seth's happy 10,000nth

Last night i attended a party at seth and jen's. seth's 10,000nth day old party. i have to say it was the best, and only 10,000nth day old party i've ever been to. in fact the thought of being 10,000 days old never even entered my mind. but seth has a program that will tell you when you will be 10,000 days old and his day was yesterday. i think it is something like 27 years and 138 days if you were born before leap day of 1980. but the party was great. seth was tricked into thinking he had to come home to get some blood drawn. (he's terrified of getting poked, but not much as mat who started to sweat when we started talking about needles) but it was a surprise party and a whole ton of people came. jen made some awesome food (mexican), some of which i now own and keep in my fridge. she made some black bean, avacado, pepper, cilantro, other stuff, dip and it was super good. then we had brownies, cake, or both, and ice cream. it was pretty fun. after dinner i played hide and seek, and made "neckwesses" that went on our hands. can't say i've done either of those for quite a long time either. all in all it was a pretty good party. lots of good food, lots of nerd/engineer talk that mostly went way over my head, and lots of babies going crazy over things like balloons and ribbon. so thanks seth and jen.

hiking above ogden

before you read on, i would like to clarify what part of ogden i am refering to. you are probably thinking ogden like above weber state and mount ogden park right? well i'm not. i am talking about above ogden like above ben lomond high and ninth street. are you with me now? well you will be soon.

the scene is 3pm at my house (pete and amy). carrie and micah are also in this scene. if you were out yesterday, it was beautiful outside. 55F was the average temp. calculated by my built in thermometer. earlier that day we had decided to go for a hike, but were at a loss as to where would be a dry, non-muddy area. the rain the three days before was hindering our dreams of spring hiking, but the area above my house was surprisingly dry.

okay, now you are with me, and here we go. we started out walking/strolling casually along, and we ended up at this area of rocks/cliffs that i wanted to take pictures of. so i took a few (coming soon to another blog near you) and we moved on. i was talking the whole time with carrie because pete and micah were always ahead of us; as we were walking and talking, i realized that we were not going in the direction of my house (down) we were still going up. i asked what the deal was, and pete said he would like to go further. i finally complied after much complaint, and we went on a little further.

this pattern of continuing on, finding a cool picture spot, walking, realizing it is the "wrong" way, asking what the deal is, and continuing on happened up until we were half way between our house and 12th street. at which time we collectively decided to continue on until we reached 12th and mike could drive us back.

as we went on we kept getting higher, which means we would eventually have to go back down (easier than it sounds). we also blazed our own trail a couple of times, micah and pete found a cool cave with some really weird poop of some kind up on a ledge, we saw some crazy climbers at 9th street, and carrie twisted her already messed up ankle 3 "blocks" from our destination and continued on.

so, if you have a bit of spring fever, and the weather is right. i recommend hiking above ogden (the 12 and below numbers). also pete thinks it would make a pretty good mountain bike trail (the underlying reason we went all the way to 12th). so call us next time, we are pros now.

actual time went from around 3pm to 5pm. we covered an area of 22 "blocks" which pete thinks is only 3 miles. have a wonderful night/day whenever you read this.

Tona

Glendon wanted to go out for sushi last week but he had to work the weekend and nights that whole week. so this week we decided to go and went to tona. jesse, mat w, glendon and i. (micah) we had a good time and the sushi was great. i think the best roll was mats "hot lava." i had the salmon teri maki. whatever that is. and the unagi roll. i probably butchered the spelling on all that but thats ok. sushi was great...yeah yeah and now to the good part of the story. mat was super excited that they had green tea ice cream! so he bought some. and i don't know if it was him getting desert or the fact that one of glendon's airmans wives told him to get cheese cake but glendon got some cheese cake. now let me set the scene. there we are. 4 cups of ice water. about half an inch of water in the bottom of each. a bit to my left about in the middle of the table is a tiny little plate with some pickled ginger and a pile of wasabi about the size of a very large almond m&m. So glendon says to me, "hey micah, what would it take for you to eat that wasabi?" i said, "a piece of cheese cake on you." "thats all?" "yeah." "you're on." "what are the rules?" "you have to put it in your mouth for at least three seconds before swallowing then no water for ten more seconds." "deal." so i tossed it in my chompers. it was aweful! it's that asian spicy that goes straight up through your nose to your brain. not only that, when i tried to swallow, i couldn't! it is like trying to swallow a mixture of dry cracker crumbs mixed into peanut butter. it just got stuck in my throat. i started gagging but i choked out the words. "start counting!" so i got to ten and drank my water. then glendon's. then mat's. then jesse's. then i ate the ice out of most of the cups before the girl came back. i asked for water then drank mine and somebody elses too. it was pretty sick if i do say so. well i wiped the wasabi/spit junk off my mouth and chin then ate my cheese cake. it was amazing! so good. well finally we finished and i noticed that i still had the taste of wasabi. it sunk in deep. so i guess glendon won in the end. thats tona. eat there.

