Tobin and I are in the midst of a mini-vacation… We’re up here at Crystal – skiing. Yep yesterday we took our first shot at snow skiing. It’s pretty fun! :) Actually, it was so much fun that tomorrow we’re going to have another go at it. We didn’t ski today as we drove home and went to church (and then drove right back here).

Anyways, I’ve posted some pics of the last few days in the photo gallery, so be sure to check them out!

We have power again! Yes – it’s true – the power came on last night at around 10. We’re so thankful. That brought the total to 5 days without power… Really tough. Unfortunately there are others still out there without power. I hope they get power back soon – and this new storm that’s supposed to roll in tonight isn’t as bad as it could be.

I’ve included a pic of what’s left of the tree that took out our power. I took the pic this morning on the way to work.

Well we’re still without power, and I’m still at work (after all there is an Internet connection here!). So I’m trying to get my website all updated since I won’t get a chance to do so from home.

Back to our power situation… So that tree that’s laying across our intersection is still there. From what Tobin says, they didn’t even do anything today (dumb, dumb, dumb!). I called Puget Sound Energy’s hotline and found that even though power was restored to the substations in Tukwila, it will still likely be several days until power is restored. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

Tukwila, Sea Tac, and Des Moines areas
Most customers here should have their power restored by Wednesday, but for some of North Des Moines and Normandy park, it may take until Thursday or Friday. We have restored power to all the substations in these communities, and are now focused solely on repairing the local distribution lines that serve customers. (PSE)

So Tobin brought me to work this morning, and then went out and bought a warm breakfast and coffee. Yum. Warm is good (and a little hard for us to achieve at present without hauling out the BBQ). He came back at lunch and we had warm soup. :) After lunch we drove down to the marina here in Des Moines and I took some shots. We saw some cool birds, and even a seal. The water was perfectly calm.

So check out the pics I took down at the Marina, and wish us luck on our power situation. Thanks!

Well we’re now back on the west side – and still without power. Here are some photos from our trip back to this side of the mountains.

I’ve also posted pics of my sister’s basketball game in Bellevue that we rushed to watch as soon as we got home from Ephrata.

Just an update, the picture I took (below) is now featured in the Weather Pix section of King5 news’ website.

Road Closed

The last few days have been pretty crazy weather-wise. First, I must remind you (lest you forgot) that November was a crazy, CRAZY rainy month. We broke a record – it was the rainiest month in history for Seattle (and that’s pretty bad). It also snowed that month and I ended up missing work for a day because there was no way I could get out of my house due to the fact we live on a hill and the roads were purely ice.

As if that wasn’t enough, on Thursday night, Washington and Oregon were hit with some pretty intense winds. I was talking to my parents on the phone when the power went out – that was at around 10pm. I hear that SeaTac set yet another record – this time for wind. It was clocked at 68 mph. We’re really close to the airport, and I’m pretty sure that those gusts came around 1am. The wind in the trees woke Tobin and I up early Friday morning. We heard branches crashing all around us (and nothing bigger we hoped). Every time I heard a crack, I jumped out of bed thinking something was going to come through our roof. We finally got to sleep but woke up the next morning only to realize that there was still no power. Tobin got a call that school was canceled, and I called work and figured out that the power was out there too. So no work for either of us on Friday. We tried to get back to sleep but were awoken by the sound of an axe outside our window. We ran out to help our neighbor – and figured out that one of our trees had topped itself and landed square in their driveway. It took their power lines down with it. This was a pretty major tree! We called Dusty and had him bring his chainsaw over (thanks so much Dusty!).

While we were waiting for Dusty to come with the chainsaw we looked around and discovered that a tree had also landed on our garage (though there was no damage that we could tell since the tree landed on another tree before hitting our garage). Then the real shocker. Our neighbor across the street and up a few houses had a giant cedar land squarely on their house. Luckily no one was hurt as they all slept in the basement to be safe.

We glanced further up the road and realized that where there should be road was only a tree. Yep, another cedar fell diagonally across the intersection and took a bunch of power lines with it. Luckily it fell in such a way that our dead end wasn’t blocked!

We spent much of the morning chainsawing the tree in our neighbor’s driveway (hey at least we have more firewood now). Then we cut the tree down off the roof of our garage. Around this time, Stephen (my brother) called and informed me that he and Heather were driving to Ephrata (they had to switch vehicles with my parents). We decided then and there that we’d go with them (hey this was a great opportunity to see my parents in a warm house and with internet to boot!). :) Little did we know…

We were all really hungry so we decided to get something to eat in Tukwila. Well this wasn’t going to happen as EVERYONE and their brother was packing out every fast food chain with power – for miles. We opted to eat instead at North Bend. Got to North Bend and guess what? No power! Luckily Safeway had a generator going, so we were able to get some (junk) food. By now it was snowing, and so we hopped back on the road in an attempt to make it over the pass before it got much worse. Well it got much worse. We ended up getting STOPPED on the pass for several hours. The roads were just terrible. While we were sitting on the pass, we turned on the CB radio and listened to the trucker banter. :) The truckers were grumbling about the traffic signs switching from Traction Tires Advised, to Traction Tires Required, to Chains Required. One trucker joked that there was probably a DOT guy drunk on doughnuts sitting on the summit flipping the switch on the sign. :)

We finally made it over the pass aching for a warm cup of coffee from Cle Elum. Guess what? No power again! Thankfully the Safeway here had a generator running, and we were able to buy some washer fluid that we’d run out of on the pass.

