·:[ NotANerd ]:·
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After much rehab and ongoing PT I’ve finally started playing basketball again .. and typing better to boot.

Now I’ve been cleared to also start volleyball but to limit my overhead activities, hopefully with no setbacks I’ll be totally done with PT in a couple of months .. and after being in constant PT for over a year now I can’t wait.

There was massive snows followed by winds and finally now we’re all on flood watch, luckily we’ve been pretty safe and no big trees have fallen yet. In any case it looks like all of our new construction has weathered the storms fairly well, the only thing left to do is to have the raised beds put in so that the garden doesn’t spread all over the hillside.

The list of pictures to put in the gallery is now huge, and I may have to upgrade the server to see if I can get some better performance out of it.

Maybe my new years resolution should be to write an entry at least once a quarter .. or maybe I’ll try and out-post Squip since she seems to have been on hiatus lately.

Its always much closer than you think .. I’ve been in constant PT since last October, everytime it seemed like it was getting better, some other symptom would show up.

I finally had an MRI done that shows multiple bulging disks in my neck .. which explains the pain (which has subsided) and the numbness in my hand (I thought it was RSI before) so with a built in excuse not to blog (I could barely type at work some days) I figured I better get up off my duff and try and at least post quarterly.

We finally got the swim spa completed and it looks grand, the landscaping is now done too so all thats left is some of the lighting and some kind of regular water exercise schedule. Hopefully I’ll get the pictures up and organized .. speaking of which I regularly post gallery pictures .. mostly to see how loaded my server can get.

There are only some small things left to do like watering systems and finally to build Mr Tibbs’ new indoor pond. Speaking of water we can barely see into the pond but I think the fish are still in there. In the mean time we’ve been hosting a few pairs of ducks .. they seem to be in great competition for the cracked corn we put out .. we’ve even been naming them. Elena calls the meanest pair “The Clintons”..

Was in (Bellevue) permit hell for the longest time over the holidays, but now the work is finally underway. My sister-in-law passed away this past christmas (colon cancer) but I think the nephew may still continue to visit this summer. It was my granddad’s 90th bday at the same time, there was a large party for him in LA over xmas too.

But why am I really writing now? My friend Mair has a new (old) art display in Brooklyn, and even the smallest amount of advertising can’t hurt (as we’ve found out when we did an interview for our store in a japanese language website) You can see her work at:

http://www.artezn.com/node/865

and if you’re really bored you can piece through the japanese site at

http://www.junglecity.com/today/2008/0208_1.htm

under the Cafe Lento entry. Yeah, its spelled wrong, but the link works, and its been bringing in customers. If you want some real fun, run it through babelfish to see the auto-translation. I had a native speaker translate it for me but it isn’t as fun as automated stuff.

Here’s what babelfish said:

It is inside the lake Hills shopping mall of bell view, the organic coffee & handmade chocolate shop ‘Cafe Lento’. It can enjoy organic from the chocolate and Africa and Central and South America countries which エレナ himself of the manager makes inside the store & the coffee of fair trade. エレナ of the Canadian graduate young time goes to the confectionery school in IT industry long to work, that it is busy, living of the natural group which is warmed among them was started with confectionery chocolate production with bell view. Last year this coffee shop is opened, the business which makes consideration to also detail feel to natural is developed e.g., the paper glass of テイクアウト compost possible ones are used. The majority of the raw materials of the chocolate is when from Switzerland, and the fruit and the like which is used has chosen safe ones which are limited to the Washington product. 1 for 75 cents ‘ Pine Nut of sip size Crunchies ‘ and, トリ…フ which rode in the thin cookie seat (approximately 15 types: 1 $2 - the $3) the male be completed is. It was made from the Bolivian wild cacao, ‘ wild Chocolate ‘ and the カイエン pepper ‘ Spicy Raspberry ‘ of the point is popularity, so. After inquiring about order, also the coffee which at a time you insert all the way with French press is tastiness. テイクアウト of chocolate yes.
509 156th Avenue SE and Bellevue (425) 644-7119 >> Map

and here’s what my friend says it really translates into:

