Deep Fried Live!

I rediscovered a website that I really liked in college called 8Legged Entertainment. It is a cooking website that features short animated video clips with Chef Tako the Octopus. He teaches you how to cook various dishes from chocolate chip cookies to pumpkin flan. Usually some sort of drama ensues, like Tako getting too close to the Kitchenaid mixer, or Tako's mom calling in to demand why he won't use her recipes and such. To watch Tako in action, click on the Deep Fried Live! link.

Dog Days of Summer

Linus the Beagle is once again spending a week at Uncle Ben and Aunt Beth's house while his owners are away. Linus is a great house guest because he is really mellow. He spends most of the day sleeping on the floor or on the couch. He sure can snore! Later in the afternoons, he likes to look out our sliding glass doors at the action below. Sometimes he paws at the glass; I guess maybe he sees something interesting. I wonder if he's secretly glad that he is away from his 3 cat siblings. If not, he'll see them soon enough.

New Training Period

This week, I officially start to train for my next race, which is the Blue Ridge Relay on September 5-6. The route is divided into 36 legs. I will be running legs 4, 16, and 28, which total about 18 miles. I'm going to train like I would for a half marathon, with a couple modifications towards the end of the training period in order to get ready for things like running twice in one day and running at night. Since I've already provided detailed accounts of two past training endeavors, I'm not going to do that for this race, unless something comes up that I think is particularly interesting. Like doing a track workout in the heat. Yep, that could be really fun!

This is a YouTube clip of the Zatten Concerto for trumpet and strings. The composer is Roger Petrich, our awesome music director at St. Thomas More, and the trumpeter is Paul Neebe, who is an awesome trumpet player (Juliard educated, no less!). Paul plays quite a bit at St. Thomas More, and I've had the pleasure of playing oboe and singing with him several times. The Zatten concerto was performed on May 29th by Paul and the East Chapel Hill High School orchestra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaXaeRIqPo8

Back from Seattle

Ben and I spent the greater part of last week on vacation in Seattle. We had a blast. Neither of us had been to the Pacific Northwest before, and we definitely hope we can go back sometime. We did a lot of touristy things, like visiting Pike Place Market, the Seattle Aquarium, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Experience Music Project, the Pacific Science Center, went kayaking, took a harbor cruise, and drank lots of coffee. Below are some pics we took-enjoy! Also, I've linked the stuff we did to their respective websites in case you too are planning a trip to Seattle and are looking for things to do.

Downtown Seattle with with the Space Needle poking out in the background.

The Seattle skyline from the harbor.

Me and Ben on the boat taking a harbor tour. Yep, we are wearing jackets because the high temperature was in the low-mid 50s all week. It was AWESOME!!!

Pike Place Market downtown.

Some really big fish at one of the stalls at Pike Place Market.

Me and Rachel the Pig at Pike Place Market.

The original Starbucks coffee shop downtown. The original logo is a little more provocative than the current logo.

The marina at the Agua Verde Paddle Club where we went kayaking.

A heron at the marina.

A view of the Experience Music Project from the monorail.

Apparently the gorillas were having a meeting when we visited the Woodland Park Zoo.

A duck in the bear exhibit!

Ben and the duck posing for a photo.

Me feeding a bird in the birdhouse at the zoo.

Me and an octopus at the Seattle Aquarium.

Ben taming the wall octopus at the aquarium.