Winter Blast hits the Northwest

A winter blast has covered from Salem north to Seattle in snow and ice. It's not as bad as some years I remember, but it's fun to be stuck together in the house. Yesterday, we got about 6" of snow at our house and overnight about an inch of freezing rain (ice).

Thursday (12/18/2008) I was in Bellevue, WA when the first storm hit there. It effectively shut the city down. Seattle wasn't much better off. Just driving 4 blocks to work required 4-wheel drive. The roads were icy and not well kept by the city. It snowed all day and accumulation was over 8" where I worked. Friday the temperature was in the teens from Portland to Seattle. The roads were mostly dry and conditions good south of Olympia to Portland. A truck jack-knifed south of Olympia and held traffic for quite some time. Total commute south - 4.5 hours.

The boys have spent a couple days sledding nearby. Ethan braved the frozen snow cold and let me take some pictures of him playing on our playground. We got another dusting of snow after the boys came in and we're all waiting for what's next. The weather forecast is predicting more freezing rain this evening and some snow tomorrow.

Priscila's been cleaning the upstairs, while I've been cleaning the kitchen. It never gets really clean.... I've been carrying Andrew in the baby backpack most of the day. Combined with shoveling snow with the boys - I'm completely beat.

Now we're going to enjoy Aunt Mel's Popcorn balls and some Monopoly. Happy early Christmas!

Salty Cheetos

A couple days ago Ethan asked what we were having for dinner. I replied, "Salchichitas" (sal-chi-chi-tas).

It's a dish from Priscila's childhood - cut up hotdogs simmered in pasta (tomato) sauce for a good while. Priscila's mom would make the sauce from scratch. In Argentina back then, you couldn't find a jar of pasta sauce in the store. Everyone made sauce from scratch.

Ethan asked what we were having for dinner and I told him. With a curious, inquisitive and confused look on his face he replied, "Salty Cheetos?!?!?"

Getting the train started

So.... Finally I'm getting this train rolling. This week I'm in San Diego at the IBM System Storage & Storage Networking Symposium. I'm here to get updated on new IBM products/technologies, update skills, pass tests and connect with the co-workers I never see.

I'll be Twittering this week at the conference and I've added my twitter RSS feed to this blog. You can check out what's going on with my travels. It's updated whenever I send a text message or web entry from my phone. Pretty cool.

On the 3rd of July, Isaac took a dump off his bike and ended up with 7 stitches. There's some photos at my flickr account.

First post

This is my first post to get this crazy blogging train started. I'll be "migrating" pages over from my wetpaint wiki. I figure blogging might outlast it, or something... Or maybe I should leave content there for static, non-stream-of-consciousness, stuff.

My wife's blog is over at my5boyz.blogspot.com - which show's her perspective on raising 5 boys. My perspective is pretty simple. It's hard. Discipline reigns supreme. Maybe a little too much some days. God grant me the strength to be as kind and gentile as You have been.

What might appear on these entries? Tech interests, food, personal achievements, the usual nonsense that most people won't read.