I really do want to do this every day, and I’ve been doing a good job recently. I’ve been motivated by listening to The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young. I got it off Audible and it’s pretty good. It has some nice guided meditations as well as quite a bit of explanation.
Anyway, I seem to be close to integrating this as a habit, but it’s not there yet.
Moving is a real pain, but it has some good points. The best I can think of right now is that it forces me to get rid of lots of things that I don’t need. Pulling things out of storage closets that I haven’t used in years makes me realize that getting rid of them is a lot better than moving them. Thank goodness for craigslist. I don’t know how people got rid of things they didn’t need before without throwing them away. Now you can sell things you don’t need for money, and people will show up to take the stuff!
I spent New Year’s Eve with Laura and April and some friends of Laura’s. We hung out at Laura’s house for a while and ate and drank and then we met up with Brian and Bridgid at a bar in Ballard. It was good to finally see them again even if they were going to bed at 10:30 or something. Afterwards we went down to see the space needle fireworks and I found Kim a little after midnight since she was working at Kaspars. The night was pretty uneventful from there.
The big news though is that Jacob and Jesse both got engaged this past week! Not to each other though. To Waleska and Deborah respectively. It makes me very happy to know this. Weddings make such fun parties and I’m looking forward to theirs.
Kim and my first holiday hosting experience was a great success! It was pretty easy with only my parents and brother here. Too bad more family couldn’t have made it over, but maybe someday Kim and I will have a house that we can get a ton of family to come to. Maybe a bed and breakfast. Anyway, for Christmas we made a tree out of construction paper and decorated with cutout ornaments. It was a lot of fun actually and a nice change from killing a live tree and dealing with everything that goes along with that.
Christmas Eve we went to dinner where Kim was working. Kaspar’s isn’t normally open as a restaurant, but they host fancy occasions there and we were supposed to get half price meals since we were family of Kim. Somehow they ended up covering all but $9 of the meal. We didn’t want to ask why they didn’t cover the last $9 when we were already getting such a great deal, but it is strange.
We played cards and my dad helped me work on the roof. I gave the family copies of the photos that I had scanned so far. On Tuesday Kim and I went back to work and the family departed.
For Christmas I took my family to see Bodies: The Exhibition in downtown Seattle. Seemed a little odd to go look at dead people for Christmas, but it really was amazing. I think we spent close to four hours there looking at everything. We didn’t do the audio tour. There’s plenty to do without it.
The bodies are all very well preserved and sliced in very interesting ways. One really interesting display showed the skeletal system of a man looking at the muscular system from the same man. There was a section where all the nerves were separated and laid out. The circulatory section had just the arteries and veins with everything else stripped away, so you could still see the basic shape of the body.
One of my only complaints is that some things weren’t labeled as well as they could have been. A lot of the descriptions talked about parts that weren’t obvious in the accompanying body section. You could usually figure it out if you had some basic anatomy knowledge. Overall though, it was an amazing display that a lot time and effort has gone into.
I finally got an electrician out here from Boyer Electric to take a look at some of the funky wiring in this house. It turned out to be well worth it, despite the high hourly rates all electricians charge. He figured out a 3-way switch wiring that he called “California style” in the first half hour, and I had spent 3 or 4 hours trying to get right. Everything he did he made look easy and did way faster then I could have even if I had known for sure what I was doing. It’s always nice to watch someone work who is really knowledgeable in their field.
The storm last night did a number on our roof by knocking the neighbors tree onto it. We were in bed and about to fall asleep, when just at midnight we heard a very loud sound. I’m amazed at how strong the wind was. I didn’t feel safe even being out to look at the damage since there were other trees that could just have easily have blown down nearby. The only real damage was a small hole in the roof and the rain gutter got thrashed. Could have been a lot worse. I saw other places in Seattle that had been smashed by multiple trees and flooded.
Kim and I went back to my parents for Thanksgiving. Kim made a lot of food to take including fake chicken, gravy, mashed sweet potatoes and stuffing. We had Thanksgiving at their house, and it was great to see the family again so soon after the wedding. Dave had a video of the wedding that was a lot of fun to watch. I had a sauna with Larry and Gwenda. It snowed like crazy Thanksgiving day. The rest of the time we relaxed, watched movies, and I helped clean out some old electronics. Nathan wasn’t home. Hopefully we’ll see him for Christmas, and we’re hoping to have the relatives here if any can make it over.
My friend Brendan, who I met in Spain, came up to visit this weekend. He stayed with Laura the whole weekend, but we hung out a lot. Friday night Laura, Brendan, two of Brendan’s friends, Jack and Ayella, and Kim and I had dinner together at our house. Kim cooked some snazzy pot pies with our initials in them, and other people brought salad and wine.
Saturday we went out and saw the Jason Webley concert at the Paradox. As usual, it was an awesome show complete with skies crashing down, swaying dizzy people with arms locked around each other and great musical performance.
Sunday we took it easy and hung out around the house until the evening, when we went to Laura’s for dinner.
I wanted to link to some of the vendors that made our wedding go off so well.
So if you’re in the area of Vermont for your wedding, a great place to have it is The Inn at Baldwin Creek. They do a great job of taking a lot of the stress out of things, keeping you organized, having awesome food and still being very reasonably priced.
If you’re looking for a couple great photographers who are reliable, good communicators and take sweet photos, check out St Phalle Photography. They had the proofs online in less than a week after the wedding, and they made us look amazing :-)
I wish I could link to our DJ’s website, but I don’t think he has one. Jonathan Britt went above and beyond the call of duty. He kept the dance floor full all night, played music we liked even with just general guidelines, and looked sharp in a tux. He also MC’d for us and also communicated very well. He showed up early to set everything up as well.
Finally, back in the Seattle area, engraved glass mugs are a great groomsmen gift, and you can find some beautiful ones from Northwest Creations Etched Glass from Doug in Kent, Washington. Of course they ship too.