holidays (Matt leaves on Tuesday for Florida). For those of you that haven't seen it, here is a short highlight montage to capture the day. Enjoy.

A Lamb Chop dinner

Just finished eating dinner and I'm rather proud of the meal I just made for the two of us. It was incredibly delicious. I thought I'd share the random recipe I put together based on cookbooks as well as playing around with ingredients a bit. (I also don't want to forget what I did) My measurements aren't exact as I usually eye the food...

Lamb Chops w/Arugula Pesto & Pureed Parsnip
Made to serve 2

3-4 Parsnips
Rack of Lamb Rib Chops (about 6-10 pieces, enough so each person has about 3-5)
2 oz. Arugula (about half a bunch)
Parmesan cheese (~3-5 tablespoons)
Milk or Heavy Cream
Truffle oil
3-4 tablespoons of melted salted butter
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Tablespoon of pine nuts
3-4 cloves of garlic

1. Start with a pot of boiling water. Peel the parsnips, cut into big chunks and put them into the pot of water til they get soft enough to be pureed.
2. Toast the pine nuts by putting them in a skillet over medium heat and tossing them for about 3 minutes
3. Blend the arugula, pine nuts, 1 tbsp of parmesan cheese and the chopped garlic
4. Once blended, slowly add olive oil til you get the desired texture of pesto. Set this aside.
5. Heat up broiler -- plan to place the lamb chops 3-4 inches from the heat source.
6. Put the lamb chops into the oven. These will cook quickly -- plan about 2 minutes each side for rare, 3-4 minutes for medium rare.
7. While the lamb chops are in the oven, pull out the parsnips and put them into a food processor using the metal blade.
8. Begin blending. Slowly add milk or heavy cream til you reach desired texture.
9. Add 3-4 tablespoons of melted salted butter.
10. Add about 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese.
11. Add a pinch of salt.
12. Add pepper to taste.
13. (optional) Add a bit of truffle oil (this always makes any dish taste better imho)

Voila! Serve all together. Put the arugula pesto on each piece of lamb chop and the pureed parsnips on the side or underneath the lamb chops.

I choose......HD DVD

Impulse buy of the week --- I got the Xbox HD DVD player. I've been eyeing it for a few months now, especially after getting the new TV but just couldn't justify the $180 price tag (which is not bad compared to the $300 Toshiba HD DVD player). The company store even has a rather pitiful discount on it.

Yesterday, however, Amazon dropped the price to $129 (for one day I guess...it's back up to $179 today)--plus, I have a $25 gift certificate. Add on the promotion of getting King Kong on DVD and 5 other DVDs made it all worth it.

I also updated my Netflix account to send me HD DVDs whenever available. Sweet.

With Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping, I'll be getting this baby tomorrow! Woo Hoo!

Who's taking the detour?

Man, because about 20 miles of I-5 is closed at least through the end of day today due to the flooding, the usual 165-mile journey between Seattle and Portland is now 440-miles long!

Rain Rain Go Away

It's been raining nonstop since yesterday---but not just normal barely-hurts Seattle rain...it's been like a downpour. I still made it into work today but then kept watching the news as Governor Gregoire declared a state of emergency in Washington State and then they shut down a huge section of I-5 as a result of flooding. I fortunately live in a condo up on a hill so don't need to worry about flooding basements or overflowing sump pumps....but man, it's a mess around the area! I'm now home, dry and in my pajamas.


Car on Stone Ave. N in Seattle


148th Ave NE, Bellevue, down the road from where I work


Downtown Woodinville where a small river ran over right into the street, blocking SR522.It looks like a waterfall!!

Snowing in Seattle

It's snowing in Seattle! And lots of it! Don't know if it'll stick (and I think the weather reports say it won't)---but still, it's a lot of snow!

kansasgirl?

Okay--I just downloaded the Zune software and signed up for "the Social" by signing in with my normal Live ID -- the same e-mail address I use with Messenger. Next thing I know, I get a huge greeting "Welcome kansasgirl!". On top of that, it tells me that my unique URL where friends can see my current music is with "kansasgirl" in the URL. What the ....? Where in the world did I ever set that? Yes, it's obviously me...but I have no idea where "kansasgirl" was ever set. I signed into Live, Spaces, looked in Messenger, no clue. I can't change it. Can't figure it out.

kansasgirl?

ipod or zune?

I'm so annoyed--my iPod just died. I noticed it was dead on the flight home from Vegas to Seattle...but I thought it was perhaps the battery (which was odd as I had it plugged in all weekend). I just took it out, plugged it into the wall and it won't turn on. Nada. Boo.

