After I woke up and returned from Slumberland, I headed out to the Barnes & Noble at Crossroads to get the September Sky and Telescope which has an article in which I was mentioned (but that’s for another blog).  After leaving the Crossroads area I deiced to head on over to I-90 and go for a little joy ride to get my mind off all the stuff that’s gone on lately such as my Mom’s heart attacks, my accident, and even work.

I originally just wanted to drive up to North Bend, then I decided to go to the pass, and from there I said the “Hell with it” and took my truck completely over the hump and over to Eastern Washington.  I thought about going to some diner in Cle Elum, but then I remembered that I hadn’t been to Ellensburg in almost 40 years, so off I went.

You know, if you are not used to it, it is sort of a shock to go from one side of the Cascades to the other especially when you are used to all the trees we have on the Western side.  I am not saying that Eastern Washington doesn’t have some great scenery, but I did notice how sparse the trees were – at least from my point of view.  It was a nice drive though and traffic was really civil when compared to I-5 and I-405.

As I headed towards Ellensburg I noticed some tall structures off on a hill to the Northeast of me, and I soon realized that they were wind turbines. While almost barren of trees the hills were still quite stunning and I had to keep reminding myself to keep my eyes on the road.

Once I pulled in to Ellensburg I hit the main drag and headed in to the down town area.  It is interesting to not that I did not see any building over two stories tall, and relatively old which I found kind of neat.  I wish I had brought my camera so I could have taken some pictures and posted them here.  Maybe next time.

It was getting close to 6:00 PM and I hadn’t eaten since 11:00 AM, so I started looking for some place to get some grub.  I didn’t want to go to any of the usual fast food chain places, but instead I wanted something local and unique to Ellensburg.  As I was cruising around and trying to find something to calm the tiger in my tummy I came upon Happy’s Market and decided to go inside and buy a pop, and ask for a recommendation.  I got my pop and asked the clerk if he knew of any good local places to eat, and without hesitation he suggested the Red Horse Diner which was just a mile down the street, so off I went in search of eats, and man did I find them!

It turns out that the Read Horse Diner is an old gas station that was converted in to a fantastic little diner.  My memory is a little fuzzy, but I believe that the red horse logo for the diner is actually the old Phillips Petroleum logo.  Any ways that logo along with all the other great memorabilia that covered the walls just fit the place and made the experience even more nostalgic and enjoyable for me.  I like going out and finding funky places, and the Read Horse Diner fit the bill, and so did the fantastic burger I got there.

My default burger of choice for most places is a bacon cheese burger, and I was going to order the 409 burger which is the diner’s name for their bacon cheese burger but then I came across the the Red Horse burger.  It was basically a bacon cheese burger, but with grilled ham added.  I had never had a burger with ham, so I figured I would try it.

Maybe I was extra hungry, but damn!, it was good burger and it was gone in just a few bites.  The ham added a little extra saltiness to the burger which for me was perfect.  The burger was done just right, had the right amount of mayo, and pickles.  It was just perfect!

Now the fries were OK in that they were your usual frozen steak fries with seasoning salt ala Red Robin.  While it would have been nice if they were fresh cut fries, they were still good as well as quite plentiful. Having said that I think that the next time I swing by the Red Horse Diner I am going to try their onion rings, because they look really good (at least they do on the web site).  I will also say that the staff at the diner was exceptionally nice, and even gave me a free refill of Diet Coke for the road.

After topping off topping off my tummy, I headed off to top off my gas tank before I hit I-90 and headed back home.  I had a relaxing trip back, and got home right at 8:00 PM.  I think I made pretty good time in that I took just 4.5 hours to cover 100 miles each way, enjoyed a great burger, and for the most part I did it all at the posted speed limit. That is except for the eating burger for which I think I set a new world record.

All in all, it was a great trip and I had a great time.  I highly recommend you visit the Red Horse Diner, and next time I head over that way I am bringing my camera so I can post some snaps of the trip. Cheers – Nemo 

I am a sore from the accident, though my little Ford Ranger seems to have gotten through with a minor scrape or two on the rear fender.  The other driver’s Accura had a mashed up hood from rear-ending me.  What pisses me is that the three guys in the other car were laughing after the accident, that is until the State Trooper showed up.  I don’t know what was scarier, the accident or the cab ride home.  I didn’t have anyone to take me home, so I had to take a cab, and it was like an E Ticket ride at Disneyland.

