Things that might be decidedly odd…

Swimming Today

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to Orcas today. The card I use to get in ran out of punches and the new one I ordered last week hasn’t gotten here yet. Still, I swam at the Proclub for 45 minutes instead. It’s actually been a while since I’ve swum there and it made me realize how much more I prefer doing the group workout. Doing the same routine as others really helps keep me motivated. Plus, following the routine feels like a more complete workout than the random assortment of strokes I do. It’s still better than not swimming at all though. Unless I start using the gym for something besides swimming, I think I’ll be opting out of the Proclub whenever the next open enrollment for benefits at work is.

Because I went down there during a very busy time, I ended up having to get a locker on the lower level of the locker room. I had no idea it was so much more swank and large down there. Plus, it seems none of the showers have lame shame curtains. Apparently, I’ve been showering in the more modest showers upstairs. If you’re not familiar with my issue with shower curtains at the gym, search back a few dozen entries and I’m sure you’ll find it (I’m too lazy to look right now).

I slept late this morning making up for all the sleep debt I accumulated this weekend, but I’m still feeling pretty tired right now and need to hit the hay soon. I’m also trying to get on an earlier work schedule again. Showing up at work at noon just means staying later and that unfortunately conflicts with my often busy social schedule.

Long Bay Area Weekend

I admit it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but I was busy traveling all over creation (that’s the bay area) with Jason, Sarah and other assorted characters.

I flew into San Jose on Wednesday night and was greeted by Jason, Sarah and Jeff T at the airport. We promptly had dinner at a tasty vegetarian Indian restaurant in or around Santa Clara somewhere. The next day, Sarah, Jason and I drove up to Napa County and did the wine tasting thing. It was a beautiful day for it, although we did get a bit of a late start. We hit up a couple places including Casa Nuestra (which Sara Lee took me to 4 years ago) and Mum’s (for Champagne).

On the way back, we stopped at Muir Beach in Marin County, although it was fairly fogged in.

That night we had dinner at a Thai place on Geary and 24th in the city with Jason and Sarah’s old friend Tessa. For such reasonable prices, the place was very fancy with uniformed waitstaff and even a shoe attendant.

We spent Friday afternoon (late start) in Berkeley seeing the campus and other nearby sights, making sure to stop for lunch at Zachary’s with Jeff T. Later, we met up with Jeff T, his roommate Sushant and Ajith (former UNC grad student) for some food and beer over at Jupiter. There I met up with Robert and we all (Jason, Sarah, Jeff T, Ajith, Robert and myself) went into the city to hit up the bars. Robert and I drove while the others took BART, so we stopped at a party a friend of a friend of a friend was throwing over in the Mission. I talked to a couple guys about swimming before we had to go meet up with the rest of the crowd for the bars.

We started out at Moby Dick’s which was pretty crowded. Amusingly, Jeff T got a free beer from the bartender who must have found him cute. I’ve never gotten a free beer at a bar in my life and he gets one his in his first visit to a gay bar. Beginner’s luck? (; From there, we continued on to the bar formerly known as Daddy’s. Apparentlty, it has a new name and somewhat altered clientelle which disappointed Robert somewhat (”There was only one guy getting blown in the corner!”). We didn’t stick around too long before heading over to Badlands for some sweaty dancing. I managed to get my ass grabbed by a couple guys who weren’t bad looking, which I admit boosted my self-esteem a little. But it was definitely a fun place to dance with a good amount of guys who were easy on the eyes.

At that point, Robert and I drove the rest of the gang back to Berkeley before continuing on to Concord. Unfortunately, Jason and Sarah’s rental car got broken into some time while we were gone and their backpacks (mostly containing nothing but clothes) were stolen. Robert and I went to the Hilton in Concord to meet up with some of his old friends, one of whom was getting married the next day. On the way back into the city, we stopped at Jack in the Box for dinner (neither of us had eaten a meal since lunch) which delayed our arrival at Chris’ (a friend of a friend of Robert’s whose place we crashed at) to some time around 3:30 or so.

The next morning, Chris, Robert and I got some good brunch at some restaurant (I forget the name) full of gay men on 16th and Market. Apparently, Chris’ swim team meets up there after their Saturday morning practice. Chris made sure to invite me to swim with them some time when I’m down in the future. Hopefully some time I’ll take him up on that offer. After that, Robert had to go back to Concord for the wedding and I met up with Jeff T, Jason and Sarah back in Berkeley. We headed up to the hills for a bit and checked out the Little Farm in Tilden Park. I had to take a nap after that because I was so tired from the night before. After that though, we grabbed dinner at Cha Am in the gormet ghetto and then went over to Castro Valley to play some mini-golf. At that point, Jeff and Sushant went back to Berkeley and I went with Jason and Sarah back to Jason’s place in Santa Clara.

This morning, we got up and did some browsing at Barnes and Noble. I found a couple of interesting books on swimming, which I need to look into some more. It seems like it would be nice to have a book on proper swimming technique for reference. There was also a cool book on weight training for swimming. I’ve been thinking about adding some weight training to my workout schedule to mix things up a bit. It might be nice to target that towards swimming. After that, we went to Jeremy’s place where he was having a BBQ. Good food, good friends and good conversation for sure.

Then it was time to go to the airport and return to Seattle. Whew, what a weekend!

The rest of the pictures are here.

