beef

After the records departed, the computer room and the green room were melded into one. Went to Babies R Us (slightly scary on a Saturday) to get the crib. Sunday, we strolled to Ikea and bought some curtains and hung them up. Still need some little things but overall it’s a baby room.

Other baby news:
Went and checked out our first day care center. 4 blocks from our house, so an easy walk. All the kids will filter into our local elementary school, Highland Park Elementary. I liked it and baby will probably end up there in January until the end of my school year.

31 week check up. No big surprises. My weight is up. Baby is kicking away. Discussed birthing plan.

Checked out the diaper service. Looks like we’ll give them a shot. They’ll drop off clean diapers once a week. We just need to purchase the diaper cover.

Unrelated news:
I get done with school June 13th!!! yippee. I can’t wait to listen to the new pond and pugs barking all day.

After 4+ years of stewardship of a Mr. J Hodin’s most excellent record collection. It was time to bid farewell. The records will enjoy and equally good stay at Terry and Heike’s.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Great White Fleet (more here), two naval ships docked at the cruise ship terminals in Downtown Seattle for a couple of days. They were the USS Preble and the USS Rushmore. I’m not exactly sure if there were any other events elsewhere, if not, a little odd since the Great White Fleet didn;t make a stop in Seattle on its tour 100 years ago.

I’ve always told myself that I should go down and take the tours they offer when they come through town (often times during Seafair) but I always miss it by a day or just don;t have the time when they come around.

So I proceeded down to Terminal 30 and got down around 12.30. Tours were going to last until 2. The tours of each ship were supposed to last about 20-30 minutes for each boat. The group I was with went and saw the USS Preble first and an 1.5 hours later the tour was over so I didn;t get a chance to see the USS Rushmore. But, the USS Preble was pretty interesting. Although commissioned only 6 years ago, the bridge looked straight out of the 50s or 60s other than a few LCD screens providing some information. The architecture was gray and blocky. The buttons and dials from an age past. Granted, don’t fix what works. They had a helicopter on board. Basically, we gat a tour of the deck, the bridge, and the helicopter landing and storage area.

The most amusing moment, and really the only time I wanted to take a picture, was of this on the bridge of the ship:

I’m glad this function of this maul is clarified for me. heehee.

wheee! Talk about wacky. The Corp of Engineers were seeing material come from the lower portion of their dam on the columbia. Their assumption was that the dam might be failing. A submersible camera was sent down to investigate. To their surprise, they found a big ball of stugeon hanging out at the base of the dam. Reports have it that there were an estimated 60,000 strugeon in this ball with the largest one being 14 feet in length.

Here is the sturgeon link. They’ve also got part of the video feed from the camera.

It’s hard to find decent podcasts. The best kinds are ones I discover after they have been going for awhile so i have a decent backlog of shows to go through. I’ve got 25 minutes each way on the bus. Based on where my stop is on the route, i usually get a seat 70% of the time. When a seat is not available, reading becomes a pain.

The first in the series, which I’ve listened to for the past 3 years or so, is The Sound of Young America. TSOYA is hosted by America’s Sweetheart, Jesse Thorn. Over the years, it has provided a lot of entertainment regarding different comedians, musicians, actors, writers, scientists, etc. One of these podcasts was an interview with the hosts of another radio show (which has it’s own podcast) – WNYC’s RadioLab.

I’m only 4 episodes into the series but have found it quite education and entertaining. The hosts come from a creative background who’s parents were both scientists, Jad Abumrad. He teams up with a veteran scientist writer/prodecer, Robert Krulwich. They spend an hour or so running through different aspects of a theme, not straight interviews, but with production, splicing, and entertaining sound manipulations. (I don’t really know what that means – google them and look for descriptions of their show). There’s no set time schedule to when the episodes come out. They just do their thing and they show up every once in a while.
I think they are schedule every other week but they are only contracted to do 10 or so a year now. (up from 5 at the beginning)

TSOYA has at least a couple of hundred podcasts available ranging from 5 min – 1 hr. While, Radiolab has approximately 20 episodes available – all about 1 hour in length.

I started a new job a little under a month ago. As things would have it, the group I joined at the City just had their offices moved to the 59th Floor of the Key Bank Tower. The floor is a nice open floor plan so i could walk around the perimeter of the floor and capture various shots.

hover over the pictures for brief descriptions. they are in order as you walk around the building from the west-north-east-south.