Friday at Marymoor Park

IMG_4022,
originally uploaded by jinlee.

The first time I took Brian to Marymoor when he was less than a year old, he was chased by a lot of bigger dogs and traumatized.

Eventually, thanks to Angela's two precious dogs, Brian learned how to play with other dogs again and now loves going to Marymoor.

With rain predicted for this weekend, I thought today was a good day to take them out.

I didn't get many good shots of them at the dog park because they like to stay close to me, but this photo was my favorite.

Michael Buble

So... not to jump on the Michael Buble bandwagon, because I don't think there is one yet. I mean, the guy hasn't even been on Oprah yet (but I suspect he will once Oprah finds out about him)... but this guy is amazing. His music makes you want to get up and dance, every time you hear it. His sound is kind of a mix between jazz and pop. His song "Home" even sounds a bit country (I had no idea he sang that song until I bought his CD). And hey, he's from the Northwest, for those of you who have a little NW pride (from Vancouver BC I think).

If you haven't heard him yet, check him out on Amazon. Or on my Myspace profile,

www.myspace.com/jin411 (The song on my profile is Save the Last Dance For Me)

Or just check out his own site at www.michaelbuble.com

I love the storytelling, Frank Sinatra, old school style of music... lets hope this type of music makes a huge comeback. I can't wait to hear more of it.

FlickR - Just so I can share with everyone

www.flickr.com/photos/jin411

I had been lazy when it came to choosing a photo sharing website, but I found one that I felt had the best layout. Unfortunately, looks like I'll have to pay a nominal fee to be able to upload more pictures. Hopefully I'll get around to that soon.

I'll be posting pictures involving my many hobbies on there. Enjoy!

It might be time for my Ford Ranger

Oh Ford Ranger. I can see now why American's love trucks so much. I love this truck, not because it's pretty (because it's not), but because it's low maintenance, never complains, and just keeps going and going. Until this week. It's an old 1992 Ford Ranger 2 wheel drive 5 speed manual approaching 150K miles.

The last few mornings, it has been making high pitched noises, and it has stalled twice now at random areas. The problem is, after it stalls, I have had trouble getting the truck to restart. Most of the problems go away after the car warms up, but that doesn't mean nothing's wrong.

I know that most of my friends wonder why I drive that thing so much, especially when I have a motorcycle, an Audi and an Acura in the garage (by the way, Geico doesn't believe me that all those vehicles are mine, I think they're trying to find out who I live with, man they're starting to be a pain). I've driven the truck the most out of all my vehicles in the past year (13K miles on the Ranger versus 8K on the TL).

It's because the truck is so convenient. I can take it to the city and not worry about it getting door dents. I can take it to a Park and Ride or mall and not worry about it getting stolen. It's paid off, it's got cheap cheap insurance, and gets comparable gas mileage to my other cars (23 miles per gallon). If this was my only car, I'd be saving nearly a thousand dollars a month on automobiles (gas, payments, and insurance).

I can take the dogs places and not worry about the interior getting damaged. *sigh* Maybe I should just keep it in the driveway and use it strictly for taking the dogs places and for the few times I need to go to Home Depot and Lowes. But then it'd just be an eyesore. What do I do Blogger?

Maybe I should upgrade to an F150... nah. I think I'll sleep on this for a while.

Stupid Choice Jin

So on the way to work today, I noticed a tiny little injured bird on the pavement. Not even thinking about the recent bird flu scares or my mom's constant warnings about how birds and rodents can carry tons of diseases (she's a nurse so I hear it a lot), I decided to let it climb onto my hand and I put it in the bark under a bush. I had some peanuts for a snack and left the little bird some of the smallest pieces to nibble on.

During the entire morning, I wondered how it was doing. I felt a little guilty for not having done more.

Unfortunately, during lunch, I found it had died a few feet away (took a sad lil' pic of it). I felt terrible and after lunch, I told my coworkers about it. Then came the paranoia and fear that I had infected myself with bird flu or Avian Influenza. The fear was mainly due to Greg scaring the shit out of me.

He printed out a few pages from the internet about what to do if you come across a dead bird (even though the bird wasn't "dead" when I made contact with it, I was still scared).

It pretty much said,

1. Put on gloves. Do NOT touch it with your bare hands
2. Put the dead bird in a plastic bag. Tie the bag.
3. Put that plastic bag in another bag. Do tie the bag yet.
4. Take off the gloves and place them in the outer plastic bag. Now tie the outer bag.
5. Wash your hands thoroughly.

It was a lot longer than that, but that was the jist of it.

Even now, late at night, I keep thinking twice about rubbing my eyes and whether I've washed my hands enough today. Next time something like that happens, I'll probably make the same mistake again, but I'll try to use gloves or something instead.