"OK... so you've got a car"
    Shania Twain, That don't Impress Me Much

Its time for another chapter in the Astonishing Tales of Carl. As I mention Carl recently bought a new car. His decision was based largely on a conversation between he an Shannon about how certain types of cars may help to attract certain types of girls. For example: Subaru(Sp?) Outback = Crunchy Granola REI-type, Sporty convertible = Peroxide Blonde, etc. Deciding he wanted to meet a nice young professional woman he went with the Volkswagen.

Did it work?

Believe it or not he bought the car Thursday and had dates on Friday and Saturday of the same week. I haven't seen much of him, but Shannon tells me that the woman is actually the finance manager at the Volkswagen dealership. Go Car-rl! Go Car-rl! Go Car-rl!

And in other news I finally met our landlords after living here for over a year. I woke up early Saturday morning to the sound of yard work. Turns out Wes and Debbie came over to help us with the yard. We I threw on some dirty clothes and went out to help them. We finished clearing out the front yard, and so they'll be delivering some top soil some time this week. Fun with Dirt abounds!

After getting good and filthy I snuck over to Lisa's apartment. She was away for the weekend with her mother so I decided to clean the place top to bottom. Why? Because every now and then I get this urge to clean. Usually I just sit down with a drink until it passes (I hate clean houses), but in this case I thought I'd put my vice to good use.

Its getting close to 11:00pm here in the Pacific Northwest and I need to finish a tad more work before I get home tonight. Yall have a good one.

"Put 'em in charge of an Exxon tanker
 Put 'em in charge of an Exxon tanker..."
    Matt's thoughts on the age old question: 'What do we do with a drunken sailor?'

Happy birthday to Kelly! Hope you get to do all the lying around your heart desires. :-)

Not much else to report. My roommate Carl just bought a brand new Volkswagen Jetta, and I believe this decision was based largely on the fact that he thinks women dig volkswagens. It doesn't really do anything for me, but then I'm not a woman.

Todays work efforts are definitly on a downward spiral. Looking into my crystal ball I see drinking and gambling in the (near) future. Have a most excellent weekend.

"Couldn't ask for a better day two-by-two
 To the ring, to the right point of view"
    Carbon Leaf, The Boxer

Sometimes time seems to be moving so fast that everything almost starts to become a blur. This is absolutely tragic since some of the indavidual moments are nothing short of sublime. I really need to just set aside five minutes every day and make sure I write them down. Will it happen? Probably not, but here's to hoping.

So let's look at some of these moments. I met Lisa's parents last Friday and that went a lot better than I had hoped. Apparently my foot-in-mouth disease has gone into temporary remission. We went to the Western Washington State fair together and had a great time. (Avoiding rides that would have resulted in praying at the porceline alter was key). We did see a really great hypnotist named Travis Fox. I'm still not sure if hypnotism is for real or not, but the show was insanely funny.

Last night I went to the most amazing baseball game. Now I really don't like baseball to be honest with you, but two of my friends on the Access Test Team invited me and they're fun people so I couldn't say no. I made the right choice. Ichiro hit a home run off the first pitch of the game. I want to be Ichiro when I grow up. A streaker got onto the field in the middle of the game and made it the entire way to second base. That was funny as hell. To top it all off the M's pulled on an AMAZING comeback that started in the bottom of the 7th when they were down 7-2 and came back to win it in the bottom of the 8th 8-7. A lot of people left after the 6th inning. I bet they're kicking themselves now.

Well its bug day so I need to get grinding. Have a fantastic comeback week!

"Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach. It pisses me off. When no one's looking, I'll go over to a baby and ask, 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life.'"
    Steven Wright

Fall has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle summers are the best, but I genuinly love fall for no good reason whatsoever.

Since the weather finally started turning cool I've started Microsoft Campus every day around 5:30pm just to stretch my legs and clear my head. We've got some nice trails that cut through the wooded sections of campus. As I was walking by the Lesbian Duck Commune I realized that... what? Why yes I did say 'Lesbian Duck Commune'. See there's this little marshy section on the corner of the campus that one of the trails cuts accross on a boardwalk. At one point there's a little pond where there are always four or five female ducks, but never any mallards. Therefore it must be a Lesbian Duck Commune.

