Author: James

Travel

Lavender Festival!

Every year people attend the Tulip Festival.  This year, olivetheotherreindeer suggested we try something different, such as going to the Lavender Festival at Sequim, which lasts only one weekend!

To get to Sequim, we had to take the ferry across the Puget Sound.

When I was about to take pictures of the guys, the announcement came for people to return to their vehicles.  Bummer!

The first farm we went to was called Purple Haze…

Erick and Jeffrey started by trying out some local delicacy, like the Lavender Virgin Margarita…

Jeffrey immediately gave it the thumbs down.  There was also the lavender white chocolate ice cream, which according to Carol, just tasted like regular white chocolate ice cream.

That’s when we started taking pictures…

And more pictures…

We paid $10 for unlimited access to 7 different farms, with free shuttling service provided from farm to farm.  The central hub is at downtown Sequim, so we took the bus to get there.  It was a squeeze…

I was sandwiched so badly I had a hard time even getting my camera out, but as you can see from the picture, some of us were just comfortably sitting on the seats while the rest of us suffered.

We arrived at the hub where it resembles a fair with booths and long lines all over the place.  Many of us opted for the Gyro for lunch…

After lunch, Erick found this incredibly large farm with called Lost Mountain, which was hyped with “100 different species of Lavender!!!”  So to Lost Mountain we went.  We took the bus again, and this time we squeezed two rows between the aisles!  After the bus made its first stop, we were able to sit down, but not before our hands turned tomato red…

Picture doesn’t do justice to the colors of our hands.  Anyway, we arrived at Lost Mountain…

So we did find a hundred species of Lavender, but apparently there was only one of each, contained in a small patch of land!  We were conned.  Nevertheless, we made the most out of the place.  One interesting feature was a water mill running purple water…

It’s hard to see the purple water, but I assure you it was purple.  Karen also decided to bring out her favorite cartoon character to join the fun…

Also some of us decided to collect their own lavender…

I have no idea what olivethereindeer was cutting there…

By the time we were ready to go, we had to wait in line for the bus again.  Some people’s sunburns were starting to become apparent as a strange mark surfaced on my back…

It wasn’t really a burn, but I still have this mark today.  Maybe it’s from the camera strap?

Turned out we weren’t able to get onto the next two buses because they were both full, so we ended up waiting for an hour!  Next time, we should just drive instead of taking the shuttle…  While most of us were just standing around, some of us managed to make the time productive.

Finally we were able to squeeze on the bus and return to our parking lot.  That’s when we decided to check out at the beach with the lighthouse.  On the way, Erick took a wrong turn somewhere and we ended up getting a nice view of…

A deer.  He stared at us as we made a U turn in someone’s back yard.

When we arrived at the beach, there was a lighthouse in view, but it was really small.  Even with my super duper 300x zoom lense, I was still only able to offer you this picture with minimal details…

Unfortunately to reach the lighthouse required a 5.5 mile hike, each way!  That’s like circling Green Lake four times!  We decided to pass and just enjoy the beach…

Erick was really into playing chicken fight on a log…

After that, a shark appeared in the water…

Okay, so there was no shark, but we did take a funny picture!  😛

Then it was time to go home.  We first dropped by Taco Time for some to-go dinner, and then we got held up waiting for the draw bridge.  The traffic literally stopped for 10 minutes. While waiting, Jeffrey had an emergency crisis and needed a place to…  download some software.

Unfortunately he couldn’t find an outlet.  Later Johnny, Angela, Jeffrey and Grace stopped at an alternate location while the rest of us headed over to the Ferry.  We thought they didn’t make it to the 9:20 ferry because they were the fifth car in line for the next ferry, but they managed to squeeze in.  Close call!

Anyway, then we took the ferry ride home…

That’s it, folks, our Lavender Festival trip!  It was fun, but we most likely won’t be going another Lavender trip for a long time.

General

Korean Soap: Full House

Karen recently dragged me into watching a Korean drama called “Full House”, which we finished yesterday.  It’s actually a cute Romantic drama about a Movie Star and a girl who got into a contractual marriage due to circumstances.  While there were 16 episodes, at least it’s not like some of the Taiwanese or Hong Kong series that drag on to 40+ episodes.  Once we started watching, it was hard to stop because of all the cliff hangers connecting the episodes.

The actress in this drama is Song Hye Gyo.  As you may have remembered from the Miss Universe pagent blog, I like pointing out people who look like others.  In this case, it’s Yuki, a singer from Taiwan who sang “Monster”.  Karen and I had a heated discussion about whether they really look alike, but let us take a look…

Song Hye Gyo
 Yuki Hsu

Check out the eyebrows, the eyes, the mouth…  The resemblance is staggering!

Home

Funky Couch Replaced!

Back in January, we purchased a sectional from Macy’s to take advantage of their tax-free sale, but what we got more than we bargained for.  When the couch was delivered, this was what we got:

As you can see, we got the aesthetically displeasing mutant sectional.  After many angry phone calls to the salesperson, a $35 gift card, and a slight (6 month) delay, the real parts were finally delivered!

Now that’s more like it!

Events

The Popcorn Chicken Contest

We had no snacks at fellowship tonight, so afterwards many of us headed over to Tapioca Express.  A while back, we had jokingly mentioned that we would get a 5-star popcorn chicken and go around until someone drops out, and whoever drops out would need to pay for it.  Well, today we got one rated at 7-star (yes, seven out of five stars–that’s no typo) and passed it around.  The pieces were glowing red from the thick coat of highly potent chili powder, and the mere fragrance of the spice was enough to invoke some frowns.

