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Communication on the internet is getting more interesting every day. I’m sure a lot of you have noticed that I’ve started using flickr for sharing photos, and yahoo recently acquired flickr. I’m excited to see how yahoo integrates flickr into their services, especially since I’ve been using yahoo mail for a long time. Just recently I’ve been using yahoo music engine, and I’ve been waiting to see yahoo’s new blog, 360. I was looking forward to centralizing most of my web communication in yahoo until I read this article about independence and privacy on the web. I’ve always liked the free web services out there like yahoo mail, blogger, friendster, myspace, etc, but now with so much free open source software out there, I feel like I shouldn’t tie myself to any one web service. I want to just get my own domain and host everything there: my blog, my photos, contacts, my calendar, IM lists. Problem with that is TIME! Who has the time for such things? If I had time to do all that I wanted creating my own web space wouldn’t even be one of the top three things. I guess the whole point of all this is that I’m hoping someone will create an open, all encompassing, flexible web place much like flickr but for everything. There’s plenty of open source projects out there trying to do something like this, but none of them seem nearly mature enough yet. The money just doesn’t seem to be in open source yet. Blah, okay, like I have time for this rant even.

Kim, her parents (Ron and Joan), and I all went up to Vancouver for the weekend. Kim’s parents had a couple free nights at the Marriott hotel so we stayed there. The hotel was nice, but it’s a little far from where the action is downtown.

As soon as we arrived we went looking for food in Chinatown. Chinatown was a tad disappointing to all with its rundown, closed businesses and large vagrant population. We spent the next few days mostly seeing the parks and gardens of the city. We took the seabus across to North Vancouver to see the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge. It was pretty with nature trails, but Joan is afraid of heights and didn’t go over the bridge. She got about 1/4 of the way across and turned around. Good effort though.

After some Persian food for lunch we headed to the south part of the city to see the Elizabeth Gardens. There were a lot of weddings going on there despite the grey skies and showers. There was a conservatory with birds and tropical plants. There was a salmon colored conure named Charlie who liked to scream really loudly and then tell you “I’m Charlie!”. Quite the character.

Kim and I headed down to the strip on Granville to check out the bars and people. We found a seat in a fun Irish pub and had a few drinks then headed back for sleep. We were too tired to stay out too late since we had been walking and site seeing all day.

Sunday we saw another garden, the Van Dusen botanical gardens. Kim and her parents are big plant aficionados. They even know what almost everything growing in out yard is. I can name the edible stuff… Most of it. Anyway, the highlight of the garden was the hedge maze, at least for me.

Then we booked it out of the city to wait an hour at the border to get back in to our amazingly secure US of A. I feel SO much safer.

Ron and Joan, Kim’s parents, have arrived in Seattle. They’re here just in time for the weird stormy weather with thunder and lightning and rainbows. So far they’ve been visiting Seattle’s parks while Kim and I have been busy working. Kim and her mom went to get stylish haircuts this morning. Tomorrow we’re leaving for Vancouver for the weekend.

I’ve been interviewing for some new positions the last few weeks, but I was happy to receive a better offer from my current employer today. I’m really happy that I’ll be able to stay where I am because I like the people and the company. My manager/coworker is a really cool guy and we get along really well. I was a little hesitant to shake up a good thing and go somewhere else. I think I’m going to take some of the money from the raise and buy a good road bike to start biking to work!

A little of everything seemed to take place this weekend. Kim babysat on Friday night for some rich people on Queen Anne. Bridgid moved on Saturday morning after a hectic week of buying a car and getting ready to start her job on the peninsula. We took her out to happy hour at the pink door downtown on Thursday and Brian came too. While Bridgid was moving out Kim was checking out culinary schools since she’s considering going back to school to study cooking.

It was Laura’s birthday and she came down from Bellingham, and after a little sitting around the house waiting for people to call use back and tell us what they were doing, we just took off for downtown to go to the cheese festival at Pike Place. There were a ton of cheese samples. Kim met us down there, but as usual, the parking was horrendous and we only stayed for a little while. Then April met all of us and we took off to go climbing at exit 38.

April had never climbed before and Laura has only climbed a little bit, but they both did really well. I was really excited and impressed that Kim led the first few climbs of the day with no fear. She kicked butt. I led the last climb of the day, a slightly wet 5.9.

Kim and I had plans to go to a modern dance show, so we dropped Laura and April off, got some food from Thai Tom’s and hurriedly got ready to go to the show. The show was called Relatively Real, and the dancing was amazing, but I definitely didn’t ‘get’ it. The dancing just looked cool, but I didn’t see how it tied in with the themes that were presented during interludes to the dancing.

After the dance show Kim and I stopped by Jesse’s to see how the Risk game was going. Jesse was the first one to be knocked out. When we left Travis was fighting to survive, Jacob was only doing slightly better, and Deborah and Waleska were duking it out for world domination.

Today was thankfully less eventful. Kim went to get her bridesmaid dress hemmed by Waleska’s mom, and I washed windows and did yard work. A house is quite a bit of work, but so far the novelty hasn’t worn off so I don’t mind yet. When Kim got back we went to Brook’s first birthday party. Brook is the little girl that Kim nanny’s for. I’m constantly amazed that human beings can survive as well as we do considering how helpless babies are for the first MANY years of their lives.

