New house pictures!!!

Hi everybody,

By popular demand, here are pictures of our new house! I took them sort of quickly since I had other stuff going on, but that is just more encouragement for you all to come and see the place with your own eyes!

new_house_2009

-Sean

Ireland!

Hey everyone,

It's been a long time since my last post, and a lot has happened in the meantime. I figured that now was a good time o give an update, considering I just got back from Ireland on a trip with Nicole. We had an amazing time and the country was absolutely gorgeous!

We started by landing in Dublin and immediately driving into northern Ireland. I soon found out that Irish roads are incredibly tight, and it was pretty hair-raising for the entire trip trying to stay within my lane and not hit any cars or the side of the road. On the way we saw north an ancient ritual site that goes back thousands of years, to before the time of even the Celts.

From there, we went to Bushmills, Northern Ireland. We saw the beautiful coastline up there and a ruined castle before heading to the western coast in a town called Cliffden. That was the wilderness region of the country, and it had a small population and wasn't very developed. It was really relaxing and we had a great time there.

From there we went to the city of Galway on the western coast. We heard some great Irish music. We headed into the most beautiful area of the trip, the Dingle peninsula. IT was incredibly gorgeous, which is surprising for a place with such a hilarious name! We visited an island that had an ancient christian monastery built on it, and just enjoyed the scenery.

From there we went to Kilkenny and visited its castle and old city. After that we went to Dublin and took in the sights there. All in all it was an unbelievable trip! Check out the pictures below!

Ireland_2009

Strikes, Elections, Baseball and Adventures in Oregon

Hey everybody,

I'm sorry it's been a while since my last post, things have been busy. You would think that when you're an engineer working for a company whose machinists are on strike, things would be slow. You would be incorrect if you thought that, however. Us engineers have been using this time to get a bunch of paperwork done that the FAA requires in order to certify the 787 for flight. I've been pretty busy with getting that done, but have also managed to do a couple other things.

As for what I don when I'm not working for Boeing, I am interested in keeping up with the latest stuff related to the election and the financial stuff going on and all that. I should probably take a break for a while, none of it ever seems to be good news. Speaking of bad news, the red sox did not get into the world series this year. Oh well, I've been too busy this year to watch alot of baseball anyways. It seems like with everything going on in the world, baseball hasn't been on top of my priorities this year. I cna only hope that next year I get my priorities straight.

Nicole and I went on an adventure over the most recent weekend in order to celebrate going out with each other for a year! It was a really nice time. We went down to Portland, then from there went into the Columbia River valley. A lot of the pioneers from the Oregon Trail went this way, so it was a beautiful and interesting site to see. We saw a bunch of waterfalls, and if you look at one of the pictures, you will see that there were salmon nesting at the bottom of one of them! From there, we went around Mt. Hood and back up to Seattle! All in all, it was a gorgeous trip, especially with the leaves changing in the area where we were!

Here's a map of the main trip locations:


View Larger Map


And here are our pictures from the weekend:

1st yr. anniver

I hope you all enjoy! Until next time,

-Sean

Old friends and hiking around mt. rainier

Hey everyone,

Things have been going pretty well here in Seattle. At work, things have been quiet, but I'm pretty sure that it's the calm before the storm. I had a busy few weeks before this last couple, now everyone is pretty much waiting for testing on the full scale 787 to start, which will mean a lot more work to do analyzing data.
This weekend I went on a hike around Mt. Rainier with a bunch of my old rowing friends from RIT. My two friends, Jen and Brian, are married and live in the Seattle area. In addition, my other two friends Lindsey and Kathleen had visited Jen and Brian for the weekend, so I met up with all of them and we hung out.
We ended up going hiking on Saturday, which was a gorgeous day for it. We went into Mt. Rainier national park, up to the Sunrise day area. We got some great shots. It was wonderful to see all my friends again. I haven't seen them since I got out of school two years ago! Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures of the hike.

Mt Rainier Hike 2008

Here's a map showing the location of where I was in relation to Seattle:


View Larger Map

Let's see, other than that, I can start to feel the weather changing. We are gettin a few days of rain here and there, but still mostly sunny warm days. I'm sure it will continue that way until fall rolls around and the rain returns. And that means ski season is right around the corner!

I hope you're all doing well! Until the next blog post.....

-Sean

Random Seattle happenings

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I last posted, I hope everyone has been doing well!

