General

Just testing out blogging from my iPhone while in Boise , I-da-ho.

This morning at 11:42am I got to experience a 5.4 magnitude earthquake while at work.

The whole event was pretty uneventful. Once we felt the building shake we stood in the doorways. They then evacuated us in a nice orderly manner (not hard to do since Californians are use to this sort of thing). Then told us we could go back into the building in about an hour once they had cleared the building. Nice, easy and quick.

Here’s some information on the quake itself - 5.4 So. Cal. Earthquake.

We’ve returned from our whirlwind tour of Nepal. Although it would have been nice to stay longer it is nice to be back in the States.

The trip was part vacation, part adventure. One of the performance groups that my wife dances with was invited to dance at various cities all over the country by the Everest Nepal Cultural Group.

Some of the places we ended up going included:

• Kathmandu
• Patan
• Narayangarh
• Palpa
• Pokhara

We will be working on getting pictures posted as we go through them, but it might take some time.

For now, here’s a picture of Mount Everest we took from the flight into Kathmandu.

IMG_0093, originally uploaded by gourmetdancer.

A few weekends ago Dancer and I had brunch down in Laguna Beach with some of my family - the view was gorgeous. We ate at a really cool restaurant called, “Las Brisas.”

Last weekend for my 29th Birthday, Dancer took me to go see the ballet, Romeo et Juliette in Seattle.  We scored some really nice box seats on the right side of that stage. Since it was a night on the town we decided to dress to the nines. For me, that meant a tuxedo - which I own. Dancer was in a very elegant dress.

We both enjoyed the show very much. I’m always worried that I’ll get bored, but they did an awesome job of keeping the story moving along. Since it was a ballet the set is pretty open, but they were able to make it work well.

After the show we were both pretty hungry but neither of us wanted to do anything fancy. We decided to head to one of our favorite pizza joints, Piecora’s. Dressed in full formalwear, we finished out our evening with some pizza and some tasty beer.

Things have been kinda crazy lately and I haven’t been able to post as much as I’d like.

Here’s a Sneak Peak into some of what’s going on.

** UPDATE **

In an effort to make my life a little less crazy, I decided an apartment was a better idea than living in a hotel. A nice bonus is that I don’t have to pack my bag every week.

The new place is really nice and right on the beach in a city called, Redondo Beach.

View Larger Map

The place is pretty bare right now and I’m still working on getting cable (as well as internet) so I can bring my Xbox down. I also had my car shipped down so it would be more like home. Since the Audi was our only car we bought a Prius to fix that problem.

Now that I’ve been at my new job for about 4 months I’ve started to think about the Weekly Commute. On average I probably commute about 2100 miles a week to work. This is almost 4 times what my previous commute was from Bellingham to Bellevue. Luckily I don’t actually end up driving very much of it.

The biggest difference I’ve noticed about my new commute is the amount of time I spend doing it. Door-to-door takes me about 12 hours a week currently. This includes waiting time at the airport and 2 flights. Once I start my next project I’ll have a direct flight which will cut down on travel time. My old commute (not including the short lived Seattle to Bellevue one) probably took about 15 hours a week on average (2.5 hours each way, 3 days a week - door-to-door).

It now seems that I am actually spending less time commuting now than I was in the past. Granted there are other major differences related to the working in another state like residency, taxes, being away from home, etc but that’s a different thing altogether.

How does your commute fair?

Its official, we are moving out of the Shangri-La. It was fun while it lasted…well for the most part. Overall it was a nice apartment and the view we great too. However, it all went down hill once we got flooded out. It took us a few weeks to move to another apartment in the building and get settled in. Once we started to relax the power went out due to damage in the main building electrical room. We were without power, heat, hot water for about a week. Granted this wouldn’t have been that bad if everyone’s power was out, but it was only a smattering of units in the complex.

We then decided we needed a more permanent residence so we purchased our first home. Although it means we have to do the whole move thing again it also means that we won’t have to do again for a while.

The overall process of buying the place wasn’t too bad. The hardest part was figuring out how sign everything when I work about 1000 miles from where I live. Our realtor and mortgage people were awesome. We couldn’t have done it without them. Once we get all settled we will definitely have to throw a party!

Happy New Year!

We started the New Year off with a bang - well, more of a pop as the main breaker in the electrical room blew - but it was exciting none-the-less. As PhilNick noted, “not as crisp and clean as I would have liked,” 2006 had its moments. Most of them good, others not so good.

Here are some of the Chart Toppers of ‘06:

Dancer and I got married in Santa Rosa, CA.

We visited the BVI (British Virgin Islands).

We made the big move to the city of Seattle, WA.

We decided to get some kittens (aka - aliens).

I (Gourmet) started a new job the has me flying all over California.

We partied in Beverly Hills like it was 1999.

We tried to install a pool in our living room (aka - our apartment flooded).

We made the second big move - up 2 floors (the pool thing didn’t work out so well).

All and all things were good. Hopefully ‘07 will be a bit smoother though. We are hoping to do some traveling outside of my weekly commutes to Cali as well as work on our hobbies (cooking and dancing) a bit more.

Alternate Title: A bit of Madness and Adventure

Update:

We have posted the pictures of our adventure out on our photo site.

Last weekend Dancer and I attended the annual company holiday party. Even though I’ve only been working there for a few weeks, I was still invited. Now normally that would be a given, but this year’s party was in Beverly Hills at the Beverly Hills Hotel. All we had to get ourselves down there, which was easy. The rest was taken care of.

