Happy Birthday Marie and Rebecca

The whole gang went down to Portland, Oregon for the long weekend to celebrate Marie and Rebecca's birthday.

Friday afternoon Mardi and I drove down to Portland stopping into Vancouver to visit Mardi's cousins Jason, Maggie, Jennifer, Jeff and Little Maggie. Thanks guys. Great to finally meet you.

A benefit of visiting Portland is there is no sales tax. So spending most of the weekend shopping downtown was easily justified. It's surprisingly fun to watch Marie and Mardi shop. Saturday night we had drinks at a bar called 750ml and dinner at a really cool restaurant called Blue Hour. Thanks Hank for the great choice of restaurant. The rest of the evening we spent at Aura a night club near that huge book store. The barman there really liked me. These sort of things always happen to me. I was buying a round of drinks which came to around $35. I handed him what I thought was two $20 notes but I in fact handed him a $100 and a $20 and promptly told him, keep the change. When last call came around I went to get that last beer and the barman told me it was on him. I remember bragging to Henry the barman game a free drink. From now on I am going to get the change back and then tip. I blame the bloody "same size, same colour" currency. That's right I spelt colour with a "u".

Sunday morning Mardi and I looked after Shy's two girls Tom and Danni while he and Grace were pampered at the day spa. The girls help me shop for jeans and t-shirts at Diesel. That afternoon some of the more crazy members of the gang jumped out of a perfectly functioning airplane for shits ang giggles. I have no desire to skydive.

Sunday night we spent the night at Mardis' grandma's place in Vancouver. Very funny watching old videos of Mardi as a little kid. As soon as we arrived at my parents place in Australia out came the naked baby photos.

The Birthday Girls. Happy Birthday lots of love Mardi and Dion aka Mion.	Dee Dee and Babs having a fab time.
Tom and Grace gettin' funky.	My lovely fiance and I.
Tom and Danni out shopping with Mardi and I.

Boeing vs Alenia: 1 All

Lee coming off the field after a fast paced first half with the score still nil all. The Boeing soccer team played a friendly match against an Italian supplier Alenia at Seahawks stadium. A great game with loads of exciting shots on goal. It even looked and sounded like a bonafide international match with the visitors yelling out in Italian and taking a few dives for penalties. A group of us from work went to watch our work mates Lee and Hafiz play. Awesome game guys. Lee, we're pretty disappointed you didn't get a yellow card this year.

Happy Birthday, Tom

Bad weather spoiled our plans to celebrate Tom's birthday on a yacht. "Plan B" was to see a movie at the Seattle Film Festival. Hopefully Tom will leave a comment on the film because I didn't end up going to the movies.

Lee, Henry, Scott and I decided to play tournament Texas Hold'em poker instead of the movies. We all put in $20 and split all the chips. I lost all my chips in the first round after Scott called my all-in Bluff. The second round finished head to head with Henry and I. My last hand was a Ace King and with all the common cards I had a pair of aces. That's my first poker game I have walked away ahead.

We all joined Tom for dinner at the Pink Door near the Markets. I still don't think that door is pink. Somehow my argument didn't get much support being colour blind. Happy birthday mate. Hope you had a great day.

Children's Art Show

Grace often hangs art in the foyer space of her building in Belltown and puts on fab opening parties. Last night was art painted by primary school kids. Mardi and I arrived late so we didn't get to buy any paintings. The prices started at $25 or more depending if you wanted to donate over and above the price. I really liked this cool painting of the Texas flag which I think was painted by a fourth grader. I suppose it's fair enough that parents got first dibs.

Mardi, Tom, Danny, Grace and Amy in front of the childrens art which will remain hung in the building entrance for a month for residents and visitors to enjoy.

Wedgetail First Flight

Whoo Hoo, it flies. This marks the completion of the aircraft mods for the first RAAF AEW&C 737. Special guests from US and Oz as well as Wedgetail program employees were invited to witness the first (official) take-off. A small group of us decided to get a better vantage point. We all went inside the office of a helicopter school and asked them if they would let us watch from their ramp on the other side from the Boeing hanger. They offered an even better deal. A roof top deck. Photographs courtesy of David Rule.

737 AEW&C "Wedgetail" paraded in front of dignitaries, invited guests and program employees. Taxiing to the piano keys. The chase plane was in the air before the 737 and buzzed the take off of the 737 to observe the take off and no doubt take photographs.