Things have been pretty quiet in the Seattle area, I haven't been on as many adventures as I went on earlier this summer. That has been a good thing though, because I was pretty burned out after being on the move for so many weekends! I haven been getting caught back up with work, which was pretty busy for a while.

I found time away from work on a couple weekends. One weekend I was just hanging out in the area, and a big event called SeaFair was taking place in Seattle and out on Lake Washington. SeaFair is sort of a Seattle festival which involves hydroplane races on the lake, a bunch of parades and stuff, and the Blue Angels flying overhead. We got to see the Blue Angels pretty close!

I also got to go and hang out at the Beach Club on Mercer Island, as well as another beach on the island. Here are some pictures that prove that it isn't rainy in Seattle all the time!

random_beachstuff_08

In case any of you are wondering where Lake Washington is, it is just east of downtown Seattle. It's pretty large and it's the lake that Bill Gates has his home on. I haven't seen his home personally, sorry to disappoint! Here's a map:


View Larger Map

Anyways, I hope you are all doing well. The weather has been great out here and I have had a relaxing couple of weeks. I'm starting to get antsy for ski season though!

Until next time,
Sean

flying, biking and paddling

Hi all,

It has been a few weeks since the last time I posted. I've been pretty busy the last few weeks!

The weekend of the fourth of July, I was back home in Vermont! It was really great to see all the family again. It was a pretty whirlwind tour of Vermont, but I was glad I got back for it. I was also glad that I had bought my tickets to go back before the price of gas shot through the roof!
The weekend after that I spent Saturday and Sunday biking in the Seattle To Portland (STP) bike race. This is a 204 mile bike race from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon. I had been training for it since around April, but I had only been on 50 mile rides, nothing as long as 200. Luckily, the bike race is non-competitive, and more than half the riders break it up into a two day ride. I rode 100 miles the first day from Seattle to Centralia, Washingon. I then camped there at the official midpoint of the race. I finished up the day after that. It was a gorgeous ride. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, as I was biking and didn't have any space to store a camera.
This last Friday I went down with Nicole and a group of friends and camped out at a campground at the southern end of the state. We woke up the next morning and drove through the mountains, where we could get great views of Mt. St. Helens. We arrived at the Washington/Oregon border (the Columbia River)and drove to the beginning of a river called the White Salmon. We whitewater rafted down the river through a guide service. It was a gorgeous day for rafting and it was an enjoyable time.
Needless to say, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks and I'm looking forward to a weekend in Seattle coming up! I hope you are all doing well, and I'll try to give you all an update with some pictures next time.

-Sean

Weekend Portland Adventures

Hey guys,

I hope you all had a good weekend. I spent the weekend down in Portland, Oregon. Portland is about 3 hours drive time south of Seattle and it is also the city where Nicole went to college. We were down there because her sister just graduated form the same college (Portland University) and needed help moving her stuff from her college apartment into her new apartment off campus. She has a job within Portland, so she will be staying in the area.
We spent most of Saturday helping her move stuff, so we were pretty tired after that. We just hung out at her new place for the night, then went out around Portland the next day. Portland is a pretty interesting city. It feels a little bit more laid back than Seattle. They also have gorgeous views ow Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens on clear days. Unfortunately we had sort of cloudy skies when we were down there, so we didn't get any pictures of those.
On Sunday we went through the Rose Gardens (Portland calls itself the "Rose City"). The roses were definitely in bloom and it was a good time to be out there.I got some pictures, here they are:

portland_june08

After we did that, we went to a large independent bookstore in downtown Portland called Powell's Bookstore. It was a really cool bookstore that was very large and spanned a few buildings that they linked together by tearing down walls to put doorways. As such, many of the rooms were around 2 or 3 feet higher or lower than the adjacent rooms. It was very Portlandy.

After that we went to a brewpub for one of the microbreweries in the area called Deschutes Brewery. The northwest has the largest concentration of microbreweries in the country, I believe. After that we headed back to Seattle. Here's a map of the locations I went to. If you bring up the map in a full screen, you can zoom in on the individual locations that I went.


View Larger Map

Anyways, that's it for this post. I hope you are all doing well.

This coming weekend I will be down in San Diego visiting Nicole's family and seeing the sights. I will be leaving for it on Thursday night and returning on Sunday night. I'll update all of you with a new post next week!

-Sean