the rick roll evolves

MTV has just launched their new MTV Music website where you can view their entire catalog of music videos. Yes, I know that's what we all thought the TV channel was supposed to be but whatev. The important thing is to behold the power of nerds on the internet. Rick Astley is both on the Most Viewed and Top Rated lists. Absurd.

p.s. For those of you who don't know what a rick roll is... it's an internet meme where someone posts a mislabeled video link that takes you to the Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. For example, someone might claim to have a video of Obama praising socialism and you'd click and exclaim "I got rick rolled!" Yeah, I think it's kinda dumb too but ask Nate to tell you about the real life rick roll in his office.

table for two

Look! A table! We were planning to buy this table at Ikea last weekend and ended up finding it on Craigslist for much cheaper. It can expand to seat 6 if we ever meet 4 more people. Sadly, they only had 2 chairs in stock but we could only afford 2 anyway so it worked out. It's hard to see in the picture, but those are glittery halloween candles! Yay for not eating at the couch anymore!

Rattlesnake Ridge

We went for a hike today at a peak about 30 miles outside of Seattle.  It was a short, half-day hike, about 2 miles each way.  We went hoping to see some fall color, but I think a lot of it may have passed by now.  Still, we saw a lot of yellows, and the view was so nice.  We didn’t know what to expect at the summit, but the view turned out to be an amazing panoramic of the valley.  Leighann says that that was the nicest place she’s ever had a sandwich. 

I’ve uploaded the pictures to my Picasa Web Album and embedded the slideshow.  You’ll have to click on the slideshow if you want to see it full screen.

 

We’re still waiting to see some of this terrible rainy weather everyone warned us about.

life in a blue state, part 347834

As I've previously mentioned, Seattle is enacting a plastic bag tax of 20 cents per bag in January. The tax will also apply to styrofoam food containers, but those will eventually be banned. The restaurants are responsible for providing alternatives to styrofoam containers, but for bags we're on our own.
I have mixed feelings on this. While I appreciate people making efforts to lessen their impact on the environment, I don't necessarily want the latest green trend shoved down my throat by government.
Here is an editorial on the subject: here
Behavior can be changed several ways, but it seems like the solution to everything is to punish us in our pocket books. A cynical person might be inclined to think the city is just trying to make more money. Do we not believe in positive reinforcement anymore? Ikea gives you 25 cents off per reusable bag you fill and I see tons of people with those hideous blue and yellow bags. They aren't even easy to carry!
ANYWAY... I like the idea of minimizing our environmental impact, but I don't think that's what this is about. I stand by my plan to find offensive tote bags (organic cotton, of course.)

Not Welcome

We’ve taken some steps to address the burglaries.

Thanks Doug and Helen for the doormat.  Now robbers and small children will know they aren’t welcome.

stellanor rigby

Stella is a big cat. Not just fat.. her frame is large. Well, it turns out she might not be a cat at all. While searching through my files for something this morning, I came across Stella's adoption papers. Since Nate adopted her before we were living together, I'd never seen them. According to the humane society, Stella is an "other". That's right. Instead of checking the box for dog or cat, they checked other. For breed they wrote grey tiger. That seems like more of a description of her coloring rather than an actual breed but whatevs. We now have one cat and one other.

the suckiest suck that ever did suck

Ok so we are in bed last night about to fall asleep and we hear a bit of noise. I guess it must not have sounded like the normal noises that cats make because we both were very nervous and nate went out to check it out. Not finding anything, we concluded it must have been the cats. Then a few minutes later, someone runs past our window into the woods. So we sit there and try to figure out a reasonable explanation. Then there is a barking dog, talking outside, and flashlights in our window. Crappy.
So we get out of bed and put on shoes and jackets and go see the cop and neighbors outside. It turns out the guy was at the neighbors window (there are only 2 of us on the bottom floor) and they didn't know if he was trying to break in or just look in the windows. But they said it was the 3rd time it had happened since they moved in. We told them where the guy ran but the cop had another call to go to and wasn't interested in going into the woods to find the guy.
I have several problems with this:
1. WTF is down the little trail the goes into the woods? We never heard a car pull up or leave so if he came on foot where did he come from and what is in the woods?
2. Why didn't he take anything? We have stuff on the porch that he could have took if he wanted to. They have stuff on their porch. We are actually closer to the woods than our neighbor so why did he walk past ours and pick theirs?
3. What would someone take on foot anyway? And if he wanted to do something besides stealing, why would he run away at the discovery of people?
4. Why don't we have enough police to send someone in the woods to make sure there isn't some homeless camp or something?

Anyway. We didn't sleep much.

So today I went to the bridal seamstress to have her look at my bridesmaid dress for amanda's wedding and my own wedding dress. Why is it so expensive? How much is it supposed to cost to have a bridesmaid dress altered. And she scolded me for not having shoes yet. I went to go buy shoes afterwards but then realized I had a dilema. Last weekend, my driver's window stopped working. I can push it up and it mostly stays a crack down. I got to the mall and realized my wedding dress was in the car and anyone could easily push the window down and take it.
I decided to drive home and after lunch try again. I was craving mcdonalds and saw a sign for one at a confusing exit that split into 3 exits. I couldn't find the mcdonalds and tried to get back on the highway but the onramps were all hov only. So I got lost in a residential neighborhood and eventually found a mcdonalds. Without thinking I pushed the button to roll down my window and it went down! I got excited because I thought it was fixed. WRONG. It was not fixed and since it went ALL THE WAY DOWN I couldn't pull on it to put it back up. So I had to drive the rest of the way home with a lovely 40 degree breeze.
Anyway I know that was long and whiney but I didn't sleep much and I'm cranky. The end.

