I finally had some time to clean my photo pile and get some of that organized. I downloaded Picasa from Google -- and I'll be if that ain't the best little utility ever for organizing and creating photo albums (once you find the time).

The scary part, though, was Picasa found everything -- and I mean everything. So some editing had to take place! :)

I organized a bunch of stuff including the full set of photos for my recent Paris trip. Here they are:

Full Paris Compilation:

• Paris Day 1
• Paris Day 2
• Paris Day 3
• Paris Day 4
• Paris Day 5
• Paris Day 6
• Paris Day 7
• Paris Day 8

Misc albums that amused me:

• Cats and Cookies
• Pace Visit 2007
• Flight Simulator
• More Cute Cats

It's the takeoff. Below is a great example. Just like the takeoffs I had in my AA 757's to/from JFK on my latest trip.

It's that whiiiirrrlllllbzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZiiing sound. It's just like candy. And the harmonious ZZZZZbuuuurrrrinnnnng power reduction. Love it. Give me more power!!! Gives me goosebumps every time. Turn up the volume to an embarrasing level -- this one is great.

OK, everyone knows I love travel -- but I must admit sometimes I get the better of myself. Let's see, depart Paris at 9 AM Paris time (get up at 6 AM), fly to JFK for 8 hours. 5 hour layover (turned into 6). Fly 5 hours home to Seattle. Arrive at 10 PM Seattle time. 30 minute delay waiting on plane for jetbridge to be fixed. Same day. Hmm -- what is that...a 36-hour day? I dunno. Too tired for math. Anyways, I'm home and being mauled by my cats for attention. Still, Paris was fantastic.

So we were going to cook today. Unfortunately the chef mis-scheduled others during the day and couldn't acommodate us -- a truly bummer deal. So we ended up doing some "left-overs" of our own and hit some places we missed or wanted more of.

THEN we set off for our last night at new hotel near the airport, since we have an early morning flight. Below is the video that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the hotel. It was better than I had dreamed of -- I'm such an airplane nerd. (Warning: I'm slightly a potty-mouth)

Watch video

Plus here's the photos:

Facebook album of Day 7 -- last day!

Wandering around Paris I went down this ally to a little park as I was waiting for Claire to finish on her own taking some last pictures of the Musee D'Orsay and what do I find out: France discriminates on gymnastic apparatus. Damn. My routine was all ready to go, too.

Here's the parks where the sign was -- cute little thing, but what an interesting welcome. It's obvious they mean not for you to slide on the railing there or jump it, but still – what an odd choice of communication, albeit effective. I love this sort of stuff. You can't make it up folks!

Today we hit the Hotel de ville and Musee D'Orsay, which was fabulous. Lots of impressionist-era paintings and interesting sculptures. Claire was in Monet heaven. Below is the link to photos plus a couple quick vids – a random Paris shot and a tour of D'Orsay Monet (mostly for Claire :) )

Facebook album of Day 6

Vid: A survey of a typical Paris neighborhood

Vid: A tour of Monet

I had the best ham omlette, of all things, for dinner tonight. The ham was real and tasty, cheese perfect and the eggs -- remarkably done, yet tender and fluffy. Amazing something so seemingly simple could be so vastly better than you've ever had before.

Today we went to the Centre Pompidou and saw the Musée National d'art Moderne. We also went to Galleries Lafayette -- a department store with the most amazing architecture. And HUGE! A cross between Macy's/Bloomingdales/Saks we think.

Anyways, below are more photos and videos!

Click here for facebook album of photos days 4-5

A rabid sparrow attacks!
Watch video

Paris Panorama from Centre Pompidou
Watch video

Eiffel Tower at night (+ bonus Claire talk about a "snake" in a building sculpture)
Watch video

OK, so my friends have cajoled and sucked me into using facebook. I must admit their photo page creator is pretty slick, so I used that to upload my photos so far:

My Facebook Photo Album

We had perhaps the last good day of weather in our schedule today, according to the forecasts. So we made the best of it! Click on them for bigger versions.

I have travel stories already. I made it my goal of staying awake the first day until a reasonable hour. Yay -- I did it. 10PM and it's bedtime on this Friday night! I am dog tired!

Speaking of dogs, I had always read and heard that Paris has dog crap laying all over the streets as people didn't pick up after their dogs. It must be one of those fallacies to keep people away -- kinda like Seattle and rain, because I have yet to come across any of this detrius on the streets. As a matter of fact most are pretty clean actually. Hmmpf. Must hunt for this elusive French dogshit. Will take photos. This is my new mission.

And speaking of the French -- I have yet to be truly offended by anyone's rude behavior yet either. I actually got a lot of smiles and good natured-ness even using my extremely limited French phrases. Although you do get a lot of "matter-of-factness" as I call it. Call it a smooth indifference. They absolutely give you what you want, but just no smile. I say -- so what?! That's not rude. That just...is. Which apparently is very French. Definitely not American style. But that's why you travel, isn't it -- to get out of your comfort zones, explore and witness that there are other ways of doing things just as good as your own.

OK, I'm nearly hitting the keyboard with my head nodding off to sleep. Pictures to come tomorrow and so does Claire!

J'attends avec intérêt mes vacances à Paris en 2 semaines ! (je ne sais pas le Français ceci bien. ayant l'amusement avec la traduction)

Safeway assaulted me today. I go in to get my weekly groceries and WHAM! Pink, pink, pink, pink. Pink roses. Pink balloons. Pink banners. I mean, it was 20-feet thick as you waded your way through it at the entrance to the store. It was PINK.

Oh, that's right, it's VD .

