Unemployment

As of this afternoon, I am unemployed (at least until Tuesday morning)!! After 5 long years of working for OfficeMax, I am finally moving on. Monday morning I will be flying down to Phoenix to start training for my new job as a beer manager for Total Wine and More. While this is still a retail job, I will now be spending my days talking and selling beer rather than office supplies! And since the liquor industry is basically new to the state of Washington, I am really excited about the possibilities associated with this new move!

For the next four weeks I will be training in Arizona. Luckily with Krystal still on maternity leave, we are all going down together. It isn’t going to be easy leaving our lives in Seattle for a month (not to mention our dogs) but we are really looking forward to seeing our family down there and giving Taylor more time with her grandparents!

I will continue to work on my social media company, Hackmeister Marketing but in all honesty, I am really looking forward to actually enjoying my day job!

 

5 Weeks

I can’t believe Taylor is now 5 weeks old! I promise to backfill the blog with stories from the last month and a half of our lives, but I figured it would be easier to give a current update and then fill in the rest later.

Today we had two different doctor’s appointments. The first was a 5 week check up with her regular doctor, who was amazed at how quickly Taylor was growing. She is now 6lbs 12oz and is above the 50th percentile in height and weight for her gestational age! She also had a hearing test that she passed with flying colors.

Now we are just scrambling to get ready for our big trip to Arizona. I am starting a new job that will require me to train in Phoenix for four weeks, so the three of us are flying out Monday! It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Seattle, and the dogs, for a month. But being away from Krystal and Taylor for a month really wasn’t an option and it will be great to see our families there and give them some time with Taylor!! 

Again, I promise to update this blog more, I should have more time with all the babysitters we’ll have in Phoenix! 

Thank you so much for all the love and support we have received from everyone during the last several weeks. It hasn’t gone according to plan at all, but we couldn’t be happier with our little girl and the wonderful group of people she has in her life!! 

Travel Lust

I have been hard at work this Sunday morning, making sure that all the work I normally do over the span of a week is done, prepped and ready to go by Thursday. Why am I doing this? Because I am leaving town for Memorial Day weekend!! Going through the prep of leaving town got me thinking about how much traveling I have been doing lately. So far in 2012 I’ve been down to Phoenix twice, New York, Vancouver several times and Whistler. For someone who loves to travel, but doen’t get to as much as I would like, this has a great stretch of mobility.

As long as Krystal and I have been together we have found new places to visit and trips to take. I guess I am getting old, but I am starting to think about how I travel, and what I get out of all of this travel. It is not cheap, but I would not give it up for the world. I do need to get more out of my investment though. I am realizing how few pictures I take when I am on vacation. I am great at getting pictures of buildings and street scenes, but I can be on a weeklong trip and return home without ever getting a picture with me in the frame. I am also great about researching local hotspots and knowing the local geography and history, but I am horrible at actually talking to and meeting people in the places I visit. I resolve here and now to fix these flaws.

Soon, my traveling life will dramatically change. Taking off for a weekend in Vancouver is simple now, but by adding a baby to the mix- I am sure more planning will be required. The necessary logistical changes should be a good reminder for the other alterations I need to make to my traveling experience.

For now, I am researching places to go in San Francisco, knowing all well that my sister already has a plan of action for us. I am also thinking of good stories to blog about it the future. Given recent news, I think the next travel blog will be about the time I saw Donner Summer and Chaka Khan perform live in NYC….that’s a great story.

 

Another Blog About Why My Wife Is Awesome

So as most of you now know, Krystal and I are soon going to be parents!! We are both very excited and have been blown away by all the support and well wishes we have received since making the big announcement. Of course, this means I get to start another blog- you can follow Hackmeisters In Seattle to keep up to date with our adventures in pregnancy and parenthood! All being said, this post is not about the baby, it is about how incredibly cool my wife is and how she absolutely nailed one of the biggest moments in our lives.

First of all, most of you know that Krystal and I have been pretty vocal about never having children. We have been together since 1998 and have always agreed on this point. So when we decided, mutually, that we had changed our minds- it was a BIG deal. There are probably many reasons for this change of heart- the move to Seattle and the happiness that has brought, the relative financial security we have established, the inevitable desire to reproduce that comes with age…but probably the biggest change has been watching our close friends enter parenthood and have a great time doing so. Billy, Julie, Tyler, Danielle, Garret, Katie, Raf and Katy- THANK YOU!

So, we decided that we wanted a baby. It was now just a matter of time….and then I left town.

As some of you know (or have read about), every year my Dad and I pick a different city to meet in and go to a hockey game. We have been to Denver for a Coyotes game and have seen the Canucks play in Chicago, Boston, Minnesota and this year, New Jersey. I was very excited about this trip, Krystal wasn’t thrilled about missing a Canucks game or about missing a trip to New York City, but all was well. And then, the morning before I left for Phoenix to meet up with my Dad, Krystal casually mentions that there is a possibility she is pregnant. We had only been trying for a month or two, so this came as a pretty good shock! Of course I was ready to run out and buy any and all at-home pregnancy tests available, but Krystal was convinced that it was too early and that if nothing changed, we would test when I got home the next week. So off I went on a trip I had been planning for months, with the idea of Krystal possibly being pregnant hanging over my head. Dad and I had a great time, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the huge, life changing event that could possibly be happening back in Seattle.

