Seattle had a sad sports year. Mike Holmgren finished his 10 season tenure with the Seahawks, finishing just 4-12, one of the worst teams in the league. The Mariners only won 61 games compared to 101 losses. The Washington Huskies did not win a single college football game, while the Washington State Cougars went 2-11. And, the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City after 41 years of being in Seattle. This article on ESPN.com sums up everything pretty well. It's too bad all our sports teams had to be so crappy our first year here.

Seeing as how we've taken quite a few pictures over the past few months, we decided to put together a 2009 calendar. We made one for ourselves and sold a few online. Calendars are still available if anyone wants to order one. Visit our calendar page to view the pictures and place an order.

Here's a few pictures from our Christmas trip. It was fun making Christmas cookies with my Mom and sister. Seeing all the family on Christmas Eve was nice too. We also went to a Stars game on Saturday night against the Ducks. I probably won't get many more chances to see Mike Modano score a goal, so I'm glad he scored the game-winning goal in OT when we were there.

One thing I really noticed on our Christmas trip to Texas is how fast everyone drives. The speed limit on most freeways is 60, but most drivers were doing 70 or faster. People tailgate all the time and cut you off. I like to complain about how people here drive so slow, but I guess it's better than driving insanely like they do in Texas and feeling like your life is at risk. I wish these places weren't so extreme, somewhere in the middle would be nice.

When we left Seattle, Lesley thought that our suitcase was over 50 pounds, which I was told is the weight limit above which the airlines assess extra fees. We emptied out a few things to make sure we could bring it without having to pay extra (in addition to the $15 bag fee). It turned out to be 36 pounds with everyone's gifts included. However, with all of our return gifts (which included several books), it was exactly 50 pounds. So, I'm glad we left the hair drier at home.

It was snowy and in the 20's when we left Seattle. It was in the 30's when we arrived. On Friday it was 83ºF in Fort Worth.

We definitely did notice differences in the air, aside from temperature. We kept shocking each other with static electricity, and there was a lot of dust in the air, in addition to allergens that bothered Lesley throughout the trip.

Prior to our trip, we spent hours planning a schedule of who we would see and when in order to figure out when we'd be able to do the things we wanted and see the people we wanted and to help us spend a fair amount of time with both sets of our parents. It didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, since some people who we had hoped to see were at work during the day on Monday and Tuesday. Still, we were able to see everyone and eat and do everything we'd wanted to. We ended up seeing both sets of our parents equally and for about 4 hours more than we'd planned.

We were able to spend the night with several different people, which was nice because we didn't get tired of any one person and we were able to spend more time with some people, like our grandmothers and Lesley's sister. We were able to leave our suitcase at Lesley's parents' house and just brought our backpack and duffel bag with us each night. It wasn't bad, but became a little bit of a hassle.

We especially enjoyed eating out at various places and spending quality time with our family and friends. Lesley's parents took us out to a hockey game. We looked at Christmas lights in Dallas with my parents. We went with our friends to see a Beatles cover band perform.

It was great to see everyone again and do some fun things. We don't have any immediate plans to come back, so I'm glad we were able to do so much this week.

We just got back to our apartment after spending the last week in Fort Worth. After a delayed outgoing flight, there were no problems with our flight this morning, aside from the fact we had to wake up at 5:10 (3:10 pacific time) to get to the airport. It was a busy week with a lot of driving around and seeing different people, so we're both very glad to be back home where we can stay in one place and relax. At least until we have to go back to work tomorrow.

We've been in Fort Worth for three full days and we have three full days left. It's been nice to see everyone again. It seems like we haven't been gone long and not much has changed, but it doesn't feel like home anymore. It was exciting to see everyone at first, but now it's almost routine again. The first day seemed the slowest and since then, the days have gone by faster. It's fun to do things with our families that we have always enjoyed and I'm looking forward to the things we have planned for our last few days, which will pass quickly.

Here's a short video of the snow falling the evening before my birthday. It fell pretty heavily for quite a while.

The roads were pretty bad before we left and with the snow that Seattle continues to get the roads are probably still pretty bad, especially since the city doesn't use salt to melt the ice:

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."

I'm sensitive to environmental issues, but at the same time, it sure was a pain that the roads were so impassible. Anyway, it's just kind of interesting that the city doesn't use salt even though it would surely help a lot.

Macy's downtown has a neat winter train display that we videoed. Here's a clip:



Sorry for the low video quality.

Another reason I'm glad we're not in Seattle now is because our neighborhood was hit with another power outage. I don't think we have anything critical in the fridge, but apparently Seattle is still dealing with some winter weather that I'm happy to be avoiding.

Before we checked out of our hotel, yesterday, I was notified that our flight was delayed from 1:20 to 2:15. Then, shortly after that, we found out that it was delayed to 2:40. After seeing that several other flights were canceled, I'm glad it was just a delay rather than a cancellation. Due to the holiday travel and the delays, we expected the lines at the airport to be incredibly long, so we left the hotel around 11 for our 2:40 flight. Checking in, dropping off our luggage, and going through security took less than 30 minutes, though, I was impressed. So, then, we had a long wait in the terminal.

