Pat's 21st Birthday

Well it finally happened. My baby brother, Patrick, turned 21 on Monday. Being the wonderful older brother that I am, I drove down to Vancouver to help with the festivities.

Nothing like a little Beer Pong to get the evening started after they saw The Hangover followed by a late lunch at Red Robin:


After the Beer Pong marathon, we went to McMenamins on the Columbia River for dinner and some brews. It was good to get some food and water into Patrick so he would have the fortitude to make it through the night unlike a couple of my previous siblings 21 runs.

After McMenamins we headed to downtown Portland and Kell's. Pat is a big fan of the Guinness, so what better place to go on a Monday night than Kell's?

By the end of the night I was not 100% sure who was celebrating Pat's birthday more:

All in all, it was a good night. This was my third, and thankfully last, younger sibling to turn 21 and now that I am in my mid-30s I am not sure if I could take any more.

Rock N Roll Seattle

Done:
10250 Chris Tobin M 35-39
Half Marathon Start: Gun 7:02:17 Chip 7:21:39
Splits: 5 Km 10 Km 9 Mile Finish O'All Sex Div
Times: 28:16 59:06 1:24:40 2:01:11 3431 1695 357
Pace: 9:06 9:31 9:25 9:15

Basically what that says is I finished the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon this morning in 2 hours 1 minute and 11 seconds. My goal was 2 hours. But I did have a two minute bathroom break in the middle. So I will call that the asterisks goal met.

We ran right by my buddy Nate's house, I will try to get the photos he took and put them up here. I am not one of those people that carry a camera with them while running, so sadly no action photos.

Other notable times:
Bryan Klisch 1:58:44
Reid Jonasson 2:39:54
Heather Jonasson 4:51:03 (full marathon!)

This was Bryan's first run, so kudos to him.

Time to replenish:


This is a picture of the finish line. There were 25,000 people participating in either the half or full marathon. That is quite a bit for a longer run. This picture is from about 30 minutes after we finished. You can see the amount of people still filtering in to the finish coral:

Now on to more important things: US v Brazil 11:25 AM kickoff in the US's first ever FIFA men's final of any kind. I know it is just the confederation cup, but it would be really nice to follow up the win against Spain with a tourney title and Brazil win. That would really solidify our argument for being seeded in the 2 pot for World Cup 2010.

Nate took a few pictures since we ran right by his house. The pictures of me might have turned out better if I had realized that Nate was going to be standing on the opposite side of the street from his house. (he's a tricky dude) I was trying to get an action photo of me as I was ready with a full glass of water to throw on the Iben's as I passed but the opposite side of the road threw me for a loop. Anyways, this guy here is much faster than I:

There's me, mile post 9. I was hurting here but seeing friends helped me soldier on:

There were 25,000 people running the race. It is a really large race for a marathon and half marathon. The start is staggered out over about 45 minutes. You never really spread out like you would think in a run of this length. This is another picture by Nate. Taken at mile post 9. Notice how packed the race still is:

Being the 'Rock N Roll' race, this is what you got every one to two miles:

Weekend Visitors

We had some weekend visitors:

The Sobo's made the trek over from Richland for the first time in quite some time. Not to worry, by the end of the weekend we were buddies again. It might have been the cottton candy that I bribed them with. But if it takes cotton candy, then so be it.

Now I know why people with kids eat either A) eat outside all the time or B) have a dog:


We had cupcake night, the jury is still out if Paty or Grace and Molly liked the desert more:

FINALLY LEGAL

By the heading of this post you think I would be posting something about my baby brother Patrick turning 21, but we still have about a month for that event.

No, today is the day where I passed emissions and got my new car legal for driving:

For those of you who don't know I bought my Grandpa's old car, this 1985 Mercedes 380SL, last November. But being Seattle and winter I kept it in the garage until April.

In order to get it licensed I needed to pass emissions. Due to a slight oversight in idling emissions we failed the first time back in April. When you fail you get to take the car to one of hundreds of 'licensed' emissions people in King County. And if you spend a minimum of $150 trying to fix the problem then you get a waiver until next year.

Well let's just say finding one of these licensed emissions people that will work on a 1985 Mercedes is a little bit harder than you would think. After trying three places in West Seattle that each had their own unique issues I ended up taking it to Phil Smart Mercedes in downtown Seattle. Not surprisingly my bill was exactly $150 plus tax, but I did pass emissions so I guess it was worth it. And being as the car is a 1985, this is the last year it will have to pass emissions since any car over 25 years old is exempt. Which is a curios law seeing as the goal of emissions is to lower overall emissions by automobiles and cars over 25 years old are much more prone to actually being the cars that need to worry about emissions, but I digress.

Here is another picture of me from my house. Patrick is up here and he took the pictures. I was hoping to get me with the car and the water in the background but Patrick deemed it more important to get the entire street in the picture.

On a side note, it touched 90 degrees in Seattle yesterday. The perfect weather to break out the convertible. There is a hard top as well. Patrick and I took about 15 minutes to figure out how to get it off. But the hard top is now safely ensconced in my garage for the summer.

Moving

I hate moving. This is one of my core beliefs in life. I am a bit of a pack rat leading me to always have too much stuff, thus I hate moving.

So when my Uncle Rob calls me at 7 PM on Friday night, he had a strategy. First he called at 7 PM on a Friday in Seattle that was in the upper 70's and not a cloud in the sky. This is a good strategy by Rob because the odds of me already being at a happy hour under these conditions are > 80%. Which I was.

When Rob says we are over on your side of the state, what are you doing tomorrow? I should have known it was a trap. But the sun (and beverages) might have dulled my defenses and I answered with a "Nothing really, why what's up?" Thinking that they wanted to meet in Seattle.

Nope, they needed help unloading the U-haul that apparently had every worldly possession of Cousin Matt's plus his long lost girlfriend(?) Jade.

Before:

After:

Matt had a week from when we unloaded the U-haul until he starts his new job over in Poulsbo. So we banged out the unloading, but left the unpacking to Matt. I actually took great pride in unloading things in weird spots. Skateboard...Bathroom. Bedroom stuff...Kitchen. And so on.

All in all it actually wasn't that bad. And then I had to drive back to Seattle for a Sounders game on Saturday night. Game kicked off at 7:30, I met my buddies the Klisch's and Aaron Last and Krista somethingorother (Aaron's girlfriend) at the Pyramid beer garden to partake of the continuing great weather. I would post a picture but due to an oversight, we brought the camera but did not take any pictures. Rest assured that it was a beautiful night to watch the 'beautiful game' at Qwest.

New Spot

Paty and I found this little gem tucked in the back corner of the Pike Place Market.

A good happy hour and a great deck with a view. What else could you ask for? This deck is attached to a French restaurant called Maximilien.

Seriously, Global Warming is so not real...

To all of you tree huggers driving your hybrids thinking you are 'helping' the environment, how can you say that Global Warming is real?

Seattle normally has one or two days of snow per year that quickly melts as soon as it sees the light of day. But NO, this year we had 'Storm Watch 2008' in December. Replete with constant updates from the great Danger Jim Foreman on the outstanding local news that I always watch.
View from our deck on day 1 of the storm:

GAME DAY!

Game Day ended up being a non starter. It took me 20 minutes to dig out my hybrid:

After digging out the aforementioned hybrid, I had the neighbor kids help push me out of my street as I got stuck twice. I did make it off the block just barely when I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and proceeded to turn around and stay home. Which ended up being a good decision since about 6 inches fell during the game and getting home would have been a challenge. An offshoot of not attending this game was the fact that I was able to keep my wearing shorts to every Seahawks game I attend streak going since I didn't attend this one. Instead of going to the game I ended up shoveling off the 18 inches of snow on our deck:

Because it was so cold (global warming, pfft) we had to move Porfi upstairs for the winter.

No funny comment, I just though this was a strange picture of the snow that formed on our deck railing:

Someone just told me that Global warming can actually make it colder? Who knew?

