Beautiful Day in Seattle

It's been cold and rainy here in Seattle for the past several weeks. It's nice that we finally have a beautiful day and by Seattle standards it's even a bit warm. I had a meeting in west Seattle and jumped out to take a picture of downtown just for the purpose of posting on my blog. If you have never been to Seattle -come check it out it's a beautiful city!



I am actually working on a blog post with an insiders/local view on what to do in while on a visit to Seattle. Stay tuned!

Later -

Jim

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Beautiful Night for Baseball in Seattle

I bought Kent a four game package for the Seattle Mariners for Christmas so tonight was our first game. A little chilly out but the sun is out and the roof is open!


Not much of a crowd tonight - playing Tampa Bay so between who they are playing and how they are playing I'm not surprised.



I ran into Meredy Davis tonight who works at the stadium. I've not seen her for years. Meredy was my boss and hired me over 20 years ago to work at St. Peter Hospital in Olympia. Ironically I eventually became Meredy's boss for a short time and we still run into each other at sporting events every few years. Nice to see you Meredy!



Okay - time to enjoy the game! Go Mariners!

Later -

Jim

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Week Two Training Update - My Near 60 Mile Week

Boy how time flies when you’re running, traveling, working, gardening and trying to fit in a social life on top of everything else! Throw in a little reading and that pretty much sums up my life right now. Two weeks down and only 14 more to go before the Gay Games in Cologne. I've put in more miles in week two of my 16 week training plan than I've ever ran before in one week - nearly 60 miles. I was looking at the hours that I’ve actually been on my feet running in the last two weeks – over 18 hours running. Not bad for week in which I also spent the better part of four days on the road. I had to deviate from my original training schedule when we decided to head to Houston. I moved my Sunday long run of 20 miles to Friday to accommodate our schedules and to avoid flying home on Sunday and having a 20 mile run hanging over my head – as it was I’d have to fly home and do a 7 mile run upon arrival in Seattle.
I’m not sure I’d call it a mistake but it was definitely a challenge! The run in Houston was scheduled to be 20 miles and I cut it short by 2 miles and took several walk breaks between miles 16-18. I'm not too worried about it - more than anything I'd like to know exactly what made the run such a challenge. I think it mostly had to do with the VERY humid conditions, the fact that I'd not had as many days between long runs as I normally do so therefore not enough recovery between long runs, running 7 miles the day before (usually the day before a long run is a rest day) or the simple fact I was tired. At any rate I took Saturday off as a rest day and my legs recovered well and I had a great 7 mile run on Sunday after we got home for Texas – nice to run in cool conditions!

My running schedule for week two was as follows:

Sunday – 16.3 mile long run
Monday - rest
Tuesday – 8.32 mile easy run
Wednesday – 8.07 mile hills
Thursday – 7.24 mile easy run
Friday – 18.0 mile long run
Saturday - rest

The good news is my legs appear to be doing well and feel reasonably strong. I’ve got a few aches and pains with my feet/ankles but nothing that causes enough discomfort to stop me from running. I’m excited to begin the big tapper leading up to the Capitol City Marathon in a few short weeks! Over the next couple weeks my weekly mileage total will drop by about half as I give my legs some much needed rest.

Total miles to date in the 16 week Cologne training plan: 105.39

Later –

Jim

Texas Weekend

You know I really do love my iPhone. It's nice to be drafting a blog posting about our weekend trip to the Houston area while I am on the flight home. Draft it now, edit and add a few pictures once home and wallah - another post down. Never a moments time to waste! We will arrive home this morning at 9:30ish which is nice - we will have all day at home before heading to work tomorrow and Toby will be glad that we get at least one full weekend day with him!
We had a good time albeit a very quick trip that covered a lot of miles in a very short period of time and a new hotel each night. Some would hate the pace in which we travel preferring to stay in one location over several days. Houston's fine and all but we really were not compelled to spend all weekend there - especially since we had both been there before.

I'd never been to the coast of Texas so I knew I wanted to do that and that was the extent of planning before arriving in Houston on Thursday.

