Today is gorgeous January 11, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , add a commentNo one can complain about Seattle winters if we get days like this. Sunny blue sky, a crisp breeze in the air…
I’m going to do a little bit of work, explore my car’s wiring, and maybe… go eat a cupcake.
Your thoughts?Ongoing projects and my daily schedule January 8, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 3 commentsSeriously, how do people with real jobs do it? This is a rough outline of my daily schedule. There’s not enough hours in the day.
Morning:
Run 1-2 miles (all I can do now without knee/shin pain), come back home and keep my heart rate up with pushups/pullups/jumprope while doing audio French lessons
Work:
Get public speaking/dating seminars website up
Continue Thirty Day Challenge niche marketing projects
Learn aweber’s mailing list software to integrate with both the above
Prepare for upcoming speeches
Learn something about real estate
Play:
Get electrical engineering nerd fix by wiring a kill switch into my car
Practice steel drums
Practice bagpipes
Practice guitar
Write
Recreational reading:
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker
Harry Potter in Spanish (currently working on book 4)
I’m falling behind, and I think the secret is to make my evenings more productive. I’m trying to maintain a consistent sleep schedule (go to bed at 2am every night, wake up at 10 am every day) which has been great because it matches my natural body clock and keeps weekends from throwing me out of whack too much. But if I don’t start getting some work done between say, 10pm and 2am I’m not going to make any progress. My new plan is to concentrate my intellectually taxing work in the the middle of the day and catch up on the braindead stuff (emails, etc) in the evenings. I’m hoping to add dance lessons and Brazilian jiu jitsu in the near future, but I’m forcing myself to get my schedule handled first. Good luck to me!
Your thoughts?A holiday photo retrospective January 5, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal, Photos , 2 commentsSome people might say that the best present of all is the chance to be at home during the holidays when your little sister gets engaged.
But those people don’t have green glow-in-the-dark dinosaur footie pajamas. Thank you, Kristin, I will be single forever.
Dad got a mystery board game that Ryan swears isn’t a Clue knock-off, but we’re unconvinced.
Mom got a drum set (because there’s nothing better than a five-foot tall, 60-year old asian lady rocking out on drums), but she’s the only person who’s not playing it yet. But we know she loves it because she told all her friends that thanks to her crazy family, she’s got to go find herself a percussion teacher.
Ryan loves his hideous alligator. (”Holy Toledo!” says Dad.)
The sis and I do love our fruit. Her forehead’s not really this big in real life.
Pie for Christmas Eve at our house. We had sixteen people over, the biggest party my parents have thrown in… well, ever. Apparently they’ve known about the engagement for three weeks, making me the only person in the world who was out of the loop.
We’ve had an unused crepe maker in our basement for years, the quintessential example of the junk in our house that we don’t need. What with all the moving, the crepe maker finally saw the light of day, so we used it for the first time ever. Turns out it doesn’t really work, unless you like the style of crepes with huge gaping holes in them.
Christmas dinner was spent meeting Ryan’s family for the first time. Long story short, everyone loves everyone else. Also, they have a pool table.
Dad and Grandma get along really well.
My last day in town was spent with my sister. For her birthday, I promised her a field trip. We started with Matchbox’s mini-hamburgers. Nine, of course.
Followed by the Boy Scout Memorial. It’s a monstrosity, don’t miss it.
By happy coincidence, the Boy Scout Memorial is right by the White House Christmas tree. Also by happy coincidence, the White House Christmas tree is really, really tacky.
Vegan chocolate cake from Sticky Fingers Bakery, the finest purveyor of vegan baked goods in the Washington metropolitan area. It wasn’t bad, but we would have appreciated it more had we been vegan.
We finished off the evening with a second visit to A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant and a family dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant. Dinner was good, but the pageant was better. Kristin I had tried to go to the pageant once before, but thanks to a wrong address on the webpage, we missed the first half. The second half was stellar enough that we had to return for a full viewing. It’s tough to capture the experience of having the story of Scientology explained to you by a cast of singing children. Just go see it yourself.