So now, what to do? I started checking out mp3 players--and it really just comes down to the iPod or the Zune. Here's what I like about the Ipod:

• I've been using an Ipod forever...like, since the 2nd generation one. Product loyalty, yah.
• Because I used the Ipod forever, I've been freakin' buying music off iTunes forever. I just did a search and have 107 m4p files. That means 107 m4p files that I couldn't play on the Zune if I switched without figuring out a way to convert. Pain in the butt.
• The new nano is cute and small, except...
• I have 13GB of music. Okay, that's not a lot -- but I keep adding music and I like not having to think about the storage size of my player....
• ..which means I could consider the Ipod Classic. (this is an issue with the Zune too---why can't either company make a freakin' 16GB player? Why either 8GB or 30GB?)
• Nice accessories -- like that cool Nike attachment

Here's what I like about the Zune:

• I've played with a Zune---and honestly, I LOVE the user interface of the Zune WAY more than the Ipod. There are just subtle things like being able to toggle shuffle on or off right off the album I'm playing instead of backing all the way to a menu and finding the shuffle option. Plus, the UI is slick and really nice.
• FM tuner. Yes, I still listen to FM. Plus, all the TVs at the gym have sound tuned into some random radio station.
• Wireless syncing -- I think that's awesome.
• Xbox 360 syncing -- since I have one of these, I love the idea of this. Of course, I can just my Media Center extender to do the same thing, but it's nice to not have to wait to connect to my computer upstairs, yaddah yaddah.
• Sure, I talk about nice accessories for the Ipod--but I've had one for years and never bought an accessory aside from a wall plug adapter.
• Supposedly the desktop software rocks. Downloading now to check it out.
• The new 4gb and 8gb flash versions are really tiny--but again, I'd probably get the 30GB one to hold my music...which is just as big as the Ipod classic. Okay..a bit thicker..but the difference doesn't matter to me.
• Finally, okay--maybe there's a bit of drinking the Kool-aid...(being a MS employee)

In either case, I think that the only thing that's holding me back from getting a Zune are the 107 freakin' M4P files that I have...and it's all music I like too. Haven't done much research--but if any of y'all know of a good, free converter, I'm all ears.

Playing with Hulu

It's 1:09am and I finally got a beta invite to check out Hulu.com, the new online video service featuring content from NBC, FOX, MGM, Universal...heck, a lot of the big players. (thanks Euge for the invite!) I'm still getting a hang of it but am definitely noticing a heck of a lot of shows that I happen to like and watch (The Office, SNL, Heroes, 30 Rock, etc...) After previewing a few, I realized that it's Hulu that powered the episode of Desperate Housewives I watched the other night when my DVR failed to record it. Neat! I'll have to follow up with a more thorough review after going through the site more, but for now, in my brief 10 minutes of scanning through it, I leave you to watch the entire Sideways movie, which I can now embed via Hulu. Sweet!



And just to check out the snipping feature, here's this week's episode of Heroes where Hiro says goodbye to the Princess: (this whole snippet is in Japanese, Asayo!)

Uveitis Ugh

I've been nocturnal for the last few days because of the uveitis in my eye. It has been so extremely painful that the idea of looking out at daylight kills me. Since Friday, I've been holed up inside the condo, shades drawn, sunglasses on. I've only been able to go out at night once the sun has set. I took Friday off from work and am taking today off too. I can barely look at computer screens...and my left eye is so tender that opening it is such a chore. I'm really opening that this will end soon...or get to the point where I can try to wander out during the day and be fine....

Pitas, Uveitis, Spamalot + Swank

I'm almost done with my Pitas migration. I've moved over all entries except for the ones written in 2000. Man, 7 years ago. Crazy to think I've been keeping this blog for that long. I've been going down memory lane copying & pasting all these old entries....

So, my uveitis is back. This is the 3rd time I've had an inflammation, though from reading my past entries, it's the first time I've had a flare up in 5 years with the last one being back in 2002. The first one was in 2001 -- funny reading back on that as I had no idea what it was and didn't seek treatment until having it for nearly a week, resulting me in missing work for 2 days because I had gotten to the point of not being able to look at the computer screen. The good news this time around is that it's a really mild inflammation, such that I don't even need to dilate my eyes daily (which I previously had to do). I'll see my opthamologist in a week and hopefully it'll be gone by then.

Last night, Matt and I went to the Paramount Theater to watch Monty Python's Spamalot -- my, was that musical hilarious. Classic Monty Python totally politically incorrect and random humor.

