Construction: End of Day 3

Biggest wasp nest ever

That is the wasp nest found in the "attic" portion of our old back porch during demolition. There's not a great size reference in the photo, so I'll tell you it's about as big as a yoga ball. And we thought the one we found last year in the rhododendron was huge. Come to think of it, so did the exterminator who removed it for us.

Construction - End of Day 2

Now we no longer not have a porch but there's a giant pit in the backyard.

Awesome!

First day of construction

Only one day into our project and already there is a significant difference. We have no back porch!

J. Paul Getty Museum

San Diego has Chick-Fil-A

San Diego has Chick-Fil-A And that means I get to have it too. Yum!

Seaworld!

Guess who just finished assembling a crib?

I cleaned out half the office on Sunday, which means there was finally enough room to take the crib out of the box.

Victorious Getaway

We spent last weekend in fabulous Victoria, BC. We had been once before, five years ago, but on that trip we took the Washington State Ferry to Vancouver Island. (Victoria is on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, while Vancouver the city is on the mainland and therefore much easier to visit.) This time, we took the Victoria Clipper, which leaves from downtown Seattle instead of Anacortes, makes no stops between here and there, and takes about two hours less. Of course, it's also passenger only (last time we took a car) and costs more, which is why we've never done it before.

But we scored an awesome package deal for two round trip fares, one night's lodging, and afternoon tea. On our last visit, we stopped only for an afternoon in Victoria proper. This time, we stayed there the better part of two days, and did all of our sightseeing by foot.

I highly recommend it, as we had a fabulous time. It also happened to be BC Day on the Monday, so although we didn't realize it at the time, we went on a holiday weekend to the provincial capitol.

Chickens!

This spring I decided I wanted to try raising chickens, and this of course involves building a chicken coop for them to live in. So starting on July 5th I spent about two weeks, mostly in the evenings, going to Lowe's. I also spent some time building a chicken coop. Only July 14th we went to a feed store in Burien and picked up some 2-week old chicks. Of course they couldn't go into the coop, so they lived in a brooder, which is a plastic bin with some wire over it and a heat lamp. As the chicks have gotten older, we've let them out for afternoons here and there in the coop where they love to eat grass and stretch their wings. Apparently chickens get to be pretty decent fliers in early adolescence -- once they start laying eggs (in about 4 months) they'll stop being able to fly as well. At six weeks of age chicks can go into the coop permanently.

We'll post photos of the finished coop and the now-older chicks soon, but in the meantime you can go through all the photos, which have been captioned with building instructions. I bought some instructions online, but didn't want to wait for them to be emailed to me three business days later, so I just started building something I thought would be appropriate. So far it's worked out pretty well!

Investigator

An unfortunate shoot out in Issaquah on Saturday night left 2 dead and four injured. The large crime scene meant the King County Sheriff's Office called out the SAR volunteers to assist in searching for evidence. You can see me in two of the photos in the Seattle Times' gallery, including the one above.

Ikea

Backpacking Trip to Navaho Pass

This past weekend I went backpacking ("backpacking" referring to camping on foot) with friends in Navaho Pass, which is in the eastern fringe of the Cascade Mountains. Fabulous weather and gorgeous scenery -- check out all the photos.

We're Pregnant!

It's taken far too long to post this news on the blog, mostly because we felt it was important enough to merit more effort than a normal post. Well, as it turns out, that means we'll just end up putting off the post for months. So, to make this easier to write for us, here's a convenient FAQ:

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Are you really?
A. Technically, no. Only Sarah is pregnant. Michal is biologically incapable of becoming pregnant, as are most human males.

Q. When's the due date?
A. October 18, 2010

Q. Wait! That mean's Sarah's 24 weeks.
A. Actually, 24 weeks and 1 day as of this posting.

Q. How do you know that?
A. There's an iPhone app for it. Actually, I use two.

Q. What iPhone apps do you recommend for pregnancy?
A. What To Expect and iPregnancy. You have to pay for iPregnancy, but it's totally worth it.

Q. Okay, enough with the software. Can I see the baby?
A. Yes. We've posted first trimester ultrasounds and second trimester ultrasounds.

Q. Is it a boy or a girl?
A. We don't know. Please feel free to tell us your guess based on the ultrasounds linked above (they are sufficient to tell). If you are a medical professional and have experience reading ultrasounds, please keep your guess to yourself. But otherwise feel free to tell us, even if you are 89% certain you can tell the gender. Better yet, send us an email with an edited copy of one of our ultrasounds, circling the relevant bit. (I would surmise at least one of you will end up circling a hand or some other anatomically irrelevant part.)

Q. What are you naming it?
A. $USER, after you! Thanks for asking, now you've gone and ruined the surprised for yourself.

Q. Are you having a baby shower?
A. Babies don't need showers. In fact, they don't even need a bath every day.

Q. Are you registered anywhere?
A. Yes. We're registered with Amazon and Target.

Q. Why aren't you registered with Babies R Us?
A. I'm throwing in this question to explain to the world that Toys R Us and Babies R Us are the worst company you can potentially have to deal with. They handled a crib recall for us, and they were terribly unpleasant and unprofessional to deal with. Michal received 4 different pieces of spam within a 24 hour period from them, and they canceled an order twice, while continuing to show available inventory on the website. A few years ago, Amazon was sued by Toys R Us for violating an agreement to allow Toys R Us to be the exclusive provider of toys on Amazon.com because Toys R Us proved to be such a horrible experience for Amazon customers. Turns out, Amazon was right. The reviews of toysrus.com agree with me.

Q. I'm just finding out through the blog. How come you didn't tell me in person about this big news?
A. Sorry. We've been discussing the pregnancy with friends as we've seen them. Perhaps you haven't seen us in a few months, or perhaps we simply forgot we hadn't told you. To make up for this transgression, we've decided to name the baby after you, $USER.