On a side note, maybe it’s unfair to single out Scientology to make fun of. After all, what with enormous arks and multi-armed elephant goddesses and so forth, mainstream religions have plenty of wacky ideas of their own.
On the other hand - an alien lord Xenu planting hydrogen bombs in volcanoes and blowing parasitic alien spirits throughout the universe? Really, that’s pretty funny.
Your thoughts?Nickerson Street Saloon flames me to death January 3, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so farApparently I’ve hit the bigtime, as owners of reputable establishments are taking the time to flame me on my own blog. Cool! (Or at the very least, someone is taking the time to pretend they’re the owner of a reputable establishment; I’ve got no way to tell who my commenters actually are.) But “Chris Gerke Owner Nickerson Street Saloon” does have the following to say to me:
Nice Hatchet job on th Saloon. You should try fiction writing for a vocation, you are great at it.
and
To set the record straight. I am the owner of the Nickerson Street Saloon. Niels showed up with 15 to 20 of his clients who paid a fee to him for his services. His group did not call to make a reservation. Which is the policy for groups of 8 or more. The Saloon seats 100 patrons. His group on a friday night ordered less than 6 beers for the whole group in a 2 hour peroid.Niels used the Saloon for his own personal gain. For him to claim that his group was discriminated against shows how clueless and classless he is.We pride ourselves on serving all customers with respect.The Saloon is not a public library.His group was asked to leave because he wanted to use the restaurant for his own benfit. Any other reasons he likes to post are BOLD FACED LIES!!
The commenter apparently didn’t like the post I made three months ago when I was kicked out of Nickerson Street Saloon. I stand by my facts and have evidence to support them, but I suppose it could conceivably be possible that his memory three months later really is more accurate than the writeup I did the day after we were told to leave.
I also never claimed I was discriminated against. I think the manager was totally within his rights to ask us to leave, which is why we did so immediately and without a fuss. For my part, I’ve continued to patronize the Nickerson Street Saloon (though not with clients) and will likely continue to do so until I’m no longer welcome. But if the manager’s behavior looks discriminatory in other people’s eyes, it’s his own fault.
On a side note, I am, in fact, a professional fiction writer. I wrote “The Girl and the Donkey” when I was a senior in high school and you can read it in the May/June 2000 issue of Cicada magazine. The issue also features short stories by Dick Francis and Lloyd Alexander, so don’t miss it!
Your thoughts?Chicago does weddings and New Year’s Eve right January 2, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal, Photos , add a commentI’ve never been to Chicago before. I like it. A lot. But considering that of the four nights I spent here, one was a wedding and one was New Year’s Eve, I may be a bit biased.
Day 1: I discover that three-puck air hockey KICKS ASS!
Day 2: Carried a 70-pound chocolate wedding cake, laughed at cold bridemaids, and celebrated!
Bonus surprise on the drive home: a winter wonderland!
Day 3: We explore Chicago’s Magnificent mile and get caught in a huge snowstorm. Just like every other day.
Says Andrew: “Brand new tractors + trains = my five-year old cousin’s dreams come true.”
I have no idea what these statues mean.
Millennium park. Happy holidays, we’re a Gap ad!
The Chicago bean is pretty damn cool.
Chicago hot dogs are dragged through the garden.
Dinner at Gino’s East: Bad photos, good pizza. Having finally tasted Chicago-style pizza in Chicago, I finally understand its allure.
Day 4: New Years eve began at Navy Pier, where we ate junk food, went sledding down tiny hills on McDonald’s food trays (just me, really), had a kick-ass snowball fight, and I made a new friend.
As for the evening festivities, there are no New Year’s Eve events in Chicago that cost less than $150 (unless you crash them after midnight, more on that later). We’d rather put our money into a fab feast. And so, at China Grill, much food was eaten and much drink was drunk.
We celebrated the new year in the China Grill bar, where I kissed many girls.
And we finished off the evening by crashing an Indian dance party which was still going strong when we finally left after 2am.