The whole trip only lasted a day (flew in Saturday, flew out Sunday), but it was a blast none-the-less. We got to check out all sorts of shops on Rodeo Drive, listen to who saw which celebrities at the hotel and met all sorts of really cool people.

Alternate Title: Is the Madness Over or Just Beginning?

The winds of change have taken me on a new adventure. I have given up the commute in a car for a commute on a plane. I have also given up the normal 8 to 5 job for the consulting gig.

Although this change doesn’t address the overall commuting dilemma as described on PhilNick, it will be an interesting change none-the-less.

So far, my adventures have taken me to these exotic places:

• Bakersfield, CA
• Monterey, CA

I’ve started keeping a little picture diary of my adventure in different airports.

When I stumbled across this I couldn’t help to wonder, “is this the predecessor to the ziptop bag wallet?”

DIY cassette tape wallet

Today, November 07, 2006, 10 hours ago

The crafty DIY hipsters at Craftster have posted a simple tutorial for repurposing an old cassette tape into a cool hipster wallet.

All you need is a tape you don’t mind destroying, a rubber band, and a few other tools we’ve all got laying around the house. The step-by-step is written out in the Craftster forum by one of its users, and although it’s not the best tutorial I’ve ever seen, it looks like a simple process and the results are pretty great. — Adam Pash

cassette tape wallet! yay!!! [Craftster.org]

Source: Lifehacker

I’ve been meaning to check out Windows Live Writer for a little while now. Mostly I’ve been looking for a tool that Dancer can use to work on this site as well as her Nari site without having to do any coding.

From the looks of it, it might be suitable, but only time will tell.

—————————————-

Flickr4Writer Plugin Test

—————————————-

In response to PhilNick’s Response to Gato’s Challenge, here are our Top 10 albums.

Gourmet	Dancer
Sleeping with Ghosts – Placebo	Prolonging the Magic – Cake
Undertow – Tool	Post – Bjork
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn – Bright Eyes	Takasim Oud – Amer Ammouri
Demon Days – Gorillaz	The Mirror Conspiracy – Thievery Conspiracy
Lo Mejor De La Vida – Compay Segundo	Boys for Pele – Tori Amos

We’ve recently added two new members to our family, Bishamon and Bouseh. We have posted some pics of them if you want to check them out. Oh, and did we mention they are hairless Sphynx cats!

Update:

As requested on Philnick, I have posted a video of our cats here!

It’s been a long time, but soon we should have some more fun stuff to post. Here’s a quick peek into what’s on its way:

• Moving to Seattle - Okay, we made it to the big city. What do we do now?
• Partying in Seattle - Oh yeah. We party!
• Sunset Cruise in Bellingham Bay - Then we party some more!

Now that we are mostly unpacked we can get back to normal things like watching TV and swimming in the pool.

We just got back from our Caribbean Run!

Here’s a quick rundown of where we went in the BVI (British Virgin Islands):

• Tortola - Apple Bay
• Tortola - Soper’s Hole
• Norman Island - Bight Bay
• Peter Island - Great Harbour
• Virgin Gorda - Spanish Town
• Virgin Gorda - The Baths
• Cooper Island - Manchineel Bay
• Jost Van Dyke - White Bay
• Tortola - Fort Recovery
• Tortola - Road Town
• Tortola - Cane Garden Bay

Here are the main pictures. The snorkeling pictures are linked based on the location above.

The trip was killer. The whole thing was split up into 2 sections: the boat charter and the beach villa. We spent the first night at a little hotel called, Sebastian’s On the Beach before we headed out to sea. The next 8 days were spent on the Sea Nymph. Our crew, all 2 of them, were the best. They fed us awesome food and took us to the coolest places around. Once we got back to Tortola, we spent the next 6 days at Fort Recovery relaxing on the beach, visiting some of the local businesses (like the Callwood Distillery) and hanging out with some of the locals.

You’ve got to love it when your friends go out and create some mischief with your name written all over it, literally.

On the commute home today, one of my coworkers pointed out an all but famous boulder along the side of the freeway. The rock bore a simple, straight-to-the-point message. It said, “GILBOY getin’ hitch’d.” You can find a lovely documentary of the event here.

I want to congratulate the talented artists for completing their project without getting arrested.

We have started to look at extending what we have on our site. WordPress has been really good to us but we have run into hurdles with some things. Fortunately, we have been able to get past most everything.

Recently, we started looking at Mambo as an alternative. It seems to allow a wider range of functionality that we are looking to utilize.

I’m hoping that if I can find an easier way to do things, my other half will start to post more. Since the site is almost entirely Gourmet and I think I need to get Dancer to get some of her photography stuff up.

We probably won’t put much work into things until after the ‘Big Day’ and such, but we’ll see.

Since the holidays should be all about great food and great company we decided to host a Holiday Dinner at our house.

We have been working on a menu. Here’s what it is so far:

Starter
Roasted Chestnut Soup (Megan)

Main
Forever Roasted Lamb (Shaun)
White King Salmon (Marc)

Sides
Roasted Vegetables - Sweet Potatoes & Cauliflower (Shaun)

Dessert
Plum Pie (Megan)
Peppermint Semifreddo (Shaun)

What do you all want to bring?

GourmetDancer is all about our passions: cooking and dancing, as well as any other things that pop into our minds. Our little logo is a compilation of these passions broken into three pieces.

The first is a Scimitar, a deeply curved sword found in Middle Eastern history.

The second is an Asian style chef’s knife. My current favorite for this type of knife is the one made by Wusthof.

The third is the symbol for Om (or Aum), the sound the universe makes.

Hope you enjoy it!

So we are workin’ on our blog…it should be up soon.