Of course this means that Krystal was still home in Seattle, with the same thoughts, but by herself. And after a few days, the pressure got to her and she decided to test. Of course, the test was positive- she was pregnant!! And, being the amazing person she is, she set out to tell me in the best way possible.

When I got off the plane in Seattle, completely nerve wrack by this point, the plan was for me to take the light rail downtown and meet Krystal for lunch. When I got to her office, she showed me her new cubicle and we decided where to go to lunch. Never did she give me any indication that she had big news for me. When we got to the restaurant, we were seated and Krystal, very casually takes off her jacket to reveal….

This wasn’t taken that day, I have made her wear the shirt a few times since

The greatest shirt ever!! I nearly swallowed my tongue at this point, but that is when my fatherhood experience began. Thank you Danielle for being there for Krystal when she found out, and for holding on to the shirt we got you for last year’s Canucks playoff run. Without you, this would be a much less interesting story!

Coming Home

I am writing this from Newark Airport, heading home after a weekend trip to New York and New Jersey with my dad. This was my first trip back to “the city” since the spring of 2001- so needless to say, a lot has changed.

I will never forget my first trip to NYC, I was absolutely awed by the city. Having grown up in small town Idaho and then living in Phoenix, I had never seen a city like this before. While my parents and sister did some of the more common tourist sites, I wanted nothing more that to wander the streets of midtown Manhattan, ride the subway and get lost in Central Park. That trip started my obsession with population density, public transportation and getting out of Phoenix ASAP- I was in love!

So when it came time to pick the city for our annual hockey road trip, I was thrilled when my dad suggested New Jersey. A good hockey city, what should be a good game, and a chance to get back to Manhattan.

The trip was a lot of fun. Our connection out of Chicago was a little delayed, but we got to Newark in plenty of time to check into the hotel and walk over to the Prudential Center, which is an amazing hockey building. We got a lot of weird looks, and a few jeers, from Devils fans- but mostly they were just surprised to see us and the other 150-200 Canucks fans in New Jersey. After the Canucks won, it was a very satisfying walk back to our hotel.

The next day, we were up early and on the first train out of New Jersey and into New York. We hit the streets hard and covered a lot of ground, walking through neighborhoods that I have been fantasizing about for 10+ years. But it was different then I remembered. The streets weren’t as busy or small as I remembered. The people weren’t as otherworldly cool and fascinating. New York is still an incredible city- but now it seemed like a real place, not a dream.

After a few hours, I realized that part of the change was of course the natural passage of time, but more was that while I loved being in New York- I no longer longed to live there. It is a wonderful feeling knowing that I now live in a place I love and belong. While I may have the occasional urge to fill out that immigration paperwork to move up to Vancouver, I am a Seattleite and can’t imagine ever wanting to leave. For someone who spent most of my life planning and scheming for a way out of where I was, this is quite an accomplishment.

So, thanks Seattle for being the city that has embraced me and made me feel at home! I’m still in Newark, but I will be back soon!

Our Olympic Adventure – The First of Many Tales

Since I am doing more social media blogging for Hackmeister Marketing, this blog is going to get a little more personal. To that end, I figure it is time to start sharing some of my favorite stories of my limited experiences in this world. Today’s gem from my past is from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Krystal won tickets to the Woman’s snowboarding halfpipe event from her company’s Christmas party a few months earlier. We were ecstatic for the chance to be in the middle of the biggest event ever to take place in our other favorite city so we immediately started making plans. Finding a place to stay in Vancouver was a challenge, we even considered staying in Victoria and taking the ferry to Vancouver each day we’d be up there. Luckily we were able to track down a very nice couple who had been running basically a youth hostel out of their home in North Van. That part of the story warrants its own blog post, so stay tuned for more adventures in non-traditional Canadian accommodations.

We drove up the day before the event and headed downtown to be part of the spectacle. It was far from our first time in Vancouver, but the city had been transformed. There were people everywhere and there was an energy in the city that was amazing to be apart of. We walked for a few hours, taking in different sites and just enjoying life at the Olympics. And, of course, we hunted for hockey tickets.

This was early on in the games, so the hockey tournament was still in the round robin stages. There were men’s games all day, but no headline grabbing match-ups. That being said, this was Olympic men’s hockey, in Canada, so everything had been sold out for months. We were a few hours away from the start of team Sweden’s first game of the tournament and the opportunity to watch the Sedin twins play at home was too good to pass up.