Tonight, we'll be heading to the Emerald City Swank, Seattle Works' annual fundraiser. This will be my 4th year in a row going! Can't wait to see what auction items are up for bid.

Migrating from Pitas....

If you look at my archive links over on the right there, you'll see that my first 2 years of blogging (2000 and 2001) all took place on a really really old blogging service called Pitas. What an irony considering what the acronym stands for ("PITA")--I'm now in the process of trying to consolidate all my blog entries into one, and because Pitas is so old, there's no concept of a feed, importing tool, nada. So I'm literally copying/pasting all my entries here into Blogger. Ugh.

All of this is getting done with plans to eventually move my entire website to Wordpress. I really loved the page organization tools I had when I put the wedding website together. I was even impressed with all the plugins that exist for Wordpress (such as this nifty Flickr one that I used) that I think it's about time that I take my website and overhaul it....but the big thorn standing in the way is for me to migrate my old pitas blog entries to blogger first so that I can easily import them to Wordpress.

Whirlwind Trip #2: NYC

We took the 2nd of our whirlwind trips to the East Coast last weekend to attend Debbie & Saevar's NYC wedding reception (they got married in Malaysia in August). The trip was fabulous as we ended up seeing a ton of folks in the short amount of time---from hanging out with Debbie & Saevar and meeting their friends, to staying with Anna & Frank, and having dim sum with some friends from Kansas, Hester & Rod.
The weather was ridiculously warm too---when we left Seattle, we were wearing sweaters and puffy jackets (or at least I was). NYC, on the otherhand, was about 86 degrees on Saturday and I was able to prance around in a tank top and skirt throughout most of the weekend. It was awesome.

Here are some photos:

A crew of us at Debbie & Saevar’s reception at the SoHo House---I’ve always been curious to see what it’s like inside this notorious celebrity hangout. The rooftop pool area is really nice.



With the newlyweds:



Dinner with Anna and Frank at this fabulous barbecue joint (Hill Country):



Dim sum at the Evergreen Café with Rod, Hester, Mike and their newborn, Emma:



On Sunday afternoon, we found Lucrecia who happened to be in NYC also:



As a thank you for lending my veil to her for her wedding, Debbie treated me to an amazing massage (the Vishesh treatment) at the Deepak Chopra Center + Spa at the Dream Hotel. (Picture here is of the entrance into the spa) After changing into our robes, we were greeted by our masseuses and led into our individual rooms. The Vishesh treatment involves using a ton of warming massage oil and then applying long strokes and creating friction to develop strong pressure and relaxation. It was absolutely amazing and wonderful. After our massages, we checked out the center and saw the yoga room (beautifully constructed) and sat in the meditation room for awhile. The meditation room had a few low seats in the room (where you can sit cross legged) and this beautiful huge stone on a pedestal in the middle of the room. With the dim, museum-like lighting, it made the atmosphere quite peaceful.


Check out the rest of the photos from this trip.

True HD

Yesterday, I sold my plasma tv to a Chinese couple off of Craigslist. Why? I'm finally getting true HD. Back in 2003, over Thanksgiving at the Joes in Portland, we all woke up insanely early to jump onto any major deals. At the time, I splurged and bought myself a 42" plasma TV---rather proud of this deal as I was an early adopter with perhaps one other friend with such a flat-panel TV. The actual HD televisions were ridiculously priced so I got an EDTV which was fine for me at the time. Fast forward 4 more years -- the cost of HD televisions is perhaps 1/5 of what they used to be--they're thinner, lighter and so much more accessible. My new officemate, the deal king that he is, had located an amazing deal for a new 42" LCD flat-panel TV from Sharp and clued me in on it (it was about 47% off). One impulsive moment later, I was the owner of such television. So now I finally get true HD. It amazes me to view the tech specs between my old and new TV---see below. It arrives this Friday....can't wait!

Specification	OLD TV	NEW TV
Model	Zenith P42W34	Sharp LC-42D64U
Resolution	852 x 480p	1920 x 1080p
Brightness	1000 cd/m2	450cd/m2
Contrast Ratio	1200:1	10,000:1
HDMI Inputs	0	3
HD Component Input	0	3
Weight	75 lbs.	48.5

Whirlwind East Coast Trips

Last weekend, Matt and I took the first of 3 whirlwind trips we have to make to the East Coast this Fall for weddings, including our own reception in Boston. This time, we went up to Ithaca, NY for Jocelyn and Ivan's wedding in the beautiful Robert H. Treman state park in front of a quintessential Ithaca landmark: a waterfall...