Kent and I used an app. called "Local Eats" to find a place to eat dinner on Thursday evening and has some terrific fajitas at El Tiempo 1308 Cantina. I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to find it again with so many option in Houston but the food was pretty good.  They served two kinds of salsa with their chips one was served warm which I thought was weird.  Between the Local Eats and the Yelp app. we found great food the entire trip. 

I got up early on Friday and headed out on what turned out to be a very tough run. I'll write more about that in my week two training update later. Let's just saw humidity and I do not get along!

Kent completed his work and I finished my run and we checked out of the hotel by noon on Friday. Okay it was time to get serious about our weekend plans. The weather had turned and it was overcast with low cloud cover and oh - did I mention, humid! Since we knew we wanted to make it to the coast we looked up the weather for both Galveston and Corpus Christi - enough said, we followed the better weather track and decided to make hotel reservations in Corpus Christi.

One of my co-workers had lived in Port Aransas, Texas so we decided to head to Corpus via Port Aransas. It's a Xxxx hour drive between Houston and Corpus Christi and since we had plenty if time and enjoy road trips we decided to forgo the Interstate and take back roads that went along the coast as much as possible. Texas is very beautiful in the spring. There were wildflowers everywhere! This was pretty much true the entire weekend. One our way to Port Aransas we stopped off at a National Historic Site - The Fulton Mansion. It was closed but the grounds were nice and best of all the grounds/gardens were maintained by the local Master Gardeners.

From there we took a ferry across to Port Aransas. Not much to Port Aransas - it's had not to wonder why people choose to live in the path of Hurricanes especially since Ike was through this area less than two years ago. I'll have to ask Georgia (my co-worker) about that. We drove out to the beach took a few pictures went for a short walk and headed to Corpus Christi. Upon arrival we checked right into the hotel and then drove around before settling on a place for dinner. We found an Italian place to eat and had a wonderful dinner - the mussel appetizer was especially delicious. Mamma Mia's has been in operation in Corpus for over 18 years! It was obvious upon arrival that there were many local "regulars" there for dinner - always a good sign. The owner Marino came over and asked where we were from so we chatted for awhile and I showed him how we found his restaurant on Yelp. Check it out if you find yourself in Corpus and hankering for a great meal and an experience all in one! Look for Mario - he'll be the one with the pipe although he's not smoking anything!

We found out there was a minor league baseball game going on in town that evening at Whataburger Field (loved the name of the field) - home of the Corpus Christi Hooks.  Because it was such a nice warm evening we decided to take in a baseball game. It was the perfect way to end the day. Very relaxing and as an added bonus a lot of really cute Texan baseball fan eye candy to keep one occupied during the slow times in the game!

We got up the next day and decided to once again follow the best weather and head north to San Antonio. I'd been to San Antonio several years ago for a conference and had a real good time. The drive between Corpus Christi and San Antonio was very pretty with all the wildflowers in full bloom.

We went to the Market and the local Farmer Market in San Antonio and checked out the river walk before heading out in hopes of making it to Austin in time for lunch. Once we made it to San Antonio, Austin was a no brainier.

We had been in Austin the previous June (previous blog post on Austin) for the Austin Pride Parade (parade queen remember) and had such a great time we just had to return. There is just something about Austin that makes you feel right at home upon arrival. Kent and I both decided we could easily become Longhorn fans!

We made it in town early enough to make it to their Farmers Market and found out that the Spring Festival was going on so we walked to the festival and checked out the street vendors. I love happening upon local festivals while traveling - this was definitely a bonus!

Best meal of the trip was had in Austin. We were looking for a sandwich shop or local deli and on Yelp found Food Heads. It was just the right kinda place we were looking for - local vibe, busy but not over crowed, fun environment and most importantly - great food! We already know where we will be eating lunch next time we are in Austin.

On the way out of town Kent found a local Barbershop and did what he likes to do while we travel - got a haircut. The shop - Floyd's Barbershop reminded me a lot of Rudy's barbershop in Seattle.

Time for the last leg of our trip. We needed to be back in Houston to catch our flight home the next morning so we headed in that general direction. Once we got closer and realized we had the time we decided to head down to Galveston for dinner before calling it a night.

