Life on Phinney Ridge: April 2008

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The twins

An interesting trivia piece for all of you, I am a twin, my wife is a twin, and my wife's sister's husband is a twin. There are other twins in the family, but it just gets too complex.

In twin related news, brother-in-law #1 decided to re-grout his bathroom this weekend. Judging by the neatly pressed t-shirt, wire-rim glasses and un-calloused hands I think it is safe to say he has never done this before.

Meanwhile, brother-in-law #2 took a picture of his baby's first ultra-sound... he's going to be a soccer player, I just know it! Either that or a computer geek who is obsessed with Tumi, BMW's and Izzy's steak.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Sierra Madre Heros!

The annual forest fires in southern california came early this year, and they have been burning steady for the past two days in the Sierra Madre area.

Guess who KNBC decides to interview for the scoop? That's right, my parents... I'm glad that the "white flash" Volvo

shall be eternally memorialized in this video as the get-away car of choice for local Sierra Madre residence "Rick & Mary Simpson" (too bad they screwed up the names).

Just think, if the fire had come a few months later the planned development across the street

would be up in smoke. I bet fire/flood insurance will be cheap this year.

"Rick & Mary" Interview: http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=245608

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Phinneycenter.org

A few blocks away from me is the Phinney ridge community center. After reading-up on the site I'm pretty impressed, there are lot of fun activities on the calendar for this summer...

3rd Annual Summer Beer Tasting
July 19th, 2008 4-7pm
http://phinneycenter.org/events/beer_summer.shtml

Phinney Garden Tour
September 7th, 2008 11am-4pm
http://phinneycenter.org/events/garden.shtml

Phinney ridge "pig-out"... I hope they do this again this year.
http://phinneycenter.org/events/pig_out.shtml

http://phinneycenter.org/

Friday, April 25, 2008

LeMay Car Collection

My father sent me a link to the largest private car collection in the world. At roughly 3,000 cars in the collection, I think they have that record locked-in for awhile. It will certainly take Jay Leno awhile to catch up.

This is definitely on my Seattle "to-do" list. The museum is located in Tacoma (WA). If anyone is interested in joining, let me know.

www.LeMayMuseum.org

Along the same lines, the Boeing museum is pretty cool too (went there a few years ago for an MSN Summit event), check it out!

www.museumofflight.org

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Justice is served

Today I visited Seattle's City Hall and Municiple building. First of all, City Hall is very cool. I actually recommend that out-of-towners check it out for a minute. It's in the heart of downtown, has great views of the city and is quite modern.

http://www.seattle.gov/fleetsfacilities/civiccenter/cityhall.htm

I then went across the street to the Municiple building to visit my local magistrate (aka the Judge). There was a misunderstanding about a parking ticket I received, namely that I didn't want to pay it. Fortunately the judge agreed with me and cut it down to a "warning".

http://www.seattle.gov/fleetsfacilities/civiccenter/smt.htm

The magistrate was kind enough to fill me in on the local law, apparently in Seattle you can't park within 5 feet of a driveway, park on the parkway, nor park on the sidewalk (unfortunate news for most of my neighbors). Also, she mentioned that vehicles are considered "abandoned" after only 72 hours! Good for me, bad for the guy down the street with 7 dumpie trucks which haven't moved in the past decade.

Citizens unite!

Indiana Jones & Expedia

At work today Expedia launched its Indiana-Jones skinned "Summer of Adventure" site. I am in awe that Expedia has stepped outside of it's comfort zone to produce something this interactive and fun. If you have a second, check it out!

I've lost 3 times on the "Golden Suitcase" game. I encourage you to try... and share your winnings with me!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hooray for Hollywoodland

I've lived in Los Angeles (Hollywood, even) my entire life and have never been as close to the Hollywood sign as I was today. It was spectacular! Gorgeous! All 15 of us crammed into an open-top minibus (it was

exactly like what I pictured the Gilbreth family driving in the "Cheaper by the Dozen" books) and took a star tours up Beechwood Canyon. After turning a few corners, the sign came into view on one side, the LA basin on the other, and the Hollywood dam, with the funky but expensive canyon homes around it, was laid out in front of me. I breathed in the smog and marveled at my beautiful city. Then I adjusted my oversized sunglasses, brushed the dirt off of my flats and wished for a tall iced-americano.

Afterwards, we meandered back down and drove through Beverly Hills where we became psuedo-paparazzi, snapping pics of the homes (okay, the gates in front of the homes) of Julia Roberts, John Travolta, Hugh Hefner and Frank Sinatra.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dumpie Neighbors

Seattle (not to be confused with the "East side") is one of those odd places trapped by a real estate boom where on any given street a beautiful new home will sit alongside 1925 jalopies with a toilet in the front yard. I'm one of the folks trapped in this paradox. The neighbor at the end of my street has somewhere between 6-8 beat-up rust buckets (I think a few other neighbors might lend him their beaters too) that he parks on the street. You might ask, "how does anyone drive that many cars?". Exactly, he doesn't. They have sat there on the street, collecting rust, for the past 5 months (when I moved in). Meanwhile EVERYONE else on the street has to park elsewhere so he can park his prized beauties in plain sight.

It's times like this that I appreciate Los Angeles.
(a) Cars would certainly have been ticketed by now
(b) Street sweeper would have called the police to tow them away
(c) They have rules for how ugly your yard can get (well not really, but they should)

Oh, in case you are looking for this home, it really does have an old toilet in the front yard... and aluminum foil covering the windows for that added touch.

Local hippies

Every day on the way to work I look forward to passing underneath the Green Lake bridge that crosses the 99. For some reason the local hippies (Fremont folk) find personal pleasure in creating large political signs and holding them over the bridge for cars to see as they pass. It's typically a sign having to do with Bush. But really, who cares? Why litter my view with your signs? I often think to myself, wouldn't your time be better spent recycling something?

Rainy Seattle? Nah.

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't rain all the time in Seattle. Having been an official Seattlite for 8 months (if you want to get technical, 2 months with a Washington ID), I firmly believe that people from Seattle say it rains a lot simply to scare people away from coming here. I simply can't find any other reasons. There have been maybe a dozen days that I've seen where the sun hasn't poked out for at least a few minutes.

I've also noticed a strange coincidence, whenever I'm traveling for business it tends to rain more. When I come back it tends to be more sunny. Perhaps being from SoCal has an effect.

Case in point, last weekend the weather went from 50 to 85 to 35 degrees. We had wind, rain, hail and 4" of snow!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Hooray for May!

It was May's birthday yesterday. We started off the day by attending a friend's brunch in honor of May where we each created omlette works of art.

After some purse shopping, we dined at Honda-Ya in Little Tokyo (Los Angeles) for the Japanese equivalent of "Tapas". We were quite adventuresome in our selections: