We're making the best of things.
Ya know, I believe everything happens for a reason. If it doesn't make sense now, it might 100 years from now. Since wealth, fame and fortune won't be my treasure here, maybe the people I meet and the knowledge I gain will be. So now, for me, work is the best thing about Seattle. What I learn here should go far.
All past issues seem to have died away.
If anything, at least people know my name. I'm still fearful of writing freely in this log.
I'm afraid of saying something like "someone looks beautiful today", which could be taken as "they looked ugly yesterday"
My laptop fried last night.
I lost a lot of pictures from December.
So, I went out to get a new laptop at Frys Electronics (they have great sales on Friday), and ended up getting a Tablet PC. We couldn't afford it really, it cost $500 more than what I wanted to spend, but I need to keep up on technology.
I love it, and it makes up for the buses!
It has a touch screen (which I can't wait to write some programs for), 250gig hd, 3gig mem, AMD Turion dual processor, card readers, dvd+-, webcam,bluetooth,Wireless-G, 3xusb 2.0s, and weighs about a  pound. The only thing I don't like about it is the glare off of its screen. Maybe I can look really cool and wear Polaroids when using it!
Becky, Peter and I are searching for some kind of opportunity.
I still think the mobile notary worked out well, and the Segway dealership opportunity still intrigues me.
Time will tell!

Discovery Park
Discovery Park has a light house.
It also is home to townsend chipmonks, a large variety of birds, and seals love the beach!
The Mongolia bluffs overlook the Puget Sound.
It surrounds the Fort Lawton military base.
Chittenden Locks
Chittenden locks is a link between the fresh waters of the lakes and the salt waters of Puget Sound.
Barges, pleasure craft, an all kinds of boats come through these locks.
There is also a fish ladder there that allows salmon to cross between the waters.
And hey, Canada is just 90 minutes up the road. I can't wait to see if the changes between the US and Canada are as great as the ones between the US and Mexico.
We'll be headed to an Indian Reservation in Puyallup, Wa.
Hopefully we'll squeeze in a trip to Everette.

There's not much that can compare to the excitement of wiping the fog off your bus window to see that you've missed your stop. I had to walk about a mile in the rain. On the plus side, it was downhill !
Buses are fine, but they automate another porton of your life.
For me, they take away control. I'm getting rustier as I get older, and walking in the rain hurts.
This event shouldn't have happened.
This is one of those times in life where I can honestly say if I had it to do over again, I'd do it differently.
I planned the trip and the stay in Seattle so very, very badly.
We might have lived further away from Seattle, and paid for parking in town.
I might have researched it, and found out that corp-to-corp wasn't a good option.
My credit card info wouldn't have been hijacked. I would have used an inactive credit card for the trip.
Bad planning is the reason for: the rushing to get here, rushing around to find an apartment, being without cash, and living out of my budget. My budget's blown, I'm tired, and free time has gotten scarce as a result.
I didn't allow enough time to plan. I let myself be rushed into a major decision and I'm paying for it.
It will take time to undo the damage.
But time has a way of creating good out of bad.
I'll learn a good computer system. I'll be more careful in the future. I won't repeat these mistakes again.
Hopefully, I'll learn from these mistakes and become a better person.
* Making a few mistakes is normal. Making many mistakes is stupid.
Writing down my mistakes will help me consider them in future decisions.

Longest word typed with the left hand: stewardesses 
Longest word typed with the right hand: lollipop
Words with no rhymes: month, orange, silver, purple
The only word that ends in the letters "mt": Dreamt
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
Palindromes are words like: racecar, kayak, level
The only four words that end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, hazardous
The only two words that have all five vowels in order: abstemious, facetious
The longest word on one row of the keyboard: typewriter
The left hand does 56% of the typing.
Our eyes do not grow after birth
Our nose and ears never stop growing. 
Babies are born without kneecaps.
Women blink almost twice as much as men.
No new animals have been domesticated in 4,000 years
Goldfish have a memory span of three seconds.
Sharks are the only fish that can blink with both eyes. 
Snails can sleep for three years
The Ostrich eyeball is bigger than its brain.
Cats have 32 muscles in each ear. 
There are more chickens in the world than people.
Almonds are a member of the peach family. 
A Jiffy is 1/100th of a second
The only month in history with no full moon: February, 1865
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
If everyone in China walked past you in 8 lines, it would never end because of their rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors
Peanuts are an ingredient of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise liner gets six inches per gallon
A vehicle with 10 miles per gallon gets 8 inches per drop.

Something happened in the late 70s and butter clams in Washington become fatally toxic. It has to do with what has been coined, "The Red Tide", which is caused by large numbers of microscopic organisms. Small razor clams don't retain the fatally Paralytic Shellfish Poison (PSP) contained in these Red Tides (which aren't really red, BTW).
PSP is created by A.catenella and is a potent nerve toxin.
A.cantenella is a plankton like animal/plant that can produce its own food and it can swim. When they're dormant, they fall as cyst onto the ocean floor, where shellfish, like clams and oysters (which can filter 8 gallons of water an hour) can scarf them up. See: http://www.tpchd.org/files/library/3f99dac18661fbba.pdf
The clams are here, they're just off limits.
I'm actually happy now, that its not a result of pollution, or over-harvesting.
But I do miss butter clams!

Decades ago, every bar in Vegas wouldn't be a REAL bar, unless they sold either hot wings or steamers.
I'd visited Tacoma and Seattle a couple of times in the 80's, and eaten some wonderful clams, oysters, and gooeyduks.
Since the 90's, I've ordered steamers in every city I've been in.
It seems that the clams have shrunk.
What happened? They've changed from this to this:
In my quest for the perfect steamers,
I'm just going to have to get a license, shovel, bucket and go clamming for myself. However, if I could somehow use clarified butter and lemon as bait instead, that would be much better.
But with me clamming, and with me being me,
I'd see the little critters in my bucket, think their cute for some stupid reason, and decide to set them free on some better part of the beach. I do that because I haven't seen any critters that I didn't think weren't cute anywhere (nice sentence, huh?).
Plus, I was raised to believe it was wrong to kill anything. Its okay to have someone else do it, though.
So, maybe I can get Becky to go clamming for me. I'll drive. lol.
BTW - This was intended to be a humorous story (you will chuckle...har har).
Gosh, what time is it?

Then we watched the Transformers.
I wish my truck could drive to the store, turn into a robot, and buy milk and eggs for me.
I can't even let go of the steering wheel without it shooting off into the desert.
Good Eats. Great Food. Good People!
Later, everyone went to the Ross Clothing store. 
I'm not sure what kind of clothes, shoes, and miscellanious items Ross sells. It looked like some of their shoes were prescuffed. But me, I could care less if my jeans are used (its not like buying a toothbrush). If the jeans look good, they're in my basket. Who knows, maybe B Pitt previously owned them. I doubt if he was ever size XXXXL though from eating too many tacos though.
I'm still pen shy about writing my notes in here.
You never know when someone is going to take your pen and stab you in the eyeball with it (sick humour, I know). That hasn't happened much, if at all, since I started this site years ago. However, sometimes the things I write in here find their way to the New York Times headlines, which is bizarre.
I'm about as original as bottled water.
Even my dreams are copied and pasted.
When I published LVDude and googled it, I got 'did you mean love dud?'
That clued me in that I wasn't going to be a MySpace.com. I still get nothing when I google the entries in here.
So, how do hackers and evil bots find this site? hmmm.
I wonder how long it takes to ping 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255

Sorry bout that. I can't believe I pay them all of that money for these websites...har har.
http://www.1and1.com is an excellent web hosting site. They're cheap, and they're up 98% of the time.
If you want 99.9% of the time, buy a Tandem!

 

You can't get out of it. I like that expression. It applies to Seattle.
I think what makes a place act like a whirlwind
are all of its obstacles and pressures. Here, 11 hours are absorbed in preparation, work, and commutes. It takes me 10 minutes just to get to a bus. Most of the day is gone. If I have to get milk, another 2 hours is absorbed. Free time and sleep become a luxury that necessity erodes. I'm not complaining. This is just an observation.
I missed opportunities to call my friends.
Time was stretched thin. I didn't mean anything by that. Everything happened so quickly.
Friends are your gift in life.
New Years Eve is when you should remember them.
On the other hand, no one called me.
So I guess all is good. Happy New Years!!!
toot toot

Love you too buddy. I miss you guys. I still have the fall colors of that area ingrained in my mind.
My IPhone said it was 16 degrees in Louisville today, and it'll be back in the 60's by Friday.
It looks like we'll be wrapping up here in about 7 months.
That's unsure right now, but I can't wait to get back. I'll miss Seattle, but I won't miss the over crowded busses.
Maybe next time in Louisville
I'll sell Coney Hotdogs down by the river and Becky can be my lovely assistant! lol.
We've got lots of time to dream and plan, and that's a good thing! HNY!

And learning more about Homer and Plato, I get the impression we are all living in someone elses dream. Our values aren't really ours. They are projections from someone else, who long ago had the power to influence generations to come. Those values include possessions, love, sex, and death. Why I'm saying this is, your dreams can out live you, and other people can live in them.