We each took one piece per round.  Jeff and his wife Christine went out in the first round.  Maria went out in the third round, and Grace and Chia-Wen went out in the fourth and final round.  Jun, Jeffrey, Ben, Eddy, Karen and myself made it to the very end, when we ran out of pieces.  Hence the six of us shall join the Happyfish 7-Star Club as ones who endured all the way!

The big winner who shall enter the Hall of Fame was Ben, though, because instead of eating a piece of chicken for his final piece, he had a piece of jalapeno!

Home

Turn Off The TV!

How much TV do you watch?  Karen and I watched… just a few programs in the past..  Karen had her 7th Heaven, Full House, Everyday Italian, Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, Clean Sweep, Makeover Story, Ambush Makeover, McGyver, Fear Factor, Perfect Proposal, and more that have escaped my mind at this moment.  Now those were just her programs.  Together we also watched Smallville, American Idol, The Apprentice, America’s Next Top Model, and Project Greenlight.  Yes, that’s quite a bit of programs thanks to TiVo!  😐

After reflecting on a sermon by Elton about cutting out the busyness in our lives, we conducted an experiment by suppressing our carnal desires of watching TV for an entire week!  Yes, I literally yanked all the RCA cables and the power cable from the rear of the TV!

Every night, we sat at the dinette glaring at each other during dinner, which I suppose is a positive thing.  Then from the extra few hours we gained back each day, we’ve been going out to the mall, the bookstore, or the coffee shop!  Wow…  what a difference!

A week later, we missed TV, so we reverted back to old form.  We do watch no more than half an hour of TV a day now, but I suppose the lack of good prime time television and the scarcity of new Full House episodes may have something to do with it.  However, since we have joined Netflix, the time simply shifted from TV to movies.  Oh well, we’re bound to run out of movies at some point, right?

By the way, it turns out that I was the only one without TV that week.  I later discovered that Karen had cunningly reconnected the TV while I was at work!  And I thought disconnecting all cables from the TV provided a large enough hurdle!  Looks like next time, I’ll need to hide the cables too.  😛

General

Perks at Work

Recently I found a couple of unexpected presents in my mailbox at work, one of which was a free $15 Starbucks Card!  Why?  I have no idea… something about community participation, but whatever.  🙂  Karen conveniently relieved me of my Starbucks Card.

Then another day I was pleasantly surprised with the other gift in the mailbox–1 month free netflix subscription!  So I signed up.  With the exception of the one time my mailman completely missed the little red flag on the side of the mailbox and proceeded to stack the incoming mail on top of it, things are going smoothly.  With 2 weeks introductory offer plus 1 month from the gift card, that’s about 6 weeks of nonstop DVD action!

Without these subsidizing incentives, Blockbuster is a better deal.  If I had a sudden urge to watch Supergirl at 11:40pm, a quick visit to the local store will suffice.  With Netflix, however, I would need to take one of my DVDs, put it in the envelope, drop it in my mailbox, go online, log in, add it to the queue, move it up in the queue, and twirl my fingers for the next 5 days as I patiently wait for it to come in the mail.  Finally, I may end up getting Screwball instead of Supergirl if they ran out of the title!  Factoring in the fact that USPS slacks off on Sundays, that’s quite a bit of down time.

Still, can’t beat free DVDs even if it takes a while to get here.  😀

General

Which American City Fits Me?

Here were my results…

American Cities That Best Fit You:
70% Austin
65% Atlanta
65% Honolulu
65% Las Vegas
65% Miami

Oh no!  Having a large majority of Happyfishers being Texas is one thing, but now the test claimed I belong in Texas!  While the prospect of owning a 1,000 acre yard is nice from a real estate perspective, it may take a slightly more excessive amount of time to mow that lawn or weed the field, and the closest neighbor may be 30 minutes away!  It’s uncertain whether I’m cut out for a life of raising cows for a living while wearing cowboy hats and swinging a lasso! The only lasso I want to see is in Photoshop. Nooooooooooo!

Events

Bellevue Park Fireworks

This year we decided to take it easy and check out the fireworks at Bellevue Park.  Thanks to Angela and Johnny, we got a chance to sit behind the fountain with the reflections.

The fireworks was choreographed to the music played by the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra.  It started out fairly nicely…

You can see the reflection in this picture…

And then there were more fireworks…

From time to time, it became intense…

Other times, it was simpler…

But color-coordinated for the most part…

There were even ones that look like dandelions in a picture…

Unfortunately, the fireworks experience was tainted by the obscuring smoke part of the time:

And for the finale, blasts after blasts of fireworks of different color schemes dazzled the canvas of the sky as the symphonic orchestra built up the tension.  The blasts continued as the tension built, and built, and finally the music approaches the big final three notes as the rest of the fireworks were fired at twice the rate…

… that would have been nice.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way the finale went.  Actually, what finale?  The fireworks stopped as suddenly as the flies drop when it hits my newly acquired fly zapper.  As the orchestra played on, there were one or two additional uninspiring shots, and then it just ended. That’s it.  Thank you very much good bye.  Very anticlimatic.  If this were Regal Cinemas I would have gotten my money back!

Sure, this was no Gasworks, but there was a lot less waiting required to get decent seating.  Also, because the lawn is level, it was much easier to play games while waiting.  I would recommend it as an alternate park for the years when you don’t feel like squeezing into Gasworks.

Nothing in Seattle beats Gasworks, though.