the brother visits

so this past weekend my brother, sarah (his gf), and their friend lindsey came to visit. needless to say. we had a fuckin great time. yes ricky, not just a great time but a fuckin great time. haha. my bro came in on thursday night while i was still real stressed out so we just chilled in and i went to bed. on friday ricky and sarah went skiing while i worked, yea thats fair. but it did rain on them so the skiing wasn't that great for them unfortunately. they picked me up from work, we checked out the microsoft store and visitor center, stopped home and then we headed out to dinner to the tap house grill. this place has 160 beers on tap. pretty sweet. we had dinner with lindsey's bro colin and their friend from home, another kyle, who now lives in seattle too so i'll prob be chillin with him again. we ended up all going to a bar called buckleys where we had a "few" drinks after which we headed to a place called dick's drive in. a great burger joint for drunk people, we grew furious once we waited in line, ordered, and then found out they didn't take cash. we assured them that we would never come back. after which we walked to the closest atm, got cash, and waited in line a mere 5 minutes later. colin probably had the comment of the night while we were eating, "gotta love having dick's in your mouth." haha thanks colin.  

saturday we went to see the famous fremont troll, then hit up pike place market, i introduced everyone to the amazing mac and cheese that is beecher's cheese, ricky and sarah bought a bunch of seafood to take home, we had lunch, and also picked up the paintings from dan. they came out real good, i was real happy with them. after that we went on a boat tour in the sound and got some sick views of the city and skyline. then we went on the adult version of the underground tour which is really just more talk about the sex, drugs, and corruption of early seattle but once again was pretty cool. then we went to check out the space needle and get some dinner and drinks. after a great time at the five point cafe we headed home.

the next day was pretty much just chillin and taking people to the airport. we did also check out snoqualmie falls which was nice to see again. and yea thats about it. pics coming next. peace.

the weekend of the jan 31st.

friday night i went out to a bar in Issaquah with my roommate and some of his friends. it was a good time, met some good new people and chilled there for a while. on the way home i had jack n the box for the first time ever. pretty standard terrible for you food but i won't lie, it was pretty good. saturday was a great day. met about 8 of the other interns down at pioneer square and went on an underground tour of seattle. if you don't know i'll explain the quick version of the story. 

seattle was built on tide flats so during twice a day during high tide the city would flood. in 1889 there was the great seattle fire which burned down the whole city. city decides they're going to regrade the hills around the city and use the dirt to raise the tide flats. businesses don't want to wait so they build their buildings right away. city starts bringing in the dirt and raises the roads anywhere from 12 to 30 feet in some spots so all of a sudden first floors of buildings became basements. once the city had enough money to finish off the roads and bring the sidewalks to the walls of the buildings, under the new sidewalks stayed hollow so there is now still the hollow sidewalks between the roads and buildings creating an underground. yea so there. thats about it. look it up if you want more info. it is pretty cool. also got to learn how badass seattle was back in the day. started really because of the gold rush, prostitution drugs and corruption was everywhere. seattle's first major was so badass he was open up a lawsuit as a citizen and then settle with himself the next day as the major for loads of money. what a great guy.  

after that we went to chinatown a dim sum lunch. it was interesting to say the least but a couple of the interns were asian which was very helpful. they just took care of everything for us and thankfully didn't try to get us anything too crazy and they stayed honest with us about what things were. it was chinese new year so the festival was going on while we were there. pretty cool to see some of the stuff but we were real hungry so basically just went to eat.

after lunch we went to pike place market for a while where i found the most amazing mac and cheese in the world. no joke dude. it is at a cheese factory place called beecher's cheese. i don't know what else to tell you other than you need to try it and pretty much everything they sell there is amazing. also while at pike place i ended up buying two paintings from a spray paint artist named Dan. real chill dude who is wicked talented. i talked to him for a while and i might even get a chance for him to teach me some things on how to do it. one painting was for me and one was a birthday present for my bro. ill put pics of them up later.

that was pretty much the day. that night i went to that shim show. im telling you...... check them out. sunday was the super bowl. we had some people over to our house and cooked a ton of food. i got hammered and woke up in the living room at like midnight. the next day at work SUCKED.

