Seafood and mushrooms make a quick visit.....

While Marc takes a weekend to golf with the boys in Palm Springs (still don't get the golf in 110 degree weather in August thing), I decided to do the unthinkable - cook some seafood and mushrooms. One of my favorite dishes of all time to make is this Seared Salmon with Shitakes and Roasted Corn recipe from Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe cookbook. Since Marc detests most of the main ingredients (seafood and mushrooms), I decided to make it for my friends and host a Girls Night. Sinead, Rebecca, Maura, Maureen and Robyn all came over, and we all had lots of laughs.... some until 2:30am. Good food, good wine, good laughs and great people - not much more to ask for.

Also was able to spend some time golfing on Thursday afternoon at a private course my friend Chris belongs to - TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge. Another friend of ours, also named Jill, joined us for the round. It was a ton of fun and as Marc always says, no matter how bad the round - any day on the golf course is better than a day at work. The rough was pretty thick as they are hosting a Champions Tour event there during the upcoming week. Lost a lot of balls, but we had a lot of laughs along the way. Hopefully my game was not so pitiful that Chris will invite us back since Marc has never played there.

Harrison Reese Consor - woo woo!

At 2:05am PST, we received a phone call from the East Coast family that we became an uncle and aunt for the 2nd time. Harrison Reese was born this morning at 3:30am EST to Glenn and Gwen weighing in at 5 lbs. and 5 oz. Harry and Uncle Jarrett will now share a birthday so we hope that JB does not get too jealous with sharing his special day with the little guy. The baby was a little early, but the best news is that both Mom and Baby are doing well. And the Consor name gets to continue on.... woo woo!

So yes, before we forget - Happy 30th Birthday to JB!

In addition to the excellent news from back east, we had a great weekend here in Seattle. The weather continued to be excellent. We caught an M's game, but unfortunately they lost to the A's again (they currently have a 12-game losing streak against them - not good). Also got in a round of golf and caught up with Andrea and Trevor, who hosted us for lunch while watching the Blue Angels speed by above Lake Washington.

Unfortunately Monday looms tomorrow.....

Teddy Bear Love

My normal route is 16 and 316. Jill came downtown after work so we could go to Sur La Table to spend some gift card credit and then have dinner at Campagne. So we ride the 16 home at about 8:45pm.

Our bus driver had a running social commentary about where we were, what stops were coming up, and how everyone should hug a teddy bear. World peace, no hate, hug a teddy bear. Teddy Bear Love. We got a 20-25 minute dose of hugging teddy bears. We were mostly just hoping we'd make it home without an incident. Repeated over and over again: teddy bear love.

Surprise!

So Marc and I made a top-secret visit to NYC over the weekend. We had it in the works for about a month, and completely pulled off surprising the Consor Clan and family friends this weekend for Jarrett's birthday party. Yes, the other JB (my brother-in-law) is turning 30 soon so Lisa decided to throw him a shindig. I think it was the first time in a long time where most of my family was actually speechless for a few seconds. Anyway, we had a great time and better yet, the humidity stayed away for the weekend. NY summers can be brutal. Unfortunately our surprise visit forced Lisa and JB to have to buy a bed and bedding that day so we could crash - thanks guys! Actually they were great sports about it and we had a great time checking out their new house as well as catching up with them. Also in attendance was my sister-in-law Gwen, who looks like she is ready to be done with her pregnancy given that she is in her last month and it is very hot. Hang tough, Gwen. The newborn Yankee fan will be here soon.

On this quick jaunt to NYC, we also got to see Lisa and Chad, my housemates from college who have been married for about 12 years now. It was awesome because they essentially flew to SF for the day to attend our wedding, so it was good to spend some time with them. The boys at Volare took great care of us. And then we went to the Stone Rose in the Time Warner Center to meet Sally, Dustin and Annette. Great time. Since we were so late (our flight was 2.5 hours late so that threw everything off), we sprinted up 3 very long flights of stairs - didn't know where the elevators were to catch them. And surprise, my friend Kim was there enjoying a night on the town too. Hadn't seen her in a couple of years so it was really nice to see her and catch up. After many beverages and a late night run to Senor Swanky's on the Upper West Side, it was time to crash at 3am.

