Summer craziness

Well since I last posted it seems like a ton of things have happened. I went on my trade show trip to Seattle a week and a half ago and it was a busy crazy time. I ended up going myself since the other person that was scheduled to attend with me had a family issue to contend with. It seemed like constant motion for me from catching the airport shuttle to my hotel to setting up the booth to exhibiting to tearing down the booth to flying home made for a hectic trip. I did manage to stroll though downtown during my downtime and the city is really nice. The only thing that was a big turn off is all the bums around town panhandling. These weren't your typical big city bums either, they were pretty well dressed, bathed and it looks as if they were fed pretty well too. I've been in Manhattan and Chicago and I have never experienced so many people begging for a handout in my life.

I did get to experience The Pike Market and a couple of "Tim-style" restaurants during my visit and I walked more than I have since I went on Lisa's infamous walking vacation in Boston many moons ago. My very favorite restaurant in Seattle was at The Taphouse Grill. If you click on the link, you will understand why it was my favorite...I ended up there twice. Not only did they have 160 beers on tap (I even toured the keg cooler) but the food was pretty good as well. On Sunday, it was happy hour all day long and I took advantage by having my fair share of Sushi Rolls at $2.95 each! When I returned the next night, I had the very best Mac-N-Cheese ever and I hate Mac-N-Cheese. This Mac had about 5 cheeses as well as Dungeness Crab in it...Wow! A definite party in my mouth. I also had dinner at a bar that boasted nearly 800 different alcohols as well as a $3.95 Martini. The neat thing about this place was there was a 6 foot diameter spinning wheel that would be set in motion every half hour and that would be the drink special until the wheel was set in motion again. This place had pretty good BBQ too, nice and smokey. I also had a beer at Pike's Brewery and lunch at Ivar's Fish Bar. Both were pretty tasty. As for the trade show itself, the traffic could have been better but not horrible. My Uncle Ron lives in a Seattle suburb but there wasn't really a whole lot of time to visit so I didn't even bother calling him to try to fit dinner or a visit into both of our schedules.

As I returned home, I got recruited into helping set up The Lisa-Jill-Jill's mom and Bev garage sale being held at our house. When I say as I returned home I mean immediately as I returned home. I jumped out of my car and went straight to work. On Thursday, the sale began and it started with a bang. Some lady stopped at 8am and dropped nearly $400 on kids stuff right away including our crib and changing table. Thursday and Friday the sale was held at our house and on Friday evening, we hauled everything over to Jill's place to resume the sale at her house. Saturday was the neighborhood sale in Jill's housing development. All in all, the sale netted $1900 in three days and $650 of it was ours which will make our Myrtle Beach trip a little nicer.

Shawn's last day of school is tomorrow and it coincides with Lisa's 39th birthday. Shawn has been in such a good mood the past few days because he can see the light at the end of the tunnel and soon he will get to go on vacation to his favorite vacation spot in the whole world. Speaking of vacation, how do you keep a 2 year old quiet on a 12-13 hour car ride? I bet I won't find out...I'm not looking forward to the drive at all. We did however find a sweet deal on a condo for the week. Its not on the ocean but does happen to be on a golf course and we got it for $800 for the week. Not bad for a two bedroom, two bath condo during high time.

I had another unfortunately experience with Ebay. This time I purchased a wort chiller which is basically a radiator that is immersed in wort (liquid that becomes beer before the yeast is added) that aids in the process of cooling the wort from boiling to 70 degrees F. you need to cool the wort as quickly as possible to help in the prevention of nasties getting into your wort while it gets to temperatures that won't damage the yeast. Well, I won an auction on a new chiller and low and behold it never arrived and my email to the seller wasn't returned. I ended up making a claim on paypal and at least I was refunded the full purchase price. I think I will end up making my own wort chiller soon.

When we get back from vacation, we will be attending the annual disco party at the newly remodeled Centennial Quarry. The renovation is almost complete and the place looks really nice. I can't wait to see the inside of the joint. Disco isn't my favorite music but the beer is cold and the people watching is the best anywhere.

For our wedding anniversary, Lisa got me a gift certificate from a place called Beer on the Wall. I think I'm going to use it for a couple of months of their beer of the month club.

So know that the garage sale crap is mostly gone, I have really no excuse for not starting on the big basement project. Oh yea I do, the stuff that is still down there is all over the place so now I have to get organized. Procrastination at its best!