Life in Washington!: 2012

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Pictures!!!

How the time flies I just don't know. My apologies for not updating in so long. Since the last post we have been busy busy with lots of activities. With so much happening it has grown kinda fuzzy so I'm just gonna put up a bunch of pics and fill you in as we go (let's be honest, you came here for the photos). Enjoy!
(also, if you want to see really zoomed in views of the shots you should be able to hold shift or control and click the pic to see it by itself).
pss These pictures are from a variety of cameras- iphone, motorola razr, and a canon t3i. Now enjoy!

Dinner on the beach!

Baked potatoes, roasted corn, and fresh salmon on the grill. Pretty fantastic.

Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains in the background

Another Mac Pac

After about 4 sets of straps I started to figure them out.

Shopping with the Sass's

Octoberfest in Leavenworth, WA

My hair gets like this when I drink from steins.

Octoberfest after a beer or two.

Pieces of an insulated vest I made

Work in progress

Finished product!

Label for the vest

Seattle (looking SE) from 60 stories up

Seattle (looking NE) from 60 stories up (had a work meeting downtown)

Good news everyone! Mac Pac's can easily accommodate beer!

Fixin' skis. Sidenote: Jenny scored a sweet pair of skis off of craigslist for $35! WOOO!!

The skis had some minor, fixable damage. This shot is of Jenny scrapping off PTex (that stuff fills in all the nicks and gouges on the bottom of your skis)

Melting PTex onto the ski to fill in holes. Yes, I burned myself. Small price to pay in the name of powder!

Step one: Drink beer from giant boot.

Step two: fix things at great heights using what is available.

Step three: celebrate with more boot (and dancing)

Bikes aren't supposed to look like that! (Flat tire)

Got around to making myself a Mac Pac

I finally figured out the straps. These turned out nicely.

Strap anchors on top

Settlers of Catan! (Best board game ever)

Catan crew (at Cory and Sara's)

Bad day to be a butterfly.

Puget Sound in November

Puget Sound- looking South from Golden Gardens Beach

Light writing! (long exposures with new camera)

More fun with the camera (still figuring it out)

Jenny with our glowing potatoes

Iphone sunset (well done, apple)

again.

Pumpkin carving fiesta

21st Century carving.

Turned out pretty great!

Made a briefcase/protective case for my work laptop out of extra material I had lying around.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Some more pics

I forgot to put the pictures from my work phone on here. Enjoy!

Pre-beach BBQ at our house

The mountainess part of Corvallis, OR

One of the radio towers we were working at in Corvallis, OR

Saturday, September 29, 2012

The last bit of summer

Looking at my watch I see it’s been over a month since Ive made a post! Holy cow the time is flying by. I am going to have think hard about everything that has been going on. Let’s see- it’s hard to remember specific weekends at this point so I’ll give an overview. We have been hitting the beach as much as possible in the last few weeks. All the Seattleites here keep telling us to load up on our vitamin D while we can… so to the beach we go! We recently bought a gas grill so we figured the best thing to do was have a cook out and then go to the beach. The grill was successfully christened and the cookout a success. During the weekends I have been feverishly working on the next round of Mac Pac’s. Sadly, in the process I destroyed my sewing machine. To be fair to the sewing machine- it has performed amazingly. I bought it for $90 from Walmart and I have absolutely put it through the ringer- sewing all sorts of super tough materials, breaking needles, and the whole 9 nine yards (pun!). There is a silver lining though- when I bought my sewing machine a few years back I purchased a product replacement program from Walmart for an extra $6. I called up the warranty number and 10 minutes later I was credited for a new machine! Bam! Free sewing machine and I’m back in business! Ok, sorry, I started to ramble a bit, but I am super pumped about that! Free! Ok, moving on.

Two weeks ago I spent Sunday-Friday in Corvallis, Oregon. I was there for work and it was my job to go around Benton and Linn Counties to see if the radios work well. To go into a little more detail: when a someone buys a big radio system from Motorola, we give the customer a map and they tell us where they need the radios to work. Since these systems are crazy expensive, we guarantee the radios will work wherever the customer wants. So after all the equipment is hooked up and working someone (me) has to go out and drive around and take samples of the radio strength everywhere we promised coverage. 4 days and around 1000 miles later we were done! It was pretty cool seeing the EVERYTHING in and around Corvallis- from logging roads in the mountains to lots of gravel roads in farm country to downtown where the University of Oregon is. It was nice to get out of the office for a change, but there were some long days sitting in a car and 5 days was enough time away from home.

In true non-stop action in Seattle, 30 minutes after I got home from my Oregon trip we had guests arrive in town. Our friends Rob and Karen (Rob- a fellow raft guide, and Karen- his gf) stopped in Seattle for the weekend. A little background story: Rob and Karen have been living in Salida, CO for a few years and they both decided to quit their jobs and move SOMEWHERE. They bought a camper and are currently touring the Western US looking for a town they can move to. Livin’ the dream I say. So anyways, they stopped by Seattle and we had an awesome weekend. We had lots of good meals, went out on our neighbor’s boat, and even had a fire on the beach! It was really really great having them in town, unfortunately they had to continue on their journey (and we had to get back to work).

This has started to become a little longwinded so I’ll cap it right here (and start the pictures). Oh! I forgot to mention that I finished the bag I was working on for the wedding gift! These deadlines are keeping things interesting and busy around the house here! Ok, on to the pictures! Quick note: these pictures are not in any particular order.