Again upon arriving in Galveston I could not help wonder about the hurricane thing again. You could see that although things looked pretty close to being back to normal they were still recovering from Ike - a year and a half ago! We drove out to the drive along the coast and around town before settling on a place for dinner - another excellent meal - delicious warm goat cheese salad!

Another local place - they had a marker inside that showed how high the water line during hurricane Ike - it was - right were I was standing in Mosquito Cafe the water was over 6 feet deep - the place is not even near the coast! Price you pay for having a business on an island in an active hurricane zone. The downtown is full of historic buildings and looked like a place I would return for a day visit sometime in the future.

So there you have it - our Texan whirlwind trip. For those of you that have followed me long enough you are aware of Kent and my geeky quirks. One is to map out all our driving trips on a map - this one looks pretty good on the map!

In the spirit of having just been in Texas - see ya'll later!

Jim

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Another One to Watch

Good for the Hawaiian Legislature - now let's see if the Governor will do the right thing. If you live in Hawaii or have family or friends that do have them call the Governor and tell her to do the right thing and sign this into law!

Hawaii governor to decide on civil unions

by Mark Niesse
Associated Press
Saturday May 1, 2010


Whether same-sex civil unions become legal in Hawaii is now up to Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, whose office was flooded Friday with phone calls and e-mails from gay rights and religious groups after the bill won approval in the waning moments of the legislative session.

Lingle has long avoided saying whether she would veto the measure or allow it to become law. She has until July 6 to make a decision.

The governor was unavailable for comment Friday as she was scheduled to return from a trip to California, but her office reported a high volume of calls pouring in from both opponents and supporters of the legislation.

The bill was unexpectedly revived and cleared the Legislature on Thursday, the last day of this year's session.

Religious groups don't plan the kind of large opposition rallies seen previously at the Hawaii Capitol. Instead, they will lobby Lingle directly with personal messages.

"She's kept it very close to the vest," said Dennis Arakaki, executive director of the Hawaii Family Forum and Hawaii Catholic Conference. "She won't let us know how she feels about it. Now we'll know. ... The ball is in her court."

He's sending e-mails to churches and text messages to supporters urging them to contact the governor's office to let her know how they feel about the issue.

Civil union backers will send handwritten letters and postcards to Lingle in addition to e-mails and phone calls asking her to approve the legislation, said Tony Wagner, Western Regional Field Director for the Human Rights Campaign.

"It's going to be important to keep up the pressure on the governor in order to demonstrate that there is support for this bill and for treating all families equally," Wagner said.

In addition, civil union supporters will likely take to the streets to wave signs as drivers pass by, he said.

Lingle has sent mixed signals: She wanted lawmakers to drop the issue because the state had more pressing budget matters to deal with, but she also said representatives should have put their votes on the record when they postponed a decision on the measure in January.

Her office sent an e-mail soliciting public comments on all legislation passed during this year's session. Civil unions weren't specifically mentioned.

"I encourage the public to continue to participate in the legislative process by providing input on the impact each piece of legislation would have on our state," Lingle said in the e-mail.

Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor this fall, wants the bill vetoed.

"If the Legislature wanted to establish the equivalent of same-sex marriage, they should have put it on the ballot for the people to decide," Aiona said in a statement. "This bill should not be allowed to become law."

If approved, Hawaii will become one of six states - along with California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington - to grant essentially all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself.

Five other states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage: Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The Aloha State has been a battleground in the gay rights movement since the early 1990s.

A 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling nearly made Hawaii the first state to legalize same-sex marriage before voters in the state overwhelmingly approved the nation's first "defense of marriage" constitutional amendment in 1998.

The measure gave the Legislature the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples. It resulted in a law banning gay marriage in Hawaii but left the door open for civil unions.

"I don't know where the governor is going to be on this issue," said Tambry Young, co-chair of Equality Hawaii. "We're hoping she sees it as an equality issue."

Although Lingle has until July 6 to make a decision, her intentions will be known sooner. She must send the Legislature a list of bills that she'll potentially veto by June 22. Measures not on that list would become law, either with or without her signature.


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Unsupervised Pets

We ended up heading north to San Antonio and then on to Austin. I saw this picture at a Street Fair downtown and it cracked me up!




By the way he acts when we get home after work, sometimes I'd swear Toby does crack while unsupervised!

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