Happenings: October 2006 Archives

Sara showed me the fateful text message that she got from Q101 two weeks ago, which launched us onto this New Orleans adventure:

I believe that the did actually call her and put her on the air (I would love to have an mp3 file or something of that conversation), and then a few days later, they called again and told her that she won the grand prize. And as a result, I'm blogging from New Orleans...

-Andy.

I had a really fun time in Seattle this weekend. Contrary to what I expected, Rushabh and I didn't spend all day on Saturday with our noses stuck inside of our respective laptops. It was a beautiful, sunny weekend in Seattle, so we ended up spending a lot of time outside. We hopped onto some bikes, and started riding around Seattle. We took a fairly long ride, starting in Capitol Hill, down to the U district, and then over to Green lake. We rode around the entire lake, and then headed back to the U district for lunch. While eating, some of Rushbh's friends called him and asked if we wanted to go on a bike ride.

Seeing as how we were already engaged in such an activity, we accepted. So, we rode a few more miles over to his friend's house, and then had a nice 14 mile bike ride up in north west Seattle, on some sort of biking trail. Surprisingly, I wasn't too sore and/or tired after all was said and done (I think I had a much better bike than Rushabh did), and I was really glad that to have seen a view of Seattle that most tourists don't see. I tried to take some pictures, but it was really hard to capture how beautiful of a city Seattle is, when you take the appropriate tour. We saw lots of people enjoying outside activities out in the many parks and bicycle trails. It seems like Seattle offers a lot of different outdoor activities, for those who are so inclined to partake.

After dark we got cleaned up, and spent the night hanging out at some places that were far too trendy for me. One interesting place that Rushabh took us too was called "Frites" - a small european-style restaurant that only served french fries. And only one kind of french fries, at that. The hook is that the fries are made fresh-to-order, and that there are a whole bunch of different sauces that you can order to accompany the fries.

Today, I spent the day with Justin and Sarah, and their new baby Lucy. It has been a long, long time since I have been around a baby who is that tiny (less than a month old). She is really pretty good natured, however - we had a nice breakfast at a small place in Capitol Hill ("Crave"), and Lucy made nary a peep. Then we spent the rest of the day hanging around Justin and Sarah's house. They have made a lot of progress on their renovations since I was last there, and things are really shaping up nice. It seem like their dog, Ada, is a bit jealous of Lucy. Ada demands attention from anyone whom she can reach, and since I wasn't doing anything important (like holding a baby), I got in a lot of play time with Ada.

Anyways, it seem like things are going pretty well for Justin and Sarah, and I'm glad that they were able to spend some time with me today. I had a really great, relaxing trip, and I'm ready head off to another week of work.

-Andy.

A couple of weeks go, I looked into my "crystal ball", and decided that this weekend would make a pretty decent one for a quick trip. I figured that work would start finally getting crazy in November, and I was doing pretty well saving some cash in anticipation of my impending car purchase. So that, combined with the fact that Justin and Sarah just had their first baby, conspired to cause me to book a quick trip up to Seattle.

Everything was well and good, until Monday, when somehow (some way), Sara managed to win a contest from Q101, which included a free trip to New Orleans, and a chance to meet My Chemical Romance. So, after Sara did some of her best convincing (and the new job rolled over and gave me a day off), it looks like I'm going to be going to New Orleans for another quick trip, next weekend.

That is two trips in the span of a week, which I think is a lot. But still, I've never been to New Orleans before, and I've engineered my flight that for only a little extra money, I get a lot of extra time in New Orleans for sight-seeing (can you believe that there are already dozens of Hurricane Katrina tours?!?!), etc.

Hopefully, I'll stop being lazy with the pictures, and actually take and post some after these trips.

-Andy

So, I'm only about a week behind with this, but I had dinner in San Francisco last weekend with Liz and Mike Pirnat, whom I haven't seen in approximately 5 years. Mike is in town on vacation, following Liz who is here on a sort of working vacation. Liz picked a mexican restaurant near AT&T Park called "Tres Agaves". We got a photo after all was said and done:

Is that not like, the worst photo of me yet? I actually thought about not posting it, but it's the only one that ended up in my camera that whole night.

Anyways, I had a good time catching up with Mike and Liz. For one thing, I learned a whole lot more about the world of wine - a world which I didn't even know existed. :)

-Andy.