Bathroom Demo

Rob has been working hard at the bathroom demo this week while he's home from work. Here are a few pictures highlighting the handy work. I'll take more pictures as the project continues.

The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School

Not to go all nerd on you all... A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of listening to Jeffery Cole from the USC Annenberg School's Center for Digital Future. He heads up the annual Digital Future report where he analyzes the digital usages of broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and social networking habits of countries all over the world. This is a topic peaks my interest and I found this discussion to be eye opening.

There were so many great notes from this but my favorites were from the highlights of a 12-24 year old. I think this is such a great representation of what the world will look like in even 5-10 years.

People who are between the ages of 12-24 year old will...

- most likely print up to 5 photographs in their entire life.

- will only IM and text message. They think email is for their parents.

- never read a newspaper, but are attracted to some magazines. If you consider the money that goes into the paper production most people this age see that as incredibly wasteful. They don't understand why it's worth waiting for when they can get the news real time.

- never own a land line and maybe not a watch. The land line didn't surprise me since most people I know now don't have a land line. The watch surprised me. With cell phones and computers I guess nobody really needs to have one anymore.

- not watch television on someone else's schedule for much longer. No surprise there.

- have little interest in the source of the information and more about the aggregation of the information. Yikes. I find this to be very alarming!

- move everything to mobile. It's obvious that mobile has changed in the last few years and knowing the US is really far behind other countries in their mobile dependence and usage, I can totally see where this one is going.

- be less interested in television than any other generation before.

More pictures

Since I took these photos I know we have a lot more snow, but this was the first snowfall of the year for Seattle -and then a few others.

Merry Christmas from Florida

Merry Christmas! Rob and I exchanged gifts while we were still in Seattle and we just don't get into gift anymore. We buy most of what we want all year and really don't need more stuff so we bought each other just 1 gift each. I bought him a yet to to be delivered order of bacon from the Swinery and a matching Tshirt. He bought me a photo frame that I wanted for my desk at work.

This is our last night in Florida and it's a been a nice relaxing time. Running, biking, swimming, eating, and hanging out. It'll be nice to be home and have a few more days off. Below are a few pictures from the week's activities.

Very Dedicated Employee

I'm a very dedicated employee. Actually, I'm not. I forgot my laptop at work and when we woke up with 6 inches of snow and the whole city shut down, I needed to get to work and not stay at home. Rob left to work around 6:30am and had a slow commute but got there with no problems. I attempted to take the bus, but when I checked mybus.org, all buses were 40 minutes delayed. I decided to hike it.

It wasn't a bad walk at all. It's about 2 miles and in the summertime, it's great! The problem is that not many people realize that it is their responsibility to shovel their sidewalks which makes it difficult for people like me to actually walk anywhere.

I love snow! I love watching it snow. I love how the city shuts down when it's snowing. I love watching the news when it's snowing. I love laughing at people who make a big deal of snow. I love when people call it a "snow event". And most of all I love that when it snows here, it's snowing in the mountains and that means we'll be snowboarding again soon!

Now... how to I get home?

80 degrees is Florida is looking pretty good right now though! We'll be there on Saturday :)

Goin' extra terrestrial...

After about 3 years of tolerating rate increases from our sole cable+internet provider (only one offers service on our street, in the MIDDLE of the city of Seattle for the love of Pete!... auugh), the latest promotional deals and employer discounts have finally made another option viable!


In the past, the cost comparisons were always within $2-3 difference per month. However, with all the current deals stacked up, here is our monthly breakdown including all taxes and fees:

current provider (who shall remain unnamed):
standard (cheapo) cable & 512K (cheapo) broadband combo package: $106.41

new providers:
DirecTV (cheapo) w/ DVR: $35.98
Clearwire wireless 1.5K broadband: $32.42
total: $68.40

Stacked up on an annual basis, that's a $1276.92 - 820.80 = 456.12 savings!

*** warning, these numbers are not official, reflect only my service options, and shall not be legally binding! ***

What's amusing is how the old isn't even comparable to the new service. The TV picture quality is clearly superior with DirecTV, and the Clearwire internet speed is about 2-3 times faster. Not that I aim to watch more TV, but I'm just sayin'...

I love the free market system.

Whistler

I neglected to post about our trip to Whistler mostly because we've been really busy, but partly because there wasn't a lot of snow activity on the trip. On Thursday night Rob and I made the trip up there. The construction along highway 99 is crazy and it's amazing that they plan to get it all done before the Olympics next year. The road is going to be great when it's complete, but until then it's a real mess. We stayed at the Executive Inn and Suites, which is NOT as executive as one might think. The rooms were kind of dingy, but you really couldn't beat the location. Right in the heart of Whistler Village. On Friday we decided not to go snowboarding. There is literally no snow there and only about 7 runs open. A downer considering what it was like last year at the same time. We hung out in the village, which was fun since we usually don't get to do that. Some great stops that we made were:

The Whistler Brewhouse - They had great fresh beer and a fun train set in the bar. Great sweet potato fries too!


Dubhlinn Gate Whistler - There are not a lot of bars that you can get a fresh pint of Murphy's. This place has great Murphy's, Guinness,and Granville Island beers on tap as well as a really fun Irish man singing in the bar after the lifts close. That is a great bar to relax with a pint after a day on the slopes.


Sushi Village Whistler - This was my birthday dinner. After downing a few pints at the bar we had some sushi. It was so good. Sushi is one of those meals that you can eat a lot of and still feel good about yourself. Try the Rainbow roll and the Beautiful roll, you won't regret it.

As for the time snowboarding, it was actually a great day to work on my technical skills. I prefer powdery runs instead of maintained runs. Since only maintained runs were open, I was able to really practice my turns on my new board and bindings. So the snow wasn't great - that's OK, I know we will go back later this year. Thanks again Rob for helping me celebrate my birthday doing something that makes me feel young and active. :)

Culinary Communion in Beacon Hill

You may remember last year, I posted this after I took a class called Wines of Italy at the Culinary Communion in Beacon Hill. I regret to say, that I hadn't been there since then. Last night I had another wine class there called Wines of the Northwest. Not only was it a great class, with great wines, but I also learned some of the latest updates from them. Earlier this year they had some drama with their liquor license which was really a problem for their classes. Well, they have that liquor license back and they are looking to start some really cool programs.

They will be selling their own bacon at the local farmers markets. They are now serving wine again for their classes, and they are opening for dinner on Sunday nights with Guest Chefs and an À la carte dinner with some live jazz. What a treat! I can't wait to try it out.