MountainWerks Trip Reports of the Mundane
The life and times of Michael and Kris

The MountainWerks All-Stars
Here are the people y'all need to know:

Me	Michael	Theron	Bob	Josh

Something I can’t help but enjoy, is when someone on a Mac or running Linux has temporary difficulty accomplishing something. I’m basically a Windows user. I ran Linux in college (though Kris pretty quickly became the sysadmin for our machines), but Windows always paid the bills. At work now, more and more people are getting Macs. They are really slick, and I’d love to have a Bash shell again for sure. But we don’t need a new machine and Macs are expensive anyway. So I have to endure lots of philosophy about how easy the Mac is, and why would anyone use anything else, etc. Now I know about the vaunted ease of use. But it’s surprising how much someone using a Mac looks like someone using a PC. They still get confused or lost in the wrong folder. They still try to save something as a PDF, but there is no such option. The shortcut key doesn’t work as expected, and the long path has to be taken. That’s the right time to casually say, “Wow, on Windows that’s a lot easier. Funny...” or “Huh. I thought the Mac would be easier to use.” Or, “That’s a very cute animation! I wish my computer had such bells and whistles!” Once Danno chased me out of his office after some of this. I must have struck a nerve :-).

Can you believe that Michael and I have been together 15 years? Seems like a long time, but really time just flew by. This is 15 years from our first date, which we count rather than how many years we've been married (12). We couldn't do much, so we just went to Red Mill Burgers for lunch, splurged and got a creamsicle shake! Mmmmmmmm.....

I have been looking forward to seeing Wanda Sykes in concert for a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGG time. She is one of my favorite comedians. I was a little worried about being put on bedrest whenever I bought the tickets (maybe 3 months ago), but I'm still doing ok. It was a little stressful since getting out of the seat to go to the bathroom would be hard (I would have to make 4 people get up and move), and it was a little bit too crowded and loud. I was having many contractions during the show (not an alarming amount, but more than normal), which freaked me out a little bit, but they stopped once the show ended. She was really funny, although I wish I wasn't pregnant and tired so that I could enjoy it and laugh more!

We went out to dinner tonight at the Woodinville Cafe (one of our favorite places). As we were waiting for our food, I was playing with my ring. Michael and I do this all the time. This time though, the ring decides to slip between the seats and down to the floor. There was this slit of space between the booth chair and the wall and we could barely see down it. The waitresses were really nice and helped us any way they could. Our food was ready so we stopped for awhile. After dinner, Michael went back at it. The yardstick didn't work, then we tried a wire hanger. He managed to bring up a lot of dust bunnies, a dirty comb, a very dirty headband, misc pieces of paper and a ketchup bottle cap. Michael had to configure the hanger into many different shapes before he found one that worked. Finally, after about 30 minutes, he hooked the ring and brought it up. What a relief!

I salute all those voters (Republicans, Democrats, and everyone else) that are standing in line for hours waiting to cast their ballot! Since I vote absentee, I am lucky that I don't have to go through this every 2 years or so. With all the problems their having, I hope this election doesn't turn into a debacle. Only time will tell!

This morning I woke up in a panic because I scheduled to take pictures of the Georges' at 11am and I got up at 11am! I quickly got everything together (it's amazing how fast I can move when I need to) and headed toward cottage lake. Luckily, it's only a few minutes away. It was a cold morning but it warmed up after about 45 minutes. It was a little harder this year since I had my big pregnant belly to get in the way. After that, I came home and took several cat naps until 5pm and woke up with an intense feeling that I *had* to plant my bulbs. So that's what I did. It was REALLY hard since I had to remove the weeds first. You'd be amazed how fast weeds come up around our house. The hardest part was digging the hole, since our ground is so compacted, but luckily I was planting crocuses (sp?) and they are planted only 3" down. I dared not plant the tulips, since they go down 6". I'll get Michael to dig the hole for me. Anyways, it was dark when I finally was done, so our driveway has a 2' x 2' piece of "clean" ground. I can't wait for my dad to get here to help clear away all the weeds...

I think it has to do with this weather. It's always dark and kind of rainy, makes you want to stay in bed. We actually got out of bed and went to work for a few hours. I hate going in on the weekend since they turn off the air conditioning on the weekends (or at least in the offices). I got some stuff done though. We were going to see Friday Night Lights, but decided to stay in instead and get fired up watching 60 Minutes. This one woman was saying that these "powerful" women who decided to be a stay at home mom made the wrong decision. Also, we will soon lose all of the headway that we made (companies won't want to hire women, colleges won't want to educate women, ridiculous!). This one professor(?) and CEO changed their company policies to accomodate working moms, and has been successful at it. His stance is that companies need to start making changes to retain these women. I completely agree!