Christmas, 2005

For Christmas this year, I did something I had never done before: spend the holiday apart from my family. Given that I had taken two trips to the east coast in the past two months, and hadn't really accrued any vacation time at my new job, I figured this might be a good time to experience Christmas in the Great Northwest, though it certainly would've been nice to share it with the fam. It turned out to be one of the mildest Christmases ever, with temps nearly reach 60 degrees (record highs for Seattle).

Fortunately, Tracy's family (also in Seattle) welcomed me warmly into their household for the weekend. And aside from the fact that we moved Christmas up by a day, it wasn't really so different from what I am used to. Whereas some families celebrate by everyone opening all at once, the Silberfeins and Tylees open only one at a time, with a captive audience. So, after about 2-3 hours of this, we had made it to the end, and spent the remainder of the day lounging around in pajamas, eating a wonderful meal featuring a roast and salmon, playing board games (Apples to Apples and Scene It!), and watching a movie (Love Actually). There were also 5 dogs (including one puppy) roaming around, reminding me of years past when we a golden retriever running around the house.

As with most other years, my family was very generous in their gift-giving. Among the gifts were flannel sheets, a garbage disposal, panniers for my bike, a GPS interface cable for my computer, a backup hard drive, and various clothes and books. Tracy got me an introductory flight lesson at a nearby flight school (very excited!), and the Tylees got me a Lowe's gift card. As always, I felt very included in their family, and am very grateful for having me over this weekend.

For lots of pictures from the weekend of dogs and people in pajamas, click here.

Snowshoe Holiday Party

About a month ago, I was in Second Ascent getting my bike tuned, and I saw a flyer for the Mt. Tahoma Trails Association (MTTA), a mostly volunteer-powered organization that operates a set of trails and 4 huts near Mt. Rainier. Each hut sleeps between 8 and 14 people, and is available for reservation at the low, low cost of $5/person (covering a permit fee). I thought this would make a great option for an alternative holiday party, with big common spaces and snowshoe-only access. So I called to check availability for December 17, the last weekend before Christmas. To my surprise, I was able to reserve the biggest hut, which slept 14. I then set out on the daunting task of finding 13 other brave and hearty souls to accompany me, knowing that I was pushing up against other Christmas parties, shopping, and prior travel plans. Eventually I reached out to friends of friends, and the day before we were to leave, I got my 14th confirmation.

The weekend-that-couldn't-arrive-soon-enough finally came, and the forecast was for bright sunny skies and brisk and windy conditions. For a few weeks now, high pressure has presided over western Washington, meaning little or no fresh snow in the mountains. Making matters worse, there was a recent temperature inversion, which meant warmer temps up high, melting some of the good early-season snow we had. No matter, if we had to hike, we'd hike.

We went up in four cars, three SUVs and Tracy's little Toyota. We made it almost to the parking lot (with chains), but slipped on the last leg and had to get a ride up in another car. One of these days I'll figure out how to make chains stay on the tires and actually help us! When we got ot the trailhead, there wasn't a whole lot of snow, and it was old, crunchy, and icy -- certainly not anything that made us want to break out our snowshoes. So we hiked the first two miles of the 4-mile jaunt before deciding that we might as well make use of our snowshoes after all. They weren't really necessary, but it was good to "break the ice" with my new set ;-)

The hike was relatively easy, and we made it up to the hut around 4pm. WOW. What an amazing setup. There were two floors, and the upstairs was filled with sleeping pads. The downstairs had a fully-stocked kitchen, some couches, a water filter, and a propane fireplace to keep the place toasty. This came in handy, as the winds outside picked up to about 40mph! The privy, unfortunately, was about 40 feet outside the front door, but at least it provided views of Mt. Rainier while you were inside. In fact, there were beautiful views in all directions, as the hut seemed to sit out on a ledge in the shadow of the big mountain.

Tracy prepared a splendid dinner for us, consisting of spaghetti and meatballs, salad, and italian bread. Afterward, we spent the rest of the evening socializing and playing games like Mafia and Apples to Apples. What a great crew I brought along! They were from different social circles, but you couldn't even tell. Besides Tracy and me, there were Kendell (Tracy's step-sister), Theresa (EPA) and her friend Joseph, Kim(EPA) and Chris (her boyfriend), Aimee(sailing friend) and her three friends Scott, Joe and Mark; John and Steph (friend of mine who I met through Liz) and their friend Abby. After most people had gone to bed, Chris and I ducked out for a midnight snowshoe jaunt under a full moon and starry sky. We noted several different animal prints, probably belonging to fox, wolf, rabbit, and any of various rodents.

The next morning, Theresa took the lead in the kitchen and prepared pancakes for everyone. We were all so happy with the accomodations that we didn't want to leave. Unfortunately, Tracy and I had to hurry back to get her to the airport for her residency interview in San Diego. Even so, the trip went off without a hitch, much to my suprrise. What a weekend!

To see all of the pictures from this weekend, click here.

Seahawks game

Today, Vince and I attended our first (for both of us) professional football game at Qwest Field, between the Seahawks and 49ers, courtesy of a Big Brother/Big Sister ticket donation. It was scheduled to be a blowout since the local team was 10-2 and the visitors were 2-10. It was exactly that, as the Seahawks coasted to a 41-3 victory. Even so, it was still a nice experience -- albeit a cold one -- since we seats quite close to the field and the game moved along a lot faster than it seems to on TV (the commercial breaks didn't seem as long). Will I go see another one? Probably not, unless someone gives me free tickets again. While it was nice to see the Seattle fans get excited about their team, I had no emotional attachment and started looking at my watch in the 3rd quarter. Vince definitely seemed to have a good time, which was more important.

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas

Today, I finally got my act together and purchased my first Christmas tree (yes, this is a big deal). Needless to say, there is no way I would ever get an artificial tree, especially when the there are at least three places to get a tree within a 5-block radius of my house. So, I enlisted Chong to accompany me to what normally is a farmer's market to pick out a beautiful-smelling grand fir. Actually, "grand" isn't really the proper adjective, since it's more a dwarf of a tree (probably only about 6 feet). I was hoping to leave some space in my living room for Goldie to run through, so I erred on the small side.

After a run over to Fred Meyer for a Christmas tree stand, some lights, and ornaments, I came home to decorate my new purchase. Though it certainly has its bare spots, I think it came out looking just fine!