Spokane Tobins

A few months back the Spokane Tobin's came to Seattle. Ostensibly the trip was to see a Seahawks game with a side trip to the Woodland Park Zoo. Realistically Paty and I were just happy that they dragged my new nephew, Eli, to Seattle.
(editor's note: I would have done this post much sooner, but I lost the cord to get pictures from my camera to the computer and you would be shocked how tough it is to replace on of those things.)
As promised we delivered the Zoo, here are the pictures to prove it.
You would be surprised how hard it is to get Lexi to look at the correct camera:

Someone likes to pose for pics:

Someone also still doesn't like birds:

Maybe warming up to the bird idea, although who is intimidating who here is up for debate:
There he is, GAME DAY is upon us. Eli's first ticket lanyard:

Paty looking, dare I say, Motherly?

All in all a good trip, we had a little adventure with a broken window at the Seahawks game, but it could have been much worse. As usual, the Seahawks lost. But this was 2008, the worst year in sports history for any city. EVER.

Happy Three Kings Day!!

For those of you that don't know, today is what my darling wife calls "Three Kings Day". Apparently according to Paty, this is the day that the kings returned home from visiting baby Jesus. In Mexico, Paty used to get more presents on this day, signaling and end to the Christmas season it seems.

Interestingly enough while western Christians celebrate today for just that, eastern Christians seem to have determined that January 6th is the day Christ was baptized in the Jordan. (on a side note, are there a lot of Eastern Christians left? Maybe Greeks and such I guess)

I did some research on this (wikipedia) and found that the day is actually more commonly called the Epiphany. And quite a few cultures have some sort of tradition that goes along with the day. For instance, the Irish call today Women's Christmas or 'Little Christmas' (I will withhold the plethora of jokes that I have queued up about little = women and Ireland as most of my readers are in fact women).

In Greece they bless the waters and ban sailing on this day. In Rome they make some sort of hard baked pastries that people choke down. More food in Portugal. And so on.

The last interesting fact I found is that this is the day the signals the start of Mardi Gras in New Orleans!

Happy Three Kings Day!

MLS in Seattle

Long rumored but coveted and encouraged for even longer:

SEATTLE WILL BE GRANTED AN MLS TEAM THIS WEEK!

For those footy crazed fans in Seattle like myself, this is super good news.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=480678&cc=5901
Now the question is, what tickets do I give up?
Seahawks
Husky Basketball
Sonics

Thanks to a Mr Clayton Bennett, it seems like that decision has been made for me. More of my thoughts on that situation to follow.

Reid and I are going to get four tickets as soon as they are announced, anyone else in?

New Car plus Wazzu

After 'borrowing' Natalie's Isuzu Rodeo 'rowdy' for the past couple months (thanks Nat!) we finally pulled the trigger on another Volvo S40 for Paty:

Notice the Seahawk Blue color! Just in time for the season to start today.

On another note, the Wazzu cougars played their annual 'home' football game in Seattle yesterday. Being as that most of my family is either an alumni or a student at WSU except me, I was really surprised to be the lone Tobin carrying the Wazzu flag at Qwest field yesterday:

It doesn't look like it, but the Pyramid beer garden beer line was actually longer than I have ever seen it yesterday. The Cougars were really living up to their reputation! It was pretty much required to double fist due to the length of the beer line.

Required cheese ball photo from the stadium. About 60% full, pretty good attendance but not great. It might have something to do with the absolute lameness of San Diego State. They did not look like a division 1A football team.

Speaking of looking good, the Jake Locker era is in full force after two weeks! Bring on the Buckeyes! (And be careful what you wish for, those farm boys of Ohio State are going to be a little tougher than the Syracuse Orange or the Boise State Broncos.)
And on another entirely unrelated note, Shadowrx got her epic flying mount today. /Cheer
Ironically, I had the 5k gold for the flying skill but didn't have the 200 further gold for the actual bird. So I haven't actually flown fast yet. After the Hawks get done pummeling the Bucs I'll have to grind out a little more gold for that bird!

