This past weekend I took a trip down to Seattle to visit Jackie and Jer while Jackie was up for vacation. Drove on down on Friday and rediscovered how horrid Seattle traffic is. It was entirely my fault as I did not head out until about 14:30 thanks to laundry, but still amazed me how badly the traffic was. I really hope the light rail they are putting in will help alleviate the traffic trouble.
When I got there I met Jer and Mike's pug, Hemi (like the engine). He can be a hyper little fella. Seems relatively intelligent.
Shortly thereafter we went and picked up Jackie at SeaTac. Jer was actually able to wait at the curb without issue, unlike other airports I have been to. With Jackie in the back we drove over, picked up Mike and went out for dinner at a McMenamins restaurant. I swear that chain owns the American Northwest.
Our desire for entertainment not sated by dinner, we went to Fred Meyer and picked up some board games; Monopoly, Scrabble, Boggle, and Uno. I also realized how obsessed the tabloids are over Britney Spears (the girl obviously has mental issues. Leave her be to get better already!).
Back and Jer and Mike's we started off playing Boggle. As is the case with all word-based games, Jer trounced all of us. To make the rest of us feel better we then played several games of Uno. The last game lasted quite a while since we played the variant where you keep taking cards until you can put one down. It became a battle of colors as I ended up with a glut of blues but no reds and it was pretty much the reverse for everyone else.
The next day, after I finally got up and stopped holding up everybody (apparently Hemi woke everyone else up earlier), we went down to Pike St. Market and Post Alley. But before we got there we had breakfast at the Original Pancake House. We then made a brief trip to the Seattle Public Library (which is still a really cool public library) on the way to REI. There I was disappointed to find out the Leatherman Skeletool is still not out. But then I got new shoes (a pair of Vasque trail runners) for around town in the wet weather.
After that we were somewhat tired so we went back to the condo and did what we did for most of our undergrad careers when we all lived together; sat around watching TV and doing stuff on our computers. Although, unlike our time in Berkeley, Mike baked us cookies while we lounged about. To get Mike into the fun we played Monopoly in which I got screwed early by going to jail twice very early on, missing out on the land grab. Jer ended up winning by getting both Park Place and Boardwalk and putting three houses on each. It got to the point where we were all happy if we completely avoided both tiles or landed on Luxury Tax to avoid having to pay Jer off with a deed to some piece of land.
I stayed up too late that night since I spent my relaxation time finishing a program I wrote using Google's Social Graph API. Since I doubt anyone knows what that is, a quick explanation is probably in order. There are ways to specify the relationship between web pages (either through special keywords associated with links using XFN or with a special file using FOAF). For instance, from this blog I have links to web pages that are mine and that of my friends. I have used XFN to specify that the links going to my web pages point to pages that belong to me and that the links to my friends are in fact links to web pages owned by friends of mine. Google notices these relationships and make a big graph with nodes represented by web pages and edges based on the relationship between the pages. It all sounds complicated, but it is surprisingly easy to add to your own blog relationship links to other people using XFN if you have a blogroll.
Anyway, as you may have noticed in the right-hand column of this blog, I have started to use FriendFeed (if you want an invite and I know you, let me know). So I wrote this program to find out all the content people I know have online. It actually found some stuff I was unaware of which was kind of cool.
For Sunday we all of us, including Hemi, went to the Fremont Street Fair. There was not there since there was a chance of rain and the wind had been kicking up that day. We then went by some store where Mike and Jer participated in what I dubbed a pug circle jerk; they spent the entire time in the shop discussing pugs and other small dog breeds with the shop owners. Yes, they have become those kinds of dog people.
After getting back we went over to University Village so that I could get a Jamba Juice (they need to come to Vancouver) and Jackie could look at the iPhone. It actually looks like the iPhone is cheaper for Jackie over the life of a new cell phone plan then the package she was looking at which surprised me. The visit to the store also sparked my interest in getting an Aliph Jawbone since my Jabra JX10 felt uncomfortable in my ear on the drive down and there was a time during the drive where my dad could not hear me because of the background noise.
I believe while we waited for dinner time to roll around Jackie, Jer, and myself played Scrabble. Jer trounced Jackie and I; something we knew going in thanks to it being a word game and the fact that Jer has played Scrabble online for literally years.
Once it was time for dinner we went to the Crab Pot at Pier 57. Jer and Jackie got a meal where they literally dump a bowl of seafood on the table and you use a mallet to open up the shells. Made a mess but fun to watch.
The drive home was fast. Did it in about 2.5 hours thanks to no traffic and short border wait. Could have been even shorter if it had not been raining.
A very small number of photos can be found here. Below is a video of Jackie putting her years of mallet practice on Channing to good use.
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