I was reflecting on the last few weeks and feeling very please with myself. Work is getting stressful again, but we still seem to be on top of things. Actually, I'm getting send down to Hollywood, California next month with a bunch of my co-workers for a big Access/VBA/SQL Database conference. Seeing as I've never been to California I'm pretty stoked.

And to top it all off things Lisa appear to be going really well, and I feel like they might stay that way if I can avoid saying or doing anything too horrendously stupid. Only time will tell.

Have a marvelous evening.

"Halo 2 is a lot like Halo 1, only it's Halo 1 on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas... And the ninjas are all on fire, too."
- Jason Jones, Bungie Studios

Mmmm... Halo. I imagine that many people who read this have no idea what Halo is. Halo is the flagship game for the Microsoft Xbox. Its currently the hottest thing in first person shooting games, and is the video game equivalent of crack. :-)

Speaking of fire, I realized on the bus this morning that I forgot to write about the time I met The Man. No, not Bill, but someone a little more... powerful. On the border of Bellevue and Kirkland there's a place called Dixie's Barbeque. Dixie's is an auto garage that was opened by a man named Gene back in the day. One day his wife started selling sandwitches out of the front of the garage and over time the she started making more money than the garage so they converted the entire place over to a restaraunt.

Eating there is a two-tier epxerience. The first part, placing you order, is very much like the Soup Nazi sketch from Sienfeld. You get in this very long line of people that ends with a surly young guy who demands you sandwitch order, and a scrawny old woman who screetches "y'wannaside?" at people as she points an accusing finger at them. DO NOT place your side order with the sandwitch guy or vise versa or you WILL catch holy hell from them.

After you get your food you move out into the garage to eat at one of the various picnic tables or mismatched sets of patio furniture that are just scattered about the place. There are coolers of water and buckets full of salted peanuts for your dining please here and there as well.

So you sit down and begin to eat. The food is fabulous! Dixies has won plenty of awards, and while the menu isn't that diverse they're good at what they do. Anyway, you're eating you food, and as my friends who took me there told me: you'd better eat fast! Shortly after sitting down the ownder, Gene comes over to your table an introduces you to The Man.

The Man is a hot sauce that Gene carries arount in a little black cauldren. The man is purple, lumpy, and about as thick as toothpaste. Gene will come over and ask "Who hasn't met The Man?" Don't lie because your friends WILL rat you out. Meeting the man consists of having Gene slap some on your food and then daring you to just touch the tip of your fork to the sauce and then to your tongue. Now friends, I'm not one for hot food to begin with so I may not be the best judge, but it was the hottest, nastiest, most painful thing I have ever had inside my mouth.

Now you could refuse to meet the man, but then Gene will just insult you until you try some. You can always scrape it off your food after he leaves, but at that point the damage is done. One member of our party actually ate the entire dollop that was given to him. He was in a sorry state for a while, and if the rumors I've heard about the man are true it gets you coming and going.

Never a dull moment on the east side.

Indigo: "I could give you my word as a Spaniard?"
Wesley: "No good... I've known too many Spaniards"
    The Princess Bride

A little (criminal) Spain nostalgia: http://www.jones.tc/barna/scams.html

"I eat antipasta twice
 Just because she is so nice
 Angelina...
 The waitress at the pizzaria."
    Louis Prima, Angelina/Zooma Zooma

Life sometimes throws such a rapid succession of unexpected things at you that can actually get you mind in a state where nothing surprises you... for a while :-)

My date on Friday was good. Dinner went well, music at Kells was not what I had hoped for, but we ended the evening by taking her dog, Tilly, for a walk and that was actually proabaly my favorite part of the night

I spend all day Saturday hanging out with Carl. He was a good ear for my whining and rationalizing. We did a few hours of yard work, ate lunch at the park in downtown Kirkland, and spent a some time just watching a Rec League baseball game. Carl's such a good guy. I'm not sure why the women at the gym he goes to aren't all over him.

