Vortex

Eve was in the rock ballet Vortex as a part of Artown. I went both nights and had a lot of fun.


This was the first ballet I'd ever been to. And was one of the more non-traditional. The dancers were great, but I really liked the more classic pieces. Eve was in a trio that was my favorite of the entire show.




After the second night we went out to an after party and then to five star. There were a few weird looks at the girls with their makeup but I thought it was fun. More people should go out to bars looking like that.

Olympia

From San Diego, I headed to Olympia for an extended training.



I was in Olympia for three days and really like the town. I was surprised when I got there that so many people were sitting on chairs outside, I knew it meant fireworks. I checked in and they said fireworks started at 10. Fortunately my room overlooked the entire fair and I got fun shots of the fireworks.


Walking around town there were a lot of nice pictures too. The cold wet climate felt great.




The flight back was a tour of the major mountains of the cascades. I don't know why more people don't look out the window when they fly.


Mt. Rainier

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Hood

San Diego

I went to San Diego for the ESRI GIS conference and stayed for the weekend to hang out with Jeremy, Tony, Nicole and Amanda.


The conference was pretty cool. They said there was about 12,000 people there representing 154 countries. It's kind of amazing some people come from so far away when it was only an hour and a half flight for me. When I landed it was the final game of the world cup, so I hung out in the airport bar to watch the game.



There were lots of great presentations and displays. Abu Dhabi had a really large presentation with a huge screen tv with a model of the city. It was pretty impressive. I worked our booth for a couple hours one day and meet people from Iraq, Cyprus, Greece, Sweeden to name a few. Someone measured the building at a mile long and figure each person walks about 5 miles a day while there. It was exhausting and then there was the going out at night.




Friday, Tony picked me up and we went to a bar-b-q at Jeremy's. Sadly no pictures. The next day Jeremy and I hung out while Nicole was at a bacholrette party. We had a good lazy morning, got burritos and went to the beach. He only lives two blocks away which is pretty amazing. In the afternoon, Tony and Amanda came back and we went back to the beach to throw the frisbee some more. From there we stopped by a happy hour and then a delicious pizza place. All in two blocks from Jeremy's



That night Jeremy, Nicole and I went on a bar crawl around there house. It was a lot of fun and we found some fun drink specials. If you couldn't guess, it was a bit of an early night after such a long day.



Sunday, Amanda and Tony had all of us over for brunch and made blueberry pancakes with bacon and eggs. It was delicious and a great way to hang out with old friends. Eventually I had to leave and headed to Olympia for a training.

Pops in the Park

Eve works for the Pioneer center in town which is the local theater. They bought a table at the Pops in the Park fundraiser for the symphony.





The theme for the table was the Pioneer Center, building. It was a lot of fun hanging out and eating and the music was great. They ended the show with fireworks but we were a little close to enjoy them.







Afterwards we did a little bar hopping...

4th of July

I had a very busy 4th of July!





First I left on Friday and headed out to Quincy for the High Sierra Music Festival. I heard it was the best festival so I had to check it out. We got there Friday afternoon and set up camp. We missed the rush so had to stay in the annex. It wasn't that bad because we had some entertaining neighbors and room to camp in.





After we pitched camp, we went and saw the Avett Brothers that were great, then we took a tour of the vendors. I Have to say Avatar imports was the craziest name.




There was this one band that was playing on top of an RV. They were pretty good for being unaffiliated. There were some great stilt costumes. I ran into Hayes and didn't know he'd be there. Then we went back and watched Widespread Panic. That night we got tickets for the late show which was Beats Antique which Eve really liked and the Marchforth Marching Band. It was a long and great night.








The next day we ran some errands and then caught the end of BLVD, my favorite discovery of the weekend. We went over and saw Trombone Shorty which was great and the headliner was the Black Crows. I thought they were good, but tried to fit a 45 minute show into 2 hours, so there was a lot of solos and other time fillers. Even and I laid down in the grass and looked for satellites.





So Sunday was the 4th and we needed to leave. We took the long way back and passed through Nevada City. They were having a quaint 4th of July festivities. We couldn't stay around for the parade, but we did get a hot dog and ice cream.




For the evening of the 4th we had a bar-b-q at Eve's house which has a great view of the valley and the fireworks from the nugget. It was a great view.





Monday was the holiday so we headed up to Tahoe. Eve dropped me off at Tahoe meadows and I hiked the 13 miles to sand harbor where she was meeting friends on the beach. It was such a great day I ran most of the way, it was hard not to. And wrapped up perfectly at Sand Harbor.