Take the quiz

Myspace Link for Warcraft Quiz

Okay, I found this online tool that gives you a silly questionnaire and in the end it tells you what WoW (World of Warcraft) character and race is right for you. I took the quiz and BAM out popped a Human Paladin. Which is ironic as I spent the last five months playing a Dwarf Paladin, which is as close to a Human Paladin as you can get.

If you do take the quiz, post the results in the comment section of this space. I am curious. I tried it a second time and modified some answers that were close and came up with a Undead Priest. Which is also curious as that is my new character, uncanny.

For those of you looking for site news, I am still working (albeit very slowly) on the rest of the Croatia post. We have been home for a couple weeks now and trying to settle in. It has been more challenging for a variety of reasons than I thought it would be.

That being said, I think that the big news of the day is that I might be gainfully employed by the end of the day. Not getting my hopes up until I sign the offer. Full details to follow when the 'jinx factor' is alleviated.

Blog Update and odds and ends

Most of you have been wondering where the rest of the Croatia post is, don't worry it is coming. Most of my time this week has been occupied with packing duties. Packing you ask? Yes, packing. For those of you that don't know, WE ARE COMING HOME!

It's confirmed, we will be home next weekend. Unfortunately this means we are going to miss the annual Cape Lookout Camping trip. But the good news is that we will be in Amsterdam for Memorial Day, or as they call it in Great Britian: 'Bank Holiday Weekend'.

I mean what would you do, hang out in Amsterdam or do this:




And the kickers:



Looks like fun, eh?

Unfortunately while in Holland I can't partake in all the vices that Amsterdam has to offer. Again I hear you thinking, 'what could you possibly mean Chris?' One vice is off limits because I have a wife who would severely disapprove and the second becasue in the off chance that I get a job as soon as I get home I might have to take a drug test. Thus the red light district and 'coffee houses' are off limits.

I'll work on the Croatia posts soon, a lot of good pics to sort through and post.

Cheers!

Good News, Bad News or just News?

Okay, so I had my plane ticket home tentatively issued today. I was going to be back three weeks from yesterday (the 23rd). This not only would have gotten us home sooner than expected, but as an additional incentive I would have been able to make the annual Tobin/Last camping trip at Cape Lookout. I even planned on not telling anyone I was coming home and just showing up at the campsite. Or maybe pull up to the group in my own crabbing boat.

But alas, in the space of less than an hour after we had decided to confirm those tickets home something came up.

Now we aren't going to be here for the additional 2-4 months that I suspected, but it looks like we are going to be in Europe until early June. We will most likely head home the weekend after Memorial Day weekend.

That ends the news portion of our blog, now for some pics.

Today was a beautiful day in Galway. I decided to leave the computer for a while and head out to the water and see what all the fuss is about.

For those of you that have not visited, we live right next to where the river empties into Galway Bay. Really close to the Spanish Arch if you are familiar with Galway.

This picture was taken about 20 yards from my apartment across the main street that I live on:

So when it gets nice people just hang out here. The Spanish Arch is in the background behind the tree.

Looking up the river towards the Cathedral and NIU Galway:


Lovely day for a cider:

or two:

And yes, I now drink cider. Make fun of me all you want, but only after you try a nice cold Bulmer's with ice on a sunny day while sitting outside admiring the view. If you still don't like cider, then you can make fun of me all you want.

Mostly I added these pictures to show you what Galway looks like. So when my better half or myself complains about being 'stuck' in Galway these last seven months, realize that it wasn't all bad. Our apartment is in the background of this picture. We live right behind the girl wearing the very last year capri pants with the sun glare over her shoulder.

I mainly took this picture to show you the zeit geist of Galway when it is nice. No worries on public drinking, lots of hanging out by the river, many picnics, etc..... But as we were leaving I noticed the shirt this guy was wearing. Yes, you are correct, that is a Seattle Mariners shirt. I so felt like I was on Alki beach! The first Mariners paraphernalia I have seen in Europe that was not worn by myself or a Japanese tourist.