When I got home there were a couple of calls from family stating that my mom was back in the hospital.  She has had three minor heart attacks in the last two weeks, and it doesn’t look good.  I have to arrange some sort of care for her which is hard since she lives far away from me.

Not to sound selfish, but I am worried about how this all will impact my new job, since I am on a 90 day probation as a new employee.  What’s scary is that I have to deal with all this on my own. That kind of hit me when I was laying in the ER and wondering how I got home, and then it really hit me after I got home at 10:00 PM and talked to my relatives.  I am hoping things will turn around, but I won’t be blogging for a few days until the dust settles.

Having said that I did take advantage of the 4th of July holiday to decompress a little by taking a drive.  Because I work in the South-end of Seattle I have been wanting to explore and rediscover the area.  I say rediscover since I used to deliver medical supplies in that area about 30 years ago.  One of my favorite roads to drive back then was Military Road, so on Friday I decided to take a trip down Memory Lane via Military Road.  I thought I had seen virtually all of Military Road, but apparently not.  I started out at 200th St. and headed as far South as I could go.  It was a blast staying off the Freeway and just winding all over the place.  I finally ended up at a “T” intersection which is the junction of Military Road and Enchanted Parkway / Meridian.  Turning right would put me on Enchanted Parkway, and turning left would put me on Meridian.  I really didn’t want to end up at Enchanted Park (a local theme park for those of you not in the area), so I decided to turn left and head down Meridian because I knew I would eventually end up in the South Hill area of Puyallup which I have never really explored before.

After driving through Edgewood, Milton and Fife, I finally ended up in Puyallup and headed on up to the South Hill area. I would be an understatement to describe the South Hill area as one giant strip mall, but that’s exactly what it is; one strip mall after another.  I really didn’t want to spend too much time checking out all the interesting places, but I did see a few places that I want to check out at a later date, and there is also a Sonic Drive-In there, so that’s another reason to return.

I continued driving South enjoying the view of the countryside, and eventually ended up in Eatonville, Land of Ramtha!  Yeah, I know, but aside from that Eatonville is a nice little town.  I drove around town for a bit, and then headed back North.  I ended back up at 200th St. and continued to head North on Military Road until it merged with Des Moines Way.  All-in-all it was nice drive and a great way to decompress.

That was the cruzin part, now comes the bruzin and onion part.  I decided to do a little more cleaning around the place and guess I over worked my back a bit because it’s hurting (and falling the previous weekend didn’t help anything either).  I am happy with the results of the cleaning though and I am started working on a few projects I have had on the back burner for a while.  One of these projects unfortunately turned into an onion, and by that I mean the more I peeled away at it, the more tears I shed (figuratively).  Basically I tried to install Windows XP on a system a few months ago, but something wasn’t right so I gave up. Maybe I should have given up permanently because as I picked up the project again this weekend, it just turned in to a death march.  As it turns out, the system had a bad hard drive, and something was seriously wrong with the NIC drivers I installed.  I finally swapped the drive with a new one that I forgot I also tired on this box on the previous attempt, so I was pleasantly surprised as not having to reinstall XP on the drive.  Unfortunately my joy didn’t last because as I finally was able to get things going and install the updates the system started crashing.  The third problem with the system turns out to be a memory issue, but I think I can pick up some PC 2700 DDR fairly cheap, so all is not lost.  If that doesn’t do the trick, I bag the system and use what I can on another system.

Well that’s it for now.  I have to get up earlier than usual because I-90 Westbound is all mucked up for the next two weeks, so it’s off to Slumberland for me.

Work is going along well and my brain is getting stuffed with lot’s of new and useful information.  I have also been making headway on cleaning up the place.  Today I gave my paper shredder a real workout, and ended up stuffing a recycling bin full of stuff.  I definitely have gotten my money’s worth out of that little shredder.

Sleep is going OK, with only a few rough night’s in the last few weeks.  Once I get settled in to my new routine I’ll start getting back to posting more.  I have several good posts lined up for the Slumberland blog, so keep an eye out for those.

