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1 Timothy 1:15-17

"The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever."

No rhyme (not even an attempt at a Seussian muse...I promise!)

The snow globe is a good picture of what it has been like here since last week.

It's 22:53 as I begin typing and we started the day with...more snow (as the hiking pictures should have indicated).

For a change, we had all the presents (the trip to Florida is the major present for Tori & Jarrod, so their share is a bit slim) wrapped before 22:00 and I even have the 29 pound turkey seasoned, dressed and ready for the seven hour roasting session tomorrow. At the moment, two pumpkin pies are in the oven awaiting retrieval in ~50 minutes and a layer of ganache. (Update: pie FAIL..maybe...we'll see how they taste. meh)

Mary and Tori finished trimming the artificial tree earlier today and we surprised mom with as traditional of a Christmas Eve supper as I could let myself impress upon the children (it's mostly fish, so not exactly in anyone's "top ten" dinner menu).

Being snowbound, we wound up watching a service from Northland Church on the suggestion of daughter #1, Liz (Happy Birthday, btw!). It was a very lavish production but had a good message. I was a bit skeptical of it at first given that it started with a Charlie Brown song, but it turned out well (LED candles...meh).

FedEx managed to get here! (UPS still has not delivered Mary's presents or called me back as they said they would), so we trekked to the Wygle's on foot to ensure Eve received the remainder of her gift. A good four mile walk (we went back the long way and stopped to try to find stamps for Tori).

I miss friends and family back east. I miss Bethlehem at Christmastime. I miss celebrating the Moravian Lovefeast at the small church in our old-old neighborhood in town. At the same time, I am very thankful for new friends and church family. It's been a rough year (still kinda rough in many, many ways, actually) but blessings abound. It is a welcome opportunity to set aside everything to celebrate the birth of our Saviour tomorrow. I pray you manage to find the time to be still and know who He is amid the toil and chaos that will no doubt ensue at most of the households who end up reading this.

In closing, you really need to pick this up: How Many Kings by downhere. $0.99, no DRM and a great addition to your Christmas collection. (Lyrics at the end of the post.)

Merry Christmas!

(I'm sure we'll be posting pix tomorrow and potentially "uStream"ing presents, dinner or dessert, so keep watching the blog, Twitter or Facebook :-)

---

"How Many Kings" – downhere

Follow the star to a place unexpected
Would you believe after all we’ve projected
A child in a manger

Lowly and small, the weakest of all
Unlikeliest hero, wrapped in his mothers shawl
Just a child
Is this who we’ve waited for?

Cause how many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many gods have poured out their hearts
to romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Bringing our gifts for the newborn savior
All that we have whether costly or meek
Because we believe
Gold for his honor and frankincense for his pleasure
And myrrh for the cross he’ll suffer
Do you believe, is this who we’ve waited for?
It’s who we’ve waited for

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
to romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?
Only one did that for me

All for me
All for you
All for me
All for you

Mary was gracious enough to let me burn a day off work to get in a long ride. I knew Friday was going to be gorgeous and we needed to do other stuff for Tori's bday anyway, so it worked out pretty well all 'round.

This is one of my favorite long rides in the greater Seattle area, partly because it involves crossing the Sound. I modified the route from the Seattle Bike Tours folks as this one is easier to follow, was over fresh asphalt that was very conducive to cranking on the road bike and also kicked it to a full 50 miles.

Ascent says I did 53.3 miles with a total climb of 2483 feet and an average speed of 14.4 mph. Here's the summary data and the elevation chart for the ride:

The full Flickr set of snaps I took along the way is available for viewing, but be warned they are iPhone camera phone pix, so the quality is "meh".

I've posted the GPX and KML files for anyone's use (despite my pathetic pace & cadence stats). KML is really cool since Google Maps and Google Earth both import it well (though Ascent has a feature to do the import and put Google Earth into "fly-by" mode automagically).

I am riding in the Redmond "Tour de Cure" for Diabetes. The event is in May and there are more details on my sponsorship page. If you're a Seattleite and would like to ride with someone, I chose the 45-mile route. Since I'm doing the STP in July, I didn't want to risk a longer ride and potential injury that close to 200-mile ride.

If I had been working back @ my previous big company (J&J) they have a national team. I think that would have been kinda fun, but I'm going to see if my current big company (Safeco) is interested in having a team presence at any of the national cycling-charity events. Red, black & white would make for a sweet jersey!

Again, please consider sponsoring me or joining me for the ride (or both!).

Great weekend. Took the kids over to Kingston on the ferry then drove down to Bainbridge and headed for Fay Bainbridge State Park. Walked on the beach for quite a while (pics coming soon) and let the kids have at the plethora of sea shells. They found a whole scallop or oyster (haven't opened it yet) and an intact starfish; they were quite thrilled.

I managed to get a decent & speedy solo bike ride in Sat and a relaxed one in on Sunday (with Ian in tow). Made an *awesome* chicken & spinach curry which we'll be eating through Tuesday at this rate (I always make too much).

I also managed to get some EVE time in and need to update the corp web site (official charter and new home base).

