car dancing

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Mr. Galore plays a mean air violin.

Are You Fly?

I'm sorry, but this, this, and this are absolutely hilarious. Quite possibly my favorite article ever pulls it all together.

Thanks to the Grist List, I've been randomly laughing about them for weeks.

how we spent our christmas vacation

Father-in-Law and Mother-in-Law Galore came up from Oregon, bringing with them a new Christmas tree to keep Al company.

They were followed shortly by Sister-in-Law Galore, Brother-in-Law Galore, and Niece Galore from Michigan. We spent the first part of the week in Seattle, then headed down to Oregon for a few days.

Niece Galore will be one year old in two weeks. We hadn't seen her since August. She's delightful.

This is what she spent most of her time doing:




Along with quite a bit of this:




It was wonderful to all spend time together.


We also spent time with Mom Galore, Dad Galore, and Brother Galore -- but we do that all the time. It was still lovely though, and Mom and Dad Galore had a very festive (coat) tree.








A merry belated Christmas to our multitudes of blog readers!

wine glass update

We have now broken another of our wine glasses.

Four down (in 16.5 months), two to go!

i may have a drinking problem

One of my coworkers recently departed from my organization. Minutes before he left for good, he sent an email to the entire staff summarizing his impressions of everyone in the office. Awkward -- but hilarious. What he said about me: "[Mrs. Galore] drinks 6 glasses of water from the same green glass. 3 before noon, 3 after noon. She is also a perfect speller, sits up perfectly straight, and could kick the *&^$ out of anybody!”

I mention this because it is awesome, but also because today, the dishwasher hadn’t been run so my favorite green glass was dirty and I was forced to drink out of a jar instead. At 11:45, when I was coming back to my desk with my second refill, I happened to notice that the jar had the number of ounces marked on the side. Thus did I realize that I had drunk 40 ounces of water before noon.

By the end of the day, I had downed six more glasses, for a grand total of 160 ounces. (There are 128 ounces in a gallon, for the curious.) And that doesn’t count what I drank at the gym – I joined a gym! – and with dinner.

I hear that the conventional wisdom that you should drink six 8-ounce glasses of water per day has been recently debunked, but nonetheless: Does anyone happen to know the symptoms of overhydration? Do they include persistent sleepiness, a penchant for naming inanimate objects, and a hopeless inability to ever bring homemade dishes to potlucks?

Also, I have no idea where my coworker got the idea that I can kick the so-called *&^$ out of anybody. Of course it’s true, but I thought I kept it pretty well hidden.

reasons i love ballard, #2180

We just did all of our Christmas shopping in a 3.5-hour time period in a 1-mile radius, on foot. Plus we ran into the Parents Galore and they bought us dinner. Seriously, Ballard is great. You should try it sometime.

meet our neighbor

On Thursday night we arrived home from a white elephant gift exchange (in which Mr. Galore's attempts to rid our household of his Hercules soundtrack were foiled when it was traded back to Mrs. Galore at the end) to find this raccoon hanging out on the fence a few feet from our door.

Sorry about the picture quality. It was dark.

After five minutes or so, the raccoon returned to the yard of our gun-toting 96-year-old neighbor.

In other news, it should be clarified that Al was not named after Mr. Gore, but was so named for being an Alberta Spruce. That differentiates Al from Phil, our philodendron.

mac daddy

Friend Abbe needed help with her computer, allowing Mr. Galore this moment of utopia:

Abbe, it should be noted, also took the holiday-card-worthy picture of the Galores and Al, below. She has a shining future in photography, no doubt.

o christmas tree, o christmas tree

Meet Al. Al is our Christmas tree.



Al is quite wee, but really -- how lovely are his branches?

snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before:

After:



It's still coming down and down and down and down. It's supposed to snow 2 inches today, then be 50 degrees tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Father-in-law Galore

Here's to an amazing person and a pretty darn good half-marathoner:

discovery park

Friend in town + long weekend + sunny days = hooray!

We went to Discovery Park on Saturday.


Dr. Mandy climbed the Ugly Tree.


Three-fifths of the San Francisco housemates were there.


Good times.

white and nerdy

Unfortunately, on the bus home after our trip to Bainbridge, a terrible incident befell Andrew:



Or did it happen this way?

good job, Warshington

We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island with Dr. Mandy:


Hi, Dr. Mandy!

We were there at sunset:





Lovely. And the scenery wasn't bad either.

you know you're a menno-nerd when ...

... your night out with friends includes drinking quite a bit of wine, then searching Wikipedia for what year Martin Luther nailed (mailed?) his theses to the door.

Band of Horses

We saw Band of Horses at the Showbox Tuesday evening. It was fantastic. They have such a high density of great songs. If you've not heard them, the following is one of their more radio friendly songs from their latest album, Cease to Begin.



