I’ve Been a Busy Boy

Well, the past week that I have had was quite busy. I went to Minnesota, attended a wedding for my cousin, had two family dinners, went to Fort Snelling, the Minnesota Zoo, found two geocaches, flew back to Seattle, attended a Mariners’ game, and went to the DC United/Real Madrid soccer game. Needless to say, I’ve had a busy week.

It was nice to go back home for an extended weekend. The weather was warm, but not so hot that you felt like dying rather than living. My parents house was constantly chilled, so refuge could be found there if it was needed. Overall, the weekend was good. The wedding was great, as well as the reception. The hall looked amazing and was perfect for the theme of the wedding and to hear that it wasn’t professionally done was pretty amazing too. However, the volunteers (aka “the family”) are practically professionals at this sort of thing. Plus, seeing the family, both sides, is always nice. We usually see them only on holidays and when there is an occasion to see them again, all the merrier.

Of course, since I just got a GPS, Jamie and I had to go and do some caches in Minnesota. I picked a pretty tough one at Minehaha Falls that was a nine part multi-cache. That took us about two hours and we maybe went up and down about a thousand stairs that afternoon. But, after our Dairy Queen pit stop and some 9th grade geometry, the cache was ours (in addition to a travel bug that is now back in Seattle). We also found one in Homeward Hills Park (near my parent’s place), but that one was much less fun and much more mosquito infested.

The Tuesday that we got back to Seattle I finally got home at 1:30a and settled into bed. That was great, but having your body get up six hours later at 7:30a is not so great. Needless to say, I was in to work early that day and dead tired all day. But, my next couple days in Seattle were pretty jam packed as the past five were.

On Tuesday night, Stephanie Collett hosted an INFO Mixer in Downtown Seattle. It was scheduled to be at the Green Room next to The Showbox, but due to a fire at The Showbox, we changed venues to The Pike Brewery in the market. That place is OK, but it was nice to see the faces that showed up. Jamie, Stephanie, Trevor, David, Rufino, Jason Tabert, and myself made it out. I was also stoked because I scored a sweet parking spot across from Simply Seattle.

Around 7:15p Jamie and I headed off to the Mariners game. Avenue A was having their summit week and each night had a different event. Tuesday night’s just happened to be a Mariners game. Since there were extra tickets, I got to attend. We showed up at the top of the 6th inning and hung out until the end of the bottom of the 9th (game was tied 1-1 then). As we were walking back to another sweet parking spot in Pioneer Square, we hear a loud scream from the stadium. I thought that something good had happened and we kept walking. Later that night I found out that Sexton hit a grand slam to end the game in the bottom of the 10th. *shurg* At least I saw it on SportsCenter.

It was a couple days before I left to Minnesota that my friend Jai had asked me if I wanted to go to the DC United/Real Madrid game at Qwest Field the Wednesday after I got back. Never having been to a game, I decided to go. I didn’t realize how big of an event it would be until I heard on the radio that there would be 60,000 people at the game (actually there were more than 66,000 that showed up). So, after work we got dinner and headed downtown. We drove, to avoid downtown bus congestion and we were a little pressed for time due to our commute from Redmond. We, and everybody else in Seattle was looking for parking to the game. Luckily, we found an open parallel spot on 10th and King. My car just fit. And we were off to the stadium.

The security line was crazy. I’ve been to a Seahawks game there before and it was nothing like this. So, after getting in line and waiting about fifteen minutes we got in and hustled to our seats about 20 rows up in the lower deck on midfield. We got there just in time to see the kick off.

Not being a soccer fan, the game was still fun to watch. I found the action on the field to be entertaining and fun to watch. The goals were both amazing and the energy at the stadium was crazy (although not as energetic as Seahawks games). I had a good time and I think Jai did too. The game ended in a 1-1 tie and since it was exhibition, there are not any extra periods or penalty kicks to decide a winner. Nevertheless, a good time.

So, fast forward to today and I can now come home and catch up on stuff around the condo, clean, pay bill, and do all that sort of fun stuff that I’ve been missing out on the past week. While the last week was a blast with tons of stuff to do, I sure do need to sleep in this weekend. But, since I’m so excited to just be at home relaxing, I just hope I can fall asleep at a reasonable hour tonight.