This year, like the previous two, the Sounders advanced to the final of the US Open Cup (a historic US soccer tournament separate from MLS). We decided to go to the game this past Tuesday night along with a crowd of over 35,000.

It was a great game, with plenty of good chances by the Sounders, and a couple by the other team, the Chicago Fire. There was no score after the first half, and the longer the game went on without a score, the more anxious I got that the Sounders would have a hard time winning. Still, the crowd was very into it with chants and cheers.

Then, in the 77th minute (of a total of 90), the Sounders' star striker, Fredy Montero, scored a goal off a rebound from the goalkeeper. The crowd went wild with cheering and high fives. After that, the crowd was even more energetic for the rest of the game. The Fire had some more chances, but then at the very end of the game, the Sounders scored a remarkable goal, as the star midfielder, Osvaldo Alonso, ran around the defenders and the goalkeeper to score an awesome goal to end the game.

With that, the crowd was even more excited and after the game ended, the Sounders team celebrated in the middle of the field before being awarded their third straight US Open Cup.

It was awesome to be able to see them win and was probably the best experience I've had at a Sounders game yet, of the five or so we've been to so far.

We didn't really have any major plans this weekend, but we did decide to go to Tacoma for a day on Saturday. We went to Noah's bagels for breakfast on Mercer Island. The three bagels we had were really fresh and tasty and the weather was great, so we ate them outside. Then we headed to Tacoma and had a clear view of Mount Rainier.

We had bought some Groupons for the Museum of Glass that we weren't able to use when we had visitors this summer, so we decided to use two of the four tickets we had bought. In the hot shop at the museum, they're usually making something. This time they were blowing glass elephants, which we watched for a little while before looking at the rest of the exhibits. There was an exhibit on glass objects that were made based on children's drawings, which was cute. There was also a piece made up of hundreds of pieces of glass all arranged together to depict a forest scene with a river and waterfall. It was really impressive. Unfortunately they say you can't take pictures in the gallery, so we didn't. Even though we've seen blown glass a few times the last couple years, the Museum of Glass was still pretty interesting and impressive.

After that we headed to eat some lunch at Tatanka Take-Out, which has bison meat burgers and vegetarian food too, believe it or not. It wasn't that great actually, so we probably won't be going back. At least it was on the way to Point Defiance Park. The weather was beautiful, completely clear and highs in the mid-70s. We parked inside the park and hiked a solid 3-5 miles around the perimeter of the park, stopping at a couple of scenic viewpoints. We could see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Gig Harbor, and Vashon Island.

I saw they had a rose garden on the park map, so we decided to check it out. We were very pleasantly surprised when we arrived and saw several dozen rose bushes all blooming! They must be blooming late since we had a cold spring. They were very beautiful, all the pinks, reds, yellows, and oranges. We spent almost an hour at the rose garden and then headed to dinner.

We stopped at a place called The Rock: Wood Fired Pizza and Spirits, where we got a 12" pepperoni and pineapple pizza. We also got the beer sampler and the apple crisp with ice cream dessert to share. I don't like beer much at all usually, but a couple were actually not too bad. The pizza was really good and the atmosphere was neat, with all kinds of rock and roll memorabilia around. After dinner we took the streetcar through downtown, which was pretty dead, so we went back to the car and drove home. Overall it was a good day.

Seattle has the largest international film festival in the United States and we've attended a few films at each year's festival since we've been here. Some films have been quite good and a few have been disappointments, but they've always been interesting.

The first movie we'd planned to see this year was called Page One: Inside the New York Times. We had purchased our passes ahead of time and wanted to get to the theater 30 minutes early. This was our first time to the Egyptian theater, which is a few blocks from where we live. When we got there, the line was halfway around the block - hundreds of people had tickets and were in line to get in. We got a seat in the balcony and as people entered the theater to fill all the seats, the palpable energy of the audience reminded me again that this festival is a much bigger deal than just going to see another movie.

SIFF has gotten some criticism because it has so many movies, not just the very best. And with more than 3 weeks of movies playing all hours of the day, every day, at 7 theaters in the region, it's amazing that so many of them generate the crowd we saw at the Egyptian and at other theaters other times we've gone.

This movie looked at how the Times operates and documented how the print media industry is struggling to react to the growth of online media sources. The documentary focused on some rather interesting news stories that the Times was covering, people with unique personalities, and a fairly balanced, if shallow, touch on the issues. It was was one of the best films we've seen at SIFF.