Michal's Birthday

Michal celebrated his thirtieth birthday with tons of presents, food, and friends. Here's how big the birthday stack started at the beginning of the evening. We continued to dinner, and whittled down the gifts over the course of 16 hours or more. And then he spent the rest of the weekend playing with his new stuff.

See all the photos.

Memorial Day Weekend: Camping at Bullards Beach State Park in Oregon

A couple of weeks ago Sarah and I joined our friends Ethan and Stefanie and two of their friends for a camping trip based in Bullards Beach State Park in Oregon. It turns out that it was far enough South (9 hours!) that it was almost in California, and more importantly, the weather was nice. We spent three nights there before working our way up the Oregon coast on Hwy 101 -- with the completion of this trip Sarah and I have (at one time or another) driven all of Hwy 101 through Washington and Oregon. Lots of adventures abounded, including relaxing on the beach and holding lion cubs. See all Michal's photos plus Sarah's few token images.

Book Review: Delivering Happiness

Okay, so I don't regularly do book reviews here (ie, never), but a few months ago I came across and signed up for a special program for bloggers where the publisher would send you an advance copy of the book if you were 1) a blogger and 2) promised to put a review of the book on your blog sometime during this week. Apparently having a blog makes one a blogger, and so I got a copy of the book. Read through the entire review for a special reader bonus!

The book is, clearly, about Zappos, but the first half is really an auto-biography where Tony Hseih introduces himself and summarizes his entrepreneurial efforts starting with mail order businesses in childhood through his first job as a college graduate which lasted all of five months before he quit and founded LinkExchange. I didn't know he was behind LinkExchange, a banner ad trading network for websites in the early 90s in which I myself was a member. Of course Microsoft bought the company in 1996 and effectively killed it, but Tony took his money and started investing in other companies.

Ultimately he's convinced to invest in an idea which ultimately becomes Zappos, and Tony gets involved in the company as CEO when it's on the brink of bankruptcy and he cashes out his real estate and personal wealth and pours it into the company. The second half of the book is focused primarily on this process and bringing Zappos through its dark days into a profitable and well respected company.

Unfortunately there's a section in the middle of the book which goes over Zappos' ten core values with 2-3 page essays written by Zappos employees. While Zappos has somewhat non-standard core values, and the essays attempt to give varied personal perspectives on each value, the end result is a not-quite-cohesive hodgepodge of brief stories.

The book itself isn't a very dense read and goes quickly. It can be pretty enjoyable, but go into it with expectations of fluffiness rather than a serious discussion of business practices. There's a disclaimer in the very beginning from Tony where he makes it clear he's not a professional writer and he's not using a ghost writer, and while I appreciate the honesty, you can see why.

 In addition to sending me an advance reading copy so I could write this review, the Delivering Happiness Crew also sent a second copy for me to give away. So, if you'd like a free copy of this book, leave a comment on this blog post before June 10th with enough information so I know who you are, and I'll pick randomly and send it to you. As of right now this is the top selling book on Amazon, so it's clearly popular.

Memorial Day Weekend on the Oregon Coast

Memorial Day Weekend on the Oregon Coast

Marine Rescue Response

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a Washington State Ferries Marine Rescue Response exercise. The WSF puts on an exercise of this scale only once every four years as there is only one spare ferry in the fleet, and this takes two ferries to run. Basically the scenario is that one ferry breaks down or has some other emergency that requires its passengers to abandon ship. I volunteered as one of the passengers, although I was not one of the injured passengers. Some mannequins were even thrown in the water to serve as over board passengers.

Evacuating a ferry consists of the following simple steps. First, you assemble at the passenger assembly station. Then you lift up all the seats and find a life jacket. You put it on. Then you help the person next to you put theirs on, only to discover the problem is not that they are an idiot, but rather that the straps on their life vest are all messed up, so you need to find them a replacement life vest. Once that's all said and done, you are given a pencil. Then a zip tie. Then a form you fill out consisting of your name, address, medical history, boarding information, and emergency contacts. Once you fill that out, you zip tie it to yourself. But not your life vest, because that might be removed later, so to your clothing. Oh, right, and the boat you're on is still sinking.

So then you form a big conga line where you put your hand on the passenger in front of you. You wind down the stairs to the vehicle deck, and when it's your turn, you slide down the Marine Evacuation Slide (MES), which because the ferry you're on isn't actually sinking and is just part of an exercise, hasn't been loaded with cars and thus is riding much higher in the water than it otherwise would thus making the MES more like an MEC (Marine Evacuation Cliff).

Once you're in the life raft, hopefully you know how to make the self bailer work, because otherwise you need to hope the nice folks in the rescue boats have a bucket you can use to bail. They do? Great, pass it over! Oops. Quick, grab the bucket before it sinks. Oops, that sank pretty quickly. Anyone else have a bucket? Oh, you do? Great. Don't hand it over, toss it into the middle of the life raft. Clearly passing it is prone to user error, which results in an unrecoverable problem. Once you've started bailing the life raft, the rescue boats (one in front, one in back) will push (back) and pull (front) the life raft to the other ferry, where you'll re-board using a reboarding ladder (which gives you traction to climb up the MES).

On the way back to the ferry terminal after the exercise, we even got to see Orcas! Despite the bitter-sounding sarcasm above, today was incredibly fun, and a very valuable look at how a real shipboard emergency might play out. If you ever get the chance to do something like this, I highly recommend it! Thanks to the Washington State Ferries for inviting (or being desperate enough to invite?) King County Search and Rescue to participate in their training.

You can view all of my photos and videos, or you can take to the skies and see what the KIRO 7 TV helicopter saw [news article | video 1 | video 2]

Mariner's Game vs Detroit Tigers