Another Warm Day

Yesterday was of course another warm day (although not as hot as the past few I guess). At work, I got to see Steve Ballmer talk for about an hour at this event for interns and new hires. It was pretty sunny and hot out there, but it was still neat to see the CEO take some time out of his certainly busy schedule to come talk to us. After work, I met up with Jeff. After picking up some stuff from Trader Joe’s, we made dinner at my place and watched Billy Elliot which neither of us had seen before. It was a pretty cute and enjoyable movie though.

Later today I’m flying down to San Jose to meet up with Jason and Sarah (along with some other locals like Jeremy and hopefully Jeff, Lisa and Kendra). We’ve got an action packed weekend planned I think, but it should be fun. While I’m loving all the traveling I’m doing this summer, at the same time I feel like I’m missing out on all the great stuff Seattle has to offer in the summer a bit. Oh well. After my trip to Vancouver the weekend after this one, I have no forseeable future travel plans and should be able to enjoy the rest of the summer here.

Too Hot

The heat wave continues in Seattle. My apartment has been like a furnace even with the windows open. I should really go invest in a fan or two I suppose. Today at work, I was actually freezing though. It wouldn’t surprise me if the A/C was cranked up because of the hot outdoor weather. I was happy to walk into the nearly 90F air upon leaving work this afternoon.

I did go to Orcas today, thereby beginning a pattern of going every Monday (my new goal). It was warm in there too, so the cool water felt really nice. I stopped about an hour in as I was feeling worn out and I wanted to get going to meet Jeff before 9pm. We went up to Kidd Valley Burgers and Shakes on Queen Anne Hill where I grabbed some quick dinner and him a milkshake. From there, we went over to Kerry Park to admire the view of the space needle and downtown. Everything was lit up and the view was quite beautiful. Of course, the company with me wasn’t bad either (;

I just finally uploaded two videos I took this weekend on my trip to the San Juans. Most of the videos weren’t particularly interesting, but I did get one of the plane taking off and one of it landing from my perspective in the back seat. Here’s the take off and the landing.

Orcas Island Trip Photos

The photos (all 212 of them that came out) are up now here. A couple of highlights:

San Juans

This weekend, I went to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands with Outventures for a joint event with Cascade Flyers. We camped at the airport with the flyers. On Saturday, we ate several meals, went swimming at a nearby lake (refreshing alpine lake on the island with lots of eye candy around) and had a dinner. Afterwards, I got to go up in a small 4-seater plane at sunset, which was great. On Sunday, we went hiking up Mt. Constitution and swimming again before catching the ferry back to the mainland. All in all, it was a fun weekend with some old friends and some new ones. I took something like 250 pictures, which I’ll hopefully be getting off camera soon.

It’s Wednesday

Well now that Wednesday is over, I guess we’re over the workweek hump.

I got up this morning ready to face the day, but after cleaning the bathroom and finishing my breakfast of one banana while running out the door, my stomach started to feel kind of funny. I also felt a little woozy and was having difficult concentrating at work. I thought I might be dehydrated so I continued drinking water most of the day. That I wasn’t peeing much at all considering how much I was drinking concerned me a bit, but I probably was just really dehydrated (which is weird because it’s not like I went out drinking the night before or anything). Around lunch time I felt a lot better, but after lunch I was feeling cruddy again.

In time I started feeling better again and I even managed to get some work done and go for a jog. During the jog, I felt pretty much normal and afterwards only a little bit under the weather. After work, I headed over to Paddy Coyne’s (an Irish pub in South Lake Union) for an OV board meeting and dinner. By that point, I was feeling much better. I ate a lot though and again wasn’t feeling so hot, although I think it was more that I was REALLY full than whatever had been bothering me before. After dinner and the meeting, I met up with Jeff and we went over to Dilettante Chocolate for some dessert and conversation. The two of us always seem to have something to talk about, which I find really cool. He’s almost like a gay, single version of Jason in that way (;

This weekend it looks like I’m going to the San Juans with OV and affiliated friends for a camping trip. I’ve never been to the San Juans and I hear they’re beautiful, so it should be a cool trip. After that, I’ll only have a couple days until my 4 day trip to the bay area the following weekend. Wow, things are getting busy again, but it should all settle down again after Vancouver Pride (the weekend after the bay area trip).

Parallels

This morning I spent way too much trying to get Parallels Desktop working. Apparently the wonky USB situation with the product is affecting my smart card reader (which i need for remote access to work). Everything installs and the reader shows up in Windows but then Windows claims the wrong driver is installed. I dunno, it works fine on my other machine. For now, I guess I’ll just suck it up. Perhaps I’ll install bootcamp on a really small partition though.

Pirates

My friend/coworker Shepherd wanted to go see the new ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie the other week, but since it was opening night we decided it was probably best to wait a while. So we finally saw it tonight over at Pacific Place. It was entertaining and suspensful, but I think the first one was better. Maybe it just seemed like more of the same? I’d hoped to meet up with Jeff afterwards, but the movie ran so long (2.5 hours according to IMDB) we didn’t get out until nearly 11 and eventually he and I decided it would probably be better to meet up tomorrow instead.

Swimming

Today I went to Orcas for the first time in quite a while. Monday was a lot busier than the other days of the week I’d done before (Wed and Thurs), but also the coach had workouts taylored to each lane. I kept up fairly well once I got the hang of things, doing all but 200 yards of the ~2800 yard routine. I’m pretty beat, but I can feel the endorphins too. I’m going to try to go there every Monday from now on. That day works the best for my schedule so long as I can leave work at a decent hour (by 6:30).