The roads got a little bit better just outside of Cle Elum and then BANG we were in a massive snow storm – gigantic flakes coming right towards us. NOT fun! We were at a crawl all the way into Ellensburg. We really didn’t know where we were, the snow was so disorienting. We went super slow and tried to follow semis (or at least another vehicle). We thought we were nearly to the summit of Rye Grass when we realized that we were only at Kittitas. Yeah it was pretty bad. We would’ve stopped at Ellensburg, but the truckers on the CB said that about halfway down Rye Grass the roads were bare and dry. Sure enough we FINALLY made it there and the roads cleared up and we hightailed it to Ephrata. All in all the trip took us about 6 hours. It should’ve taken 2.5 hours!

So the power’s still out from what we hear, and we’re enjoying hanging with the family in a WARM home (and with internet!). We’re not looking forward to the drive home, but even with the terrible trip over here it was still better than sitting at home in the cold with nothing to eat! :) I haven’t been to Ephrata in what seems like ages – it’s nice to be home!

Well I’m going to go play a game with the family. Who knows when I’ll post again – it’s all going to hinge on when we get power back on. I hear that for Des Moines that may take 3-5 days due to several transformers being out. That’s where Biblesoft is located, so we’ll just see how that’s going to work out!

Happy (almost) winter! :) Check the new photos I’ve posted!

Check out the photos I posted of the crazy weather we’ve been having!!!

I took this pic the other night when Tobin was out and about. (OK, I was a little bored.) :) Anyways, I wanted to get an updated pic for the website (as you can tell I haven’t changed the one in my header – yet). I processed this image a bit different from most. I actually went into the channels and removed two of them. That gave the image a better feel than if I had just desaturated it and bumped up the contrast.

I’m so glad I’m done with classes for the quarter! :)

I finished my last final last night!!! I’m so happy to be done with school for a few weeks! This was a rough quarter… So glad it’s over. (Don’t know my grades though – yet.)

So I’m sitting here working – in a generally good mood. School is done, the sun is shining, and I’ve got some good music playing in iTunes… I’m listening to By the Tree. Man they’re good. Maybe I’ll buy their songbook. Anyways, this song came on – Wonderful Again. This is a great song for my current mood. I absolutely love the catchy beat of this song. It’s a happy song. :) I wanted to give you the option to play this song, but there was no music video that I could find, so here are the lyrics.

I feel lonely these days so blue
I want to fade away,
Want the world to fade away too
Is it always this lonely without you?
Why did my younger days have to end?
Is it gonna be wonderful again?

I feel like it’s raining in my heart
Feel like I’m searchin’ for something
But I don’t know where to start
And the dark cloud is turning
my blue skies gray
There’s stones in my eyes that I need
you to roll away

Always in the back of my mind
The things I already knew
The whole world is lookin’ for a sign
There missin’ the ones in plain view
Tried to be a sinner but time after time
I come running back to you
And in the end you make it
wonderful again

I’ve been walkin’ through the valley alone
Fallin’ like a rolling stone
That’s when I look around and I
finally found
I’m not the only one who’s alone
in this town
We’re always in the valley
We’re not alone, not alone, not alone

Always in the back of our minds
The things we already knew
The whole world is looking for a sign
We’re missing the ones in plain view
We try to be sinners but time after time
We come running back to the
taste of your love
When we drink of your wine
Touches of blue and changes everything

I have a hard time being on this side of the mountains (for those of you not from WA, the Eastern side of the state is much different from the Western side). I realize that I really like the sun, and here in Seattle we don’t have as much of it as I would like. I don’t really realize it until its sunny (like today) and that puts me in a pretty good mood. :) So I can relate to the line about the dark skies – literally. But to be perfectly honest, I really like the instrumentation and beat of this song (more than the lyrics)!

Have a great day!!!

I was working on my school homework the other day, sitting at the table with my laptop, when suddenly the backyard got all sunny (it’s always dark). I looked up and there were sun rays shining right into my backyard through the trees. Of course I had to take a pic (OK, maybe a few), so here it is… Pretty cool huh?

How is school going, you ask? Well I was almost all set to take my first of two finals on Tuesday, then found out hours before the test that the teacher had moved it to next week… This was a good thing with all the speeches that were given (class went 45 minutes over), but bad in the fact that now I have to go to school for a few more days this quarter (unless of course I decide to proctor the test).

So I’m no closer to having my finals done now, than I was when I wrote my first post about this week, but I am (thankfully) done with all my papers for CS560 and CS562. One paper was 22 pages, the other 31. CRAZY! (They were double-spaced APA, but that’s still WAY too long!) The good thing is that the topics of both papers were actually interesting to study. I’ll write another post about that soon.