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.

Pam and I took a trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island for New Years. While a bit cold, we had a nice time; a good dinner, time in a Jacuzzi, breakfast served at our room (at the Tucker House), buying some artwork and seeing the island. We also found a book that is perfect for our trips: a directory of weekend trips detailing what to see when, where to eat and place to sleep.

On the 2nd, we had Misha, Rachael and Ben over for a salmon dinner. I used a bit of soy sauce and the mushroom topping, and cooked it on the wood board I have. For an appetizer,  I put out an English cheddar I found at Costco that I’m loving. It’s replacing the Swiss that Pam bought for custom pizza night as my favorite to snack on. Unfortunately Becky, who is now moved out here, wasn’t able to join us. We will have to have Ben and Becky over again soon. That evening we watched an episode of Carnivalle on Comcast’s HBO On-Demand. It was spooky weird and I might have to go buy it at Costco soon (It’s like $26 cheaper there then Amazon).

I’ve also finished watching the first season of Enterprise. It’s entertaining. 🙂

Yesterday, I went on the MUMPS ride the lake bike ride. I did two little extras, riding around mercer island (backwards from what I’m used to) and doing Juanita Hill. My heart rate spent a long time in 190’s and hit 205 on Juanita Hill. It was 45 miles at about 17/18 mph with a tad faster on Mercer. The temperature was in the high 30s. By the end I had nothing left in my legs. I’m going to have to work on it to get back into shape. After the ride I took a shower and enjoyed the Jacuzzi at the Pro Club, there I listened to two guys talk about Iron Man competitions, where the biking portion alone is 112 miles. Oh well.

Dinner last night was some beef cooked for 24 hours in a crook pot. It was very tender and just falling apart. Just perfect. Today is the first day physically back in the office. Let’s see if I can stay on track today. 🙂

Been working at home all week, which has turned out pretty well. I don’t think I’ll have house fever before our trip this weekend.

I got in one bike ride from Tracy Owen park to Redmond because it looked like a sunshiny day. Unfortunately most of the ride was in a cold fog and I popped an inner tube after running into some glass. I met some nice folks and learned that a lot of people use a ~15 mph pace with an early start and a pace line to do STP in one day. I also saw again the horse trainer that I met on Ted’s rides, she had a very fancy heart rate monitor and was doing all right with the longer rides.

I also tried using the crock pot to cook a big $5 piece of beef from Costco. I cooked it for a couple of hours on high, and ended up with a tough piece of meat. I’ve since then let it cook on low for many more hours, and it has finally gotten tender.

Last night I went to dinner at Mark and Alyssum’s place. Raymond, Keshav and Kerry were also there. I had some very nice Oregon desert wine that Kerry brought, and learned about brewer’s yeast being the topping of hippies. At some point Alyssum will introduce me to hippy popcorn. Later we all played celebrity taboo and watched Buck Rogers.

Had a pretty busy weekend, Friday night was the our holiday party, which was pretty decent once my headache went away and I could enjoy the band. The Dancing Heads room was especially enjoyable. They use green screen technology to get a video of just your head and then overlay it on to a video of headless dancers keyed to a the playing of a popular song. The results are VERY amusing.

Saturday I woke up and joined a cascade cycle ride for what should have been a 40 mile 17-18 mph ride. The end result was a 48 mile ride at 19-20 mph. That small difference in speed plus the cold weather really kicked my butt. It went from Redmond, over Sammamish plateau over to fall city, up to the falls, and then back to Redmond by way of 202 and union road. Along the trip we saw the extra dramatic Snoqualmie falls, accompanied with mist drenching everything out to the parking lot). During the ride back on 202 we saw an entire vally plus roads under water.

Saturday night was dinner and a Hanukah party hosted by the Goldmans. Had fun, played with Ryan and ?, ate lakes.

Sunday was the Darkside bike ride. I saw a Neon flip over on a wooden bridge. The driver was all right, but his car looked like it was in pain. Later in that ride I did 11mph uphill (2/3% grade) in to a heavy wind. That same wind gave me 18mph without pedaling on the way back. With pedaling I hit ~43 mph. We ate some food in a North Bend bakery. I’ll have to go back there more.

Decent weekend, Friday night was dinner at Mediterranean Kitchen and some shopping at the Bon. Saturday we went to Keshav and Kerrie’s pre-Christmas party. Unfortunately I slept through the first part of it, but I did get to play a bit of halo 2 co-op and watch Keshav show off the new Grand Theft Auto game. Sunday, pam and I went on an 8 mile bike ride through a small snow storm, meeting our ride leader Ted. Pam’s phone didn’t survive the trip. We did a bunch of chores around the house, finally cleaning up Halloween. Later we went and bought some new ski clothing (since we both have loss weight from the last time we bought that type of thing. The new Snoqualmie Chinese place in the grocery market wasn’t all that good. I wish I knew what they did wrong, because their cooking was very similar to my stir-fry results. This week I continue to try to keep up my spinning class and cardio (I did four workouts last week).

I spent last week in Kansas City where I got a chance to watch a few movies, eat home cooked meals and meet a lots of relative and friend’s of Pam’s familly. All and all, it was a nice break from working. I did manage to watch Kevin Devlin’s book tour talk on The Millennium Problems (seven math problems for the next 100 years, with $1 million prize for each)

I saw Senator John Kerry yesterday. He was pretty cool.

This morning I grabbed coffee at snoqualmie ridge’s new coffee shop, Bibo Coffee. It’s sort of sad that they are priced the exact same as microsoft’s cafiteria coffee, so much for the coffee discount. I created an rss feed for Tom Toles’ political comic that often shows up in the Seattle Times. My old college roommate has a blog with rss that I’ve subscribed to. Last night I read through all the longhorn scenarios for networking.

I listened to Paul Collins talk today on “How to be Obscure”. It’s an entertaining talk on people who were almost famous, or should have been famous, but are now unremebered. Stories told included N-Rays, studies of the effects of opium and how an inventor managed to automate a process and then make a fortune from it by not patenting it and keeping the process a secret.Collins edits the Collins’ library and is the author of Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen People Who Didn’t Change the World.