No, I'm not bitter, or especially so. But with my BS meter set so high these days I was bound to find this utter explosion of forced joy very disturbing and ridiculous. What a waste of time. So this is the only day you can celebrate with the love of your life?

Seems to me a better love is one that lasts all year long and stays steady and becomes your "rock." VD in my opinion is just an excuse to waste money and feel better about yourself for actually remembering the day.

So I'm not actually bitter on love. Jaded on what people think it "should be", perhaps.

So I've been sick and at home for a few days -- no fun. I'm still alive, however!

Anyways, I decided to fire-up Flight Simulator and do some mountain flying. Love winter scenery. So I took a few shots of me in my trusty Cessna 172 "N101GW" departing Lost River in the North Cascades. Also got a vid. Watch video

Watch video here

More! More! More!

I usually don't post misc. emails, but this one is so damn funny I just had to.

Take a few minutes...it's worth it

Since I moved to Capitol Hill, I'm able to receive Air Traffic Control (ATC) frequencies into Seattle's Sea-Tac airport. In fact, I live 1,420 Ft from the imaginary airspace "intersection" that marks the start of the final approach from the north to Seattle.

So I decided to sponsor a live Internet audio stream of Air Traffic Control. You can listen to it at http://www.liveatc.net/ (click the "listen to Live ATC feeds" in the sidebar and scroll-down to "SEA Final" -- there are a number of SEA feeds, actually. I'm the one with 133.65 as the only frequency)

133.65 is the final approach sector for KSEA -- Seattle-Tacoma International. Busiest times seem to be around noon, 4-6PM and 8-10PM.

Seattle has 2 (soon to be 3) close parallel runways oriented north-south -- named runways 16/34. You can click on the chart to the right to see a bigger image of this. When landing and departing to the south 16C is used mostly for arrivals, with 16L used for departures. When the weather is really bad or foggy they switch to the Instrument Landing System (ILS) on 16L as the ILS for 16C appears to not support bad weather CAT2/3 operations anymore because of contruction of the third runway.

In the summer, and in better winter weather, Seattle usually lands the other way to the north, using runways 34C for arrivals and 34R for departures

After-hours this frequency can be combined with one or all of the feeder arrival sectors, so you'll hear ATC, but not pilots. Also sometimes you'll hear some bleed-over of a Seattle radio station in the background -- their main broadcast antenna is only 1 mile from me, so with it's huge power output sometimes you'll be stuck listening to Seattle's best smooth jazz -- sorry! Could be worse...

Here are charts and info for KSEA

Here is an airspace illustration I created of major arrival and departure routes into SEA. The triangle symbols are the major intersections along the routes (Imaginary places in the air programmed into aircraft navigation databases) The hexigonal-type symbols are actual radio navigation stations on the ground. The 3-letter acronyms you see are the codes for other radio navigation stations outside of the chart

This is far from complete, but a good intro into how traffic is sent in/out of the Seattle area.

Or at least that's what this cool new website, flightmemory.com, says.

This is a website where you enter all the details of your travels and it then spits-out maps and statistics for you. I totally got into this just being lazy today. Spent hours putting in my flights and travels, all from memory.

Then you start to remember trips you forgot! Like I vividly remember flying on Delta Airlines through Cincinnati once, and Northwest via Detroit -- but I can't remember what for!

*Highly* entertaining for an aviation/travel nerd such as myself.

View my Flight memory maps and stats here!

Highlights (And I'm far from complete!):

In Miles 167,658
In Kilometer 269,821
Earth Circumnavigation 6.73 x
Distance to the Moon 0.702 x
Distance to the Sun 0.0018 x
Total Airports 53
Total Airlines 16
Total Aircraft type 28
Total Routes 106
Total Countries 8

I'm off as a traveller again!

Super excited -- I just planned two cool trips. A short trip in December to the Bay Area to see some friends I haven't seen in ages and then a fantastic trip to Paris in March -- my favorite travel month.

I planned the trip to Paris first and then thought -- crap, that's 6 months away! I need a vacation to ease all that waiting...so I planned another.

Hopefully my friend Claire, who's going back to school on the East coast, will be able to join me as it's her spring break.

Pssst...I'm flying first class to Paris...yes, hate me...Bahahahaha!

"Iritis is a form of anterior uveitis and refers to the inflammation of the iris of the eye."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iritis

Who knew! It kind of sucks as I can't go outside much, and after this entry I am done with computer screens for the night and have to limit my exposure for a few days -- so totally weird. And they don't know what causes it in many cases.

Hmmmpgf!

Natalie and I have made it back from our road trip -- we covered a lot of territory. Sedona, Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest National Park.

I get back home tomorrow.

Check out the photo gallery

Vid: I find rain in Arizona

Vid: Natalie needs a new car

Vid: "Sleep in a Wigwam on route 66" said the sign! So we did!!

Today is 07/07/07 -- fun!

Got to see all the Boeing airplanes fly into BFI today -- saw it from my roof as they approached. The 707, 717, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767 and 777! Whew! I'm such an airplane freak. I almost peed my pants.

I must admit I'm getting very excited for the 787 rollout tomorrow. I won't be up in Everett as it's invite only and the best view will probably be on my HD TV. However, come first flight in Aug/Sep -- you bet I'll be there!!

Edit: Here's a great set of photos from the PI:

Boeing parade of 7-series planes

My good friend Lauren is running for Seattle city council!

Lauren Briel is a focused, independent new voice in Seattle politics running to restore accountability and rekindle the spark of decisive leadership in our City Council. Our city is a beautiful, diverse community, and it demands an inclusive political process involving not just the policy makers but key stakeholders and the community at large.

http://www.votelaurenbriel.com/

This summer just got a whole lot more interesting! :)