errands, friends, bbq, golf & more

I finally felt like having a long weekend, was truly a long weekend off of work. Having July 4th on a Friday vs Saturday or Sunday really helps to get the "festivities" out of the way and still have a couple of days to recoup and get things done.

Thursday
Rick and I started the weekend a little early by meeting our friends Ashley and Gerry down in Pioneer Square to check out First Thursday -- an art walk in the historic district. It's such a rare occasion to make it to Seattle on a week night, so getting to the art walk on a Thursday evening is usually not in the cards for us. We didn't really spend much time windows shopping, but instead opted to grab some dinner at a quaint Italian restaurant and then head over to the Owl & Thistle for a drink and listen to an Irish punk band. The band was terrible, and I was getting tired, so we called it an evening and headed home.

Friday
We had a packed agenda for Friday. In the morning, we were scheduled to meet up with Kyong (my travel buddy for South East Asia in November) and Rick was going to teach her golf. Of course I didn't consider that driving ranges would be closed in honor of the holiday, so after a few false starts at a couple of closed driving ranges, we found a golf course close by that was open. Rick instructed Kyong, and I hit balls off the mat. We capped off the lesson with a long conversation-filled lunch.

The long lunch ran over and so we were running quite late for a July 4th BBQ that we'd be invited to. I'd planned to be there between 1-2 pm and after making time to go home and get cleaned up, we didn't arrive until 3:30 pm. Sadly, I missed one of my friends who we'd planned to see there. They'd left just 20 minutes before we arrived. Ah, best laid plans. Even though we didn't know many people, we had a nice time -- especially since they hired a band Panda Conspiracy to play.

Came home around 6 pm in time to eat dinner and watch Borat (finally), and then Rick had a great idea for watching the fireworks. We took the Harley up to the Newcastle golf course which overlooks the valley. Little did we know that, not hundreds, but what seemed like thousands of other people had the same idea. It was packed! Good thing we could maneuver easily on the cycle. It was spectacular to see the fireworks from that vantage point. Across the valley and Puget Sound you could see tons of firework shows in the distance. I tried to capture it all on the video camera, but lighting didn't really do it justice.

Saturday
A day to catch up -- laundry, oil change, Costco, emissions test for my car. Since the dogs had me up at the crack of dawn, I was incredibly productive. Ever so much, that I got a chance to head over to Redheadmomma's house for a lovely afternoon visit with her and her family.

Sunday
Rick and some of his friends had a tee time to play at Chambers Bay, a relatively new Links golf course that opened up just a year ago and will be hosting the US Open in 2015, and the Amateur Open in 2010. Links is a course after the Scottish style golf courses of rolling hills, not much for trees and water lining the edge of the course. Rick asked me if I wanted to go along, and since I didn't have anything else really pressing, I thought it might be a fun afternoon to walk along with them. Amazing course! I took a ton of video and pictures, and boy did I get a work out. Up the hill, down the hill. All in all, we walked almost 10 miles by the time we completed the 18th hole. So with that, I was exhausted and ready to be home in bed by 11 pm.

And with that, I'm back to the grind...