Kobe

wednesday night sarah and i went out to Kobe...its that place that you all drive by on your way to got coffee. it has a huge sign and you probably have never been there...yeah thats the one. the place was awesome! it's a japanese steak and sushi bar so you sit around a big bar and your chef makes all your food right there in front of you. the cool part is that he is good at flipping knives and food and he's pretty funny too. the food was even more amazing than the chef too. it started with soup and a salad. i liked the soup, sarah liked the salad. then the chef came out and made fried rice and noodles. (i got noodles, sarah, fried rice) and both were the best i have ever had from any chinese/japanese place. the guy was spinning the egg on his spatula and tossing it in the air and stuff then he tossed it and caught it on the spatula sideways so it cracked open, but the shell stayed on the spatula..it was sick. he made more fried rice than he needed so i got some of that too. it was a good deal all around. then he made shimp and i don't know what he put on them but they were so good. sarah ate all 3 of hers! shrimp was part of my meal so i got a bunch more. but i ate all of it because all i ate that day was a bowl of cereal. finally he got to our main meal. i had fillet mignon and sarah got teriyaki steak with peppers and onions. both were great. and finally he made everybody stir fried vegetables. he also put alcohol all over the counter and lit it. that was cool. the place was super fun. a bit on the expensive side but worth going at least once.

the new way to shop...

i am starting to become an online shopper...
it's actually really fun. you can search for everything, and buy anything! i like it a lot. the prices are way good, but sometimes i start to miss that shopping feeling that apparently only girls get when we walk around stores seeing all the different clothing options, reading price tags, going from store-to-store, you know--the usual...well, if you are an onling shopper like me, then check out AMAZON.COM it's the best! i bought a CD for 5 bucks! do it now!

SUPER Party

Superbowl parties are often a gamble. You might end up at the really lame superbowl party with some chips and and a couple of guys who are WAY into the game or else sleeping. Or there's the insane superbowl party that is really just a reason to get drunk.

So if you are looking for a sure bet, go to the Massie's parties.

First of all the Massies are great for any party. They are incredibly welcoming and fun to hang out with, even if they are almost old enough to be your parents. (I said almost!) They'll play games, quote from movies, or sing along to some really great tunes. (Try challenging Rod to a game of name that tune.) They are just great people.

Their house is great too. Very warm and cozy with lots of different places to hang out.

So parties are always fun there.

But here's why their superbowl party is the best: It's two parties in one. They've got one upstairs for people who have to be quiet during the game. You know, people who are really into it. And downstairs is another party where you probably only have to be quiet during the commericials, and not even then. You know, people who aren't really into the game. Now you don't have to get stuck at one or the other either. You can move back and forth, you just have to know the rules. I'm not going to go upstairs and start a game of Yatzee, and no one is going to come downstairs and tell us to shut up and watch the game. Everyone is free to mix and mingle.

The food is great. Food upstairs and down. Not just a bunch of stuff picked up from the store, but some delicious homemade superbowl food. And beverages. Soda, or beer (Corona was the beer of choice, although I brought some Killians and some chocolate stout from Roosters.)

So I mostly stayed downstairs, where I worked on my essay (they also have wireless internet). Some people played pool. We started a game of "Marbles" (a Massie original as far as I know, complete with hand carved board.) There was also some Wii action going on and a game of fusball broke out between some twenty somethings and some dad's of twenty somethings.

Overall a very fun party. I highly recommend you work a Massie party into your busy social schedules. And check out the newly refurbished downstairs. I hear that one of the guys who painted down there is "excellent."

my coffee

I went to Got Coffee to do a little bit of internet stuff that i needed to do. and like always i was planning on getting the tea. probably mint. so i was standing there trying to decide between mint and black current. well this girl asked me what i wanted. i said i would be a minute because i didn't know yet. "i can help you decide, i'm pretty good at that." "sure what's good today?" bla bla bla...she told me to get a latte with caramel and cinnamon. i did and it was pretty good. it was kinda like a caramel macchiato but less sweet and more latte like. my favorite thing is usually a latte anyway, that or a breve. anyway the point of the story is that if you are at Got Coffee and can't decide what you want...you might want to try it. it’s pretty good.