What's Up with The Brown Bag Cafe?
Oh, no, what’s up with the Redmond Brown Bag Cafe?
My Sweetie and I wanted to get out of the house today (we’re both sick with a cold + cough and under the weather) and decided at the Brown Bag Cafe in Redmond would be good (good soup for my Sweetie, bad country-fried steak for Eric). We got there and my first impression was: “Wow, look at all this parking! Yeah! Score!”
Next: “For sale sign?”
Next: “‘Open’ sign not lit.”
Next: uh-oh.
Looks like The Brown Bag Cafe is shut down. I had just called a little earlier to check on how long the wait might be but got their standard answering machine greeting. There were too many confused cars making their way in and out of the parking lot to get out and see if there was a note about what was going on. I might have to park nearby and see if I can find out the story.
In the meantime: bummers.
(Oh, I did a quick blog search: one fellow mentioned he read the note and went to the Kirkland Brown Bag to ask what was up, not getting much of an answer other than the owner had decided to close the Redmond location. Hmmph.)
Leavenworth's Festival of Lights
Last weekend, my Sweetie and I enjoyed our first trip together to Leavenworth, Washington to be there for their Festival of Lights.
I put up some photos:
Just for grins, I also uploaded the pictures to flickr, too (since I work on one of the most awesome Photo teams in the World, and yes, we publish to flickr in addition to Windows Live Spaces):
One thing that’s cool about flickr is that I’ve allowed it map any pictures that I’ve geotagged. While I need to go through and geotag my Vancouver pictures (still), I uploaded one from my AT&T Tilt that was taken through locr, adding the latitude and longitude of the picture downtown. You can go to my flickr map to see that:
(as more show up, more pictures should be available).
The trip was fun. We arrived Friday and had the town pretty much to ourselves. We really liked hanging out at Uli’s between adventures. We had dinner at Mozart’s in the middle of a nice snow – I think about four-inches fell Friday night and Saturday started out with sunshine and was absolutely beautiful.
By the time we took the shuttle to the Icicle Creek sleigh ride it was lightly snowing again, which was grand. Our driver, Aaron, was just as interesting to me as the sleigh ride itself.
We got back in time for the big lighting festival, followed by a townwide Chicken Dance. Yes, I did the Chicken Dance and I believe I did it quite well.
Sunday we got a quick walk in along the river park. I didn’t realize that the park was so big, and goes to a little island. It’s certainly worth putting time aside to escape the crowds and go enjoy the park.
The one really, really smart thing we did thanks to my Sweetie was to take a bus. It was scheduled via Greyhound and we picked it up in nearby Monroe. On the way there, we passed one bad wreck (semi-truck with its cab on the side and one very crushed red pickup) and on the way back almost got crashed into (kid coming out of the ski slope floored his Explorer – gee, who knew you weren’t supposed to floor the gas on ice patches?). Being without a car made enjoying Leavenworth easy, too.
Oooh, and I typed on this long enough for MSN Soapbox to finish processing my short two-minute point-and-shoot video I uploaded of the beginning of our sleigh ride (again, uploaded via the very swanky Windows Live Photo Gallery):
'Veronica Mars': a Small Bit of Closure…
This is the Veronica as an FBI agent Season Four preview that was pitched but didn’t make it: ‘Veronica Mars’: The fourth season lives! (On the Internet, anyway) | Popwatch | Blog | Movies | Music | TV: Entertainment Weekly .
It’s a small bit of closure.
Just a small bit.
How I Got The Lady to Spin Clockwise
This is popular right now: Right Brain v Left Brain | Herald Sun .
My Sweetie pulled it up for me last night. Yup, she spins counter-clockwise for me. Nope, no way to change. Studying the silhouette, I couldn’t imagine how the image could. I focused on her feet etc etc and couldn’t spin her clockwise.
Then, I:
- Right clicked on the image to save it to my pictures folder.
- Saw that the image had a boring, technical name by default.
- Gave it a new name that was nice and understandable.
- Saved it.
- Went back to the page, and, who-da-what-sa?!?!
- She’s spinning clockwise.
Let me check again…
Yup, still clockwise.
(Oh, no, I inserted her and she wasn’t spinning, so I had to go through Live Writer to ensure it wasn’t dorking with the image: made it original size and removed the drop shadow. Now she’s back to spinning counter-clockwise. Sigh.)
Marc Olson
Thanks to a random Facebook-moment, I just found out tonight that Marc Olson passed away last week.