Tomorrow, we'll be going to see a movie about Sushi, which sounds like a really interesting movie to me. And later we'll be seeing the only international movie we're planning to see at this year's festival - a French animated film about a cat in Paris - called A Cat in Paris.

While we do miss out on a lot of mainstream movies in theaters, we have enjoyed broadening our perspective in participating in the major event that is SIFF.

So, I had another birthday recently. Seems like it comes around more and more often. I do like to take advantage of my birthday when it happens, and I was glad to be able to do all these things that I wouldn't normally do.

Lesley took good care of me for my birthday. She bought me several doughnuts from Top Pot, including my favorite: old-fashioned glazed. I love classic country music, so she got me a Patsy Cline greatest hits. She also took me out to dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant that we'd never been to before. I pass by this place sometimes on my way home and have always been intrigued, but have never stopped in. I thought the place had good ambiance and despite being in an out of the way location, it got pretty busy when we were there. We shared a vegetable platter, which was a lot of food for pretty cheap. I'm not sure when we'll go back, as neither of us are huge fans of Ethiopian food, but it was nice to try this place out and go somewhere different for my birthday.

We also went out to brunch at a cafe that had opened recently just a couple blocks from our apartment and watched a film noir (The Third Man) on our Netflix queue. We also went out to a piano bar nearby and listened to a variety of songs, including work from 70s progressive artists like Kansas and the Moody Blues, ragtime tunes, and classical pieces by Beethoven.

It was fun going to several places we hadn't been to before. And it's cool that new places are opening nearby, as we didn't have to go any farther than half a mile from where we live for me to have a good birthday.

The Texas Rangers have made it all the way to the World Series and it has been a lot of fun to watch them over the last few weeks. While we both rooted for the Rangers back in Texas, when we moved here we decided to adopt the Mariners as our favorite team. Until this year, neither of these two teams had made it to the World Series, they're not exactly the most successful franchises.

The Mariners just finished a 100-loss season, so it wasn't that much fun watching them this last summer. It is exciting to have a good baseball team to root for now, though, and to be able to watch the Rangers in the playoffs on national TV. I wish they could've been more successful when we lived there, but we'll be rooting for them this World Series.

Weekend before last, Troy and I went to the Seahawks preseason game against the Green Bay Packers. Troy got the tickets for free from one of his co-workers. They were pretty good seats, only about 20 rows up from the field at the 40 yard line, and normally cost over $100 each.

It was really fun going to a football game again and sitting in those nicer seats was cool. We got to see Aaron Rodgers play for the Packers and the Seahawks scored three touchdowns, if you can believe that. Unfortunately we forgot to bring our camera, so we don't have any pictures. I was surprised how late so many people stayed for the game, since most starters were taken out at half time. It briefly sprinkled a few times, but we didn't get that wet since the roof blocked some of it. We stayed until late in the 4th quarter. The Packers won 27-24, but it was still nice to go to a game for free. It made me wish football season would be here sooner.

Seattle has one of the largest, if not the largest, film festival in the country. The Seattle International Film Festival runs for more than 3 weeks, with hundreds of films (400+ this year) at several different venues in the area.

Lesley and I have gone to a couple movies at SIFF for the past couple years and this year got a package to go to 3 movies. It's fun to go because it's such a big festival and there are so many movies to see that aren't normally available in theaters.

One of the movies we saw this year was Garbo: The Spy, a Spanish documentary on a double-agent who, working for both Britain and Germany during WWII, delayed German forces from reaching Normandy. It was a very interesting documentary about an unfamiliar historical figure who impacted history.

We also saw a less serious film called White Lion, which follows the life of a white lion in a majestic South African setting.

We're looking forward to seeing another movie later this week, about a New Zealand family that lives in the wilderness.

In the past we've seen some very good movies and some unremarkable movies, but they're always interesting and are different than the Hollywood films that you can see any weekend at the multiplex.

We went to a Mariners game with Lesley's friend Megan last Monday night. The weather had been terrible most of the weekend, but it cleared up Monday afternoon and was comfortable and sunny when the game started.

Megan bought our tickets - they were good seats in the outfield. We were the closest I've been to Ichiro and it was interesting seeing him stretching throughout the entire game.

Anyway, this was a Mariners game, so they gave up 3 runs in the 2nd inning, then back-to-back home runs later in the game. But, at the end they made it close, scoring a run in the 9th and having the winning run at the plate. Less-jaded fans had reason to believe in a comeback, but I saw the double play coming. Here's the game story. We've now seen 9 Mariners losses and 1 Mariners victory. It was an exciting victory, though.

