I think a lot of people will enjoy this, not just airplane nerds like me…

From: http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2012/02/a-touch-of-truth-and-humor-for.html

787: She is drop-dead gorgeous, she has all the “right” friends, and all the boys want to date her. She loves spending time at the spa, and she is addicted to social media. Predictably, she is a drama queen. Every little problem gets blown out of proportion, resulting in tears and tantrums. She has an attitude of entitlement, believing that everyone exists to serve her needs and desires.

767: He isn’t terribly smart, or good-looking, or popular, or talented. He is a little clumsy and socially awkward. Though he is a diligent and reliable worker, his only real option for the future is to go into the military, because frankly he has little prospect of finding employment in the private sector. But bless his heart, we love and adore him.

777: He’s the family overachiever. Eagle Scout, 4.0 average, captain of the football team, scholarship offers flowing in, a gorgeous and smart girl friend. He wonders to himself how he could possibly be related to this cast of characters, and secretly wishes he weren’t.

747: Quiet and studious, she tends to keep to herself. She’s a bit heavy and has a touch of asthma. She seems wise beyond her years, and is burdened by an unspoken sadness. Yet she is unfailingly loyal and will go to the wall for you. Others would do the same for her in an instant.

http://sweatersoffelicity.tumblr.com/

So we started to watch all of the episodes of Felicity again….well…just because.

If you remember the 90′s, the fashion of the day was sweater wear. Mock turtleneck’s and all!

Christopher decided to start a new blog after watching the very first episode.

After high school and growing-up into college I had a lot of fine opportunities to meet a lot of fine folks.  One of them was Barb Tolbert.  She became my mentor in that she taught me a lot about my profession of the time (public relations and marketing) and, like all great mentors, bestowed upon me her wisdom of many general life lessons that I still use to this day.  She encouraged me, and sat me right-down on my butt when needed.  She is one of my cherished friends, even as time and life have escaped us.  I admire her, and I know she is great.

It did not surprise me when I learned a few months ago that she was running for mayor – how cool!  And she did it!  Barb Tolbert is the Mayor-elect of Arlington, WA.  I am so proud of her and the community she continues to build, encourage and foster.

Barb – you are one of my personal heros.  I just know that you will continue to do great things and that your constituents are very lucky to have somebody as impassioned as you are to lead them.

Congratulations!  You’re a rock star!

Iceland!

We are booked to ICELAND! Yay! Yes it’s winter. But Iceland is not as
cold as you think….milder than Eastern Washington in the winter! And we
*adore* cool weather, so this is such an awesome thing for us. And it was a
killer deal. Here’s where we are staying — check-out the the photos link…it looks awesome!
sites.google.com/site/icelandapartmentvacation/

Yay for us!

YAY BLUE ANGELS. It’s Seafair. I love this. Haters can just STFU for a weekend…I’m sorry their delicate constitutions are so offended because it’s the end of the world and its soooo loud and it lasts days and days and days and days….you live in a loud city! whatever!

YAY!!

Chicken video

Here’s an action shot for the chickens and chicken post below….

Sausage and oxtail

Both excellent

Next course…

Green garlic soup and beet salad.

Beet salad is fantastic and wins this round…but the garlic soup is
still very good.

The frites below were still divine…heavenly! I’m in withdrawals….

A thing of beauty…

Frites with fontina and Demi-glacé

Longest passenger tram

Up to 10,000 feet!

We won!

Not at chicken poop bingo, but at the general raffle. How ’bout that!?!

Chicken poop bingo

Seriously. At a bar in Albuquerque. Wherever the chicken poops over
the numbers, depending on the numbers you drew, perhaps nets you a
prize!

Greetings from flight level 330

Over Idaho on the way to DFW enjoying WiFi Internet on my laptop from
33,000 feet..first time I’ve had the opportunity. I know this has
been around for a while now, but I’m old and it still gives me a big
WOW factor that I can browse the net from 33,000 feet while traveling
at mach 0.80 on a tiny little netbook at connection speeds I would
have sold my soul to have 10 years ago.

It’s really cool.

New Mexico Road Trip 2011!

So we have decided to visit Christopher’s old ‘hood in April with a road trip around the state…I sooo love planning trips.   Half the fun almost!

