Life in Washington!: September 2012

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.