We did learn from our transportation issues last time so we took a taxi home, and after a couple minute wait, it took us home pretty quickly for just over $10.

We had been paying $30/month for cable, but then our cable provider almost doubled our rate, so we decided to cut our service back.

For the last four months, we got by okay with just local channels. We did wish that we didn't have to miss out on some sporting events on cable, but we weren't about to double our cable bill just to see a few games.

Then, late last week a Comcast representative knocked on our door and offered us the same deal that we'd had in the past. It, again, is just an "introductory rate" for 6 months, but last time that 6 month introductory rate lasted for a full year.

We'll have our service set up next weekend and are excited about getting to see some playoff hockey, regular season baseball, and world cup soccer.

We took public transportation to the Mariners game on Friday, as we normally do. It's normally convenient enough to take a bus to the game and it isn't worth paying to park or take a cab.

We caught the bus a block from our apartment, got off downtown and went into the transit tunnel where we caught light rail without having to wait at all. Once we got off the train, we had to walk a few blocks to the stadium, but that gave us a chance to buy some cracker jacks and water for pretty cheap from a street vendor.

However, getting home after the game has always been a bit of an issue. Due to gameday traffic, bus routes around the stadium are rerouted, as we discovered one time after the game. There used to be a special bus that ran from Safeco Field to the retail core downtown, and it was easy to get home from there. However, that bus doesn't run anymore. In the past we've also just avoided the hassle of the buses and walked home since it isn't really that far, but that's an option I like more than Lesley does, and since her foot has been hurting, that wasn't an option Friday night.

We had planned to take the same way home that we had taken to the stadium. After the game, we had to wait several minutes before light rail arrived, but we were covered from the light rain, so it wasn't too bad. We took light rail into the tunnel and got off to transfer to one of three bus routes that would take us home.

Since it was late at night, buses weren't running very frequently anymore, so we had to wait a while before the next bus came. For some reason though, it was very full of people, maybe people from the game, though I'm not sure where they got on the bus. It was so full that it didn't even stop to let us on, unfortunately. That's happened to me a few times here, not very often, but it's always very frustrating when that happens. So, we had to wait another 10 minutes for the next bus to show up. That bus got pretty crowded after we got on, but it did take us home.

I'm not sure what we'll do after next Mariners game. I suppose taking a cab wouldn't be too expensive, but it shouldn't be so hard to get home from somewhere just 3 miles away. Unfortunately, the level of public transportation service here leaves something to be desired.

Lesley's parents gave us tickets to a Mariners game as an anniversary present, so this past Friday Lesley and I had the privilege of going to the game.

The visiting team was the Texas Rangers, so this game was between two of the three MLB teams that have never played in a World Series. Our tickets were in the lower level behind home plate and the section we were in was pretty full.

We didn't get to the game early enough to get one of the Felix Hernandez bobbleheads, but we were there to see J. R. Celski throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

This game happened to be Cliff Lee's first as starting pitcher for the Mariners. He was acquired in the off-season and has been injured lately, but he's been a very good pitcher, so we were excited to get to see him pitch. He pitched a very good game, but so did the Texas pitcher, and the game went into extra innings and stayed scoreless through the 11th inning. It was an entertaining game and the crowd was on their feet rooting for a Mariners rally.

The Rangers have done well at finding ways to lose games this year, but the Mariners outdid them. The Mariners had the bases loaded with only one out in both the 11th and 12th innings and failed to score. In one inning they hit into a double play, in the other they failed to bunt in order to execute a suicide squeeze that would've scored the winning run.

To add to the entertainment, Texas' manager argued with the umpire on a call and was ejected from the game.

And, near our seats, someone tried to steal someone else's bobble-head and was arrested for it.

To end the game, the Mariners had an error and then threw a wild pitch that allowed the Rangers to score two runs.

It was a deflating end to what had been an exciting game. Click here for ESPN's story on the game.

Anyway, despite the loss, I still consider the Rangers my second favorite team in baseball, and some of my friends love the Rangers, so I suppose I can be happy that they won. And I'm glad Lesley and I were able to go to a game together. Of the 9 Mariners games we've been to, this is the 8th time they've lost. Hopefully next time we can see a Mariners victory.

We've had a couple thunderstorms since we moved here, but the storms here are so much shorter and less impressive than what we used to get in Texas. We've missed the crack and rumble of thunder, which convey such power and excitement through the downpour of rain.

