The Life Archives

August 9, 2008

Toddler mischief

Today we rearranged oour living room a bit and I was surprised to hear my subwoofer make a strange rattling sound, when I moved it. The first thing I found inside was the plastic chicken. Turning the subwoofer upside down didn't work very well and I couldn't even get my hand in there.

Finally I realized that toddlers are not only good at making a mess - Tim's tiny hands were able to reach inside and get all the plastic toys back:

Posted by marco at 8:46 PM

May 11, 2007

Island in flames

9 days ago our cruise stopped at the little island of Catalina and we drove around the island in a golf cart:
catalina.jpg
You can tell it was pretty dry.

Yesterday a fire broke out and 4000 acres of the island are in flames:
News Report.

The previous entry shows Timmy on the beach on Catalina...

Posted by marco at 12:10 PM

May 8, 2007

Sea-Water Experience

timmy_sea.jpg This is Tim, 16 months, shortly after his first contact with the sea. I thought the water was ok that day in Catalina, but as you can tell from the picture, he is not a fan of cold, salty water.
A few days later, we tried the heated hotel pool, which he liked ok, but he only really enjoyed the water in the adjacent hot whirl pool.
Bonus material: Video of Tim dancing!

Posted by marco at 3:43 PM

March 19, 2007

Protest!

Iraq war enters its fifth year - the protests in Seattle go right past my office:

Maybe I didn't see all of them, but that group weren't the expected thousands....

Posted by marco at 5:04 PM

February 17, 2007

Tim goes shopping

Tim made is first purchase today. He grabbed the remote control for our DVR and managed to purchase an on demand movie for 3.99$. I'll make sure to deduct that from his allowance, once he as one, because the movie sucked!

The Black Dahlia is nominated for an Oscar (Best Achievement in Cinematography):

An adaptation of James Ellroy's novel about two 1940s L.A. cops who head up the hunt for the killer of starlet Elizabeth Short.

Update: At least Black Dahlia didn't win an Oscar, instead Pan's Labyrinth won that category (and others) - a movie I really enjoyed ;)

Posted by marco at 4:46 PM

February 15, 2007

Post V-Day

Flowers and Greeting-Card vendors hang their heads, on the day after:
postvday.jpg

Posted by marco at 11:39 AM

January 11, 2007

Snow again

After our visit to Germany with pretty warm temperatures we now plunged into sub-freezing temperatures again and a lot of snow and ice on the roads.
This is the view from our living room, including our car:
snowy_road.jpg

Posted by marco at 11:04 AM

December 15, 2006

Power-Less

Seattle had one of the worst wind storms ever last night. Our power went out a little after midnight. Luckily we have a gas fireplace that works and we can even use the gas stove, but not the gas oven. The oven would have been really helpful to cook all that stuff that's now starting to thaw in our freezer.

We have no idea, when power will be back - the Seattle City Lights Homepage is not really specific about that. You can read about the storm at the local News Station Komo-TV Seattle.

Update: Power was restored Friday night and Cable cam back Saturday night. But many people around Seattle will still be without power for days :(

Posted by marco at 11:16 AM

November 27, 2006

Snow in Seattle

Wow, we have real snow going in Seattle. Our third winter here and it's the first time the snow actually stays. Of course, since it rarely snows here, driving is even worse then usual. The one very steep hill near our house was closed as a precaution.

snow_seattle.png

Posted by marco at 7:25 PM

November 16, 2006

Sneezing Season

Posted by marco at 3:01 PM

June 16, 2006

Street Sweep in action

After all the fuss about the signs, on 6/13 the first Street Sweep happened.

Before:

The Sweep Crew:

After:

The good citizens of West Seattle all removed their cars to make way for the big machine. And the gutters are free now, free at last!.

Posted by marco at 11:36 AM

Seattle replies: Street Sweep

In a previous entry I complained about my taxes being wasted. I politely asked what was up with this and got response from the Street Sweep Team. See the extended entry for the full emails (posted with permission).

At least they didn't put up the full heigt signs at all locations and stopped the roll out as soon as they found out. Interesting that the main reason for cutting down the signs was aesthetics. I'm not sure I'll ever consider any traffic sign a thing of art or beauty.

Hi,

while I recognize that the Street Sweep Project is a good thing, I'm
really unhappy about what you did with the signs.
Not only was one put up directly in front of our bedroom at 8am very
noisily, a few weeks later every one of them (I'm sure there is at
least 40 of them in our 5 block zone in West Seattle), was revistited
and cut down.

How much money did that cost to send a work crew to cut those signs
down to a lower height?

Was that really necessary?
Especially since you say no tickets will be handed out, which doesn't
really encourage people to move their cars at 8am anyway.

And then there was a third round of changes to the signs, putting the
stickers with the dates on.

How much taxpayer money would have been saved, if all of this had
happened in one go?
I'd really like to know the figure. Especially if tha same thing did
not only happen in West Seattle, but in the other two areas, too!

