New York City

Quick hits from the Big Apple.

*If a limo service tells you the fee is $65 plus tolls plus tip, that means the tip is not optional. It’s actually $75 + tolls. Oh. Make sure you’re only paying for the tolls TO your destination. You don’t want to pay an extra $16 for the limo to get back to the airport.

*Dude. Drinking a Margarita in a jumbo size Martini glass doesn’t make you look hip and cool. It makes you look like a goober.

*Yuengling is not a micro brew. Oldest Brewery in America or not, it’s still just another blase Lager

*New York is not as casual as Seattle but there are still a lot of people wearing blue jeans and T-Shirts.

*Sports bars in Lower Manhattan play the same Classic Rock as Sports Bars in Lower Indianapolis.

*With the crazy-ass price of real estate around here, you’d think Embassy Suites would ditch the Atrium idea. It’s nice (?) but there are 200 rooms of unused space between me and the ground floor.

*Regardless, it’s still NYC, one of the most interesting/amazing places I’ve ever seen.

Dave

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

–W.H. Auden

Dave

A good friend of mine passed away suddenly last Friday. Best guy around.

Bad (perfect) timing on this shot. Kinda like “Country Bumpkins go to Europe”.

I don’t have the words to explain how much I already miss him.

The Scoreboard

Our high-tech, full-color score board. It was a big decision to keep score as we weren’t sure everyone was mentally ready to accept losing a game. It’s Seattle you know, we don’t want anyone feeling down because they’re losers.

Turns out, I’m the one getting beat up on.

Dutch Idol

Number of hits on Google.

Dutch Rock Star: 1,360,000

British Rock Star: 12,000,000

American Rock Star: 62,400,000

So I guess this isn’t surprising

Ping Pong

When Manny moved into the basement, we had to move the Ping Pong table out to the garage. We were excited to have him move in but we were bummed about exiling the table from the house. It was December, cold and dark, and the table sat folded up for the next few months.

Finally, about a month ago, it warmed up enough that you could hang out in the garage with just a jacket. We hung some overhead lights, bought a new bucket of balls and the Spring Ping Pong Season began.

Manny and Michele in action:

Spring in Seattle

Mariners 8 – Rangers 3

Good Times and Bad

Sometimes my Dad is really funny.

Virginia Tech

Nothing I can say will make any of this remotely better. I just hope all involved can find a bit of peace in the midst of what has to be hell.

image via Instapundit

On top of the Earth

A friend of mine from Sweden emailed me this great picture from his recent cross-country ski trip.

In his own words, he was in…

“The Northern Swedish mountains, a place called Hemavan, almost spot on the Arctic Circle. Very few inhabitants, but this area is homeground for most of Sweden’s alpine ski stars.”

I met Kristofer in Wollongong, Australia when we were in school together at the University of Wollongong. We had some great times together, like climbing Mt Kosciuszko, 4 Wheeling on the beaches of Frasier Island and flipping coins for beers at the North Gong.

I don’t know if all Swedes are as adventurous as he is, but his emails are usually something like, “Just got back from 4 weeks of sailing the Mediterranean”, or “I am getting ready to do the 90 km cross-country ski race, the Vasaloppet“. Next thing you know, he’ll tell me he’s flying on the next Shuttle mission, doing some endurance training in zero gravity.

And now, in honor of Kristofer, here are some random facts about Sweden

*Finland was part of Sweden from 1323 until 1809.

*Sweden is a little bigger than Texas with less than half the population, 22 million to 9 million. Of these 9 million, 1.6 million live in Stockholm.

*ABBA was also the name of a Swedish canned fish company.

*Volvo is Latin for “I roll”. It was founded in 1924 in Gothenburg, Swede.

*Almost 150,000 Swedes settled in Washington State between 1890 and 1910. In 1910, Swedish immigrants founded what would become Swedish Hospital, today the largest hospital in the Pacific Northwest.