A little surprise for me upon arriving was a mini-reunion with some Smiffenpoofs, Laura and Barb, that I hadn't seen in at least 9 years or so! They were performing the ceremony music:

We spent some time reminiscing and badly trying to remember the words to "Manhattan", one of the oldest 'Poof songs. Congrats to Jocelyn and Ivan! They should be off in Hawaii by now...Here are the rest of the photos we took...

We're off to NYC next weekend to attend Debbie and Saevar's reception (at the SoHo House nonetheless---we can't wait to check it out!).

Thank you...Valentin?

We got a late wedding present today. It was a nice present---in the form of a stainless steel All-Clad stir fry pan. Thing is, we have no idea who it's from. According to the order form, it's someone named Valentin that lives in New York. I feel bad. It's not a cheap gift either...but I have no idea who this person is.

Speaking of weddings, I was looking over our final banquet order and thought it was interesting how much was consumed. Keeping in mind it being a wedding of 180 people, a full bar open from 9pm on, etc...these were the amounts consumed:

41 Bottles of Domestic Beer
144 Bottles of Imported/Microbrew Beer
13 bottles of champagne
35 glasses of juice/mineral water
180 glasses of soft drinks
2 bottles of sparkling cider
54 bottles of white wine
37 bottles of red wine
140 glasses of martinis

Whew!

One Foot of Hair

I cut my hair on Saturday. One foot of hair to be exact (and yes, I donated it to Locks of Love). I also highlighted it a mahoghany red (not too crazy as I've done this before). I'd grown my hair out for the wedding and left it nice and black...so I'd been eager to chop it off and highlight it again after the wedding. My head is so light now! Here are before and after shots.

Before


After

Labor Day Camping

We had a fabulous Labor Day weekend camping with Matt, Asayo, Yoko and their dog, Luna. We all woke up bright and early Saturday morning and started to 2.5+ hour drive down to the Hood River, OR area to our campsite. The whole Columbia River area is absolutely beautiful. The campground itself was great, only about a year old. It was incredible how clean the bathrooms and showers were! Admittedly, I've never gone camping anywhere that had bathrooms and showers so it was a pleasant surprise to have such amenities!

Here's Matt after we set up our campsite:

After setting up, we went straight into town, got some quick lunch at McDonald's and then over to Wet Planet Whitewater Rafting for an awesome afternoon of rafting the White Salmon River.

All suited up!

The whole trip was amazing as the weather was great, the water super clear and fresh and the rapids exciting. Mid-way through the trip, we had to hike around the river due to a drop that was too dangerous for any of us to go through...and at the end of the hike, we had 2 choices to get back to our rafts: either keep walking around or jump off the cliff into the 45-degree water! It's a bit crazy thinking back--but we all took the jump and it was awesome.

Photo courtesy of Wet Planet

At the very end, we went down Husum Falls, a 10-foot Class III drop which is incredibly exhilirating.

What a thrill! After rafting, we headed back to the campsite and enjoyed a relaxing dinner and smores by the campfire.

The next day, we woke up bright and early to get some windsurfing lessons. Unfortunately, there wasn't much wind so we had to pass some time in town---we got some coffee, walked around, checked out a local swap meet that windsurfers and kitesurfers sold all their equipment.

After 2 hours, we got a call that the wind had picked up and that we could head over to start our lessons! The first hour or so of our lesson consisted of land simulation on a board with wheels at the bottom so that we could get a good sense of the wind and how to move the sail around:

Still practicing our stance--but it kinda looks like tai chi!

We then got suited up and headed over to the "Hook", an area of the Columbia River that's pretty protected with less wind and a good place for beginners to practice. We spent the next couple hours here and it was so much fun!












All the really good windsurfers and kitesurfers out on the Columbia River---they were totally sailing and going really fast:



Another long exhausting day---we got some food in town and headed back to camp again where Matt and I cooked up some grilled corn and skewers for dinner and we again ended the night with smores. The next morning, we packed up camp to start heading back north.

The group of us at the campsite



We decided to swing by Mount St. Helens on the way back up since Asayo, Yoko and Matt S. had never been before. For our first stop, we went to the Ape Caves, a former lava tube and walked around inside for a bit. We then drove over to the Windy Ridge Viewpoint to get the views of the mountain and Spirit Lake.



Still smokin'!


Luna looking out at Spirit Lake

It was incredible to see how so many trees were still totally ruined, like toothpicks that fell over

We played 20 Questions all the way back to Seattle over our walkie talkies between the cars--a bit dorky but it definitely helped pass time! Fun trip, good company. Yay.