Seattle: The Greatest City in the World

Man, every time I come up here to visit Seattle makes me fall in love with her all over again. The city is beautiful and the people are great. I really miss living up here and I'm leaning toward moving back up for school next year. Living in Barcelona would be great, too, and I'm not ruling that out yet but I always have so much fun up here and I don't know if I can stay away for 2 years.

On Friday night, Cliff and I watched the entire first season of Entourage. It's really good and I recommend it strongly to anyone who hasn't seen it. Sadly, there are only 8 half-hour episodes but they're extremely entertaining. I'm going to pick up Season 2 as soon as I can. This 4-hour Entourage marathon was easy as hell compared to the 24 marathons that I've attempted. One night I watched 13 straight hours of 24 at Dookie's house. This is still my record for consecutive hours watching a DVD boxed set. I'm sure there are many of you who can beat that and I'm that I'll eclipse my record soon.

Saturday morning we went to see Noah again. It's absolutely incredible how smart and active he is. I'm very impressed with his patience and overwhelming desire to learn. He loves reading and loves imitating adults. They love sports in that house and Julie's husband is a high school coach so let's hope Noah grows up to be a jock and a nerd at the same time. I can't wait to see him next month when I come up for Christmas.

After visiting Noah, we drove back across the mountains. I decided to take the route through Vantage since my dad and Cliff had never gone that way and I had my new GPS that I wanted to experiment with. The GPS worked fine but when we pulled into Vantage I tried using the "Points of Interest" feature where you ask for the closest gas station, restaurant, etc. and it tells you where the closest one is and how to get there. Well, there was a gas station 100 feet down the road but the closest one that the GPS found was up the hill, about 14 miles away, in George, WA. I don't know why the two gas stations in Vantage didn't register in the POI's but I wonder if they would be in the more expensive version of the GPS. I'm going to use it a bit more down in Cali this week and if it keeps missing stuff I'm probably going to have to upgrade. We'll see.

Saturday night I went out to Fremont with Greenie and Davis to meet Dave, Tasha and a lot of his Federal Way crew. We started at Norm's, a really chill bar that sells Pabst 40s in brown paper bags. I like Norm's more than most places because it's not too pretentious. Greenie's girlfriend, Kitty came over with a few of her girlfriends who I knew from college days at UW and it was nice to catch up with them. One of the girls, Caroline, mentioned that she could take a double shot of 151 with no chaser and that she used to bet guys $20 who didn't believe that she could accomplish the feat. Well, I didn't believe her either so I whipped out $20 and said, "Let's see it!" She went to the bar to order the double shot and I almost vomited as they filled a lowball glass with the nasty stuff. I think it was closer to a triple shot than a double shot and I almost vomited again as Caroline calmly sipped it all down. 151 easily the harshest liquor in the world next to Everclear and she drank it like a cup of orange juice. I happily gave her the $20 and asked how much the shot cost because I wanted to pay for that too. When she leaned in and told me, "$10", I almost vomited for the third time as the 151 vapors escaped from her mouth and invaded my nostrils. Very impressive and well worth $20. Greenie and I had two 40s each and headed to the Ballroom with Kitty and her friends. I don't like the Ballroom very much because it is pretentious and everyone there seems to think that they're the coolest person in the bar. Greeine and I hit the dance floor after downing a few Jager Bombs and quickly showed everyone who the best dancers in the house were. Maybe not, but we had a lot of fun and it's always great to dance with hot girls. Some of the girls are married or engaged or very deep in a relationship but those girls are the mst fun to dance with since you aren't worried about trying to game them up or anything. I had one more gin and tonic and finished the night with a bottle of beer. We were all pretty good and drunk and I ended up crashing at Greenie's for the night.

In the morning, I felt like regurgitated dog crap. It's not a good idea to drink 40s followed by Jager bombs followed by gin and tonic followed my more Jager bombs followed by beer. It was Seahawks gameday so I had to get my shit together and I took Kitty and Greenie out to breakfast. We got to the place right when it opened, at 8 AM and were the only patrons of the restaurant at that early hour. I mentioned that I had to drop a deuce and Greenie said that he had to as well. I hit the bathroom first and unloaded a really nasty beer deuce. There was only one stall at the place so I left the toilet unflushed, washed my hands and told Greenie that he could go for it now. He went in the bathroom then came running out instantly, etremely pissed, ad yelled, "GET BACK IN THERE AND FLUSH THAT, NOW!" I was on the ground laughing and picked myself up in order to fluch the toilet for him. Poor Kitty, the rest of breakfast was kind of like that, me making vulgar jokes, Greenie laughing, and Kitty rolling her eyes.

I got home around 9 AM and talked to Sean, an original SuperFan, and he said he could come pick me up in 20 minutes. Renee said that she needed to get ready but she could drive me down in 30 minutes. I told Renee that there was no way she could get ready in 30 minutes and I told Sean to come pick me up. She was pissed but I couldnt risk getting to the tailgate party too late. I took a quick shower, put on my Seahawk's gear and took off for the game. We got down there later than usual, a little after 10 AM but found a good spot in Tailgater's Heaven and got the party started. Morgan, a friend of Cliff's from high school, always brings a keg and we love to mooch off of his beer. We bring the food and they get to eat some of what we barbeque. It's a symbiotic relationship that works well. Kenny and Curtis' brother, Boog, decided to go beer-for-beer and see who could act the least drunk. Well, by gametime they both lost as Ken could barely keep his eyes open and ended up passing out for a quarter or so. Renee finally showed up with Torrie at 11:45, absolutely disgraceful. They got about an hour of tailgating in before we had to head to our seats. Davis and I played a game of beerpong, or Beirut for you East Coasters, and lost by one cup. There were a number of factors that I believe led to our loss, the number one factor being the stiff wind in our face. I'm used to putting a nice arch on my balls but the wind kept knocking them down short of the cups. I had to switch to a line drive technique and I did it a little too late. We were behind for a while but once I got used to the line drive we came back and had about 15-20 shots at the final cup with a ton of shots rimming out. After we lost I went to look at the cup and there was about 1/3 of the beer in there that there should have been, a factor that may have led to some rim-outs. Not that I'm bitter or a bad loser or anything. Morgan and McDuff went on to crush three other opponents, by 5 or 6 cups each, using the wind at their back to their advantage. Weaksauce, if you ask me. We'll get 'em next time.

I can't believe I just wrote that much about a game of beerpong. I guess you can tell how much I love the game. The actual football game was as crazy as you'll ever see. The crowd was really into it and I think we helped influence the game a lot. The Giants had 16 penalties, 11 of which were false starts. That's absolutely insane. The Giants are a real good team and Eli Manning showed me a lot yesterday. He's going to be a legit superstar in this league. The Giant's defense is also really, really sick and I think they'll be tough in the playoffs. 99% of the time we lose this game but this is the 1% of the time where the kicker misses 3 game-winning field goals and the team that dominates, loses. I feel bad for the Giant's fans out there because I've been on the other side so many times but I have to say, winning feels good. We're 9-2 and have a pretty easy schedule left so I think there's a good chance we get home field thoughout and if the crowd is as good in the playoffs as they were on Sunday, I have a good feeling about where this team is going.

After the game Davis and I met Renee, Torrie and Torrie's sister, Evin, at Peso's in Queen Anne. I had the Habanero Enciladas and they were extremely spicy. I could only eat about 1.25 out of 2 and gave the rest to Davis. After dinner we headed home and I hit the hay, hard. It was another tiring weekend and I had a great time. I really do miss it up here. Luckily, I'll be back in a few weeks. The children can come out of hiding now, I'm headed back to Cali!