Introducing….Nate!

I’ve been promoted from the position of lowly commenter to active contributor! We figured it was silly having two different blogs mirroring the same little bits of news that we had. We’ll see how much I actually post here. Oh, and now we need another commenter, cause I think we’re down to one…

100th post

In honor of 100 posts, I've changed to a ridiculous theme. Let me know how you feel about it.

weezer/ angels and airwaves

We finally made it into the city this weekend! Weezer and Angels and Airwaves were playing at the Key Arena and it was really fun. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, the arena is right under the space needle. Even knowing that, it was still surprising to exit the concert and be greeted with a giant landmark in my face.
ANYWAY.
We missed the opening band- I couldn't even tell you their name. We wanted to get a drink, but no alcohol was allowed in the seating area so we had to drink on the concourse. We got to our seats (yes, we were old and sat in seats) just in time for Angels and Airwaves. I really enjoyed them. I know this picture didn't come out very nicely, but if you can imagine, the orange lights looked like falling meteors. It was a really different light show.




Weezer was a blast! I was never a huge Weezer fan, but I knew just about every song they played and they sounded great. They had a trampoline on stage and generally acted ridiculous. During their encore, they let about 20 local musicians up on stage to perform with them. They had just about any instrument you could imagine and played some of the sing-a-long classics. It was really fun and I almost forgot to take video, but I did take this one earlier in the show. I imagined the crowd playing along on their rockband instruments because I know that's what nate and I were doing. Nerds ftw.

So we decided when we do end up buying a house, it's going to have to be in the city. We'd both rather sacrifice size for location because it's taken us a month living up in Bothell to make it down to the city. That is too long!

over 1 billion served

The national debt clock has run out of digits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7660409.stm

I tried to add a widget to the blog, but it was too wide to fit. Go figure...
I added this instead. Be patient.. it takes awhile to load

pictures

As promised, I took a few photos of our new place in Bothell. We haven't hung our pictures yet but I had sunny weather today so it was now or never!

This is the fireplace with the beginning of my halloween display. To save money, we'll buy most of the decorations after the holiday when they are on sale and have something better next year.

This is my office. I took the den that is open to the living room. I'm very excited to actually have somewhere to keep my telescope.

The guest room is also Nate's office. His desk is across from the futon. When he works from home, he can close the door but mostly he just brings the laptop in the living room.

I have a reading nook again! It's much easier on my eyes to read with natural light. Stella is a fan of the view too.

Here's another view of our living room.
Every single window faces trees! This is the back of our apt as seen from the patio.

Here is our bedroom. We waited for a long time for these ikea tables to come back in stock!

All in all, we're very happy with this place. It's great to not have to look out my window into someone else's apartment. Since we're on a hill, our garage is actually above us. When you come in through our garage you walk downstairs! It's great for carrying groceries. The leaves are just starting to change around us, so I can't wait to see pretty leaves out of all of my windows!

a productive weekend

We were very productive this weekend.

-I got my dalom tables from ikea. They're being used as bedside tables.
-We finished our registry. This was difficult because we received way too much unsolicited advice on what to add (or subtract.) We tried to keep a wide range of prices keeping in mind that people can just get us gift cards if they don't like what we chose. And I took off the bedding because I still like mine too much. TJ Maxx ftw.
-We had our 2 meals out for the week. I wasted my Macaroni Grill meal on salad which was sad. Nate got a ravioli dish that was way better. I redeemed myself Sunday morning when we tasted "Washington's best bacon" at Country Cafe. There is a huge country village nearby with a giant rooster statue out front and it fills the void Cracker Barrel left.
-All of our boxes are finally unpacked and out of the garage! I finally can walk into our home and feel relaxed.
-The invitations are DONE! They took forever and at the last minute we decided to print up inserts that gave our website so hopefully people end up at the right hotel. The insert made the envelopes 0.01 oz overweight and I had to buy 17 cent stamps to add to the envelopes. It's an elk or a ram or something and it looks ridiculous next to the heart stamps I carefully picked out. Then the guy told me it's against federal law to not put return addresses on your envelopes. I check the usps website and it gave specific cases where that's true but I don't think it applies to my invites so I drove down the road and dumped them in one of the blue mailboxes. I hope they make it!!

Ok so I'm going to try to be better about blogging since I'm now way far away from anyone I know. Until next time.

life in bothell

We are out of corporate housing and in our new place in Bothell! Our unit is on a corner with forest on both sides so it's very private feeling. It's much larger than our place in Melbourne so our stuff actually fits. Pictures coming soon...
Wedding planning is starting back up again. The invitations arrived this week and I've been addressing them myself. SPOILER ALERT: They aren't in cursive AND I used some abbreviations. I can't get that many invites out in a few days without cheating a little. I'm calling it modern. Also, my dress should arrive today. We had to have it shipped from FL since I still need to get it altered. Now I have to find someone here to do the alterations.
On a side note, I want to mention that you can lump me in the 83% who disapprove of Congress. That is all.