After many failed attempts to find “affordable” tickets through official ticket brokers, we descended into scalper hell to try our luck. To be clear, I hate this. I do not like haggling, bargaining or any of it. I also have the world’s worst “poker face”- anyone within 8 blocks knew I would probably give my left arm for two nosebleed tickets. Luckily Krystal is GREAT at this, so I turned her loose on the poor unsuspecting scalpers, confident she would score us a deal and we’d be on our way to the game. And after a few broken deals, there we were- with two well inspected, unquestionably authentic, lower level tickets for the game. Since we were less than an hour away from start of the game, she had even negotiated to pay face value for the tickets. What a deal!!

We handed over our cash to the guy and headed off for the arena. About half way there, I think to myself- “I wonder if we’re on a aisle or in the middle”. I look down at the tickets and the one on top is for seat 3. No problem, in some sections that is an aisle seat. I rotate the tickets in my hand, keeping the death grip I’ve had on them since we bought them. I’m in seat 3 and Krystal is in…….seat 3?!?!? I stop dead in my tracks and stare dumbfounded at the tickets. Then I start to hyperventilate. I feel sick to my stomach and have a hard time staying upright. What are we going to do?!? Krystal rips the tickets from my hands and for the 5th time in the last 20 minutes she inspects the tickets. The paper is right, the printing is right, the official Olympic hologram is right. What is happening? We soon realize that one ticket is the original and the other is an official reprint. As I am trying to practice my speech to the ticket takers, convincing them to just let Krystal sit on my lap during the game, my 5’2″ wife storms off in search of our scalper. It takes a second, but I realize what she is doing and run to catch up to her.

I am shocked to see our scalper still standing on the block we left him. He still has tickets to sell and is obviously surprised to see us walking back up to him. In an intelligent move on his part, he ignores Krystal and asks me “What’s up?” “You tell me- these are for the same seats” I manage to spit out. To this day, I don’t know if this next part is truth or a well executed plan, but he takes the tickets from my hand and furiously inspects the tickets he has just sold us. After a few seconds, almost under his breath, he says “I got screwed”.

At this point it is obvious that our transaction is not business as usual so a few other scalpers are now surrounding us on the street. One of them is trying to convince us to go to the arena and tell them what happened and they will just let us in. Krystal is having none of that. She demands our money back. Our scalper hems and haws, but after a few tense minutes of debate with us and the other scalpers- HE ACTUALLY GIVES US BACK OUR MONEY!!

We snatch our money from his hands, offer a quick thank you and get the hell out of there! Krystal is ready to try her luck again with another scalper, but we are minutes from puck drop and I am fried. We end up walking a mile or so to Granville Island and watch the game from a bar, an experience that also warrants a blog post). The next day we would finally witness our first live Olympic event at Cypress Mountain.

The moral of my story, do not mess with my wife! And, whenever possible, just buy tickets from the box office.

Why I love Seattle

Life in Seattle and the greater Pacific Northwest is finally getting back to normal after a week of snow, ice and general confusion. Many commentators around the country have mocked our region for being unable to cope with winter weather (LA Times- I’m looking at you), but I am actually quite pleased with how our city and our people got through the storm. We don’t get much snow and ice here, and we are topographically challenged when it comes to winter- but we have pretty much figured that out and dealt with it.

Just before Thanksgiving 2010 the city was hit with a sudden blast of snow and ice. The storm hit during the early afternoon and left major bridges and freeways in the area a sheet of black ice. Most people found themselves trapped in horrific traffic trying to get home. City busses were stuck for hours on crowded streets and cars slid around like toys. Personally, I was driving back from Vancouver, BC when the storm started. After hours inching down I-5, then slipping and sliding across north Seattle- I eventually found myself trying to get over a hill in Fremont that my car would not be able to climb and decided to slide backwards onto a residential street, park and walk the remaining 2.5 miles home. The next couple of days in the city were spent sharing horror stories of hellacious commutes and near death experiences. The city was shut down for a day while people complained about the lack of response and all the canceled bus routes.

This winter’s storm was actually much larger than the previous one, but the forecast was much better and we were actually well prepared. There was even a lot of chatter on Twitter from people who were doubting the doomsday predictions from local meteorologist. When the snow starting falling in Seattle, people were ready. We had already decided we weren’t going to work, we had gone out and stocked up on food, supplies and wine to get through a couple of days at home, and all but the most dedicated simply settled in for a well deserved mid-week vacation. With most people at home, the few brave drivers and busses on the road were able to move about fairly easily.

Walking the streets of my neighborhood during the snow days, people were happy, friendly and willing to help each other out. Sure the city was basically shut down, but we were happy and even going out of our way to support the local business that were actually able to open. While the outside media was showing pictures of downed power lines and sliding cars, most Seattleites were happily snowbound and chatting with their neighbors on the street (or cross country skiing down their block).

From the outside, it may look like Seattle can’t deal with winter weather, but from my perspective on the inside- snow brings out the best in our city. We have our priorities straight- we will stay home when it just makes more sense to do so, and we will go out of our way to help each other out when needed. Our midwestern friends may brag about their ability to drive through twice as much snow, but we’ll just smile and silently question why anyone would try to prove their driving abilities just to give up a perfectly good snow day.