We ate lunch at the airport and watched a plane at our gate. It left once and returned to be de-iced again. I think it left and came back again, too, but it finally left. We heard several cancellations announced, including all of Alaska's and Jet Blue's flights, but fortunately our flight wasn't canceled or delayed further. I consider ourselves very lucky that we were able to leave. After some anxiety about the weather and wondering whether we'd get to leave, it felt great to get off the ground.

My parents picked us up from the airport and I was very happy to see them again. It's nice to talk on the phone with them, but it's no substitute for being in person. And I got to ride in their new Prius. Lesley and I had some food to eat with my mom and then we chatted in the living room. We got to bed a little late, and I had forgotten how tiny my old bedroom is, but I was happy to be visiting my parents' house again.

I had to adjust to this job for the first few months that I worked here. I didn't know anyone and was mostly just assigned individual tasks to work on rather than being given the opportunity to take ownership of things and work with others to get things done, like I had at my previous job. However, I would say that phase has ended and I've involved myself more and things are going better.

Again, my position is new and not pre-defined so what I do will evolve over time as I find the best things for me to work on. A few weeks ago I was mostly doing web development for a particular project. That project has slowed down lately and I've been doing a lot of work for another project, which involves upgrading the lighting controls for a customer in order to help them turn their lights off when they're not needed in order to save electricity. I've been communicating with the customer, answering questions from the electrician, and identifying and requesting the data that we'll need to have provided for the interface that I've also been developing. I've also been working on helping our group coordinate better and protect and prepare ourselves better by developing standards and backing up some of our project data.

What's been most interesting to me as I've adjusted to this job is how much my previous job has influenced me and helped me here. The familiarity I gained with information technology at my last job has helped, but what I've really noticed is how my last job taught me to be assertive and take initiative. I've been given almost nothing to do here and almost everything I'm doing is because I've looked for it and started to do it. The lessons from my last job are what have really helped me to find things to do here and just start doing them. I think if I came straight to this job right after college, it would be totally different for me than it is now and I wouldn't be doing nearly as much.

I think it was good for me to leave my last job to come here, though, because as I've said before, this job and this company, especially, fit me a lot better than my old job, and I'm optimistic about the opportunities I'll have here. Right now, I think everyone's happy with what I'm doing, including me.

Our flight was scheduled to leave today at 1:20, but has been delayed until 2:40 due to high cross winds. Lots of other flights have been delayed and even canceled. I don't know what we'd do if our flight were canceled. We've heard on the news that lots of people are stuck at the airport and won't be able to get on another flight until Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully our flight will take off at 2:40 with no problems. We'll leave the hotel soon to take the shuttle to the airport and wait there for 3 hours until our flight. Hopefully security won't be too bad...

With more snow on the way, we decided to stay in a hotel tonight. We finished packing and getting everything together and left the apartment around 2:45 to catch the bus. It was very cold outside and started snowing more while we were waiting. We had to wait about 30 minutes because the bus was late. I was beginning to wonder if it would even show up. It was almost empty when we got on, but got really crowded by the time we went through downtown. A bunch of other people were also going to the airport and so all of us had our bags and suitcases in the isles. There wasn't much room on the bus at all. It seemed to be snowing pretty heavily, so I'm kind of surprised the bus was able to make it all the way to the airport with the snow and bad roads. We finally arrived at the airport around 4:20 and then we waited for a while to catch the shuttle to the hotel.

We finally arrived at the hotel after 5 and found an illegal, but very choppy, feed of the Cowboys-Ravens game to watch. We walked in the snow to get some food from Taco Bell and then finished watching the game.

We're really glad we got down here today instead of waiting until tomorrow. We'll probably leave pretty early in the morning just in case the security lines are long. I'm already not very fond of this holiday travel in the winter. So far it's been a big hassle.

It was really snowy the past 3 days here in Seattle. Here are some pictures of the beautiful snow everywhere:



We also took some video, but who knows when and if we'll post it.

The snow stopped falling yesterday and was compacted by feet and tires turning it into ice this morning. I wasn't sure whether I'd go into the office today and after seeing the buses running way behind this morning and hearing that all the school districts were closed, I decided to work from home today. I walked with Lesley to work and it was a little slippery, but not unsafe. It was nice working from home again.

However, another storm is expected Saturday night and Sunday. Considering how the recent storm caused 100 bus lines to be canceled, we didn't want to be stranded away from the airport for our flight on Sunday. So, we decided to stay at a hotel room near the airport on Saturday night. This is a slow time for hotels but the one we chose was almost full for some reason. So, anyway, now we should be able to make it to the airport in plenty of time and hopefully the flight won't be delayed.

I was awoken in the middle of the night Wednesday night by thundersnow. It's not very common here, but neither is regular thunder and lighting with rain.