The problem with Galway was, how would you feel about moving to Seattle for seven months? Starting in October and lasting until the end of May? Just the absolutely wrong time of year in terms of weather. Galway's winter is a lot like Seattle's, but more rain and much more wind. Plus Galway is farther north than Seattle (it is actually North of Whistler) so there is even less light during the depths of winter.

In summary, Galway isn't bad at all. We just let the winter get to us somewhat and that biased our opinion.

Homecoming News..............er, kind of

Okay for those of you sticking out the vast wasteland that is the lack of entertaining blog posts lately: I appreciate your patronage. The two of you that have been checking the blog everyday make me feel guilty for not adding anything.

Okay, here is the update:

We still don't know EXACTLY when we are going to be home. But, it is looking very likely that we will be home in early June.

One thing I do know is that we are flying to Pula, Croatia (get an atlas, look it up) on Saturday. We fly out of Dublin very early so will most likely go to Dublin Friday night.

You think; 'Chris, why of all places Pula?'

This is one reason:

So starting Saturday I will be filling the Canon Rebel 1GB memory card back up with photos of exotic places destined for the blog. And since I have nothing to distract me whilst in Croatia (for those of you that know what I have been occupying my time with lately, you know what I am talking about (by the way, we dropped Attunement, Moroes and Little Red Riding Hood tonight; my first time for all. Maiden proved too tough though(all Dunn family reading this refer to Matthew Dunn for translation))) the blog will surely get some good posts and pictures going forward the next two or three weeks.

So to recap, we are flying in to Pula on the 5th of May. We are tentatively planning on flying back to Dublin on the 19th of May. But we don't have tickets yet for that flight. As we are 'playing it by ear'. We do have a hotel in Pula for the first two nights. From then on, we are just going to drive/ferry/yacht/bus/train whatever our way down the coast over the next two weeks to Dubrovnik.

This is the first time we don't have a detailed itinerary as part of any vacation. Paty is a little leery of this new system, while I am looking forward to 'going south as we go'.

All for now. Going to be doing a lot of packing the next couple days. Leave comments, they are always appreciated!

Oh, and if you know of a good and high paying job, I am almost officially starting to inquire.

Editor's note:
By the way, this entire itinerary pertaining to our homecoming is still VERY subject to change. Actually it is all subject to change. We actually kicked around the idea of going 'to the land Down Under' for three weeks starting Saturday. So even the Croatia part is subject to change.

Swans in Galway

One of the cool things about living right where we do in Galway is the Swans.

There is a colony (nest, roost, flock, whatever the name) of swans that live in the waterway about 100 yards from our apartment. Everyday, two of them venture up the canal next to our apartment. It is always two, leading me to suspect that they are the same two as there is a big one leading and a smaller one always behind. And no more than two ever come in the canal for some reason.

But one cool thing about them being close is whenever we have bread for dinner and don't finish, that means a visit to the swans the next day.

They are kind of intimidating (okay really intimidating), but once you get used to feeding them you can have them take the bread directly out of your hands:

This is the last day of the Spokane Tobin's visit:

The background is a famous portrait of Galway. Many of you might have received a postcard with this exact portrait. Just without the US and Mexican contingent:

We just have to time our feeding so that it does NOT coincide with this guys visit as our feeding one piece at a time system gets drowned out when he starts throwing whole loaves of bread at the swans:

But this photo gives you an idea of just how many swans live here.

They are not exactly a replacement for Porfi, but at least the swans keep our avian care gene fullfilled.

DONE!

Well my crazy idea has now been completed.

1 hour 51 minutes and 33 seconds later, I finished the Prague Half Marathon. 13.1 miles or since we are in Europe 21.0 Kilometers.

Before the race:


With me is my buddy Reid and his girlfriend Heather. They were also doing the race.

Km 2, going well:

Km 11 (halfway), still doing okay:

Km 20.5, finish line in sight!

Right after the race, on my 'cool down' drink:

The after picture, none of us the worse for wear (maybe).


Going to be a long night in Prague tonight! Celebration time. There is a European Championship qualifying soccer game between the Czech Republic and Germany in town tonight. We are going if we can secure some tickets. The only problem is they might be standing room only. Not really an ideal situation for three of us in the group.