A number of years ago, my buddy Dave and I made a silly video about our cats.  We wondered what it might be like for cats to compete with each other in an olympic-style competition.  The competition itself proved to be too big of a project to bite off, so we merely made a video about them preparing for such an event.

We basically just filmed our cats (our cat, The Professor, and Dave and Jen's cat, Mambo) doing the things they normally did.  I wanted to make it all NFL-film documentary style, so I found some appropriate music, and put it all together, with me doing a strained althetic announcer voice (yes, that's me).

I just recently heard of Stage6, and decided to give it a shot using this video as a test.  It's a YouTube-like site that allows you to have much higher quality video (at the cost of having to install the Divx player).  So, I give you "The Road to Catathalon 1987".  I'd like some feedback as to how well this works in the various other platforms and browsers.

Oddly enough, after viewing this, many people ask me who won, or when this event occurred.  I'd like to take this time to pre-emptively remind people that the Catathalon is a fictional event.

Not to diminish the previous post so immediately, but today is Becky's birthday!  As luck would have it, Becky's brother Andy is moving to Vancouver, BC, which is only a couple of hours away.  And, even more luckily, Becky's dad and Andy are driving through Seattle today on their way to move him in. So, due to several remarkable coincidences colliding with perfect timing (more likely God doing what he does best), for the first time in about 8 years Becky gets to be with some of her family on her birthday, and in Seattle of all places.

So, they are to arrive just after lunch today, and we'll have a pleasant afternoon of visiting and touring and some yummy dinner somewhere.

Here she is trying on a new scarf.  It's a little big.

Happy Birthday Becky!

We made the beautiful drive from Bellevue to Bellingham to visit the Flints yesterday.  The drive was very scenic, although the traffic was pretty bad in several locations due to construction.  We arrived and got the tour of their house, and then preparations for dinner commenced.  Jeff flexed his cooking muscle (see image right) and prepared chicken fried steak, which was absolutely delicious.  I like to think it had something to do with me filling the pan with the perfect amount of oil.  Bethany prepared some yummy vegetables.

During the preparation of dinner, Becky's french horn arrived, which we had shipped to them to get it here as soon as possible.  That worked out perfectly.

Due to the beautiful weather (sunny, about 70 degrees), we were forced to eat outside in their great yard, where blackberries grew in abundance (yes, that is an actual picture of the blackberries we saw, not a stock photo of blackberries.  Great picture, Becky).  If we had known, we probably wouldn't have bought blackberries at the market the other day.

After dinner, we toured some of Bellingham.  We went down to a popular park on the water, and drove around downtown and got out and toured Jeff's church.

All in all, it was a delightful evening.  The trip back was long due to lane closures and construction, but it was worth it.  Thanks Jeff and Bethany.  I leave you with this panoramic view of the backyard. Click it to view the whole set.

Becky, Jenna, and I drove into Seattle again this morning.  This time, we went to the world famous Pike Place Market, perhaps most known for the famous Pike Place Fish Market.  You probably remember it from "Sleepless in Seattle".  It's the place where they throw the fish around.

Anyway, we went there.  It was pretty cool.  There were tons of people there, so it was a little stressful navigating with a stroller through the smaller hallways.  We bought some red snapper to eat this evening.  Should be good.  I didn't catch any pictures of fish in the air because my good camera hasn't arrived yet.  We're using our old one and it's too slow to get stuff like that without alot of preparation.  Becky also got some fresh rasberries and blackberries, the likes of which she has never seen before. (Evidently, they were good).  We also got some yummy cinammon rolls for the ride home. I'm sure we'll go back many times, especially when friends and family come to visit, so I'll try to catch some actual pictures of fish in mid-flight.

Here's an autostitched panoramic view from the top of the parking garage near the market.  I think it turned out pretty well.

This is more or less a test to see how this works.  This is not the first time she's laughed, nor the first time we've caught it on video.  It IS pretty funny though.  Enjoy.

I took several groups of pictures during the move that I've stitched together into panoramas with AutoStitch.  Some of them didn't turn out, others turned out great, and still others are fairly good.  Autostitch is nice because it only takes about 5 seconds of human intervention to make one.