-- 
Thanks,
Marco




Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 11:24:36 -0700
From: "SPUStreetSweep SPUStreetSweep" 
To: 
Subject: Re: Sign height

Dear Marco, 

Thank you for supporting the pilot project's mission of improving the
health of Seattle's waterways. The project would not be successful
without the support of you and your neighbors. 

The Street Sweep team understands your concern and we, too, were
disappointed that installation of proper height signs with decals did
not occur in one session. However, a miscommunication between the Street
Sweep Team and the sign shop resulted in a multi-day job to correct the
situation. When the original signs were installed, many of your
neighbors agreed with the city's preference to install shorter, less
intrusive signs with distances that fulfill both communication and
aesthetic goals for the neighbors. When we realized that the 10 foot
tall signs at double the capacity were installed, we asked that the
quantities be decreased and the proper 4 foot sign poles replace the
towering signs. Again, trying to remain sensitive to the neighborhood
aesthetics. 

For your own peace of mind, you should know that as soon as we realized
these mistakes, the crews were asked to halt installation until the
proper sign height poles were available. There were only a few streets
in Columbia City that were also effected, and the third neighborhood of
Duwamish has not yet started. We hope that you understand that mistakes
happen, and in this case, the resources were managed as well as they
could be in the midst of trying to prepare for our first sweep on June
20 and keeping neighbors happy with signage requirements.

Please let me know if you have additional concerns. 

Best Regards, 
Seattle Street Sweep Team

Posted by marco at 11:25 AM

June 1, 2006

Thanks for wasting our taxes, Seattle

Update: Seattle replies to my complains

Clean sweep sign 5 Blocks around our house have been selected for a pilot project from Seattle Public Utilities: Street Sweep. For one year they will sweep the streets, each side every other week. And to make people move their cars temporary parking signs have been installed.

All of that is fine by me, but what I really hate is that they installed one of these many parking signs right in front of our bedroom window at 8am.
Actually that's not the worst: The worst was that they first installed those roughly 100 no-parking signs at regular height, like the give way sign in the background of the picture and then 3 weeks later they revisited every single pole to cut it short to the lower height of other no parking signs.

WTF? Nobody cares if the signs are at standing height or at sitting in a car height. People will just leaver their cars out anyway, since the FAQ states that no tickets will be issued.


Way to burn some taxes, Seattle! Just like the Monorail for which you collect taxes, but I'll never see it built!

Update: Seattle replies to my complains


And by the way, your website looks ugly in my Firefox on Mac.

Posted by marco at 8:14 PM

May 10, 2006

Maraschino Cherry

cherry.png Do you like those red cocktail cherries? I always hated them and now I know why:
They are so nice and red, because they are colored with Carmine, which is the juice of crushed femal bugs. I knew they used that stuff in Lipsticks, but it's also used in a lot of other foods. See the Seattle Times article for all the appalling details.

Posted by marco at 9:52 AM

April 16, 2006

Frohe Ostern / Happy Easter

Ein Ostergruss von unserem Tim zumindest an alle deutschsprachigen Leser ;)

Everybody else: Happy Easter! (so how exactly was the resurrection linked to egg-laying bunnies?)

Posted by marco at 10:55 AM

January 2, 2006

Tim says Hello World :)


Tim was born on 12/30 at 18.18 - he weights 7lb 11oz and is 20.5in. Mom and Baby are well. More details soon ;)

Tims Tagebuch ist auch online! ;)

Posted by marco at 3:23 AM

December 28, 2005

Julia's Intl District Food Map

Posted by marco at 1:44 PM

December 27, 2005

Political Correct Holiday greeting

Being political correct - PC - is everything in the modern United States of Amerika. So here it comes the totally PC Holiday Greeting:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual orientation of the wisher.

Disclaimer:
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms.
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher who assumes no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.

Btw, those people that think they have to say Happy Holiday instead of anything with Christmas are pretty stupid in not realizing that holiday comes from Holy day, which isn't anything less christian ;)

Posted by marco at 11:34 AM

December 8, 2005

Walking the Bunny

walkthebunny.jpg For Nikolaus Day I got a lovely gift from Christine: A bunny Harness.
So now I can take Opie for a walk ;)
I am pretty sure though that
a) this will not give me more exercise.
b) I like this thing much more then Opie does.

Posted by marco at 4:14 PM

December 6, 2005

Adventskalender

This is door 1 of my Adventskalender - looks a little strange.
adventskalender
Normally, the chocolate in those calendars is aweful. But this one isn't!
This was:

My truffle-expert wife made me the tastiest Adventskalender ever!

Posted by marco at 12:25 PM

December 5, 2005

2nd Advent

Xmas Cookies
There is no denying, Christmas is coming. Today I baked Vanillekipferl und Heidesand. Tini had already made the other two kinds (Linzer and Oatmeal). I also tried making some hot Cider with Vanilla, Cinnamon, Cloves and Lemon. We even had a brief apperance of snow!

Posted by marco at 12:45 AM