Now we just got word that the person we thought was going to be moving in is flaking out on us, so we’re back to the drawing board for finding a roommate. Oh well, with both sets of parents visiting in the next week it will probably prove to be better to have the room open.

Betsy had the idea to have a poker night get together, so we decided randomly on cinco de mayo. Betsy and Wes brought a cool fold out poker table, Thao and Tai brought chips and cards, and everyone else brought food or drink of some sort. I think there were 9 people in the game to start, with Jesse and Deborah on the same team. We were playing Texas hold ‘em with a single deck and a $5 buy in. Jacob and Waleska showed up later, so they were nice enough to make quesadillas for everyone. Kim had never really played before, but she did pretty well and even won a hand. I went all in on a hand and Travis took my money, but he lost it all not long after. Tai played the role of announcer and teacher really well and everyone had fun. Thao ended up winning the pot around midnight.

Kim and I went home to my parents’ for the weekend. I had planned to run in Bloomsday, but the registration got messed up and I didn’t want to pay a late fee, so we just spent time with the fam. Nathan was even home, so the whole family was together.

Saturday morning everyone except Nathan went into town to the gym to play racketball. Kim had never played, so we taught her the basics. I didn’t bring non-marking shoes so I ended up playing barefoot, which really burns your feet after a while. Kim and I went looking for morel mushrooms, but didn’t find many. It must have been a little too early still. We played hearts and eukre most of the evening. Sunday everyone except Nathan went to church. After church Kim and I drove to Post Falls to visit with Gwenda, Grandma and Sierra for a little while, then we drove back to Seattle.

Kim organized a happy hour get together at Jai Thai near our house. It was nice to just get a bunch of friends together on a weeknight and have some cheap food and drinks. Afterwards Kim and I went climbing and Jacob came with us just to hang out. He was going to meet up with everyone at happy hour, but he fell asleep. I can identify with that. Sometimes it’s the best just to come home from work and pass out.

Yesterday Brian, Bridgid and her sister went with Kim and I to eat at the Olive Garden. I forgot how many fat people there were. It’s kind of scary how overweight our society is becoming, even in health conscious, trendy Seattle. I can only imagine what it’s like in cities where almost nobody cares about organic produce and there’s not a ton of outdoor stuff to do nearby.

Friday I stayed at work late to do some server work with Dennis. Saturday Kim and I went to see Finding Neverland. I thought it was going to be another Hook style movie about Peter Pan grown up, but it turned out to be about the writer of Peter Pan and was wonderful. Kim did some babysitting work Saturday night so I stayed at home and read and organized photos. Since Brian was nice enough to give me a flickr account it’s resparked my photo organizing kick.

Sunday Kim, Brian, Bridgid, Brian’s friend Mary and I went climbing out at exit 38. It turned out to be nice weather again despite earlier bad predictions. I’m really glad when I don’t listen to the weathermen. I always wonder about people who miss out on so much because of iffy weather reports. I think a lot of people just go do outdoor stuff when the weather prediction shows a bright sun. I led some 5.9′s and some 5.10′s, and everyone climbed very well. There was a guy named Jens at the crags by himself who we ended up climbing with and he was really good. He led a 5.10d that we probably wouldn’t have done otherwise, and he reled a 10.c when I got a rope stuck by trying to pull the rope through without undoing a knot at the end.

Mary had to be back at six, so we got back at 6:20. Not bad considering the large group we had climbing. The rest of us went to see a documentary at the Guild theater, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. It’s a small film only playing at a few theaters, but I’d say anyone who can see it should. I think documentaries are really beginning to fill a major role in education and entertainment. Perhaps I was just never aware of documentaries before, but I think they’ve really increased their stature in the film world, especially films like Fahrenheit 911, Bowling for Columbine and Super Size Me. It’s wonderful that documentaries are becoming not only very enlightening, but very entertaining.

Kim, Brian and I went climbing all weekend at Vantage, aka Frenchman’s Coulee. We went despite the nasty weather reports that predicted rain. I feel like it’s been raining and overcast for the last month in Seattle, so it was time to get out. It didn’t look good driving out there Saturday morning since it was raining in Seattle, raining at Snoqualmie, raining in Cle Elum, raining in Ellensburg – but when we got to Vantage and the Columbia River it was dry. We got a bunch of fun climbs in on the sunshine wall. We started out slow on 5.8′s since it was Kim and my first outdoor climbing of the season. Kim was also feeling really sketched by the expansive valley below and the exposed arrets we were climbing. I started off leading and led up to a scary 5.9 on Saturday. We camped Saturday night and were up fairly early Sunday to climb again. Brian started off with a chimney climb called Seven Virgins and a Mule that took a long time since it was only Brian’s second chimney climb ever and he placed a lot of gear. He did great though and then we started climbing some 5.10′s. By the end of the day Kim even overcame her fears and led a climb! Now we’re back in Seattle and it’s dark, overcast and rainy. I might start to believe all the Seattle weather hype soon.