So here is our tentative thinking…

DAY 1: Seattle – El Paso, TX
Yee-haw, TEXAS! It’s close to some places we want to go and the flights were surprisingly cheap.  Albuquerque RT airfare was expensive in comparison.  But in any event this worked well for logistics.

DAY 2: El Paso – Carlsbad Caverns Nat’l Park – Roswell
Apparently you go down into the caverns and can have a snack down there.  Plus then there’s an elevator back up!  On the way to Carlsbad we get to claim another park visit — Guadaloupe Mountains National Park – who knew?!   Then into Roswell for some tourist trap stuff and to say we been there.  Here’s the map

DAY 3: Roswell – White Sands Nat’l Monument – Las Cruces
From Roswell it looks like we go through some nice high mountains and in to White Sands to look at dunes.  Then on to Las Cruces for the night.  Christopher can’t stand the wait as there is a deli he MUST re-visit here!  Here’s the map

DAY 4: Las Cruces – Albuquerque
We drive on our first Interstate of the trip up to ABQ to hang out with Christopher’s Dad for a few days over Easter.  Here’s the map

DAY 6: Santa Fe day trip
Santa Fe seems cool and has lots of southwesty-type stuff.  Plus some museums and general tourist type stuff.  Here’s the map

DAY 7: Albuquerque – Seattle
Whew!  We go home.

Punxsutawney Phil says Spring comes early‼

Sigh….

Sorry it’s so weird and vertical — I only had my iPhone with me.

Lunch time treat! 787 on approach

I was able to get off work early as I did server maintenance this
weekend and then today had to drop off some recycling in SODO….and
look what graced my late lunch! A 787!

Update!! Two of them in a row! I got a video of the second one and
will post later, because, well, like any good airplane dork would do,
of course

Our friends ROCK!!! Literally!

Jenn and Jason rule the floor at Neumos with some awfully righteous
riffs! They trade with us cat sitting. I wish we were so cool!!

Merry Christmas to us!!

I’m not normally such a brand name queen, but people rave about their
Le Creuset cookware. It’s damn pricey though.

But what should magically appear in the clearance rack at City
Kitchens?! Behold! For the enamel not taking hold to one of the
handles we got “Grand Pierre” for 50% off!!

Now, what to cook in him first??! So many things….

Snickercakes!

A snickerdoodle cupcake with cream cheese frosting topped with a
snikerdoodle cookie! Uuuugh!

This is our street — right at our block!  What a wild night.  And cold — love it!

I especially like the big bus sledding down the hill around 3:00 — and that it takes out the bus stop sign. (And even funnier is that stop is scheduled for removal, bahahaha!)

Cool things in old books

Recently I’ve been on a mission to find old books I remember reading
as a kid. I found this one "New York to Rome: Jet Flight 808" with an
amazon.com merchant in used condition (of course since it was
published in the 60′s!) for 4-5 bucks. Winner! So I grabbed it. I
must have checked-out this book in middle school at least a hundred
times. It’s a very glamorous, technical look at a TWA 707 flying
across the Atlantic. It was old even when I was in school…but the
dreamer in me didn’t care.

Anyways I finally got the thing in the mail. I opened it up and was
thrilled to find a signed little card typed-up from TWA public
relations wishing someone happy holidays. This book was originally a
gift (from the card it indicates an advance copy to boot!) from the
now long gone Trans World Airlines.

What a cool little find!

Fish on the run!

Having an awesome dinner at Genke Sushi.

And for those of you not in the know…yes, that is a conveyor
belt! YUM!

Bah! TWENTY years.

Crikey I’m so officially old now…

Holy Crap! Where have you been all my life? This will go great with my Wine Glass Holder!

Found thanks to dlisted

Cliff Mass is on my side!!

Per my post last week (2 down below “[waaah, waaah] This rain is abnormal [Waaaah, waaah]“) One of the Northwest’s preeminent meteorologists, The UW’s Cliff Mass, agrees with my rant! OK, he doesn’t explicitly point me out or anything, but here is an expert on weather totally backing me up on what I’ve been saying forever. Outstanding.

Here’s his post:

The First Day of Summer: When Will It Be?

In fact, he’s more conservative than me in his findings — he says July 12 instead of my July 5th.

