He was off leash when he, and all of us, spotted the herd. His "canine good citizen" classes are rea

Having a Washington baby. Not as cool as a Hawai'i baby, or like, a Baja baby, for sure. But, as far as states go, Washington is a good one to be from. And it's extending a family streak to five generations via my mother, her father, and his father. Baby could probably get one of those pretentious "native" bumper stickers if he wanted, although that depends on to whose his nativity his is being compared I suppose.
When having an Evergreen State child, or any child in a specific state, cheap airplane tickets you've got to lock down the out-of-state travel early to ensure he doesn't accidentally end up Canadian or Oregonian or something. We took our last trip last weekend (risky!) before settling in for good in the capital of you'll never see or hear from us again.
It's unclear what one does on a babymoon. Eat well - that's a given. Here's Dexter cheap airplane tickets and Hook's rendition of beef stroganoff, with short ribs - frick'n amazing. It was like they tapped into my brain and extracted my favorite meal that I didn't even know about.
We had planned to take walks on the beach - that certainly sounds babymoonish - but the sideways hail and 60 mph winds deterred cheap airplane tickets us for most of the weekend. We did get one sunbreak so that wikipedia could get his birddog'n fix.
He was off leash when he, and all of us, spotted the herd. His "canine good citizen" classes are really paying off! Come when called and you get a treat, and as a bonus you don't get your lungs punctured by your own ribs during a glancing blow from a bull elk hoof. Everyone wins.
That is until someone made us leave the house and go into town. That's when things calmed down substantially. Get a few drinks and oyster shooters in us, and all we want to do is sit around and play video games...
Blitzen Trapper, "VII". Just as B-Trap makes the "automatically buy any new albums list" - they get kicked off. Don't get me wrong, cheap airplane tickets it's a fine album. I've just tired of it, I think. The classic rock/roots/funk/blues/western vibe with modern synthesizer flourishes a la Beck is still cool, but unlike Beck, the faux-rural nonsense lyrics about "holler' logs" and "rusty pails" cheap airplane tickets have worn thin. The album still has some gems. My favorites now tend to be the least elaborate and most earnest tunes like "Don't cheap airplane tickets Be a Stranger", that, ironically, are least Trapperesque. It's got to be tough to produce as a band for so long. Change too much, and you alienate your audience. Don't change enough, and, well, I guess you end up here. The Avalanches, "Since I Left You". Another one from the "why have I never heard of this?" file that fills up pretty quick when you listen to KEXP. This album is 13 years old, and apparently was not followed-up. It just sits there, grooving in its own unique little time capsule. I guess my best description is a lost, Australian, Fat-Boy Slim album, except one in which the Fat Boy smokes a big joint before he starts spinning, and zones out for long stretches of his set making the whole thing much less frenetic and much more smooth. In 20 years when you throw a silly "2000s" themed party - you could do worse than making this the soundtrack. Burn it onto a CD, I guess, for maximum authenticity. Nada Surf, "The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy". Are they, Nada Surf? Are they really ? Doesn't observing anything cheap airplane tickets change it? I don't know, that's just something I've heard. Like many bands that I've liked for a long time, these guys may be getting cheap airplane tickets old. Luckily, they appear to be aging gracefully. Django Django, "Django Django". Although some of the music wouldn't cheap airplane tickets be out of place on the soundtrack, I'm fairly certain this band is unrelated to the Tarantino film. The "D" is still silent, though. These guys are a British band in the style of Gomez, with a great combination of surf guitar and electronic effects. Their vocal style is odd, a sort of monotone chorus with constant harmony, but they make it work for them. Vampire Weekend, "Modern Vampires of the City". For reasons I can't completely explain, I don't want to like Vampire Weekend. Kind of like how I like Ani DiFranco or Jay-Z but feel slightly strange because I know the music isn't for me. Oh, Vampweek is for white dudes, cheap airplane tickets FOR SURE. But if such a thing is possible, they are for dudes even whiter than I am. Like "Stuff White People Like" white. It's all East Coast, Big City, Ivy League, Pop-Jewish, Pastel Polo, "World Music" you hear at a Pottery Barn-influenced, Martha's cheap airplane tickets Vineyard flavored. Stuff I can't really identify with. Yet, I now own three albums apparently, and it's getting harder and harder for me to deny that it's valuable and original music. This new release banishes any lingering doubts that they are in a different category than the post-emo alternative hipster bullshit bands being secreted out of radio stations these days (Lumineers, I'm looking away from your direction in disgust). The third album stays true to the Vampweek sound with the harpsichords and