Dion's wrist has signed in

I have a SPOT watch. It's very, very cool. I can receive data via FM like MSN Messenger messages, my outlook calendar, news, sport, weather and more. Mark's company developed it with Microsoft and MSN Direct. Thanks a heap Mark. Hopefully I can configure my wrist's MSN account properly so me crew can send me messages while I'm riding my bike. Oh yeah and it tells the time aswell ever aware of the correct time from an atomic clock.

Gas Works Park

We didn't end up going for our regular Saturday morning ride because of rain. Seeing the sun come out Sunday afternoon was enough to motivate us to go for a ride along the Burt Killman Trail. We stopped for a rest at Gas Works Park which is a park right on the water where an old oil refinery used to be. I'm guessing we are talking about petrolium instead of natural gas.

"I think it was some sort of gas refinery." - Mardi	9 miles from home at Gas Works Park on a nice spring sunday afternoon.

Hank and Tom came over to Maple Leaf for dinner. We were pretty tired after our 12 mile ride we were asleep when they arrived. Luckily I started my curied chicken and papadums before I lay down to watch telly. Mardi loves papadums, she takes them to work burning them in the microwave and stinking out the whole floor.

Mean Girls

I was surprised by the movie Mean Girls I saw last night. And I'm not going to lie to you the leading girl Lyndsay Logan is hot! Mardi and Marie dragged me to see it. I feel obligated to say this to cover myself from any future abuse from my mates. Its a very, very funny movie. Everyone can relate to cliques at high school. Too funny in parts. A couple of very funny scenes were directly followed by a dialog which was drowned out by laughter.

Happy Mom and Mums Day

I called my Mum in Oz at Midnight saturday night. I forgot to do it earlier, but I didn't forget my Mum. Happy Mothers day Mum.

Sunday we spent Mothers Day with Mardi's Mum, sorry Mom, Nancy and Marry Ellen, Belinda, Dean and Grace Anne. We all went for a bike ride along the bike path which goes to Steven's Lake near Snowhomish. A lovely picnic lunch in the shade afterwards topped off the afternoon.

Nancy, Me, Mardi, Mary-Ellen, Grace and Belinda	Grace and Nancy feeding the horses

Card night

We had an awesome time over Jon and Kathryn's place on the east side in Madina Friday night. We started out playing cards with a few drinks. I had played Eucha before and it was Mardi's first time. Despite this Mardi is no fool and teamed up with the Eucha grand master, Jon. However Kathryn and I were ever confident we were going to prevail.

"I'm at my best when I'm at my worst" - Kathryn, 2004

After Kathryn and I got slaughtered in cards we decided to switch to 8 ball to even the score. This is where the evening went wild dancing to 80s music and downing vodka and cranberry. It came down to the last game. Yes, Kathryn and I are the pool champions.

"90% percent of the game is half mental" - Some football coach (please comment if you know)

Finally we all got to bed at around 4am. The breakfast at the Pancake House made up for the fact I didn't have any Berroca. Thanks Jon and Kathryn.

Cruise Ship Tour

Mardi arranged through our friendly cruise travel agent Dean a tour of the cruise ship Oosterdam. The boat, ah sorry ship is only a year old but it looks like the interior was salvaged from the love boat from the 70s. I think Trump was the decorator. The rooms are much better than we expected and lots with verandas. I think our wedding/honeymoon will be pretty cool with our family and friends as long as I'm not harrased by impatient little old people. Its a long story.

Mustang Sally

Another saturday morning triathalon training session. Mardi, Jen, Henry and I decided to ride our bikes out to Elliot Bay Marina and back. A little lunch at Maggie Bluffs balanced out the workout.

Saturday afternoon Mardi and I drove "Sally" out to Fish Lake to join the Sultan Crew Belinda, Dean, Grace Ann, Ashlie and Janelle camping. What a great drive in the convertable down the other side of Steven's Pass.

Sunday night I went with Grace, Marie and Mark to Frank's cool deck party downtown. We had to cut the camping trip short as Mardi had to leave for San Francisco by 6pm. I haven't been back to Frank's for a while. Frank's New Years Eve party was where I proposed to my lovely Mardi. The band at the party played out on the deck during the sunset. I really want to live downtown again.