Cafe Lento is a organic coffee and a home made chocolate shop located at Lakehills Shopping Mall in Bellevue. You can enjoy home made chocolate made at the store by the owner, Elena-san and organic & fair trade coffee imported from Africa and Latin America countries. Elena-san is originally from Canada and attended confectionery school when she was young and worked in the IT industry for a long time. She kept the natural living style even through her busy work pace, started her desert and chocolate making with the natual life style in Bellevue. She opened this coffee shop last year and you can feel her caring to the nature in her business through details like takeout cups that can be composted. She also selectively choose most of her chocolate ingredients from Switzerland and fruits that are used in deserts are safe and harvested in Washington states. The recommended items are: one mouth size “Pine Nut Crunchies”$.75 each, Truffle on thin cookie sheet (about 15 kinds, $2~$3 each). Other pupular items are: “Wild Chocolate” made from wide cacao in Bolivia and “Spicy Rasberry” with cayen pepper. The coffee made with a french press after each order is exquite. You can also take out chocolates.

Snow snakes will often snag skiers, Grass and Sand snakes will do their best to embarrass volleyball players .. So far I’ve survived most of those encounters .. but a week or so ago I ran into the very rare (hard) Wood snake .. which caused a head first collision with a wall. Luckily I’m well padded.. well at least most of the soft parts are, I just had a minor case of neck strain, small bruise on the head and this odd wrist soreness.

Never let them talk you into “just one more game”.

Things are settling down now that the house guests are gone .. just in time to start all of the swim spa (and landscaping) demolition work… now if I could only get the permits approved I could be rehabbing all of my injuries at home by Christmas.

yuck, first the floods, then the snow, wind and now its snowed again (twice !!) last week it took me 3 hrs to get home .. its normally a 15 minute (no freeway) drive .. but everyone was in a tizzy about the snow. It made me miss my sonics game (and the return of Gary Payton). Then the 3 day freeze that followed wasn’t very nice either .. main roads were clear but all of the side roads were very hazardous.

Just as everything was clearing up it snowed again last night and (for once) I had to be in the office early (8am ugh) fresh snow is actually easier to drive on than ice, but I had to route around all of the hills as they weren’t cleared yet. Still it was only a slow (30 minute) drive on empty roads since everyone appears to have slept in.

This is wrecking havoc with my deck/spa/hardscape contractors .. the grounds too hard to dig, the snow is in the way and they might not be able to get in/out of our driveway ..

I did start putting more pictures in the gallery .. in fact I tried taking some night snow pics but lots of them were pretty bad.. since storage isn’t an issue I just put them all up while I look for some ones that might be worth working on.

I forgot how much I liked cool weather .. especially the fog, its still pretty mild and hopefully when the hardscape work starts in a couple of weeks it won’t rain too hard. Now that the weather is cooler, the furnace has started kicking in, I’ll have to check and see if the efficiency is really as good as advertised since we didn’t have good numbers from last winter.

This is now indoor sports season, my bball league has started as has Dave’s advanced vball class .. its always good to get training in, although my body’s still going to be sore for a while.

On the tech side, still no webcams, we did get a new printer (hp color laserjet 2605dtn), we mounted up a scarecrow to deter animals (its a motion detecting sprinkler system) and I finally got a new phone (nokia 6131). I racked all of my AV gear in a new entertainment cabinet but I still need to find/buy an HDMI AV receiver .. then I can think about the new plasma screen. The interim LCD TV turns out to have an HD tuner in it and I’ve recently discovered that the local broadcast HD stations are unscrambled, as are discovery and most of the PBS stations … just more temptation/examples to get HD signals and a larger screen.. but at least I don’t have to get that Tivo HD Series 3 yet. I didn’t think that HD sports would be worth the money but I might be changing my mind soon

and when you have two and relatives in a third it makes for a travelling christmas..we’ll probably drive to LA and Palm Desert and forgo the NW visit till we move in Jan/Feb

I managed to get some early remodel pictures up on my gallery, of course, as all projects its suffering from a bit of feature creep, still looks to be in reasonable shape but we’ll see once the work is done. The good thing is that my contractors are basically working like generals and are coordinating everything. The only thing we have left is to pick the new carpet. We found a few we liked but now have to look for PET (recycled) materials and low adhesive/VOC.

Oh and if you look at the new pictures in the gallery, some of the early sonics pics are horrible, wrong settings, I got better at the later games but am leaving them up anyway kinda like a historical progression.

Hopefully the server will stay up, its been solid for weeks and now its been really spotty.. I think I traced it down to a bad switch so maybe it’ll be ok under load.