March 2012 – Page 2 of 2

Trying out co-working

Eastlake Mail has been offering co-working for a while. When I returned from my road trip, they’d rebranded themselves as Vybe Communications and really started emphasizing co-working instead of mailing services. I thought about signing up before I left. I stopped in Monday and chatted with the owner (or manager, not really sure which). He offered to let me try it out without charge. On Tuesday, I did. I didn’t get a whole lot done, but not due to the environment. With a 50% off offer for 6 months, I signed up. So for $100 a month essentially, I have an office now. I used it Thursday and Friday and did get a lot done.

I have one software development client. Perhaps I’ll look for more. And in the back of my head is that I’ll take on some genealogy work for hire. I have no idea how difficult it is to drum up business in that enterprise, but I know I’m pretty decent at the work, at least with some populations.

2012 Sounders season ticket package arrives

On my way out of the door to the office (yes, I actually have an office now) this morning, my phone rang and the caller I.D. said it was from the lobby. I wasn’t expecting anyone, so that meant it was a package delivery and probably my Sounders tickets, and it was!

I opted for actual paper tickets this year instead of the new season ticket cards. I lose wallet sized cards way too often to make that a good option for me.

The new tickets themselves do not have pictures of Sounders players anymore. Instead, there’s a view of Seahawks Stadium with the crests of the Sounders and each of their opponents. I wonder if that has anything to do with the rescheduled match last year. Did people get too confused about which ticket was which?

The scarves this year are black and green. I really like the new look, which you can see in this photo from SoundersFC.com:

In other Sounders news, I still haven’t decided where I want to watch the Santos Laguna away match. I could watch online, but the CONCACAF announcers are awful. I could go wherever E.C.S. plans to be, but that’s usually too crowded for me. I can’t hear the announcers over the yelling, chanting, and singing from E.C.S. I’ve watched at Forza, but they’ll let whoever is there vote on what to watch and the students don’t seem to be particularly huge football fans.

Sounders vs. Santos Laguna

Went to the game tonight. The first competitive match of 2012. It’s the first leg of a home and away series with Santos Laguna of Mexico in the CONCACAF Champions League, with aggregate goals determining who moves on.

The Sounders played really well. None of my issues with the Sounders play last year cropped up in this game. The team passed well. They did not rely on the long ball. Every player worked their butt off.

David Estrada continues to impress me. I don’t know if he’s really ready to be the starter all the time, but I am not going to be pissed when he does get starts. He’s way better than Pat Noonan. My only concern is that he got pushed off the ball a few times on the left, but so did Alvaro Fernandez. The Sounders seemed to get more crosses from the right.

Eddie Johnson substituted in for the final 10 minutes or so. I liked his performance as well. It’s still too early to tell if the Sounders overpaid for him, but I’m somewhat less concerned about how he’ll turn out now.

Johanson continues to move forward to create attacks. Fredy Montero created all sorts of opportunities too. Even Leo Gonzalez was pushing forward more frequently too.

And despite all the attacking, I never once felt like our defense fell apart, even when Santos scored. Santos had so many attacks fall apart against smart defending.

I was jazzed about the season before. Now I really am.

Writing more this year

One of my goals this year is to write more regularly. I often start writing something to post and end up discarding it after a paragraph or two. What stops me is a combination of I can’t write this as well as what someone else has already said and I am not going to reach the idiots I am castigating and Christ, this is a lot of research and editing to make this perfect and I wouldn’t want to read about my boring life. Plus a few more pieces of reasoning. All of these are only partially valid.

But the drawback is that all this crap rattles around in my brain anyway and if I don’t write about it, I’m going to steer my personal conversations around so I can say it anyway. Also, it’s nice to have a personal chronicle (i.e., journal) cause my memory is crapola and I am much more successful at that when it’s online.

And no one else has to read this if I’m not as eloquent as others, am preaching to the wrong people, I write something not particularly well back up, if it’s boring, or whatever else.

I don’t promise something daily, but that’s my loose goal. They’ll be spread out between the blog, LJ-only (probably fairly infrequent), and the book blog.

Tolling 520

In a moment of brain fog, I turned left… onto the 520 on-ramp instead of heading north on Montlake. You know, just after the last exit before tolling. To add insult to insult, it’s not like tolling on most roads on the east coast, where I could have paid the toll, gotten off at the next exit, and driven back on surface streets. The only way back without spending an extra 45 minutes on the road is to get back on 520 and pay the toll going the other way.

This was an expensive grocery shopping trip.

Reflective license plates

When renewing my tabs, the state Department of Licensing required that I purchase new license plates. My old ones are over seven years old, which meant that the reflective coating has worn off, according to them. So new ones (costing $20) it is!

I thought of a way to extend the life of these new plates though! I could add glitter to make them even more reflective!

Oddly enough, I have some leftover blue glitter that almost exactly matches the hue of the blue lettering on my plates.

University Link can’t come soon enough

I just looked up University Link at Sound Transit. The line will open for business in 2016. Four more years yet! Too long!

Last night I had to wait three buses to get home from the Sounders match, and the one I got was still standing room only the whole trip home. If we had University Link, all the students who were on the buses (I’m guessing 95% of the three busloads) would have been on light rail.