Random stuff from last week:

• John Williams at Benaroya Hall (the guitar player)
• I’m going to be a daddy
• Did pacelining 101 with cascade cycle (50 mi loop around lake washington)
• Did a 65 mi ride with 3500 feet of elevation climb. It was a loop from renton up onto the hills above Kent, over to Black Diamond and then to Issaquah by way of Tiger Mt Road and Ravensdale, return by following 90 and 405 to Renton.

Also, KC’s blog points me to Baby Name Voyager.

Last week was quite busy at work because of preparation for another feature RI. Code Coverage especially was a focus. I missed my Tuesday night ride and Monday night spinning because of it. I was feeling pretty hard core because of a really fast 50 mile ride to Black Diamond from Renton last Saturday. This weekend I did a quite loop around Lake Sammamish against a nasty little headwind and 50 mile ride with Sue where we went from Carnation up past North Bend and back. The back road in that valley with Carnation and Fall City is just ideal biking right now especially with the weather in the 60s.

Pam and I hung out with Misha Friday night along with Ben, Becky and Mark S at the Teapot a kosher vegetarian restaurant near work next to the Malay Satay Hut. They have excellent dishes, and even the skeptical Misha was impressed with their “chicken”. Saturday, I held a BBQ with my employees. It was low key but the food was good. Sunday, we had dinner again with the Goldmans and Julie, except this weekend instead of a limo ride and dinner out, we had a turkey dinner with Stephanie at the Goldman’s house. The girls were into remembering children songs, and were singing them all night.

I started up my cycling training in full force last week. Spinning class on Monday, Tuesday ride with cascade cycle, Thursday warmup ride with Seano, Saturday ride around lake Sammamish with Ben and then Chilly Hilly on Sunday again with Seano. That mon-sun week totaled 99 miles. This week on Monday I did another spinning class with Pam and Ben and last night was another cascade ride. We did 26 miles hitting hollywood hill, norway hill, and one other I don’t know the name of. I also learned the cycle cross that goes from hollywood hill over to Keshav’s neighborhood. The ride leaders have talked me into doing thier RAMROD training series and also enterining into the RAMROD lottery. Today is going to be a well desereved recovery day as I’ve biked every day for the last four.

Sunday evening Pam and I got in a nice dinner with the Goldmans at theMediterranean Kitchen in Bellevue. I’ve got at least two more meals in the leftovers.

Last night Pamela and I sat through a sales pitch for a security system for the house form Monotronic’s local reseller Spot Security. Having no background or experience in such things, I was expecting to get the information and then poke around a bit and learn more about the industry. Unfortunatly for them, this was a pressure sales technique where you either decide at that momemnt or don’t get the “deal”. I didn’t respond well to that, nor when she left out the 3 year commitment part while we were talking price (I insisted on doing some web searchs once I had a company name and found some poeple complaining about that).  One of the books that Tim let me borrow goes through all the sales techniques that she was using. It even went as far that she made the call to her boss in my kitchen to let him know that we weren’t intrested, so that she could come back to offer some more discounts. I offered to make a decision by tommorow after I could ask around, but that wasn’t good enough, so she evenutually left.

These folks might be the best secuity and value in the buissness, but if they feel the need to use this type of sales technique, I think I’d rather not do buissness with them.

I’ve fallen off blogging for a while. Probably because of the first RI of the features I work on, but I can get a quick entry off with what’s been going on.

On Jan 11th I went to the Seattle Symphony and saw Vladimir Feltsman in recital. While I didn’t recognize the Beethoven Sonatas (8 and 31), I enjoyed his playing of the Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. That weekend my mother in law came into town. Friday night we had dinner with the Goldmans and the next day my wife took her to Portland just in time for the ice storm. I stayed home to work on the RI, but caught with them and Julie for the National Acrobats of Taiwan. The acrobats put on a great show, with the most memorable piece being the high chair and hand standing.

Wednesday of that next week included a party at keshav’s house along with batlestar galatica.

Thursday night I went to a course on healthy Thai cooking at the pro club.

That weekend we spent with Mark, Alyssum, and three of their friends in a cabin at Mt. Baker. There we did some snowshoeing. A very fun weekend.

The next Tuesday I held my first Babylon 5 night. I showed to Keshav, Carrie, Mark and Alyssum the pilot movie and the first episode. I cooked up a Lemon Grass Tofu on salad dish that the guys ate.  The next night Raymond hosted a dinner at his place to watch more battlestar galatica.

That Saturday I went to a wine sampling at Henry’s place (my boss’s boss’s boss) with Mathias, Ben G. and Rajesh. That night Mathias and I let the buzz wear-off at Mark and Alyssum along with Stephanie. The next day Pam and I held a gift exchange. I gave a Nancy Pearl calendar and “Boggle” dictionary to Julie. Stephanie bought me cycling socks and a water bottle.

I held the next Babylon showing on Tuesday, Mark and Keshav came for it. The next night the Wininet team went to a dinner at Marakesh in Belltown.

This last weekend I went to Whistler with Pamela, Mark, Keshav, Chris, Mike and Ben. I ski’d for three days. During the car trip up, we created an ad-hoc wireless network that I shared my internet connection through my cell phone on. The ski-ing was quite fun, we were lucky that a foot of snow had just shown up the day before. The top of the mountains were beautiful and much fun.