Some random highlights/comments from the show include:

• Ben Bridwell playing a tambourine with a grim reaper-like fake axe
• A couple of amazing cover songs
• Koby Teeth, the name used by Bridwell to refer to Toby Keith
  
• A random couple in front of us that had confused the show for their private make-out room. Baseball!

I only wished they had played St. Augustine, which is a favorite of mine.

bright pink salad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh dear

Mrs. Galore, in what is unfortunately not an unusual lapse in common sense, has ordered not the desired six total onions in this week's vegetable delivery box, but six two-pound bags of onions.

Twelve pounds of onions makes a very, very heavy vegetable box, and presents the obvious dilemma: What the hell does a two-person family do with so many freakin' onions??

SYNTHAR revisited

As promised, I wanted to write a bit more about my impressions on the upcoming Synthar album. I listened to it almost all day today to get it into my head (sorry, twin that shares an office with me). Synthar is definitely programmer-approved.

I suppose I should proceed by stating that I think writing about music is a tad ridiculous. It's the same for food. Sorry, music and food critics. These things are just personal preferences.

With that said, I'm a really big fan of the Synthar album (but you should buy it and give it a listen for yerselves). Nice beard, by the way Best :)

A few random thoughts:

• Beating Drum - love the thick texture, dissonance, and base line on this one, especially right after the first chorus
• New City - Love the last 2 minutes "It's a full time job to find work" -- again, the texture is great
• The Robots Among Us - Awesome. Best song on the album.
• Small Coastal Towns is my favorite lyrically (that includes the words and vocal melodies/harmonies)
• Similar comment about texture and dissonance (as with Beating Drum) on Hurricanes -- can you tell a fluffy melody is not my thing?
• Stabbed by an Unseen Blade is incredibly clever lyrically
• Eyes Shut is a simple and pleasant close to the album with some clever percussion going on in parts
  

If I were pressed to give a criticism, it would be that I'm not crazy about the first song. The "yeah" and pop/bubblegum chord progression just doesn't do it for me.

All in all, it's a great album and very worthy of purchase, in my opinion. I hope to see Synthar live one day in Seattle, or even better, Ballard.

SYNTHAR

Beast, a friend and former housemate of mine, is in the band SYNTHAR. They're releasing an album, Evenings & Weekends, in self-produced, indie-style. I predict that it is going to rock, which is why I'm enthusiastically downloading an advanced copy as I type. It pays to have a friend or two these days...

I will be blogging about my impressions soon. In the meantime, if you want to have any sort of online dating appeal, you'll go friend them.

while in pennsylvania ...

... someone who knows I'm a vegetarian served me a dish with meat in it and didn't tell me until after I had eaten it, it was insinuated to me that environmentalists are affiliated with Scientologists, and I had this conversation twice:

Me: I work for an environmental website.

Other person: So global warming is the big thing, huh?

Me: Yep, global warming is a big deal these days.

Other person: But of course it isn't being caused by humans.

On the plus side, I saw sheep, chickens, a peacock, bears, an emu, llamas, goats, cows, and horses. It was a very successful trip, farm-animal-wise.

How do you like them apples ... galore

Mrs. Galore says that I should keep my nerdy posts to a minimum. I don't think it'll be too trying, since I always have a good outlet over here. Perhaps I am already pushing the boundaries, but couldn't resist mentioning the purchase of this. A huge thanks goes out to Mother-in-Law Galore for her impressive role in the plot.

wining and dining

The scene: The Galores are entertaining guests. Mulled wine is being imbibed. Guest Susan wonders if she can fake mulled wine by pouring room temperature red wine over leftover mulling spices, then heating it in the microwave. She commences to try. The attempt appears successful -- until Guest Erik points out that her glass now has a crack in it. The Galores attempt to reassure her that it's fine, despite calculating inwardly the two wine glasses Mrs. Galore has broken within the last month. Suddenly -- revelation! It's not a crack! It's a hair! Hilarity ensues.

Time passes. Guests leave.

Mr. Galore, cleaning up, hits a wine glass off the counter with his elbow, and it shatters on the floor.

reasons i love ballard, #2179

I was at the bus stop a few mornings ago with my liberal heart on my sleeve -- or on my bag rather, in the form of my various crazy-hippie pins: "Hate is not a family value," "Health care is a human right," "Reading is sexy," etc. And a woman came up and gave me a pin that says "Wage peace." Yay!

reasons i love ballard, #2178

This morning (if noon counts as morning), Mr. Galore and I took a brief walk on an unusually warm day to a new Ballard cafe that we hadn't yet been to. Then we took our lattes and pastries and sat on the benches in the little park by the bell tower, and six men came and stood in the bell tower and sang a song. Also we saw two people we knew.

Good job, Ballard.

recent conversation

"What's with the lowercasing of the titles and the uppercasing of the posts?" -- Mr. Galore

last names galore!

Galores: h/t Brendan.