When Tacoma rates in the news....

I actually missed this one... and caught it on one of the News Tribune's blogs about Tacoma and its going-ons....Here's the link

And who says we are the underdogs to Seattle?

There might be blood, sweat and sore muscles....

So we postponed the snowboarding trip for later in February. The Snoqualmie Pass was shut down because of all the snow and thank god we didn't even attempt it as avalanche unfolded burying some dumb asses who did try to attempt to cross through it. seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/349334_pass31.html


So instead I met friends for "There will be blood," a title that I was a little leery about as I don't like the sight of blood or lots of violence. There is some violence, but Daniel Day Lewis turns in this performance of such a loathsome character -- I can see why the movie is getting accolades. Which brought up the question -- Can DDL ever play a normal character? And is he anything like some of the characters he plays?


And I finally got around to signing up for the Y -- where Mindi and I spent a couple hours. I ventured into my first spin class in a loooong time and all I can say is my butt and legs are killing me now.... If I attempt that again I need to invest in some padded butt shorts....but I'm actually tired as I type this and am going to attempt to try and go to bed before 3 a.m.

Ryan Adams...and a few forgetful moments

Got a chance to finally see Ryan Adams live at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle Saturday night (whohoo! a weekday night off!).

Sometimes I wonder where my head is... I was supposed to meet up at (former) Trib coworker Jeff's house about 5:30, but I left a wee bit late and had to turn back for the tickets that were sitting on my computer desk.

Weather (which turned gray and rainy after several days of sunshine and clear skies) was a hamper but I made it there in time to choose: dinner or trying to catch his roommates gig. We chose diner ... which was some really great conversation, good Thai food and losing track of time... And again, my brain was in retrograde as I thought the show was at the Moore, and as we were driving by the Paramount, thank god Jeff noticed the marquee....

And I thought we had plenty of time since the tickets said 8 and most acts don't go on until sometime after. But we showed up about 20 minutes into a show that ACTUALLY started on time. Both of us have been to our fair share of live shows, so what? really? a rock star starting on time? Holy crap!

The show was a blast and mellow and these girls in front were laughing hysterically in front of me which made me laugh.....

Adams was loopy, of course. Sober? Maybe. A lot more mellow than previous reported performances of being too drunk and rude to the crowd.

Here's a link from an activity that he made us do:


All in all it was a great night.. good music, great company... and it wouldn't be a 'Liz night' if I didn't get lost in Seattle trying to get back home. I'm ok in the day time up there, but still get thrown by the night time and lack of a grid to follow. At least the lighted Sky Needle acted as a beacon to point me in the right direction.

Homeowner.. at last!

The calls and emails started rolling in this afternoon...

I AM OFFICIALLY A HOMEOWNER!!!

My wonderful broker was the first to call (Thanks Jeri Lynn, you've been amazing!) and then Robin, my real estate agent.

And oh wait, the title company called about 5 hours later.. Uh, thanks for the prompt message.... (snicker, snicker....)

But all in all, I'm alternating between giddy and scared shitless.

It's a big step -- and i never thought I would get here. The whole settling down for now... kind of makes me want to bolt. But I'm here for a few years at least.

Work is going really well so that's not an issue of not having to worry about where my mortgage payment is coming from... I'm about to start Super Bowl preview stuff and then we go into prep tournaments and basketball playoffs, then winter World Cup, followed by March Madness, Mariners preview.. and well there is never a down time.

And they handed me a final bill for all of my moving costs today... so all this OT will come in handy.... and they know they'll get their money's worth out of me....

So sad....

I was truly shocked when I was flipping through channels tonight... and caught part of the ticker on E! news... What? I had to wait and see it run in full again.

Heath Ledger? Dead? At 28? Huh?

That cold chill just ran through my body. All you can think is -- what about his daughter? Another young life and talent gone too soon.

His first American movie '10 things I hate about you' was filmed in my newest locale -- and as someone who has a (closet) thing for teen movies -- I know the movie well and have had fun tracking down some of the sights used (and the high school -- Stadium High -- is quite impressive!)

For our local take: www.thenewstribune.com/news/updates/story/262180.html

'You take the good, you take the bad...'

I signed the paperwork today for the townhouse!!!!! We close on Thursday. Whohoo! Three months later.....but at least the end is within the sight line.

On the 'this is how my life has been going' note: The city numbered ALL of our townhouse wrong, giving out the wrong permit numbers to the lots. So that means my address is changing.... AGAIN! The pissed off part that gave me a killer headache is I had to find this out at the close signing when the builder knew THREE weeks ago it was changing and did not inform me of this.

I just FINALLY got the Post office, Fed Ex and UPS -- along with the utility companies -- to deliver, recognize, pick-up garbage and send to the 709 address. It took three months to untangle the fiasco of all of that.. and now this... sigh....(What a time sucker that was -- and now i know where all of my limited time off has gone.)

And all the builder rep can say is 'uh, sorry.' And 'well, when we get around to it, we'll change the house address eventually.'

So for now, I'm sticking with telling people I live at the 709 address until we can get this all straightened out. I'll keep ya in informed when it switched to the newer address -- look for emails and postcards in the mail!

Warning to all of you musicphiles....

I learned this the hard way when I went to recently go grab some music from my external hard drive last week and found out that it was dead to my Mac. Wouldn't mount it, wounldn't read it, basically it was coming up blank.

What??? Noooooooo.....Years of music, pictures that I purposely had transferred to the external to get more space, and in a hurry had not done a second back-up onto DVDs.

My 160G Seagate external that was supposed to have been Mac and PC compatible had converted itself back to a MS-DOS format (for the computer-challenged) that means I am sooo screwed. This is actually a more common thing than I realized and happens when the external is improperly ejected (argh!)

A few hours searching in Mac help forums, trying to piggy back it through a PC and then finally succumbing to defeat and one last ditch effort, which to plagarize from the credit card ad:

$299 for a new 500G LaCie hard drive (Mac-Approved/format friendly drive)
+
$99 for a disk recover program
+
1 sleepless night
+
praying that I would at least get the pictures back
=
never forgetting to back-up again!

It looks like I've gotten back the music, photos and some of my old portfolio pages, design examples, etc.

Some programs may be lost but I can at least replace them with the newer upgrades.

So if anyone can learn from my lesson, I share this with you all as I reorganize it all! Back-up and format the drive to the most appropriate drive!