I only knew and worked with Marc for a brief time while transitioning around the Office team, but every conversation I had with him was a delight. One of my big regrets moving out of Office and to Live was that I wouldn’t have a chance to work with and learn from Marc.
I can’t begin to imagine how much he’ll be missed.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and Bioshock
Here’s a snippet from a New York Times article about “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand and how Alan Greenspan, part of the Collective social circle with Ayn Rand, responded to early criticism of the book:
Shortly after “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic’s comment that “the book was written out of hate.” Mr. Greenspan wrote: “‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”
(From Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism – New York Times )
Well, it ends up that I’m currently playing the fantastic game Bioshock for the Xbox 360 right now. Sure, it’s great fun and all and fantastic graphics, but the back story of this underwater city of Rapture is especially engaging for me because it’s about a failed Ayn Rand hero-like figure and this great endeavor he brought about.
The word “parasite” above stands out because it is often referred to in the unraveling story (you find lots of recorded diaries) and posters around Rapture. Rather than “Who is John Galt?” you see “Who is Atlas?” posters.
Just as Ayn Rand wrote about a failed communist community, Bioshock lets you have a peek into a failed Objectivist community and the issues and breakdowns that ensued.
Fifty years in the making…
Interesting Quote from The Battle of Thermopylae
Last week, I watched the film 300. It was kind of an accident because I just wanted to see how the first few scenes looked (okay) but then I just kept watching it. I enjoyed it. It’s based on a graphic novel around The Battle of Thermopylae. I was reading about the battle on Wikipedia and hit this quote:
“Good heavens! Mardonius, what kind of men are these against whom you have brought us to fight? Men who do not compete for money, but for honor”
(from Battle of Thermopylae – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
Some takeaways for me:
- I’d love a dose of Spartan culture in our culture. For many it’s too indulgent and too entitled.
- Another meditation on sacrifice: Articles of Faith Our culture’s slouch toward sloth not whole story.
- I have totally missed out on knowing about this battle and all the pop-culture references. That makes me sad.
- When Queen Gorgo sends off King Leonidas with the farewell, “Spartan! Come back with your shield – or on it,” it reminded me of an illuminate quote of Heinlein’s Lazarus Long:
- “… Roman matrons used to say to their sons: ‘Come back with your shield, or on it.’ Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.”
I think about that last quote a lot and what it means to be in a state of decline.
Meet Trina, my Daemon
And she can be visited at The Golden Compass Trina page. And you can go to the site to discover your daemon.
I can’t wait for the movie!
I can't stop laughing – OMG!!1!
I tried to show my Sweetie http://icanhascheezbuger.com/ off my laptop yesterday but I couldn’t stop laughing, especially at this one…
…WARE HIZ EYE GOES?
OMG!!1! « I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
Toto at Chateau Saint Michelle
(First, I’m doing better at making the T in Saint silent when talking about Chateau Saint Michelle. I get it right half the time.)
We went to a misty concert at Chateau Saint Michelle back on June 17th. When you’re a member of the CSM wine club, you get tickets to a special summer concert. They provide a choice of two, and this year it was Toto and Brandi Carlile.
Well, we ended up choosing both by getting Toto for ‘free’ and paying a very affordable rate for Ms. Carlile.
But before this decision, as a further demonstration of my age, I was thinking hard about Toto. I was pretty sure I remembered them as the band that did “Rosanna” but I was fuzzy beyond that. Fortunately, their web site has a video that touches on all their hits to jog your memory.
“Oh, they did that song? Sure I know that one. I haven’t heard it in a long, long time, but I know that one.”
So first of all, we enjoyed the wine being provided for the members. If you’re local to the Eastside / Seattle area and love wine, you should be a member. I absolutely loved the Malbec from the barrel tasting. I can’t wait until it’s released.
Right before Toto started, the folks sitting next to us won the Willows Lodge retreat giveaway. I’m pretty sure this is the second year in a row that someone next to us has one a big raffle item. We must be good luck.
Toto started (ooo, and now with Leland Sklar), and given that they have a bunch of new music, played probably about ten songs straight of rocking stuff I’d never heard. We happened to be hanging out up front (and protected from the rain from the overhanging stage design) when they played “Rosanna.” Nice.
And we ran into Alex Rector.
We wandered back to our blanket and hung out until they played “Africa” – their so-long-and-farewell song – and then hoofed it for the Subaru.
It’s the first time in a while that I’ve been to a concert where, well, I wasn’t a big fan of the band I was just there to hang out and have fun. Mission accomplished.