Saturday night I hung out with Dan. I actually had run into him on my first date with Lisa: he and his grilfriend just happened to be at Jet City Improv that night. Small world. Anyway he took me to this little hole-in-the-wall Italian restaraunt that has the most fabulous atmosphere and great food. If any of yall come out to visit remind me to take you there. Spagetti Red's is the name of the place.

Then Sunday things started to get interesting. I logged into work from home to tend to a few unresolved pieces of business. Microsoft has this really cool thing called Unified Messaging. It works like this: if you call me a work and leave me a voicemail Unified Mesesaging saves the message as a WAV file and emails it to me. So when I checked my work email account I found a voicemail from Lisa asking me to call her. Turns out she was going sofa shopping and wanted to know if I wanted to go wander around Ikea with her. "Not the most exciting date" as she put it, but it was actually a lot of fun. She found a sofa she like and may buy later. I found an Office Chair I liked and may buy later. We then proceeded to fill up one of those strange yellow Ikea bags with all the random crap that makes Ikea a fun place to shop. Odds and ends for the kitchen, candles, rugs, etc.

I have no idea where things will wind up between Lisa and I, but I realize that there's no way I can lose. I really am crazy about her: she's intelligent, confident, beautiful, fun, and one of the best dancers I've ever had the priviledge of leading. If things don't work out romantically then well... I'll still be lucky to have her and Tilly as friends.

As I write this too you I'm sitting in my office at work. I was getting work done from home, but I started having some technical difficulties. That paired with the arrival of Shannon's sister-in-law with her two little kids made going into work suddenly sound like a great idea. However, I've finsihed what I came in to do, I've recorded my weekend for postierity, and its just about bedtime for Little Computer Engineers. Hope yall have a positively inspiring week. :-)

"Patience, my blue friend."
    Quygon-Jin, Episode 1

I think Angie's right: it is kind of sad watching someone like Liam Nieson deliver a line like that one.

So we hit our goal a little after 3:30am this moring, and did I make my 10:00am meeting? Yes I did. I think the secret to a 19 hour work day is to break it up with happy thing:

• 6:30pm: Indian Food
• 12:00am Ice Cream
• 2:00am Indoor Frisbee Golf

"It is a dark time for the Rebellion..."
    Star Wars

It's 1:00am in the morning and I'm at work. I've been at work since 8:00am yesterday, and I have a 10:00am meeting today (tomorrow?). Ugh... and the end isn't as near as I'd like it to be.

This by itself would not be so bad: I knew there'd be days like this when I signed on. What's really, REALLY starting to make me tense is the fact that I have not been able to reach Lisa to finalize the much anticipated Second Date! I'm sure she's just in trial and completely out of time, but I'm starting to worry...

May the force be with you.

"Hippies, Hiiiippies... they're everywhere!"
    Eric Cartman, Having a nightmare

Holy cow! What fabulous weekend! I was a bit stressed that I had no elaborate plans for Serena's visit, but it turns out we both just needed a vacation from our work. I cannot remember the last time I spent four consecutive days without worrying about my job. Most of the weekend was simple stuff: movies, nice restaraunts, mini-golf, etc. Serena, the sharp dresser that she is, also helped me find a few suitable date outfits from amongst the Labor Day Sale maddness.

We did spend one entire day at Bumbershoot and had a fabulous time. I never would have guessed how crowded a music festival could get. We saw some cool things, I bought some art (so I won't have to do that again for a year :-), and ate a lot of bad food. The headliner for the day we went to was Lou Reed (Jewel, and Everclear were on other days) so we opted for one of the lesser stages and listened to some Bluegrass instead.

I actually love Bluegrass. In Blacksburg they used to have this weekly thing at one of the bars called the Old Time Jam where a lot of locals would come out and just play some amazing Bluegrass. Its all fiddles, bajos, guitars, and acoustic bases. Good stuff. Has a way of making people dance. Unfortunately it also makes a lot of aging hippies smoke pot. You would not believe how much grass was being smoked at that concert. This is Seattle, after all. Granola? Yes, have some *CRUNCH*, *CRUNCH*.

So I'd like to dedicate the link in this enty's opening quote to all those hippies out there. Go on... click on it :-)