I love it when this happens — now I have an actual article by an expert to refer to when people complain (Which happens nearly every day! I swear….)

BTW, I *love* Cliff’s blog. I’m a total weather junkie.

STOP it. You are wrong. It is always like this.

The Seattle area gets a nice little sunny streak in early May, which make all the ex-pats go bananas that summer is here. Then it shuts down again with the last part of May and most of June being pretty cool with spats of rain all the time.

“Oh, this is so abnormal”

“Oh, this isn’t like other years”

Bull$hit. It is ALWAYS like this in Seattle spring. I’m tired of hearing about it — I thought I had posted about this previously on my blog to proove my point, but I’m making record now.

I need to remind everyone that summer around here does not start until exactly July 5th.

Oh, and more rain is in the forecast!! Hahahahahahahaha.

Only 2 years to the next decade and 4 years to the answer to the ultimate question of life and the universe.

My real day was May 7.

Thanks to Christopher who had the camera!

Hawaii 2010

Kona, Big Island, Honolulu. Christopher, Garrett, Amy and Ana

121 Photos

Cat commas?

Or synchronized sleeping?

Feline open parenthesis?

Two cat posts in a row, I know, but they’re just so damned cute…

The poor things…

So ignored. So unloved. So abused. Life is hard.

Happy Christmas!

Claire and I after crackers! Loving the holidays!

Read to the end…the reporter chose to quote me!  April and Steve (also quoted) are good friends of mine as well (fellow airplane geeks)

NYT Link: Boeing Looks for Momentum in Dreamliner Takeoff

This just cries out to be ridiculed and made fun of as wide as possible.  Seriously, this is a professional news organization in an area where aerospace is one of the top 2 industries.

Seriously, KOMO, you deserve all the raspberry you can get for this.  It’s just sloppy and lazy.  No excuses — you are NOT the average person who may not see the difference — you are in the business of ACCURACY and by god in the Seattle area you need to know your airplanes. Would a TV station in Detroit make a story with a caption about a Mustang yet have the picture be a F150 truck?  Must I even explain this to you?!

Next you’ll show a screen shot of Apple Macintosh OS X in relation to a Microsoft Windows 7 story.  Seriously, guys, this is that bad…and if you can’t see that — wow, I’m astonished and kind of embarrassed you are in my town.  You guys are being THAT stupid.  And you haven’t even corrected it after hours of people leaving comments on your own website!

Shame on you.

Here’s the link to the story, which hopefully they will correct.  But I took a screen shot to proove KOMO’s stupidity:

Fudge FAIL

I swear I followed the instructions to a "t" — here’s hoping attempt
#2 will turn out better

"Perfect" brownies!

So we got suckered in to the "perfect brownie pan" after watching the
commercial so many times…thanks Christopher for the perfect
Christmas present! I’ll be damned If it doesn’t actually work, and
pretty well actually! Here are the second batch results (first batch
was little gingerbread cakes!). And yes, we are aware of the gigantic
cupcake mold commercial….only the future will tell

What do you get when you cross a young, pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson and the Brady Bunch’s dog Tiger who can now read minds and talk in a post-nuclear-WW4-apocalyptic world and marry it to a misogynistic film script made on a budget of about a buck fifty?  Oh, and throw-in Jason Robards in mime makeup leading the extraction of, well, let’s call it viscous liquids, just to throw you for a loop…

Why, you get “A Boy and His Dog,” one of those movies that is so amazingly bad it’s completely awesome.  Entrancing, even.  You know the kind — so bad that after the first few minutes you simply must finish the entire thing.  It’s the the biggest train wreak of a sci-fi movie ever!  And I had the privilege of spending 90 minutes this Thanksgiving weekend watching it.

It’s now my favorite awesome worst movie to date.  Highly recommended. Must see.

Mona! En guard!

For Mona…

Handerpants

When you need more than nothing but less than a ‘handcoat’

Now *I* have the blanket with sleeves!

In a fashionable zebra pattern nonetheless….plus bonus "press and
open" booklight, which provided the handy illumination for the photo.
Thanks Christopher!!!! Xoxo!

I’ve been blogging for a decade. 10 years already… huh!