We got to hear some of "On The Media" tonight (a rare treat these days) and I was very disappointed. Will there be any media channel that doesn't deliberately promote Obama in some way, shape for form? I expected more out of a media watchdog organization. Nader's announcement should make things interesting for a while. Lest we forget, there's still time for martial law to be declared...even after elections are held. Sagging economy. Protracted overseas engagement. Cold war ruminations in the former Soviet Union and China...Pakistan in turmoil. India rising. Lots of kindling for fear.

Now continuing to enjoy a Düvel over the course of the rest of the evening (which may include more EVE) and trying not to anticipate the busy week ahead.

Mary & I did one of the monthly event dinners (part of the week-of-birthdays for her) at Monsoon last night and had a wonderful time. Eric did an amazing job giving us all a taste of Vietnamese new year with the fusion twists the restaurant is famous for.

We weren't expecting it to be family-style, but that only added to the collective enjoyment and we were lucky enough to meet the owners of Yama Japanese Restaurant and Red House Beer & Wine Shoope, both local eateries that we now are anxious to sample.

Here's what you missed last night:

• grilled flank steak with green scallions and vermicelli noodles
• fisherman's soup with morning glory greens
• five spice washington chicken "roti"
• braised leek and asian eggplant salad with crispy tofu paper
• braised baby back ribs with coconut juice and longevity egg
• kurabuta pork belly with pickled cucumber and banh bo
• mung bean sweet soup with tapioca

While you will hear reports of dismal northwest weather in the winter, we manage to get some gorgeous days fairly regularly. I had an opportunity to see something similar to this shot of the Olympic Mountains in person this morning and the video pales in comparison to the real thing, but will be a welcome reminder when the grey winter weather overtakes our fair city.



Via The West Seattle Blog

Follow the pix to the flickr set of the first and our first snowfall in Brier (Seattle) WA...

Follow the pix to some Flickr sets of Ian & Jarrod:

You can follow this Flickr set to see what Liz is up to during her visit in WA.

Weekend roundup:

• picked up the Xterra (yay!)
• bought a new receiver after 15 years with the old one (more on that in a separate post)
• watched a movie with the kids in the new home theater
• made enough headway in the former-beauty-shop room to get the Dell, HP Laserjet 6MP and Avocent SwitchView DVI online (along with the Macs which were already functioning)
• tore through enough boxes this week to actually get access to my road bike and front wheel (which had to come off for the transport from Fremont to here in the Sentra)
• actually got a bike ride in (yay!)
• prepared the way for Pippin to arrive Monday

The downside is that being so busy makes the weekend go by way to quickly, and we even gained an extra hour this time 'round (though, I can say that I am again reminded of how much I detest even the concept of losing afternoon sunlight and will make those who cause DST to disappear each year the first ones off the plank when I become czar).

Good article from The Seattle P-I summarizing the issues surrounding the Proposition 1 ballot initiative (dealing with traffic/transportation problems in the greater Seattle area). As with many things here in the northwest, this topic has far more than two sides and there is no clear answer to the overall problem.

It reminds me of the I-78 mess in NJ and the Route 22 mess in PA. I take public transportation here and can get work done on the way to/from the office, but even the HOV lanes grind to a halt at times. There has to be a solution to this traffic problem. Telecommuting is great, but not a option for the service sector, which is the growing workforce of America, especially in the cities. I wish I had the magic bullet to kill this beast, but I have even fewer ideas than I did for the situation back east.

My commute is longer than I wanted and it's not like I live that far away (Lynnwood/Brier/Kenmore is a scant 12 miles from the city proper). We tried to live closer, but it's way too expensive and the choices were few and far between (for houses & properties that fit 6 people and a dog in an area with decent schools). Other families face the same issue and it's even expensive for individuals & couples (want a nice downtown condo for a mere $2 million USD?)

Once we clear the boxes away, I plan on cycling a couple of times a week (at least I live close enough for that, and the Burke-Gilman trail makes it a much less harrowing experience than it might otherwise be). Between cycling and busing I can say that by moving here we did not become part of the problem.

One thing I do know is that tolls and gimmicks are not going to fix the gridlock – that will just put cash in the hands of the politicians.

For those of you still sticking around for these posts, we're officially no longer homeless. Fran (Omholt) – our agent – handed us the keys Friday along with numerous surprises: she provided everything necessary (dishes, towels, inflat-a-bed, sleeping bags, etc.) to enable us to crash in the new place Friday and also eat dinner there. Definitely look her up if you are in the market to buy/sell a house in the Greater Seattle Area. You will not regret it.

Thankfully, Mary likes the new place (whew!) and we are trying to get our small amount of stuff settled and figure out what to do flooring-wise before the rest of the fam and the rest of our stuff arrives (not 100% sure of the order yet, unfortunately). After one massive Sentra-packed trip from Fremont today, the only thing left in Seattle is my bike, which we'll be picking up tomorrow. I'd kill for some chairs and a desk at this point.

Ian is doing remarkably well in spite of all the chaos and confusion. He's not afraid of the new room and is sleeping very well. Eating is another story (some kind of stomach thing going on with him). He loves the nearby parks and keep handing us fallen apples from our trees outside. Boy did I miss him. Mary said he did very well on the plane rides, too.

It's been a long day and I'm off to bed soon. More on the move as the week progresses and perhaps even some pictures - autumn is spectacular here.