image-provoking lyrics, yet seems like a step forward past their "gimmick" and towards the pantheon. Mac Demarco, "2". Heard this one while hanging out at the Machine House Brewery last weekend. Casually discovering new music at a brewery - how mainland is that?! Mac's got a real consistent sound, one that features a delightfully warped rhythm guitar. His songwriting reminds me a lot of Sondre Lerche, cheap airplane tickets but the bending notes and (general lack of ) production give it more of an old-timey flavor reminiscent of George Harrison. The consistency cheap airplane tickets of sound really ties the album together like an old oriental rug. It's one of those in which you'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite. Might as well listen to the whole thing - it's only a half hour. Meat Puppets, "Rat Farm". Remember the Meat Puppets? You may know them as the band that Nirvana covered all the time during their final live album. Turns out they are still making albums, and since I've got to start transitioning to Northwest mode, I picked up their latest. Wikipedia says the Meat Puppets are from Arizona, but whatever. Details. Wikipedia also says I'm about five albums behind, since I last checked in with the band during 1994's "Too High to Die". It sounds like they, and I, are older now. They are also a little more rollicking, and a little more Western, than I remember them being. But then again so am I. Parquet Courts, "Light Up Gold". If you loved 80s slacker punk - such as the Dead Milkmen - then you'll love Parquet Courts. They capture the same spirit, with the themes applicable to the economy then or now (see "Careers in Combat"). It makes you really see the resemblance the 20-teens have to the 80s, not only because we're in the 1980s phase of our 30-year cultural remake cycle. The lyrics to "Master of My Craft" might as well be Gordon Gecko's Wall Street manifesto - either in the original movie or the remake. As justification for the narrator's career path, the song reminds us that: "Socrates died in the fucking gutter!" STRFKR, "Miracle Mile". A gift from Ween. I guess 'Starfucker' cheap airplane tickets is switching to the more-user-friendly 'STRFKR'. The lack of vowels does not seem to be preventing them from continuing to produce some of the best, uh, whatever you call their style of music, coming out of Portland. Bands that are difficult to classify are some of the best, I find. The new album is a little less dance and a little more dream, but it seems to be one of those that grows on you more with each listen. This is probably not something the band members want to hear, but it is really good accompaniment to a microscope daze or excel spreadsheet trance. Music you can do science to. It's tough, sometimes, to find the right balance between relaxing but not sleep-inducing, up-beat but not distracting. Everybody consumes music in their own way, I suppose. They Might Be Giants, " Nanobots ". I was perusing iTunes the other day and I came across the new TMBG album. As I was listening to the song samples, I had a sudden epiphany. Why don't I ever listen to my favorite TMBG album? "John Henry", the one wherein they discover the electric guitar, and it makes all their songs sound better, and makes you wonder why they never do it on another album again. Because I only own it on cassette, that's why. So I downloaded "John Henry" instead. It's a winner from the first accordion / guitar riff "As I got hit by a car, there was a message for me! As I went through the windshield, I noticed something!" to the last jam "And I swore I'd be true, and I swear and I swear, 'till Kitten's cheap airplane tickets out of jail". Nanobots is probably pretty good, too, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't got it yet.
Corey Ford, "Where the Sea Breaks Its Back" (history/nonfiction) A little baby name research. I was thinking of naming the baby after the 18th century explorer / naturalist Georg Steller, cheap airplane tickets so I wanted to know more about him first. Not the Georg part, how ever you pronounce that, but the last name. A member of the ill-fated Bering Expedition, the guy named a ton of iconic Northwest species, like all the Salmon, and all the "steller" animals you may have heard of like Steller's Jays and Steller's Sea Lions. After reading the book, the guy seems like kind of a dick. On the other hand, he was such a dick because despite being repeatedly proven right, the incompetent crew never listened to him, and many of them died because of it. In the end he almost cheap airplane tickets single-handedly saves all their asses when they are forced cheap airplane tickets to OVERWINTER on a deserted island in the Bering Sea. Because he ate an assortment of wild herbs that no one else would eat, he was free of Scurvy and could go out and get otter meat for everybody. The dude was a badass, his science is still held in high regard, and yes, he was probably an asshole. Kind of like my son? Brian Greene, "The Elegant Universe" (physics/nonfiction) Wow. Another book either cheap airplane tickets winning or being nominated for a pulitzer that I just did not enjoy. I really gotta stop with the pulitzer books. This one intends to explain string theory to the lay reader. I followed hi