pike place public market

a pretty awesome farmers market

the flying fish area

puget sound

1st starbucks

first seattle weekend

after work on friday i came home and chilled for a bit after which i ended up being lame as i got real tired so i just stayed in and caught up on some sleep. woke up on saturday early enough to catch the end of the syracuse spanking of notre dame which was a nice thing to wake up to. i watched a little bit more bball and then decided to head downtown and see what that was all about. figured i would walk around a little bit and then find a sports bar to watch the pitt - louisville game. seattle's downtown is really quite cool. its very clean, people are great, and has a lot of nice shops and restaurants. all the types of stores that im into. i passed by a patagonia store but figured it was a good idea not to go into it as i didn't quite feel like spending 400 dollars right then. they've got a good bus system and also a monorail but every rips on it for some reason? the downtown is also right on the puget sound which is gorgeous and you can see the overwhelming silhouette of mt. rainier in the distance. i ended up walking into a restaurant bar called floyd's place which apparently is pretty well known for their bbq. the bartender here was awesome. if you don't know seattle has a huge micro brew community and collection of local beers, one of the biggest if not the biggest in the country. so he had me sample and try a bunch of local beers all of which were pretty damn great. mac and jacks african amber is probably my new favorite beer. but so anyways after talking to him for a while and watching most of the pitt - louisville game i mentioned to him that i was going to have to head home so i could catch the sabres game. to which he responded "well thats hockey right? you know we have the hockey package here?" jackpot. so needless to say i stayed and watched the game there. another great sabres win over my old city of raleigh which sucks. the game was fun, a guy by the name of quinn who was a cool dude had me teach him most of the rules of hockey and he definitely left as a new hockey fan and hopefully a sabres fan at that so thats good. so after a little while the bartenders changed and a hawaiian dude started working. after talking to him for awhile i mentioned that i was going to try and go to the pepper concert later that night and asked if he knew them because they are from the big island of hawaii. he started laughing and was like yea i know them, turns out he went to highschool with all of them and his mother even taught most of the band members in school. so that was pretty sweet. i also mentioned to him that i was thinking about moving to hawaii for a month or two after my job here in seattle ends in july and his only warning for me was to be careful because i was probably going to go there and never end up leaving. haha. i guess worst things could happen right? 

after a little while i headed down to the showbox where the pepper show was, my roommate was going to come with but we found out it was sold out so it wasn't worth him trying to come into the city without a ticket but since i was there i figured why not try to scalp a cheap ticket or something. when i got there the line was down and around like 2 blocks just to get in since the doors hadn't opened and scalpers were asking for $80 for a $20 ticket so i said fuck it and went into the bar called the green room directly next to it, actually its tied into the showbox. but anyways so i walk in figuring that ill wait til everyone goes in then maybe the scalpers will lower their prices. im looking around the bar and there aren't that many open seats but i see this one guy at the end of the bar by himself with an extra chair next to him. so i asked if i could use it and he was like oh yea man go ahead. so i sit down, order a beer, and i notice the guy is writing on a napkin and looked semi familiar. so the more i thought about it, i was realizing that it was classic musician, sitting at a bar writing lyrics on a napkin. i asked him if he was in a band to which he laughed and said that he was. i then realized as was like oh you're in pepper aren't you. he introduced himself and sure enough it was Kaleo of pepper. we talked a little bit about boston to which he said "dude! i fucking love that city!" and he talked some about performing there and how he always has such a good time there. then we talked about the bartender from before who went to school with him and stuff. it was pretty cool. he was a real chill dude. after a few he had to head back stage so he peaced out. i was going to ask him if he could hook me up with a way to get into the show but i didn't want to be that dude after having a solid convo with him so i didn't. probably should have but whatever. 

but now comes the reason why i officially can't stand and loath scumbag scalpers. when i came out they were all still asking for 80 and there were other scalpers who would keep walking around asking if people had extra tickets to try and buy them before we could and then sell it to us for a higher price. while waiting right outside the door hoping someone normal would come along with an extra ticket, a girl did. she mentioned she had an extra and as i went up to her to talk to her. one of the scalpers came up, ripped the ticket out of her hand and just threw 40 bucks at her and walked away. her and i both tried to stop him but he just said nope its been sold and walked away. a few minutes later he came back to try and keep doing the same thing. i just keep yelling very nice complements at him. but then to make them even worst a little while later this girl came up to her two friends who were next to me pretty much in tears because she was suppose to have all their tickets but they were gone, why? because one of the scalpers grabbed her ass when she walked by, but it was because she had the tickets in her back pocket and they stole them from her. ughhh i dont hate much if anything in this world but im pretty sure i hate those scalpers from that night. scumbags. and needless to say i didn't get to go to the show but still cool meeting Kaleo and chillin at floyds place.

sunday was a pretty solid day. roommate kyle and i went down pike place public market where i was going to meet up with a bunch of other microsoft interns to hang for the day. so we went there and met up with them, some cool kids, most were from australia but there was also two from vancouver. we hung out at the market for awhile, saw the throwing of the fish, went to the first ever starbucks, grabbed some lunch, and then headed to the experience music project. this place was sick. its basically a museum for music and all about ways to express and experience music. there were amazing exhibits on jimi hendrix, the grunge movement, guitars, and a bunch of other stuff. they also had an area where you could play different instruments and jam out. so that was real cool and i got two sick flags there, one of led zeppelin and one of jimi h. after that kyle and i peaced off home to watch the steelers ravens game and grill some dinner. did that, chilled and now im heading to bed. tomorrow is my birthday but prob won't be anything special as i have work and then have more work to do when i get home for my online english class. sweeeeeeet.