Well that’s it for now.

I will say that I am very impressed and happy with the people I work with, and I think this job is a move in the right direction for me.  I am definitely going to learn a lot at this new job, and it is a big change for me in that I am no longer working as just a test technician for hardware and/or software.  I am actually moving more into IT, and it feels right.

Having said that, I am a little wiped out from having a very sleepless night last night.  After almost 10 months of being mostly unemployed, I was really apprehensive about today, but except for being a little tired, and having a headache for a while, everything went well.

I am feeling a lot better about things now.  Well I need to head off to Slumberland. 

Also I am getting a lot of help from folks and for that I am very grateful.  Because of some timing issues I have had to improvise a bit, but aside from correcting a few typos things is going very very smoothly.

I wish my house cleaning would go as smoothly.  It’s not so much the work that is making things drag a little as it is the constant beating up on myself for not being a better house keeper, and I have to say I do get a little maudlin while dredging up old stuff and deciding whether I should toss it or not.  I am also finding that it sucks doing this all by myself.  I really don’t need someone to help so much as it would be nice to have someone to talk to while doing the work to help break up the monotony, and relieve some of the stress that comes from dredging through the past.

But I have to trudge on and keep on tossing old stuff.  I decided to take a bunch of old prints and posters that had been laying around for years to the NWSFS Social last night and I offered them up to all those who attended, but no one was really interested.  The hosts were nice enough to say that they would take the prints and posters to the Norwescon Volunteer Picnic in July, and hopefully they could give them away as gifts to some of the volunteers.  What’s funny is that some of those prints and posters are close to 30 years old (and the posters have never been opened) so in come cases they may be older than the volunteers!  I do hope that those who get the gifts do enjoy them.  It’s a shame that those prints and posters were stashed away for so long and I never really had a chance to enjoy them, but I am happy that someone may eventually find joy in them.

Speaking of giving away stuff I gave away a pair of binoculars I got in exchange for some Coke Rewards Points. I gave the binoculars to a volunteer for a astronomy group who works with local students wishing to learn more about astronomy.  I have started a project called “Colas for the Cosmos” over on the CloudyMidnights blog, where I am collecting Coke Rewards Points and using them to get telescopes and/or binoculars to give to local students.  If you are a regular Coke drinker then maybe you might want to get involved, or start your own Colas for the Cosmos project.  Drop me a line if you are interested.

OK, that is enough of a break from cleaning for now.  I have to get back to dusting and vacuuming. 

In the mean time, watch this video of my favorite cryptid, the Thylacine, the last known specimen of which died at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania in 1936 - Last Tasmanian Tiger, Thylacine, 1933:

Swing by Slumberland if you have the time

Winnie the Pooh On The Swine Flu:

http://www.city.com/forums/topic271_post471.html#471

Cheers ~

Once I got to the park I was able to quietly sit in my truck and enjoy my food, and then afterwards take a nice walk on the reasonably flat terrain around the barns located at the park.  While I did enjoy the peaceful walk, I was occasionally brought back to reality from a breeze that reminded me that I was down wind of the barns and their residents.

After the walk I went to the store, picked up some groceries, and then headed home where I pounded out my first blog entry about the book Weird Washington.  The post “Washington Weirdness: Mel’s Hole” is over on the Slumberland blog.  Swing by and give it a read if you are so inclined.

Other than that, there isn’t much new stuff to post about, so it’s off to Slumberland for me!

I have made major progress on cleaning up the spare room, and I am starting to sort through all the junk  My plan is to turn that room into my study/computer lab within a couple of months, so that once I get back to work my living room will actually be a living room once again and I will have a nice place to decompress a little, or at least that’s the plan.

Now should things turn out where I end up having to move I will have at least pared down the junk I will have to take with me.  Right now I’m keeping the moving option on the back burner though I am looking more and more at Northern California as an option since there may be some opportunities for me down there.  Given that I have lived in the Seattle area all my life I don’t know how well I will adapt to a new location, but maybe it will be a good thing.  Then again just getting out of the bunker and living someplace else in the Seattle area might be a good move for me too. I’ll just have to see what comes down the road and roll with it.

Well it’s time to head off to Slumberland and catch some sleep (hopefully)