I don't know if we'll be able to see all of Washington in the next 8 months, but we're going to give it our best shot.
The streets are tough in Seattle
I drove through a 6 way stop last night, and a one-way street magically turned into a two-way street when we were in the left hand lane. We had to dodge an oncoming car! Its a good thing that most people only drive 20mph here. The few accidents we've seen here look terrible, but you can tell they were head on collisions at a low rate of speed.
I tried to hop in the jacussi at 6am
They had it locked up =^(  awe. I had to take a shower instead, lol.
We toured Pike's Market today.
Its a big flea market by the Puget Sound, and it cost $16 to park there. Most of the restaurants were no larger than our kitchen. I'm beginning to realize the once fist-sized clams they sold everywhere in the 80's are now the size of a quarter. I have to wonder what is happening to our oceans?
Later, we went to the Northgate Mall.
I need to get a warm jacket.
I'm as blue as a Smurf when I get on the bus
We didn't get a jacket, BUT we bought a really cool blanket.
I can wear it on the bus. I think I'd fit in.
Renee~n~m all are going to stay over on New Years Eve
We bought the fixings for a really nice beef roast, YUM!

Ahhh, the bennies of owning a truck! I hauled a couple of end tables for Victoria.
We hung out with Jonathan, Renee, McKenzee, Victoria and Charles.
Renee gave us a rocking chair, so I'm all set for old age!

Please note: Anyone can reply to this.
Just click this heading "About per diem", then click Reply. Be sure to click Enter when your done.
I'm not really sure yet why all employers don't offer per diem to travelling salaried employees.
So I'm researching it. My example uses a fictional employer "Acme" and an employee "Wiley Coyotee".
I also use easy numbers, $20 per hour (or $160 a day) and a per diem rate of $80 per day.
The per diem rates are much higher. See IRS Publication 1542
Please Note: The per diem is not on top of the $160 a day, it comes out of it.
The way I understand it:
- If Acme pays $160 per day, and offers per diem using the non-accountable plan
Both Acme and Wiley pay Fica taxes on only $80 a day.
- If Acme decides not offer per diem, they still pay $160 a day.
Plus, Acme pays 7% extra in Fica for the non-taxable per diem they decided not to offer.
In this case, both Acme and Wiley would pay almost $6 a day (or $1,500 a year) extra in taxes.
Wiley he has to pay a tax guy to go through his reciepts to categorize them as allowable or not.
- I'd think using per diem, everybody would save on taxes. But I'm not a tax guy.
Set up might be a small pain, but I don't know.
It should be something an employer can set up in Quick Books.
Quote: To create a non-taxed per diem payroll item, follow the steps in this Knowledge Base Article.  However, you should be aware that not all per diem paid to employees is tax free.  The deciding factor is whether you are using an accountable plan (where the employee submits receipts for expenses paid) or a non-accountable plan (where a flat rate is paid to the employee and no accounting of the money spent is required). See  quickbooksgroup.com.
I've only seen the non-accountable plan implemented, which is a no-brainer.
The down side of it is, the employee appears to make $10 an hour.
Unemployment benefits, disability, and the income figures decrease.

I'd just assumed most companies pay their travelling employees per diem.
Never assume anything! I'll learn one of these days.
My little article mentions a savings of $1,500 a year...
Wiley Coyotee could get himself a really nice rocket launcher for that pesky Road Runner with that.
Gosh, one of these days I'll fix the reply entries to this blog...yuck...its all out of order!

Recently, I wrote a note about the Olympian Casino in Washington. Now I can't find where I got that information from. OOPs. I usually post in the wee hours of the morning.

<= Our Christmas Tree, aye.
This year, it will just have to do.
Thanks so much! I really miss you guys.
Being in an unfamiliar place during the holidays is always tough.
You know that Christmas works backwards
Its the most depressing holiday of the year.
But I've got more memories stored up from this last year than most people get in a life time.
Thanks for being part of them and Merry Christmas to you all: 
Becky, Sonny, Rod, Reese, Jesse, Peter, Susan, Preacher Scott, Gma, Jennifer, Dustin, Paul, Robert, Emily, Renee, Jonathan, McKinzee, Jess,  Ricco, Jeffree, Mikey, Andy, Ashley, Tim, Jari, Loff, Lewis, Jerry, Jennette, Chuck, Charles and Renee, Ida, Allen, Cheryl, Kelly, Tass, Emilio, Cyrus, Paula, Mark, Frank, Ruth, Warren, Lisa, David, Leann, Kevin, all the people at Fourth Street Live, all the people at Kentucky Towers, all the people we hung with at the Pub and TGIF Fridays, Don, Curtis, Erich, MS. ===> Thankyou ===>
To those who are in heaven now: 
My Dad, Squirt, Rob, Mom, Dave, Grandfather, Skip, Uncle James, Jim, Chris and Chris, I'll never forget you.
You all touched my heart.
And at sometime, you gave me joy this year. You guys are GREAT!!!