While this is certainly an interesting point in a time line, it’s really only an electronic analogue to a diary. I’m sure many people have been keeping diaries for longer. Nonetheless I’m kinda tickled to meet this milestone. I started “blogging” before “blog” was even a noun or a verb; indeed before it was even a popular catchphrase. Indeed I had my first web page back in 1995 (See my “Deep Archive” link above)

That’s a lot of time and bandwidth (timewidth?) dedicated to my own banter. What have I accomplished in that time?

As it turns out quite a bit. I became a true adult (still out for some debate). I had a successful consulting company (official corporation even!) and then transferred clients/closed it after my clients became successful and got gobbled-up by other, bigger corps in what became the dot com bomb. I moved to California and back. I bought a house. Got cats. Sold a house. Bought a condo. Used five different types of blogging software. Stumbled into a great relationship. And generally observed what made me laugh and ranted upon the stuff that irritated.

As I look back at some of my entries it makes me smile and laugh a lot. Also I cringe a lot…was I THAT shrill, really? Or was I THAT stupid, really? But that’s the deliciousness of time and becoming older — the cumulative benefit of your experiences always makes you wiser and wiser.

So what will the next decade have in store? Who knows….That is what is fun, and worth living!

-Garrett

1998:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1998/

1999:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/3/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/

2000:

http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/3/

2002
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/1/

2003:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/2/

2004:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2004/1/

2005:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/2/

2006:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2006/1/

P.S.: I’m going to attempt to add these old entries to my database. So if you subscribe to the RSS feed you may see a slew of new entries. I’ll be careful to set the date in the posts properly, but I’m unsure if they will appear in the RSS feed because they are “new” entries as far as the database is concerned…

Made these a few days ago…yum!

North African Dinner

North African Dinner (see post below) — photo courtesy Christopher

It was pretty good. Took forever to prepare. Way too much chopping for my taste. But it was tasty I’ll grant that. It got better as it cooled down — and the leftovers were fantastic.

So I’m a partial slave to the Food Network. Can’t get enough of it. The recent win of Melissa D’Arabian as the Next Food Network Star was a major celebration for the household — much joy was had. We were routing for her. Then to find out that she and her family has moved from Texas to our very own Kirkland, WA! Well, some Eastside stalking may be in order. But I digress…. Anywhooo…

So her new show is titled “Ten Dollar Dinners With Melissa d’Arabian” Her whole thing is flavorful dinners for four people and 10 bucks. This is good. Flavor is good. Cheap is good. The Wiedmeier kitchen today was prepped to experiment with her “North African” episode for dinner. It includes some spicy meatballs, couscous and carrots altogether.

So, how did my $10 fare?

Not so much. It paid for the cumin ($5.28) and the olives ($3.24). You see, I didn’t have everything needed for the recipes at home. I’m pretty sure a lot of people are in a similar predicament. I have no clue as to how the ingredients, when counted in total, could ever equal less that $10 — even $20!

Now, don’t make me a hater — I still love Melissa and the show. My on/off plans for d’Arabian spottings on the Eastside are in full swing. I’m just dissapointed with the Food network to so flagrantly mis-title something. What new math are they using?

To wit: below is my recent shopping list with total. Even if you lay-off some of the ingredients which I think they assume you already have (Cumin??? Wine??? — they must think we’re all drunks….OK, well, I guess a good assumption) it’s still waaaaay over $10.

Dinner is in a few hours, so perhaps I’ll post the results and let you know if it was worth nearly four times the advertised deal…

Cumin $5.28
Brown Sugar $1.29
Diced Tomatoes $1.00
Chicken Broth $2.00
Tomato Paste $1.00
Unsalted butter $2.49
Ground Beef $3.19
Onion $0.52
Garlic $0.50
Ginger root $1.20
Cilantro $0.99
Parsely $0.99
Lemon $0.25
Carrots $0.99
Calmata Olives $3.24
White wine $5.98
Oats $2.49
Couscous $2.73
Dried Dates $3.29

TOTAL $39.42

Having fun with Claire up in the poor people seats

This is so true…

My God, I think that’s me there…

Chocolate “no bake” cookies! Okay, I know, they kinda look like turds
laying there…. But trust…

mmmmmmm

That was fast…Sam says “thanks!”

What was that…around 5 minutes maybe?