tmo's blog

family dinner
scene: monday evening; elevator in my apartment building after letting in daniel, his parents (dave and ruth), and yasmin; my neighbor robert steps into elevator as well
robert: hey, is this your family, friends?
me: ummm…. yeah (with simultaneous thoughtful expression). yeah it is. this is my seattle family

so, after living in seattle for a year and eating countless meals at the seidels and andresens, i finally invited them all over for a meal at my place; i figure i can feed them once ;-). i baked some chicken breasts (with optional and recommended sweet baby ray’s hickory and brown sugar bbq sauce) and made my granny’s fried corn; dave (yasmin’s husband) made some broccoli and tempeh.
we ate, talked, laughed, shared; after spending time with both families, it was the first time i got them all together, and it was good times. they’ve had a significant impact on my adjustment to the seattle area and culture; my experience here would be dramatically different otherwise. i thank God for them

and, speaking of family, my momma ‘nem (mom, grandmama, aunt yvette, aunt brenda) are flying up to visit at the end of august. i’m excited! they will be my first real “visitors” since i’ve moved. and, my family family will get to meet my seattle family 🙂

one year anniversary!
today (tuesday) is my one year anniversary at microsoft! it’s amazing that i’ve been on the IE team and been a part of IE8 release candidate, shipping IE8, and shipping Win7. and, i work on a great team with great people; i brought cookies in to celebrate, and quite a few dropped by my office to congratulate me. good times y’all.

and… my name is published
then, one of my co-workers saw me in the hallway and was like “hey, your name is mentioned in one of the w3c specs”. and, i checked it out, and he was right: me, one of the testers, and one of the program managers from IE are listed in acknowledgments for the cssom-view spec. i don’t know about y’all, but that’s hot.

well, so far, i’m doing a better job of keeping the blog up-to-date. i’m moving this weekend to another (much cheaper) apartment, so hit me up on the cell if you don’t see me online. holla!

so, ya boy went for his first real hike yesterday with some fellow microsofties (big shoutout to josh for putting it together!).

we went from this:

to this:
 

as you can see, the view is it’s a 8 mile round-trip hike, with an elevation of 4000 ft. so, it was rather steep at some points of the hike. the weather wasn’t that bad; it was a little cloudy in the morning, but the sun came out more later in the day. still, there are plenty of trees, tall trees that provided plenty of shade:

well, i ain’t got much to say about the hike, other than it was a fun experience (that i will definitely do again) and cool to meet some other folk. i hope the pictures do more of the talkin. otherwise, just hollatchboi 🙂

so, yeah, i was in st louis last weekend. and, yeah, i didn’t tell too many ppl. but that was on purpose: i was in town to visit family and washu/harambee/nsbe folk. it was only for the weekend, so i did a flyby (too far for a driveby). if i ain’t see you, then i’ll catch you on my next trip in may.

but, anyway, i came in town for my uncle’s 80th birthday party. my parents hosted it at their house, and there was plenty of people, food, and fellowshipping. i got to see all my family in st louis, which was pretty convenient :-).
my dad put together a live jazz combo in our living room for the party, featuring him on guitar, some of his friends on bass (eric moore), drums, piano, and vocal. and i also got pulled into to play piano on a couple of songs :-). it was fun though; it’s been a while minute since i played music alongside my dad.

i dipped out a couple of hours into the party to go to the Visions Concert at Graham Chapel the 560 Music Building (i say graham chapel out of habit :-). i was a little late though, as in i missed the first half of the concert, including dishon’s performance during intermission:-/. but, of course, the choir was bangin, and i had a good time.

but an ever better time was had with all the washu folk that i got to catch up with: OH-SEVEN! we was rollin deep, between those who were already in stl and me and carl flying in for the concert. it was good to see some of my WU07 classmates, even though there are quite a few that i know would have liked to have been there.
and apart from the concert, i got a chance to catch up with my peoples from Harambee, Men of Integrity, and NSBE (FIIIIIVE DEEP!!), all of whom i miss and am so excited to see do big thangs at washu and beyond. quick shout out to ‘09! i’m proud of y’all!!!