So, to try to provide the experience we missed, we purchased a Thunderstorm CD.
And, while it provides the sound of a Thunderstorm, for the most part, I miss feeling the thunder, seeing the lightning, and smelling the rain.

A year ago we bought a season pass to the Space Needle for a pretty cheap price. Since then, we've gone up quite a few times to enjoy the view. It was nice to be able to see the view from up top throughout the year as the seasons changed and at various times of day. Unfortunately, our pass expired this past week, so we probably won't go up any time soon. But, that's okay, we got our money's worth out of our season pass and enjoyed seeing so much of the city from up high.

View from Space Needle on Vimeo.

We went to two Olympic events when we were in Vancouver. The first one was the men's 5,000 meter speed skating at the Richmond Olympic Oval. The event started at noon on Saturday, February 13th and was the second medal to be awarded. We rode the light rail to Richmond and arrived pretty early so we would have plenty of time. The weather was bad most of Saturday unfortunately, with windy, cold, and rainy conditions. We waited outside in line to get through security for probably 30 minutes, so I was happy to finally get inside the Oval.

I was in awe when we came up the stairs to our seats and could see the ice and all the flags for world countries hanging in the rafters. We were going to see an Olympic event! It was really amazing to watch. There were a lot of fans from the Netherlands, which apparently has a history of having great speed skaters. They were all dressed in orange, so they were easy to see in the crowds. There also weren't nearly as many seats as I thought there would be, it only seats 8,000 fans.

There were 14 pairs of skaters with an intermission in the middle. They started out with the slower pairs, but they still seemed fast to me. Each skater had to skate like 10 laps around the rink, I don't remember exactly. It was really exciting toward the last few pairs of skaters because each time they would just destroy the time set by the previous number one spot. As expected, Sven Kramer from the Netherlands won gold, with an Olympic record time of 6 minutes and 14.6 seconds. A Korean won silver with a time of 6 minutes and 16.95 seconds. Russian, Ivan Skobrev, won bronze with a time of 6 minutes and 18.05 seconds. It's hard to believe only a few mere seconds determine who wins gold.

One thing I didn't like was that we did not get to see the medal presentation. We only saw the flower ceremony. We would have had to pay even more money to buy a ticket to see the medal ceremony at BC Place. For some reason most of the events except the ones in Whistler are having the medal presentations at BC Place instead of the individual venues. So, I felt ripped off in that aspect.

The other event we went to was the first preliminary round men's hockey game, USA vs Switzerland at noon on Tuesday, the 16th. This took place at the General Motors Place (aka Canada Hockey Place) in downtown, normally where the Vancouver Canucks NHL team plays. This is the first Olympic games to use an NHL-sized ice rink. It's a really nice facility and only 15 years old.

We had really good seats, only a few rows up in the upper level and toward the end the USA would shoot at twice. Despite not really following hockey the past several years, I still recognized a lot of the USA players. I was disappointed though that Mike Modano wasn't on the team. I heard that they had decided to use a lot more younger players rather than the older, more veteran players like Modano. I did see former Dallas Star Jamie Langenbrunner play as the Team USA Captain. There were actually a lot more Switzerland fans than I thought there would be. There were also a lot of Canadian fans, who really cheered for Ryan Kesler, from the Canucks. It was a pretty clean game, no fights at all. The USA won 3-1.

Here's a video from the pre-game warm ups:

USA vs Switzerland Men's Hockey Warm ups on Vimeo.

I was a little disappointed we only went to two events. I wish we could have gone to more, especially short track speed skating or figure skating. It would have been really cool to see Apolo Anton Ohno win a medal. Still though, going to two events is probably more than most people will see in their lifetime. I'm very happy and lucky to have been able to go to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Here are pictures from Vancouver and the events we went to:

We went to the Men's 5000 meter speed skating event today at the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. It was a lot of fun and we saw a new Olympic record set by a skater from the Netherlands who had a lot of supporters in the stands.

Note: We had posted video of the last half-lap, but YouTube took it down due to copyright infringement.

When we signed up for cable with Comcast a little more than a year ago, we were offered an introductory rate of about $30/month for basic cable. We thought it was only a 6 month introductory rate, but it lasted for about a year.

Then, last month, our introductory rate ended and our cable bill more than doubled to $67. I called Comcast to see if we could continue our old rate, but supposedly they didn't have any deals available. I asked to reduce my level of service and they told me that I'd have to return my cable box to the service center.

So, Lesley and I decided to cut our level of service to limited basic cable, which gives us channels 1 through 29 and costs $13/month. Our TV antenna doesn't take an analog signal and we watch enough local TV to make it worthwhile to pay for it.

