richpurcell.com

So this past weekend I went to the Oregon Coast. I stayed in a little town called Astoria. As it turns out this is quite a popular little town. Astoria was the setting of the 1985 movie The Goonies, which was filmed on location. Other movies filmed in Astoria include Overboard, Short Circuit, The Black Stallion, Kindergarten Cop, Free Willy, Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, Benji the Hunted, The Ring,^[10] The Ring Two, Into the Wild, and The Guardian.

For the occasion I got myself a new camera - Cannon PowerShot SD780 IS.

Got some pictures here. Enjoy.

So I’m on my way to Berlin to visit a friend. Its been eight years since I’ve been to Germany. The last time I went to Frankfurt, Cologne, Freiberg,  Rothenburg and Selters. So I’m very much looking forward to visiting Berlin. Ah Berlin the former home of the Love Parade with all its European charm and splendor. Yes I know its cold and we all know how I feel about the cold. Oh well hopefully I won’t freeze. Until then I’ll be practicing the most important phrase in any language “Wo ist die toilette?”

OMG! Check this out. They are so cute.

Here I am again on the bus.

Sitting there

wearing my cap

as if looking good is just what I do.

(I must really be in a good mood)

A lot’s happened in the past few months. One of the biggest things is that I’m officially a citizen now. Yes I know, I totally sold out to the MAN, but now I get all the cool privileges of being a dual citizen. Roughly translated, I get to keep my foreign born snobbery without the danger of being deported. It was a long time in the making but finally over. It took me all of 13 months to get it done.

Before the ceremony they told us we could use the restroom. I got back just in time to hear the speaker concluding “…and this concludes the explanation of how things really work in America.” Every one was congratulating one another and commenting on how life would be so much easier now that they knew the secret of how things really work in this country. I kept asking for someone to explain it to me, tell me what did I miss. But no one seemed to notice. I guess they were too busy thinking of what saps they all were for not understanding before.

Oh well that’s life…

Here is my musical taste over the past few months. Enjoy.

Me, thinking about the person on the bus next to me:

Dude, there’s no reason to be smelling bad at 7:30 in the morning. And yet, here you are.

A couple days ago I received a voicemail from a friend in Germany. Wouldn’t you know it, the one day that I accidentally have my phone on audible ring while listening to music on my headphones I get a call that I’ve been waiting for. Well it was good to hear from him anyway. Yeah I’m talking about you E =)

Anyway if you read this soon call me man.

You know this just could be the motivation for me to get an iPhone. Right! Like I need any motivation to get another pristine, beautifully designed, Apple product.

So for the past few weeks I’ve been a vegetarian. I know, I know I’m skinny enough as it is. You’re probably wondering why I’d wanna stop eating meet for. Well it’s mostly about will power. In the past I’ve had days where I would avoid meat dishes, but I was never able to extend any of those times past the one-day period. This time I’m giving it a try. I made a deal with myself that I’d try it for about a month to see how it feels, if I’d really want to exert the effort. So far it’s been going well, but it does take effort. Fortunately a co-worker told me what to expect. Very few restaurants have more than a few vegetarian dishes. So whenever I get lunch at work I usually have to pour over the menu searching for the one or three dishes without meat. And sometimes even when a meal looks like it may not have meat in it you still may have to ask the waiter if it really is vegetarian. On the second day since becoming a vegetarian I had to send back a dish that was in the vegetarian section of the menu because the chef prepared it with chicken. And going out with friends can be a challenge, because I don’t like being the one that every one else has to bend their tastes for. Also since starting my vegetarian thing I haven’t had any one over for a meal. Of course if I have friends over I would cook a meat dish for their benefit but I’d be concerned about cooking enough of a variety of vegetables so that I could also enjoy a decent meal.

At this point I think it’s important to say that I’m not doing this because I don’t want for an animal to have to die so that I could eat. That’s not my reason. So at any time I could decide to change my mind and go back to eating meat. Animals not dieing for me to continue eating is just a nice side effect. But it is a challenge and so far I’m living up to it. At this point I think its also important to mention that I’m not going vegan. Yes I do eat eggs, but that’s about as far as I’m willing to go right now.

So far I’m enjoying it. However I can’t quite decide if its because of my latent desire to be different than the crowd. I mean, what if everyone went vegetarian, would I want to start eating meat then? I don’t know its too much for me to think about now. I’ll cross that bridge it it ever comes.

Just last week I discovered that one of my good friends here in Seattle was a vegetarian for about eight years. She gave me the “Best Vegetarian Cookbook Ever”. There are so many recipes and I want to try so many dishes just based on the pictures in the book. Yes, “I like da pretty pictures.”

The best thing is that I haven’t lost any weight. I’m still holding to the same weight I was in High School. Yes, I’m still a bit of a bean pole but hey skinny is in… Right? Any way I’m pretty happy with the amount of energy I’ve had in the last two weeks. I mean come on two blogs in one day? That has to be a record for me.

Wow I don’t believe they gave it to me! I just got back from the DOT where I had my address changed on my license. Not only did I get my address changed, I also got the Corrective lenses restriction removed and my motorcycle endorsement.

Last month I took the motorcycle safety course and I’m still surprised that I passed the test. Most of you are probably aware that in every class there is a “screw-up” you know the one person in class who gets everything wrong and it usually takes him twice as long to learn anything. In my class that person was me. I still can’t believe it, I dropped the bike (a big No-No), I did horribly on the double U-Turn (basically a figure 8 turn). I swear it wasn’t all my fault either. On the first day of class I got stuck with the shortest bike. It felt very uncomfortable. Since this was my first time on a motorcycle I wasn’t sure how it should feel. Even the instructors told me, during the second half after they gave me another bike, that the previous bike wasn’t my size. What can I say, it was the only bike that wasn’t taken. Once on the new bike things started rolling. Even then it still took me longer to learn the exercises. And again I can say it wasn’t all my fault, I mean most of the class was made up of people who had previous motorcycle experience. One guy rode dirt bikes and now wanted to get his street bike endorsement, at least three other guys already had bikes and just wanted to get the endorsement also, and one guy already had his endorsement and just wanted to get a refresher since he hadn’t ridden in about a year. And incidentally all of the other folks who were taking the course to learn how to ride scooters (the Red Bull Team) went to another practice range.

A co-worker suggested that even though I was taking the course to learn how to ride a scooter, I should just take the full motorcycle course, that way if I ever wanted to upgrade later I’d already be familiar with riding a motorcycle. It seemed to make sense to me. Halfway through the course I wanted to drop out. I felt really bad about being the one guy who was always the last, always the “screw-up” but I toughed it out. At the end of the course when it was time to take the exams I told my self “well someone has to fail and it’ll most likely be me”. I took the written test and aced it, no surprise there. However I was dreading the skills test. Again I told myself “someone has to fail” So I took the test completely messed up the double U-turn. However something one of the instructors said stuck with me. Since the double U-turn was to be executed within a rectangle she said “Think of the box like Vegas. What happens in the box stays in the box.” Since I knew I could only lose so many points in the box I decided to focus on passing the rest of the test. And to my amazement I actually passed the test. Not as high a score as the written test but enough to pass. Wow, they must have been really feeling generous that day. Whatever it was, I don’t care cause I got my endorsement.

So as soon as I get through paying for the shutters for my new place I’ll be looking seriously into buying a scooter for getting around West Seattle. Oh yeah guess what I finally bought a house. A townhouse in fact. But somehow that seems to pale in comparison to getting my motorcycle endorsement. Sometimes its the little things that count.