of course, it wouldn’t be a trip back to st louis without some kind of strange weather. well, it was clear and sunny when i arrived friday night, snowed saturday night/sunday morning, and brightened back up sunday afternoon. if i had told you that it snowed, you probably wouldn’t have believed me, but i have footage of one of the remaining patches of snow before i left on the left…

so, yesterday, i went bouldering. the weather this past weekend was gorgeous: hardly a cloud in the sky, temps in the 60s, and no humidity. and in some places you can literally see a mountain at every point of the horizon (the cascades, the olympics, rainier, or baker). straight up breathtaking.
anyway, back to bouldering: dave im’d me sunday morning to ask if i wanted to go bouldering with one of his friends phil. he likened it to rock climbing, but said that there are no harnesses. hmm…….
dave and phil (intervarsity connection—both of whom were on staff with IV at some point and have wives currently on staff) picked me up sunday afternoon on our way to gold bar, wa, which is east of seattle toward the cascades. our ride to the boudlering site became much more adventurous as the terrain got much more “gnarly” (according to the phil’s bouldering guidebook), which basically translated to not being able to take his minivan that far up the trail. so, we hiked the rest of the way. the view that we had along the way made it worth it.
phil was our bouldering subject matter expert, so he demonstrated what to do. at first, it looked like just climbing a rock, but it became more clear that it’s a bit more than that. more time is spent in figuring out how it can be climbed (again, no equipment, no harnesses, no hooks or carabiners). but, we did have one piece of equipment: we had a landing pad that we placed on the ground under the climber to drop to if the climb becomes too difficult.
i managed to climb the first boulder (pictured below), but it was also the last boulder i climbed successfully. we went to about 4 boulders. phil seemed to effortlessly maneuver up the boulders while dave and i soon realized how out of shape we were. needless to say, it was good times, and i got to do something i’ve never done before :-). and i’m sho ‘nuff motivated to stick with my strength training. what if i get stranded somewhere and the only way i could live was if i could climb some big ol’ rock?

peace…

i ain’t lost my job. many folk have called/emailed/texted me to make sure i’m alright. and i am. thanks for checkin up on me

also, this has been a historical week, if you haven’t noticed. i can’t say i’m a ride-or-die obama supporter, nor can i say i have a genuine interest in politics, but i was proud (to say the least) to see a black man take the oath on tuesday. i hope everyone got a chance to see the ceremony, whether live or re-aired.

and… another highlight of last week was microsoft’s mlk celebration. the guest speaker was magic johnson (yep!) who talked about his entrepreneurial experiences in bringing businesses to “urban” areas that would not normally be in those markets. and he did a great job of connecting it to dr. kings dream. it was very refreshing and inspiring to hear what he’s doing for the community and the impact he’s having.

aight, holla

1. i miss everyone back in st. louis!!!!! i’m grateful for the time to come home for the christmas holiday. it was great to connect with the fam, my transformation peeps, washu alum, my intervarsity foundations team, sluh c/o ‘03 5yr reunion, and random kickin it with people.

2. you gotta check this clip out: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3070902
it’s a preview of an mlk performance that yasmin will be in. this mug is hot!!!! if you’re in the seattle area on monday, please attend the event!

3. ya boy has been on the grind. for real. work has been cool, but there’s definitely been a lot of it. it’s an exciting time to be on the ie and windows teams (check out the stuff on the windows 7 beta…)

4. the sun came out today!!!! in a seattle winter, that’s something to praise God for

5. i went to a small group on wednesday night hosted by a couple from eastside church. good times, good times. and good people.

6. i need to start workin out again. i hate saying that at this time of the year because everybody is saying it. it’s the cool thing to say in january. but i want to get back into it for real for real. i went runnin last weekend and got too excited and i stressed my it band (iliotibia band runs along the outside of your leg). i ran too far and ran on steep hills. i’m fine now, but i had to walk (instead of run) back to my apartment, in my running gear, which made me look like i was over dressed for a walk :-/

7. ever seen “burn after reading"? if you haven’t, don’t start now. waste of $4 rental

8. i have nothing else to write. it’s just that 8 is an even power of 2.

holla

and here’s why:
 

i really, really, really want to go into the office today. this is my last day before i go on vacation. why it gotta snow when i want to go to work????

alas, immabout to put on some hot chocolate 🙂