Here's one of the loading process.  The truck was really enormous.  It had our stuff along with several other shipments, and the driver had several more stops to make before he headed to Seattle.  It will be cool to see him again when he brings the stuff that's coming to our temporary place.  He said that would be around Thursday.

Several people have asked about our new place.  It's a very nice furnished apartment.  I made a panorama of the view from the balcony (yes, we're on the second floor).  It's a crazily-wide view, so the edges are distorted.  Don't let that fool you. The trees are super-tall.  When sitting inside and looking out the door, you can only see about half-way up.

The living area is very nice.  It's somewhat similar in layout to the old apartment we had in Austin we we first moved there.  The kitchen is pretty small, but it's nice and open, which makes it feel bigger.  The sliding door there on the left goes out to the balcony.  As you can see, I miss my TV.  We do have a DVD player though.

The "master" bedroom is pretty nice.  It has a nice big window and an attached bathroom.  The closet is also pretty huge.

I'm running out of stuff to say, so Ill just post the rest with a short description.

The guest bedroom.  The crib was supplied for us, which was great.  One less thing to worry about.

This is the main bathroom:

 Here's the utility room:

 I've got more photos uploaded, I just need to go through them and make the non-pano source ones public and tag them.

Everything went fairly smoothly considering we were travelling with 2 cats and a baby.  Our flight from Austin to Dallas was delayed enough to make our connection extremely close.  On top of that, there had been a plane change that screwed up our seating.  Our primary seats didn't exist anymore, so they moved us.  The problem was that they didn't move us as a group.  Each of us had separate seats in different parts of the plane, and we didn't have enough under-seat space for the cats.  So, we managed to get a guy to trade seats so we were together in a place where the cats fit.

Once that was straightened out, the rest of the trip was pretty good.  Jenna stayed pretty calm most of the trip.  She only threw a few tantrums.

More precise location of our temporary place

When we finally got to our temporary place, Jeff and Bethany were there to greet us, which was very cool of them.  Jeff and I went to Azteca's, which, surprisingly enough, was a decent mexican food place.  We brought back some fajitas for the four of us and hung out.

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this move possible.  Special thanks to my parents who have been super generous with their time and helped me wrap up lots of unfinished projects at the house before we left, and doing all that with the prospect of us taking their grand-daughter thousands of miles away.  Thanks millions.

Our new temporary place is not exactly where I showed last time.  Here's a more precise location.

Well, in about 15 minutes, we're out the door headed to the airport, at which point our new residence will be Washington state.  We'll let you know when we get there.

Well, almost.  By the time you read this I probably will be.  The truck arrived on schedule this morning, but the moving company forgot to send out the loaders (which was odd because the packers were here yesterday).  That was fine because the driver had a chance to go around and tag all the furniture.

Anyway, things are eerie around here.  Nothing but lots of little pieces of garbage everywhere.

I'll get some pics up on Flickr later.  I'm working with relatively limited internet access through my phone.

I've got a hotel room lined up for us tonight, then it's off to the airport late in the morning!  Crazy

The packers came early this morning and packed all our stuff.  I was completely amazed at how many boxes it took to pack up the kitchen.  It pretty much took 1 person dedicated to the kitchen, while 3 others did the rest of the house.  From what they said, it's typical.  The kitchen has to be packed with more padding, so it takes up more room and takes longer.

Anyway, the loaders come tomorrow and load up everything.  That will be even crazier.  The house will pretty much be empty.  Then, we fly out on Thursday about noonish.

I simply don't have room to take my camera on the plane, so it's packed.  I'll try to snap some pictures with one of the lesser cameras though.

I'm getting ready to shut down my PC for the last time here in Austin.  The packers are coming tomorrow morning.  I hope they're not really mad at how unprepared we are.  Anyway, things are getting pretty stressful here at the end.  There's still so much to do and only a couple of days left to do it.  We said goodbye to my brother and his wife this evening, which was pretty sad.  I've never lived more than about an hour from my family my whole life.  Things will be very different with them being that far away.

We did finally find out where we will be living for the next couple of months while we look for a permanent place. Here's a bird's eye view.

We've got a ton of possible houses to look at when we get there.