Tag: life

Honeymoon Initial Plan Complete

One of the tasks that Jamie and I have on our checklist is for me to being planning the Honeymoon. From the onset, we decided that we would basically take the entire month of August off. This would include time before the wedding and also time spent on our Honeymoon. We were looking to leave the Monday following our wedding and coming back about three weeks later. Our budget has been set and I was now off to research.

Since this will be a once in a lifetime vacation, we wanted to make it count. So, we will be visiting three different locations while we are away. We will start by going to Fiji from Seattle. Using Luxury Link we are able to find some pretty good deals on places on Fiji. We have it rounded down to one spot in particular and we’ll be watching it closely, but it looks like a lock. The neat thing about Luxury Link is that it is auction based and the starting price is usually at a pretty substantial discount when compared to purchasing directly from the resort.

From Fiji we wanted to visit an urban location. Being in the South Pacific, we figured that going to Sydney would be pretty sweet and relatively close to Fiji (as compared to Seattle). We will be spending almost a week in Sydney doing who knows what, but knowing us, I’m sure we’ll have a great time. To wrap up the trip, we will visit the island of our engagement, Maui. We plan to spend our last week there before coming back to reality in Seattle.

After working out the initial estimates, I will have used all of my stored up vacation, nearly all of my accumulated Starwood Starpoints on the hotel in Hawaii, and we’ll still be 20% under our original budget. So, I’m pretty stoked. It’s nice to have it locked in on what we are going to be doing. The next steps are to book the trip and count down the days (which we were already doing anyways).

A Couple Hawaii Videos

I have been slow in getting the video up online from our recent trip to Hawaii. But, here are two clips that I put onto YouTube recently.


This is Jamie and I at the sliding sands trail at Haleaka. It was a fun hike going down, but not so much on the way back up.


This is Jamie’s tour of the Westin Maui Resort. We stayed here on the first part of our trip.

Enjoy the videos, more will be coming in the future… hopefully.

Things I learned from my accident

This morning I got into a minor rear-end accident. I’m OK, my car is OK, the other driver is OK, her car is OK. But, looking back at the incident, there were some things, post accident that I would do differently.

  • Verify the phone number. I just took the phone number for granted. Now, I have a phone number that calls a disconnected line. I have no way to get in contact with the person I hit.
  • Write down driver’s license info. I didn’t do this, but at least I could verify the name and address of the person.
  • Write down the car’s VIN number. These are usually visible through the windshield glass, but I didn’t do it.
  • Be patient and wait for insurance information. She didn’t have the info with her, so she said she’d call me later. Now that I have a phone number that doesn’t work, I’m out of luck.
  • Have a camera. Ever since I lost my small digital back in January, I don’t have an “everyday” camera with me. I could have used it today to take pictures of where it happened and also of the damage.

Other than the above, I’m OK. I’ve filed a claim with my insurance, but I am not tapping into insurance for my part of the claim. But, I wanted to have my story on record so that if something comes up later (think statute of limitations), I’ll be able to recall what happened. Looking back on it now, I hope that I’m not going to get scammed. It looks all too good for a setup, so I’ll have a skeptical eye on this.

Is it your birthday?

Last night after work, Trevor, David, Rufino, and I went to Claimjumper in Redmond Town Center to get some drinks before we headed out to an Avanade event that night. We were just about on our way out when someone from the restaurant came to our table. She says: “Is it your birthday?” We’re a little stunned, and Trevor says that it is David’s and we all kind of point at each other saying that it is the other person’s birthday. She’s like “OK, let me bring you dessert on us.”

At this point we think she’s kidding, but we were wrong. No joke, she shows up with a huge slice of chocolate cake. So, we got a free dessert! Nice deal, and awfully nice of her. We didn’t really know what to do since we were all kinda shocked. But, ate of it that we could. It was good, but we were all pretty full off of our beers and food that we ordered.

Pretty nice of Claimjumper and I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before.

Inline Skate Excursion #1

Being somewhat proactive with my fitness, I thought it would be a good idea to get a pair of inline skates. I would be something low impact that I could do when I got home from work and it’s a little different than biking. Today was the first time that I went out with my new skates, and I got jacked up.

Skating up the University Bridge was OK, I was a little uneasy, but things were going alright. I get to the north side of the bridge and this is where I made my mistake. There are two ways down from the northeast side of the bridge. One, take the stars, or two, take the decline down to the street. I’m not 100% sure what I was thinking, but I took the decline. About half way down I lost control of my speed and I fall down on my right side. I fall mostly on my right wrist and elbow. I get scraped up pretty bad on the right elbow. I have gone no more than a quarter mile and I’ve bit it! Good job me!

I sit there for a while and suck down some water, since falling is hard work and all. I think about quitting and going home to clean myself up, or do I continue towards Fremont? I decide on the latter. The rest was fine until I hit some parade in Fremont (Solstice?) and I turn around and head back.

I get home and take my shirt off and I see the real damage I caused. It’s pretty hot, but I cleaned myself up and now I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I really didn’t like falling, so I’m not 100% sold on me continuing to inline skate. I think biking would be good for me too, but I just spent some money on these skates and I’m sure I can’t return them now. There’s always Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace to sell them, and I think I could too… but do I want to give up after the first try.. that’s the bigger question.

What to do

It’s been an interesting start to the new year. Nothing bad has happened, but when I sit down to try and figure out what I want to do in the upcoming year I have lot of things that I want to do. Some of them are much more practical than others, but I have a good mental listing of things that I’d like to accomplish before the clock ticks out the last remaining seconds of 2007.

But, here lies the problem. There are so many things that I want to do, that I can’t figure out where to start. I swear that I am the king of half started projects that just stop before they are done. Then there are the great ideas that I have that never make it past the idea stage. So, where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me confused on what to do next. I’m thinking that I need to physically write down a list of what I’d like to do and in what order. I’m very much a check a box kind of guy and if I have something physical that I can check off I think I’d be better at completing the things I want to do.

Granted, it’s already a week into February and I haven’t done this yet, but there’s a lot of time left on this year and plenty of time to accomplish lots of things. I’m sure at a later date I’ll post what I want to do, but I think that in the mean time I need to prioritize what I want to do and when I want to complete it. I could just say “before 2008”, but that seems like too big of a time frame for me. So, it’s back to the drawing board and time to actually write down what it is I want to do this year.