We caught breakfast with Stefanie and Bonnie.... well, they drank coffee (not breakfast people), and found out the latest and greatest on their fronts. Bonnie just passed the bar exam on her 1st try, which is no small feat. Stefanie was checking out some eye-candy at the table next to us and had to be restrained somewhat. :-)

The other fun thing we did with Lisa and JB was check out a microbrewey on Long Island called the Brickhouse Brewing Company. Some pretty good beers and nice to know that people on LI don't have to only drink Coors Light - oh wait, that's just my Dad who likes that stuff. The flight back was good, except for the hour of turbulence which did not sit well with Marc, and we ended up back home 30 mins earlier than expected. At least we were upgraded. :-)

Oh another thing - regarding Marc's entry about the inside the park homerun, the Mariners were playing the Red Sox, so you know for me - anytime the Red Sox lose is always a good day for me. A bottom of the 9th walk-off home run, plus the inside the park one - you know I was grinning from ear to ear regardless of what the Yankees did that day.

Inside The Park Home Run

One of the most exciting plays in baseball - if not the most exciting. Well, today Jill and I witnessed the first one ever at Safeco Field as Adrian Beltre hit a shot off the center field wall, which somehow deflected off Manny Ramirez backing up Coco Crisp in center, and sat there for a split second. This was long enough for Beltre to beat the throw from 3rd.

FoxSports Recap

Not only that, this inside the park HR put the Mariners up by one. JJ Putz proceeded to strike out Ortiz and Manny only to let Varitek tie it up with a HR off the Hit it Here Cafe. But Sexson came up first in the bottom of the ninth to walk off with a HR.

Universal Remote Control

Jill got me a cool universal remote control (MX-700) as a gift a while back - one of the best ever when you consider how it simplifies your coffee table.

Anyway, it worked great when I had a serial port on my computer, but about 20 months ago I upgraded to a computer without such a port. A friend gave me a USB to Serial cable converter which was a nice gesture, but the remote editing software just couldn't communicate with the remote anymore. I didn't find this out until I got a DVR and wanted to reprogram the remote from the cable box to the DVR and include the new functionality.

After about 10 emails back and forth from customer support, they simply stopped responding. We had tried everything including a complete reset to factory settings and uninstalling the editor and the usb to serial device drivers and trying again. This was over 3 months ago!!!

Well, today I checked the website for updates to the editor and noticed there had been a few. I installed the new editor and without a hitch I could reprogram the remote. The other remotes have gone back into hibernation (hopefully for years)...

Golf in Palm Springs in August

My friends have a sick sense of "saving" money on golf by going to Palm Springs next month for our annual tournament. Most of us in the Pacific NorthWest think 85 is hot and it should be above 110 there.

I haven't really golfed much in the past year, so it should be interesting. I played Harbour Pointe today and had several wayward shots and a few good chips and putts. The winner gets to choose the next location and I wish I had been practicing enough to do so and take us somewhere cooler next year.

4 Years Together..... WOW!

Some background... We have this tradition that we do every year in mid-July (July 14th to be exact). We go to a Greek restaurant to celebrate our anniversary of getting together in Greece back in 2002.

Normally we have found some places in Seattle like Kleftiko in Queen Anne or Costas Opa in Fremont, but Marc decided to take things up a notch and book us a weekend away in La Conner, WA, which is about 60 miles north of Seattle. Great guy.

So on the 14th, we had a great dinner at the appropriately named Greek Islands Restaurant in Anacortes, WA. It was so authentic, they had actually Mythos on the menu and a pretty decent selection of Greek wines. Mythos was pretty much the beverage of choice for all of the beer drinkers sailing with us in Greece. We capped the evening off with a great sunset, which of course we caught on film.

The next day, we took a ferry over to Lopez Island in the San Juans. The weather could not have been better. We checked out a number of the beaches on it and were a little bummed that we did not start our day earlier to bike around. Lopez is really flat and does not have a lot of cars so it's a great place to bring your bike, have a picnic and just enjoy the scenery. Oh well, next time.

The rest of the weekend was fun and relaxing. We had a nice dinner in La Conner and enjoyed some Zinfandel from Dashe Cellars in the Russian River Valley. Sunday was spent checking out different areas of Whidbey Island, including Oak Harbor (skip), Coupeville (ok) and Langley (cool - Penn Cove Mussels - yum). Great views of the Olympics, Mount Baker and Mount Rainier depending on which area of the island you were on. We also stopped off at Deception Pass and watched some kayakers trying to paddle against a very strong current without success.

All in all, a great weekend. Exploring the Pacific Northwest is a fun thing, particularly in the summer. How humid was it in NYC this past weekend again?

Stay tuned as we'll give you some of the highlights from our July 4th trip to Portland, OR!

blogging

So here we go. This blog is Marc and Jill's way of communicating our thoughts to mostly our friends and family. There will probably be strangers who stumble upon our mumbling.

beckOn contains our thoughts On various subjects.

Marc