When I got home, I prepared to return our cable box. On the box, there was a sticker that said to call a certain number to return it, so I did, but I figured that I'd just have to take it to the service center anyway, so we left for the service center while I stayed on hold. I was on hold for about 30 minutes and almost made it to the service center before they picked up the phone and told me that I didn't need to call them and just needed to drop it off. Anyway, we got to the service center and there were more than 10 people in line in front of us, but it didn't take too long. We dropped off our box and will basically save more than $600 this year over what we would've paid if we kept our service at the inflated rate.

So, we no longer have ESPN or other cable channels, but fortunately there's nothing major on cable that we'll want to watch in the next few months. We will miss watching Mariners games on TV this summer, as well as the occasional soccer game. But you never know, maybe they'll offer good rates again.

I'm a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, as some of you may know, and I like to watch every game if I can. However, being in Seattle, the local attempt at a football team is often televised here instead of the Cowboys. I do like the Seahawks but they're terrible and get in the way of me seeing my team.

Last year we watched pretty much every Cowboys game that wasn't televised here at a local sports bar, which was inconvenient and kind of expensive. This year, we were able to find video feeds online to watch most of the Cowboys games. And, this year we were pretty fortunate, as 10 of the 16 Cowboys' games were broadcast on local TV.

The game this weekend is the last game of the regular season and is fairly important, as the winner of the game will win the division and gets a higher seed in the playoffs. Unfortunately, while much of the country will get to see this game, the game is not being televised locally. Fortunately, all playoff games are nationally televised, so we will at least get to see the Cowboys playoff game(s) on TV.

We finally received our tickets to the two Olympic events we requested at the end of October last year. We're going to a speed skating event on February 13th at noon and a hockey game on the 16th at noon. The actual tickets are pretty cool looking and rather large.

I'm getting really excited about going to Vancouver and being a part of the Winter Olympics. The city will probably be very busy and swarmed with tourists and spectators. It also happens to be Valentine's Day on the Sunday while we're there, so maybe we can eat at a nice romantic restaurant or something. I can't wait!

Today is Troy's 26th birthday. This past Saturday we did several things to celebrate it. First we went to a restaurant we'd never been to before called Portage Bay for breakfast. It's only 3 blocks from us, so we walked there in the cold morning air. It was really busy, so we had to wait about 20 minutes. The food was good though and it was very filling. I got a ham, mushroom, and cheese scramble that came with toast and red potatoes. Troy got the breakfast sampler which came with eggs, toast, red potatoes, and his choice of bacon or ham. If we had gotten toast or pancakes, we could have used the fruit/topping bar which had several bowls of all kinds of fruits, butter, and whipping cream to put on your food. It all looked so good! We'll probably go back some time.

After breakfast, we walked to Lake Union and spend a few minutes there. Most of the park is blocked off because of construction and has been pretty much ever since we moved here. Hopefully it will be done soon. Then we went back home for a while before taking the bus to see a movie at the Varsity Theater in the U District. We saw Earth Days, a documentary about the history of the environmental movement. It was pretty informative and interesting because of all the archival footage from the past 50 years.

After the movie, we took a bus to the Space Needle to use our coupon for two free glasses of wine. It was dark by the time we got there around 5. We had turned our tree lights on before we left so we could try to see them from the Space Needle. Even with the telescopes, it was difficult to see our tree.

Then we rode the bus to Capitol Hill to try a Vietnamese place called Monsoon. Unfortunately we didn't have reservations and they were booked until 8, so we ditched that idea and went to Seastar near Whole Foods instead. Seastar is a really nice place and the food was excellent. I had a cup of crab and corn bisque and the penne with sea scallops. Troy had the mahi mahi with rice and vegetables and a glass of Riesling white wine. The bread was really good too. We had been planning to get cheesecake for dessert at the Cheesecake Factory downtown, but we were both too full, so we didn't get anything.

It was a pretty fun, full day. Troy has a few presents to open when I get home from work today. Happy Birthday Troy!

Lately I've been lucky enough to be able to watch TCU football games on TV at home. Their games aren't normally televised, but Versus has been showing their games in our area. TCU is actually ranked 6th in the entire nation (woohoo!) and has consistently been very good for several years. I really hope we can win the rest of our games this year and have a chance to play in a BCS bowl game. The biggest game we have left is against 14th ranked Utah at home. I'm looking forward to watching that game in two weeks. Go TCU!